Making the Most of Your Affiliate Networks

If you have any kind of Pay Per Click or Pay Per Action advertising on your blog, you’re already familiar with affiliate networks. Basically, these organizations offer individual website owners and bloggers the opportunity to place ads from a huge range of companies—from Amazon.com to small independent retailers—on their webpages. The affiliate network assigns a special code to your blog, and when the customer clicks through your ad and buys something, you earn either a commission on the sale or a flat fee (depending on the specific agreement you have).

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, here is one of the most comprehensive lists of affiliate networks I’ve found: http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com/affiliate_center/affiliate_networks.php. Most of these networks require that you apply to them before you can use the ads; but this is just a way to make sure you aren’t misusing the ads and that your website is not doing anything illegal that would affect the retailers’ reputations.

Assuming you have already joined a network or ten and you’ve chosen some ads, how can you make the most of your network to ensure you’re earning money on your blog? One of the best ways is to stay in contact with your affiliate marketing rep. The majority of these companies assign each site owner to a live person who manages your account with them. These individuals work on a commission as well, and they are highly motivated to help you earn money from advertising. Once you develop a relationship with them, they will make sure you get the best information about the ads in your network; and this includes inviting you to be part of special promotions that will earn you higher rates per click or per action.

Another important tip is to review your affiliate networks daily for new promotions and banner art. Changing up your ads on your site can help keep things fresh and catch the eyes of visitors who come there regularly. You want to shy away from making your site into a single wall of blinking, rotating graphic banner ads. The reader will be overwhelmed and it will end up defeating the purpose of the ads by causing them to lose focus on your website. A couple wisely chosen and placed ads can be just the thing to augment your site design, and grab attention.

If you have other forms of electronic communication with your readers or members, such as a regular newsletter, ezine, or email list, you can incorporate links to your affiliates in these as well. Each program within an affiliate network offers several choices in links—banners of every shape and size, text links, and even codes to build forms so that you can be creative with your advertising.

Of course, the most important element in making money with affiliate advertising is getting enough traffic to your site. These ads are absolutely a numbers game, and you need to do everything in your power to get people to you website to view them in the first place.

The bottom line is that earning money from affiliate marketing isn’t just about throwing up a few banners here and there. You need to think strategically and make sure you are using all the tools provided to you. You also want to make sure you stay in compliance with any regulations that the retailers have about advertising. You will void your affiliate network membership if you engage in spam or other unscrupulous advertising practices.

Here are my Top 3 favorite affiliate networks to join and would highly recommend you join (the customer service and product network are top notch!):

Motive Interactive

Never Blue

Market Leverage

My First Recurring Affiliate Commission

So I wake up the other day, turn on the computer and logon to Gmail as part of my morning routine. When I get to my Inbox, I find that I have 2 emails from Yaro Starak:

When I open them up, I find that I’ve received $20 as commission for referring Jeff Christman to Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring program. So, Jeff, if you’re reading this, thanks buddy! This is my first ever recurring commission (so I should be getting paid $20/month for as long as Jeff is on the course) and really, my first ever real commission (apart from one off TLA payments), so I’m pretty excited about the extent to which I can gather a continual referral income (especially since I only did the one review of the course).

And it should be noted that Yaro got the other $57 which made up the total sale price of $77. If any of you guys have tried Blog Mastermind could you tell us how you found the experience and maybe give us a short review of the site and its features and how it’s worked for you so far. It would make a great case study.

How I Got Banned then Unbanned From Adsense

As you can see, I no longer use Google Adsense on this site anymore. There are multiple reasons including the fact that they make the reader experience worse by providing annoying ads, the fact that in most cases they are an eye-sore and poorly designed, and also by the fact that they took up too much space in my old design (especially in the sidebars), and only earnt me $10 or so each month.

So after this new theme was relaunched at the beginning of May, I’ve hardly been checking my Adsense account. So, when I tried to login a few days ago, I was shocked to see that Google wasn’t letting me in.

Now, the Adsense account is linked to my mother’s name as I’m not yet 18 years old, so I checked her email, and was horrified to see the following email:

Subject: Google Adsense Account Disabled

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions
have been generated on the Google ads displayed on your site(s).
Therefore, we have disabled your Google AdSense account. Please
understand that this was a necessary step in order to protect the
interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks or impressions on any
ad(s), including but not limited to clicks and/or impressions generated
by:

- a publisher on his own webpages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programmes or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behaviour, targeting or delivery of ads for any reason

These or any other such activities that violate Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and programme polices may have led us to disable your
account.

OK, this really got my back up. I for one have hardly ever clicked on my own ads, and if I did, have immediately reported it to Google or a representative to warn them of invalid clicks. Therefore, I really was annoyed to have seen the back of my account, also due to the fact that there was still $40 left in there that I was being owed (I suppose that’s not a great deal for some, but £20 can get you a long way!).

Anyhoo, I immediately contested the decision (for those who are in a similar situation the link to contesting is here) to see whether my account could be reinstated. Within 24 hours, another Google rep had sent the following email:

Thank you for your email. As you know, Google treats instances of invalid
clicks very seriously. By disabling your account, we feel that we have
taken the necessary measures to ensure that invalid clicks will not
continue to occur on your site. Due to the proprietary nature of our
monitoring system, we are not able to disclose any specific details of
these clicks.

Short but sweet. I knew my battle was over. So it came as an immense surprise as I was writing this post to try and login to my account to find that I was able to do so with my $40 given back to me! Very strange, my emailing must have hit a G-Nerve somewhere! It seems by looking at a report, that a Blogger site that has been dormant for a year now, got around 20 clicks in 1 day - probably by some unscrupulous visitor/bot.

Anyway, morals of the story: don’t just rely on Adsense for your online income. Diversify your streams of income so that if one goes caput, you’ve still got others that will keep your pocket money or rent pay coming in monthly.

My Best Adsense Layout Ever!

Who wants more money from their adsense sites?

My name is Mark Wielgus, from 45n5.com, and I’d like to thank Adnan for the opportunity to make a guest post at Blogtrepreneur.

Last month my adsense earnings were over $700 dollars, which means I’ve got a long way to go to catch the higher earners, but also that I know a thing or two about adsense.

I thought I’d share what I think is “My Best Adsense Layout Ever!” for three reasons.

• Show off “My Best Adsense Layout Ever!” (thanks Mr. Obvious, lol)
• Help anybody struggling to earn with adsense see a proven money making layout.
• Listen to any constructive criticism to help all of our adsense incomes improve

So Let’s See That Hot Adsense Layout Please

There she is. Perty ain’t she?

The rundown on the adsense.

1. Google search box above the banner

2. Large rectangle after the title and before the content

3. Link unit above the vertical menu (people usually click the first link first)

4. Small adsense block at the end of the menu

5. Footer is covered by a leaderboard

The Rundown On the Layout

1. Width no wider than 760px

2. Make menu text look similar to ad unit, but leave space between them

3. 2 column layout

Simple, yet elegant, and maximizing your adsense units.

Only Listen To Advice From Your Visitors

I presented a good starter template, however each site is unique and has unique visitors. Therefore it is up to you to test what works best for your site.

Never settle with any default layout or adsense colors, rather, let your visitor tell you what they like to click on by constantly using adsense split testing.

Seriously, even the hard fast “blend your ads” rule isn’t always true, and I’ve found I sometimes get a higher click through rate by using a contrasting color. Test, test, test!

In Conclusion

That is “My Best Adsense Layout Ever!”. Hopefully if you’re struggling to make an adsense dollar you have something to start with now, and if you disagree that is the best adsense layout ever, let me know in the comments why!

I look forward to hearing from you.

10 Reasons Why TextLinkAds and ReviewMe are Kicking Blogging Butt

Lately it’s all been about ReviewMe and Text Link Ads (aff). These sister companies are becoming the base of online income and you can find their names on almost any page in the blogosphere, such is the consumer base and loyalty they have garnered and attracted.

Recently, I completely sold out on my TLA sidebar spots - meaning that I now have 8 monthly advertisers! I raised the amount to 10 now, so still 2 more spaces left if you wanna buy your ad! And I did a review of NorthxEast Business Blog which managed to earn me $50 which I finally received on March 1st.

But the fun isn’t just stopping there. A few days back, ReviewMe announced the arrival of their much waited upon affiliate program.
To quote from the blog:

“Not only will the affiliate program drive traffic to your individual listing at ReviewMe which will encourage review sales for you but it will also pay you $25 for any referred sale even if the visitor does not purchase a review from your blog.”

Unfortunately and unlike TLA, ReviewMe only coughs up the $25 if you refer an advertiser who will buy a blog post. For publisher referrals there is unfortunately no reward. Maybe this is to do with the increasing amount of publishers signing up day after day - Im not really sure. Anyhoo, here’s my brand spanking new affiliate button which you can use if you want to buy some ads to boost Pagerank, Search Engine Recognition and traffic for that all important site, blog or forum in the form of a review:

But why are these TLA and ReviewMe so dang popular? Here are 10 sweet reasons:

1. An easily navigable site - means that you can find what you want where you want it. TLA utilizes the common function of categories, whilst ReviewMe has gone web 2.0ish by using tags instead. Either way, browsing for an advert opportunity has never been easier!

2. Cheap links on newly submitted sites - looking for a cheap, quality advert on someone elses blog? Search for New Text Link Ads, check for high Alexa ranking blogs and high Link Popularity at a low price ($15 is a steal). New sites tend to be underpriced due to unseen potential by the TLA robots - so take advantage of it!

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