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Affiliate Programs I’m Connected With – Part Three

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Aug 29, 2011

Hi Y’all. We’re talking affiliate programs that I’ve used and tried to make money with over the years in these last few posts. We’ve had part one and part two and now we move to part three; hold on to your seats.

Clickbank is one affiliate programs I’ve never specifically written about, hence no link to an article I’ve written. Clickbank is a program that you see a lot of big time internet marketers talking about all the time. They say they create programs, then set it up with Clickbank to help them market their products by allowing us to find products on their site to market, as publishers with their landing pages. There are some nice products there, but a lot of junk as well I have to say. I did purchase one product from them that I liked, 20 Ways To Make $100 Per Day Online, that I thought was pretty good and I marketed that thing for a long time on this blog.

And this is where things fall apart for me. According to them, I’ve never had any clicks on any of the products I’ve marketed from them, and I’ve never made a single dollar. I find that hard to believe, but it’s why I decided a long time ago I wasn’t going to market anything else they offered except for the book I’ve given the link to above. A month ago I finally removed that product from my sidebar as well; I guess just having me think it was great didn’t translate to anyone else. But over 5 years I haven’t been credited with a single sale. Maybe others have had better success than me; can’t tell you.

Solutions Medical is an affiliate program that I hooked up with to market medical billing books through my medical billing site, which I talked about on the part one post. Unfortunately, it’s another affiliate I’ve never made a single dollar from, although they do show some clicks here and there.

TTZ Media is an interesting little affiliate program in that it can highlight certain types of ads that you can put wherever and the products will rotate. You can pick one product or many products and change colors as you want to. Below is an example of the types of ads you can create:

According to TTZ, I’ve had almost 2,000 clicks over the years, but I’ve never made a single sale. Once again, it’s a program that I didn’t use a lot, but did have it on some of my other sites here and there, as well as popping it into a blog post every once in awhile. So, once again, I can’t tell you how well they pay or what payments are like. I can see how this might work for some people, but it’s never worked for me.

J-V Network is a lot like Clickbank. What you do is look through the tons of offers they have and sign up to help promote and market that program. I actually did a test with something called Tweet My Blog, which I had on this blog as the first program I used to send my blog posts to Twitter, which was neat except I couldn’t get rid of its marketing on my blog itself. That is, if anyone clicked on the link in Twitter they came to the blog and had a large banner ad at the top of the blog that obscured even the title of this blog.

Anyway, I had that post above and I heard from 3 people who said they’d added it to their blogs as well. When I went to check my stats it didn’t show I’d had any clicks, which of course means it showed me as not making any money from those sales. That was disappointing and I wrote them, but never heard a single thing back. I’ve never gone back to try it again, and I’m not sure I will. I do still get email every once in awhile from someone that’s created a new product that they’d like help marketing, but I’m just not in the mood for now.

There you go, 4 more affiliate programs I’ve dealt with. And there’s still more coming; well, you asked.
 

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Affiliate Programs I’m Connected With – Part Two

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Aug 28, 2011

Obviously if this is part two, then there was a part one, which I hope you check out. Last time I mentioned 3 affiliate programs I’m a part of; here are some more. And, just to remind you, the links are to articles on this blog and not to the sites themselves, but there are links to those sites on some of those other articles.

Commission Junction is probably the second best known affiliate program I use, but it’s also been the diciest. I can’t say I’ve had great success with it, but it’s given me some of the best options for finding products and links to market to date. If you notice at the top there I have banner ads, and those are from CJ, as I call them sometimes. They rotate, so if you go to a page more than once you’ll see different ads, up to 5.

The best thing about them isn’t the fact that they have lots of different sizes and literally a couple thousand affiliates. The best thing about them is that they allow you to pop up specific products, with a template that’s formatted along with a “buy” button, which I kind of stole as the template for my books there to the left. The first three years of this blog had me adding a product or link of some kind at the end of every post, but I gave that up at the beginning of the year. Sometimes I pop a product in where my image resides. I use products on some of my other websites instead now.

I can say I’ve made money, but it’s been kind of iffy. I’ve talked about the problems I’ve had with some Commission Junction affiliates, which is irritating because I deserve to be paid. They don’t always support the publishers, which is us, and that’s depressing. But I have made some money here and there, to the tune of probably $400 over 3 1/2 years. Not great if you ask me, but more than some other affiliates. I’ve actually made more, but I’m not counting those affiliates that haven’t paid me.

Google Affiliate Network is Google’s version of CJ, with fewer advertisers but they’re getting bigger. Over the years I’ve made some sales, but not tons. That’s probably my fault as I haven’t used them as much as CJ except for Barnes & Noble, who just recently left them. The best thing about GAN, as I sometimes refer to them, is that if you have Adsense money and make sales with this program, it counts towards your monetary total, and thus you get to your thresholds for getting paid quicker.

The bad thing about Google Affiliate Network is that, like CJ, they don’t support the publishers. Instead, they tell you that you have to work directly with the companies, which failed me when Finish Line refused to pay me my commission, then dropped me because they said I didn’t make enough sales. This seems to be a major failing with some of these affiliate networks; they put a lot of affiliates together, but can’t make any of them treat you right. I’ve probably only made $200 in total over a 4-year period, most of that from the sale of books and DVDs.

The final affiliate network I’m going to mention is Linkshare. They’re like the other two networks I’ve already mentioned, the newest one, and they’re starting to add more companies to the mix. They’re the company that Barnes & Noble just moved to, and one of my other former affiliates also moved to. That might mean that Linkshare is the up and coming affiliate network for everyone, or that the terms are better for these companies.

The problem here is that I’ve yet to see a single sale from any of my affiliates, although once again I have to say I think this is probably my fault. Initially I only belonged to 5 programs and haven’t marketed them all that often, and now I’m only up to 9 programs. However, with the move of B&N and the fact that I like mentioning books and movies and thus putting links into some of my posts (in case y’all don’t remember, if you see a blue link that’s an affiliate link of some kind), and I do tend to sell some books and DVDs here and there, I hope that I’ll start making a sale or two over there. Because I haven’t made any sales I can’t say how well they pay.

Something you have to know for all of these is that the companies you link to will kill those links without your knowledge and, unless you’re always checking your old blog pages or your websites, you’ll have no idea unless someone notices one of your pages looking weird and contacts you about it. That’s kind of depressing, as I’ve seen many things go missing from older pages, but there’s really nothing you can do about that.

Three more down, and lots more to come.
 

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Why Do I Have So Many Problems With Commission Junction Affiliates?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on May 31, 2011

It must be something with me because I don’t see all that many other people complaining about these things, although I bet they are and I’m just missing them. Once again I’m having an issue with a Commission Junction affiliate that won’t pay me and another affiliate that’s dropping me; sigh…

The one that won’t pay me is called NothingButSoftware, which of course means they’re all about technology. I purchased a LCD projector from them for one of my local organizations, a non-profit, and I should have gotten a very nice commission from them. Instead I’ve gotten nothing. I’ve sent them 5 emails, 3 regular emails and 2 through CJ, but I’ve not heard a thing.

Here’s the other side of this, though. CJ states that the best they can do is contact their affiliates and ask them to respond to their publishers. That’s the response I’ve gotten every single time from them. That and their standard “if we haven’t heard from you in 3 days we’re going to assume the problem has been taken care of.”

What the hey? You know, I’ve had this love/hate thing with CJ. Some of the affiliates they’re hooked up with have been wonderful. I would easily recommend 123inkjets because they usually pay you within hours. I had that one issue with GoDaddy but once they learned about it they took care of me. Once I had an issue with FootballFanatics, a sports apparel company, but once I provided them proof they paid me (well, eventually anyway). But some others, like these NothingButSoftware people and 101Phones (which still shows me as an affiliate even though I yanked them over a year ago) are horrible. I did have a problem with Finish Line as well but that was through Google Affiliate Network.

I can’t be the only one who believes that if a company signs an organization to help push their products that they should establish some standards for how they’re supposed to work with you. I get the impression that each advertiser is running things their own way and CJ is just the puppet intermediary. That’s a shame, and they probably wouldn’t like the association, but I keep getting cheated by their publishers and it’s not fair. And if it’s happening to me consistently then it’s happening to others as well.

I did say I have another affiliate dropping me, right? This time it’s a company called Organize.com, and they’re dropping me because I live in New York, and our state has decided that these companies are supposed to be tracking any commissions I might have and paying taxes on anything I make. And Organize.com has decided I’m not worth it; okay, all New York publishers aren’t worth it.

I have to admit that years ago I didn’t like any of this, and now I’m siding with the companies against the state. Sure, states need money, but what gives them the right to pretty much take money out of my pocket, money that I’d be spending in the state and paying taxes on the stuff I purchase, to try to get funds that, for the most part, I’m not really earning anyway? I can imagine the trouble it must be for some of these web companies to try to track all these different state rules; I’m not mad at them for this. At least they didn’t drop me because supposedly I wasn’t making them sales like Brookstone did. And get this; even PokerStars hasn’t dropped me, although I pretty much can’t do anything with them for now since I can’t advertise to an American audience and thus it pretty much kills what I can do with them.

Affiliate marketing isn’t supposed to be this difficult. You make a sale, you get paid, you move on. This type of thing keeps coming up, not having affiliates pay you, and then it destroys the confidence we have in the process. It’s no wonder we’re always writing and worrying about scams.

Except this isn’t a scam; it’s just bad business practices.

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I Know Nothing About Affiliate Marketing

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 2, 2011

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about affiliate marketing, something I’ve been a part of for at least 5 years by now, and wondering “what the heck am I doing wrong?” I’ve made few affiliate sales over the years, but at least I can say I’ve made some. I guess that puts me ahead of a few people, but so many others are really rocking the industry. Then, after yesterday’s escapade and thinking about it some more, I realized one very interesting fact; I know nothing about affiliate marketing!

Going Crazy by Frédéric Dupont

That’s a very disconcerting thing to come to, and though it’s probably over the top, especially since I once wrote an article on how affiliate marketing works, truth be told I’ve been looking for answers for a long time. I’ve read a lot of stuff; I even put together a post where folks could download free ebooks on the subject.

Last night on Zac Johnson’s site, as he was talking about another affiliate marketing program, I left a comment saying that it was nice for him to profile, but I wondered how he did things, even though I had read his book Six Figure Affiliate Blogging and even wrote a review on it. No answer yet, but he’s probably still asleep since I wrote it around 2AM.

You know what the problem is? Well, it’s actually twofold. One, I’m not innovative when it comes to marketing in the first place. It’s never been my strong suit, even though I’ve been working independently for almost 10 years now. I’m okay at networking, which has saved my behind over all these years, but marketing; nope. Two, with all the books and such that I’ve read over all these years, information I’ve eaten up and memorized and understood, I’ve never picked up that one big nugget that I’ve really been looking for, and that’s the first 3 steps of it all. And no, I don’t need to read “create a product” or “set up an autoresponder” or “capture emails for lists” again; none of that tells me a thing. I once asked Willie Crawford this question and he said he’d think about it and get back to me on it; didn’t happen, unfortunately.

I belong to Commission Junction as one of my affiliate programs, as you know. I used to pop one of their products or banner ads into every post up until the new year began. At least half of the time the product or banner ad had something to do with the topic of the day. Obviously just showing something that no one was interested in on that day didn’t work, as I rarely made sales from doing all that work, though I did get a few clicks here and there. My question was what the heck was I really supposed to do when I either selected a product or a banner ad from one of these advertisers; that’s the step I’ve never really gotten.

At least I did get one question answered a few days ago on Lisa Irby’s blog, where she had a post, along with a video, titled Why Some Blogs Don’t Perform Will Affiliate Marketing. It wasn’t in the video, which was still neat to watch, but in her response to the comment I made on the blog. I said it sounded expensive to do what she did, having to buy a lot of domain names, and after a back and forth she said she doesn’t buy a bunch of domains, but drives people to an existing site where she markets her items.

That was an aha moment for me because she’s the first person to ever say that from all that I’ve read. It takes a load off my mind to know that I don’t have to do like some of these big time marketers, create a product, buy a new domain name and push it like crazy. Whew! At least stage one is set; I’ve finally learned something useful, so thanks Lisa. That one nugget gave me other things to think about, and really that’s what it’s all about. I now have a better idea for what I could be doing.

In 2009 I wrote a post called Let’s Learn Affiliate Marketing Together; seems we still need to learn that lesson.

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Zac Johnson’s Six Figure Affiliate Blogging – A Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jun 26, 2010

Back in May, I decided to download the free ebook by Zac Johnson called Six Figure Affiliate Blogging. I’ve been following Zac’s blog for almost 2 years and have enjoyed checking out his posts. I figured that it can’t hurt following a guy who has almost 14,000 subscribers, and I might even learn something some day. So, when I saw that he had an ebook, and that it was free, well, I figured I’d have to be an idiot not to download it. So, now I’m going to review the book for you.

It’s actually two books in one. The first 2/3rds of the book are Zac’s ideas on how one could possibly make money in blogging. The last 1/3rd of the book are interviews he conducted with some of the top earning bloggers out there, such as John Chow & Jeremy Shoemaker. It’s actually pretty neat reading, but of course that part won’t make you any money. However, I always find it intriguing seeing how other people got started in the business and achieved success, which is why I run interviews on two of my blogs.

Back to this book. You start off with a little history of Zac, and let’s just say he’s learned how to make money online. Then there’s a brief tutorial on what affiliate marketing is, what blogging is, selecting niches, hosting, etc. If you have any knowledge of this sort of thing already, as I did, you’re probably going to skim it and move on.

Something big that he talks about is branding, and one of his recommendations is paying someone to create a unique blog for you. It’s an interesting concept, something I can’t totally say I agree or disagree with overall, but I will say that having a unique design might pull in those people who first visit your site and entertain them for a short while. Long term I’m not so sure, but I guess it’s the idea of making a good first impression.

Then we have the concept of getting traffic to one’s blog, and of course he shares a lot of ideas there as well. I knew all of the ideas, but I have to admit that I haven’t put them all into place, so this is an area where some folks might gain something positive from reading it.

After that, and before the interviews, he gives you a lot of different types of ideas on how to make money on your blog, and he gives examples of what he and some other people have done in the past. There’s a lot here for novices, and even if you’ve been doing it for awhile if you’re not making a lot of money you might find something here. Of course Zac subscribes to the idea of creating email lists and using autoresponders, and indeed signing up for this ebook will put you on a mailing list and you’ll start getting some stuff for awhile. Still, it’s a free ebook, so one really can’t complain about it.

Had I written this review in May, I could have qualified for a contest he was running, but I decided to write it now so that it wouldn’t look like I was doing it just to enter a contest. If you’re new to the game, and you want to find out what it’s all about, this is an easy recommendation. If you’re someone who’s looking for ideas to kick start stuff, it’s worth reading as well. And even if you’re more experienced, if you’re not making lots of money with affiliate marketing, and trust me I’m not, then it’s worth reading to see if you can pick up a thing or two to use. I’m going to have to interview him one of these days, if he’s up to it.

Wimbledon-Record Breakers Video

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