Google affiliate network

Google Affiliate Network is shutting down for good in the next few months. When I first read the news from Marketing Pilgrim, I wasn’t very surprised. Companies like Google like to dabble in a lot of projects, but eventually most of them (like Google Reader) will be killed off.

Read the Google Affiliate Network announcement here.

For the most part, I never really used Google Affiliate Network.

I guess the main reason was my distrust for Google and their view of affiliate marketing.

On one side of the coin, Google has been increasingly critical of affiliate marketers using the Google AdWords platform, with many affiliates losing their entire businesses overnight every time Google updates their AdWords policy to be even more anti-affiliate. On the other side, projects like Google Affiliate Network highlights the fact that Google will try just about any business model once.

I never felt like Google Affiliate Network would be a long-term thing, and I didn’t want to get burned by Google again. Luckily this time, I made the right choice.

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If you’re an affiliate, you should have noticed by now that ClickBank has a new design. Cleaner and more up-to-date with the latest design cues, it’s no doubt a big move for CB. 

Clickbank new

But behind the new interface, something else is brewing – and has been brewing for a while now for those who noticed – that may effect your future as an affiliate. 

Here’s what it is: ClickBank is moving out of “get rich quick” programs.

In fact in our previous ClickBank review, we noted that one of ClickBank’s biggest boo-boo is the proliferation of scam-type ebooks and digital products related to the make-money-online niche. ClickBank vendors would already know by now how much CB has tightened it’s product review process for just about anything that mentions the possibility of making money online since 2012. 

This year, the trend is becoming more obvious. ClickBank is trying to rebrand itself as a place where you can “Put Your Expertise” to work. It’s refocusing its efforts on selling digital products in “real” markets, and de-emphasizing make-money-online products. 

In fact, in ClickBank’s Featured Products page, there is not a single make-money-online product mentioned: 

Clickbank featured

Even under the “Business” category, ClickBank does not feature any online marketing or affiliate marketing product. I see this move as a push to “clean” it’s image and appeal to a more mainstream audience. 

Furthermore, ClickBank is also attempting to engage affiliates and merchants directly by providing tools and guides previously done by their own affiliates. In fact, ClickBank already has a website builder called the “Audience Builder” for affiliates and vendors who want to maximize their ClickBank potential, at just $27 monthly

 Clickbank website builder

This falls under the new “ClickBank Powered” account type, which is perfect for marketers with little or no knowledge in building their own website. This is truly the “last mile” that for years have prevented the lass-tech-savvy from selling their own digital products with ClickBank. Now that barrier has fallen.

In other words, ClickBank has changed.

It’s no longer a place for dishonest, greedy Internet scammers to sell rip-off products and hype others to do the same. It is now a more professional, mainstream outlets for just about anyone to turn their ideas into products and sell them at a global marketplace, without worrying about merchant accounts, online security and customer service. 

At least, that’s what they want us to believe.

  

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jvzoo

JVZoo is perhaps the most talked-about affiliate network among Internet marketers today, and in this JVZoo review we’ll tray to explain why.

There’s a very good reason to love them: they pay your affiliate commissions instantly to your PayPal account.

I mean, why wait weeks or months to get paid for your efforts?

Although relatively new, JVZoo has achieved amazing traction among marketers in the “make money online” or “get rich quick” niche market. In this JVZoo review, we’ll find out exactly why most marketers prefer to promote JVZoo Products on their blogs and to their mailing lists.

Click Here to Signup for JVZoo

JVZoo Review: Instant Commissions to PayPal

First and foremost, JVZoo commissions are instant via PayPal. In my opinion this is the number one reason affiliates are flocking to JVZoo. As compared to ClickBank who makes it hard for new affiliates to get paid, and traditional networks like Commission Junction that may take up to 90 days to pay your commissions, JVZoo uses PayPal’s Adaptive Payments technology to pay you instantly at the point of sale.

According to their site:

Our system runs on Paypal’s adaptive payment system which allows your payments to go directly into your PayPal account the moment a sale is made. Unlike other instant payment systems with Paypal, JVZoo has a true payment system that allows you to be paid for EVERY sale that is made.

If you’ve been in affiliate marketing long enough you would have probably tried various affiliate programs that implement “instant split PayPal payment” for sales and commissions – sites like . In theory the program will split payments received from buyers between sellers and buyers, directly to their PayPal account. In practice however, it uses a rotational order button to distribute payment between the seller and affiliates at the percentage set by the seller.

In other words, if a seller set commissions to be 50%, the first sale will be made to the seller’s PayPal account, while the second sale will be made to the affiliate’s PayPal account. The third sale goes back to the seller’s PayPal account, and so on.

There’s a massive problem with this model: REFUNDS!

When a buyer requests for a refund, the seller would have to check if the payment was made to his PayPal account, or to the affiliate’s PayPal account. If he did not receive the payment, he would have to ask the buyer to contact the affiliate directly (or contact the affiliate on the seller’s behalf) to get a refund.

As you can expect, this is a very messy and potentially destructive for your online reputation. Buyers would find it difficult to get their money back from the affiliate, especially when some of them may have never known a third person was involved in their purchase.

It has also landed more than a few marketers and affiliates in trouble with PayPal, partly due to the complaints by buyers when they do not receive their refunds.

paypal-adaptive-payments

With PayPal’s adaptive payment however, a single payment is truly split between the seller, JVZoo, and you. When the seller initiates a refund for the buyer, PayPal will automatically deduct the split amount from all three accounts.

But it gets even better – JVZoo offers customer services to all buyers.

As you can see from the PayPal screenshot below for a commission I received from JVZoo, they list their URL and phone number for customer service.

jvzoo-paypal

This creates the ideal win-win situation for all parties involved. Sellers get to be hands-free on billing matters, customers get good service and prompt refund fulfillment, and affiliates get paid instantly.

JVZoo Review: Integration With Warrior Forum

warrior

Another big thing we want to mention in our JVZoo review is the integration with Warrior Forum, probably the largest marketplace for Internet marketing products. This is done through their “Automated WSO Failover System”, which is basically a replicated offer of your original WSO post on their own forum.

A WSO (Warrior Special Offer) forum is where hundreds of Internet marketers in the “make money online” niche post huge discounts for their products. Some even sell exclusively through the Warrior Forum.

However, Warrior Forum has frequent downtimes, and every second the site is down both sellers and affiliates lose money.

According to JVZoo:

JVZoo’s new system checks to see if the Warrior Forum is up and running every few seconds. If it is down, your backup URL kicks into gear. That means all of the affiliate links will now point to your backup!

JVZoo Review: Instant Affiliate Bonus Fulfillment

jvzoo-affiliate-bonus

Offering a bonus to your subscribers and blog readers is a great way to rake in higher commissions. However, the manual process in delivering bonuses can be quite tedious.

With JVZoo however, you have a built-in system for delivering any bonus you want to your buyers.

According to the JVZoo website:

Now, when you promote a product through JVZoo, we will also deliver your bonus for you, completely hands off to you! All you need to do is simply enter your URL of where your bonus is, or upload the bonus file to our servers and when someone goes through your link and purchases, their bonus from you will be waiting for them on the receipt.

JVZoo Review: IPN Notification System for Developers

jvzoo-integration

Developers and third-party software owners would love JVZoo’s each integration via their own IPN, as well as PayPal’s IPN.

Their IPN seems to be copied from (or borrowed from) ClickBank’s IPN, and I think it’s a smart thing to do if you want ClickBank affiliates to be able to migrate easily. We managed to use it without much issues when setting up Sociabot, our social media automation product.

Documentation is reasonably well-prepared, another plus for developers who don’t want to waste too much time figuring out the JVZoo backend.

JVZoo Review: User Interface

Of course, we cannot conclude this JVZoo review without commenting on the look and feel.

Although JVZoo’s interface leaves much to be desired, it’s practical and easy to navigate. A lot of thought has been put into helping you find the information you need when you need it, although the poor design betrays that.

No mobile version site or mobile app is available for JVZoo at the moment of writing. I also noticed quite a number of irregularities when using different browsers.

However, I think a design makeover could be just around the corner. If they do redesign their website, it would make JVZoo much more appealing to potential affiliates.

So is JVZoo a ClickBank killer? Yes they are, in my opinion.

Although there are no numbers, I don’t think JVZoo has even 10% of the affiliates ClickBank has. That could change in a few years though, as most affiliates seem to be disenchanted with ClickBank’s recent policy changes.

It’s not easy to unseat one of the largest digital product affiliate networks on the Internet. But perhaps that’s not what JVZoo needs to succeed. As long as they keep engaging sellers, buyers and affiliates the way they do now, they could carve out a strong niche market for themselves and ensure survival in a competitive market.

Click Here to Signup for JVZoo

If you liked this JVZoo review, feel free to recommending it by linking back to this post.

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New LinkTrackr features and updates have been rolled out to all accounts. Here’s what’s new:

1. Faster Stats and Graphs

linktrackr-stats

We’ve completely revamped the way we store click data, and as a result you will notice that your graphs load almost immediately.

Even if you have a huge amount of clicks monthly, your Dashboard and stats pages will be super-quick.

2. New Campaign Creation Feature

linktrackr-conversions

In the past campaign creation used to be confusing to new users, and we were also limited to just ONE tracking variable. In the new update, you have a campaign creation tool and we now support up to 5 variables for maximum tracking options.

Our individual link graphs have also been updated to you can now analyze your clicks by Campaign, Subcampaign, Ad Type, Ad Name and Keywords.

You can save your campaigns to get a short URL, and to reference it later. You can also easily duplicate tracking campaigns, and make it compatible with Google Analytics.

3. New Conversion Tracking Tool

linktrackr-conversions2

In the past, each link had it’s own conversion code. The problem was you had to put in multiple conversion codes into a single page if you’re tracking multiple sales and products.

With the new conversion tracking tool, you only need to place ONE code on your pages to track one conversion type. Plus, you can easily save your codes and re-use it later.

4. Download Your Stats in CSV

linktrackr-csv

We’ve always tried to simplify our graphs and stats to give you a more meaningful experience when trying to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. Hardcore users however have always wanted to analyze their clicks in many different ways.

With the new release, you can easily download your complete stats log for the past 60 days in CSV and export it to your own spreadsheet. Now you can play around with your data any way you want!

5. More Accurate Clicks

We’ve improved our tracking system to report more accurate clicks for UNIQUE visitors. We’ve also updated our system to exclude more bots and spiders. As a result, your will get the most accurate click count possible.

We are in the process of updating our video tutorials. In the next few days we’ll be emailing you the video link for the new Campaign and Conversion modules. It’s pretty easy to use, but we want to make sure everyone understands it as much as possible.

If you don’t have a LinkTrackr account yet, now’s the time to get one and take your marketing to the next level.

Signup here: http://www.linktrackr.com/signup.php

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In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use Amazon affiliate links in your LinkTrackr account to track clicks and other important data. Getting a regular HTML link should be easy if you know the basics, but since Amazon now has tons of different product widgets and links it can be pretty confusing to a beginner.

Amazon Affiliate Link

Step 1: Login to your Amazon Associates account at http://affiliate-program.amazon.com and make sure you are working with the correct account. In the example above, I am working with the ID “classicguitar-20”.

Step 2: Enter the product name or search term and click on “Go”. Amazon will return a list of related products.

Amazon Affiliate Link

Step 3: Find the product you want, and click on the highlighted icon (not on “Get Link”). This is the easiest way to get a regular HTML link.

Amazon Affiliate Link

Step 4: How just highlight the raw HTML link as per the example above, and right click to copy the link. This is how the raw link looks like:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004R7A9NU/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=classicguitar-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B004R7A9NU

All raw HTML links should start with “http://www.amazon.com/…” – these are the only type of links that will work in LinkTrackr, PPC ad networks or any other link tracking software. It should also contain your Amazon affiliate ID.

Amazon also offers a short version of the link. The get it just click on “Shorten URL with amzn.to”

Amazon Affiliate Link

The shorten link is encrypted so you will no longer see your affiliate ID or any other variable like ASIN or the product name. It’s much easier to work with and the chances of making a mistake with your links a much lower.

Amazon Affiliate Link

If you click on “Get Link” in step 3 instead of the HTML link shortcut, you will be taken to the complete linking options page filled with all type of widgets and link formats. If you are on this page, you can choose the “Text Only” tab and manually copy the required HTML by highlighting only the link as shown above. However, unless you are very careful, it’s easy to make a mistake.

Amazon Affiliate Link

So we would recommend you just right click on the link preview and choose “Copy Link Address”. This is safer and actually much easier. With either method, the actual HTML link you get is the same.

Amazon Affiliate Link

Now login to your LinkTrackr account, click on “Add New Link” and fill up the form. The example above shows you how to do it by entering only the HTML link – no widget codes, no image or pixel codes, and no iFrame codes.

Amazon Affiliate Link

After creating the Link, make sure you test it out. When you click on your tracking link, it should take you directly to a page on Amazon.com. If you do not see a complete page, you have not done it correctly.

Common mistakes:

  1. Entering the “iFrame” code into LinkTrackr. Your link will work but you will only see the iFrame widget and not the Amazon.com page
  2. Entering pixel image codes.
  3. Not including “http” in your link

So we hope this Amazon tutorial has helped you understand how to get a regular Amazon affiliate link and use it within your LinkTrackr account.

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We’ve added some useful new features to all LinkTrackr accounts to enable more flexible and powerful link cloaking. The first is the ability to add a “Meta Image” to your cloaked affiliate links.

cloaking-facebook

Although this is entirely optional, a Meta Image will allow FaceBook and other social media services to display a thumbnail next to your link, making it more attractive and compelling.

We’ve also added a “Basic Cloaking” option that allows you to cloak your affiliate links without having to display the viral bar. This is useful in some circumstances, and has been one of the most requested improvements in the last couple of months.

 cloaing

All your previous cloaked links will display the viral bar by default. You can easily change this by editing an individual link.

Lastly, we’ve also updated the viral cloaking bar.

viralbar

Google Buzz has been replaced by Google +1, and the old FaceBook share buttons have been replaced with the new Like / Send combination allowing for even more reach on FaceBook.

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I think the video above explains everything about the new geo-reporting for LinkTrackr. This has been a much anticipated feature for quite some time now, but we’ve been bust testing a few methods to determine the best way to do it.

Well it’s finally here (or soon if you don’t see it yet) – and this new feature will allow you to see clicks and conversions by country, for all links or individual links.

Let me know what you think.

NOTE: Only clicks after the update will be tagged to a certain country, all previous clicks will show up as “Unknown”.

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FaceBook conversion tracking is a tricky issue, but if you’re planning to buy FaceBook ads then you’ll just burn a hole through your pockets without the correct tracking system setup.

FaceBook used to have it’s own conversion tracking system, but due to unknown reasons they had it shut down. Perhaps  they were worried that advertisers would start to realize just how bad their conversion rates are, and doubt the quality of their advertising platform. No real official reason was given though.

Till today FaceBook has not introduced a replacement to their native conversion tracking, so most marketers are spending blindly on FaceBok ads. This is surprising when you consider the fact that FaceBook Ads are often hyped up to be “the Google Adwords replacement”.

The good news is that you can easily track your FaceBook conversions with LinkTrackr. Unlike the defunct native FaceBook conversion tracking system however, LinkTrackr can also be used to track affiliate products you may be promoting. As long as your affiliate program supports pixel tracking or TID tracking, results should be accurate. You can read more about affiliate conversion tracking if you’ve never attempted to track affiliate sales before.

Here I’ll give you a step-by-step walkthrough on how to create your own FaceBook conversion tracking campaign.

FaceBook Conversion Tracking Step 1 – Naming System

FaceBook’s ad platform is different from Google Adwords. FB only tracks by campaigns and ads. They do not have “Ad Groups” to help you group together different ad targetting options.  Therefore you will need to create your own naming system if you want to implement your own FaceBook sales tracking.

To make things simple, whenever I start a new campaign, I name my first ad “FB001″ and continue this incremental numbering system for all ads, like below:

To keep the data accurate, I just keep giving the ads a new number regardless of whether they were approved, or whether I paused / deleted them. Never use the same number twice.

FaceBook Conversion Tracking Step 2 – Tracking Links

Now that we have numbered each ad, create a new tracking link in LinkTrackr for the product or affiliate offer you want to promote, and enter that tracking link with the ad number as the campaign name. Example:

With this simple method, you will be able to see right away in your LinkTrackr dashboard the amount of clicks you get from each numbered ad. If you have an account that supports conversion tracking, you should also be able to see the sales and optins from the numbered ads.

Multiple Campaign FaceBook Conversion Tracking

The example above is when you’re running a single campaigns for a single product. If you’re running multiple campaigns, you need to append a campaign ID to your campaigns and in your tracking as well, for example:

http://gobala.linktrackr.com/trackingname-FB01AD01

This is my reference for campaign 01, ad 01. If you want to test more complex campaigns however you’ll need a spreadsheet to keep track of your numbering system.

FaceBook Conversion Tracking Limitations

The limitation with this method is that you cannot track how many “Likes” you got from the campaign. If your objective is to get more likes then advertise your FaceBook page instead. FaceBook will be able to tell you exactly how many Likes you got when you advertise a page or “sponsored story” with the default stats.

Like I said before, FaceBook conversion tracking is not easy and never will be until FaceBook intriduces a new conversion tracking for advertisers, but this method will work pretty well.

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Do you have a YouTube conversion tracking strategy?

If you’re like me, then you’re probably uploading product reviews, screen capture tutorials and other short videos on YouTube to promote your affiliate website or affiliate links. But how are your YouTube promotions really impacting your profits? Is YouTube really worth your time?

There’s no real way to know unless you implement a systematic way of tracking your YouTube clicks and conversions. And of course, you can do this easily with LinkTrackr.

The easiest way to do it is to embed your LinkTrackr tracking link right on the video page. On your video editing page, you can actually insert a short description of your video. Put your tracking link right up front followed by a short description as you can see below.

YouTube only makes a portion of your description visible, so make sure you enter the most important text right after the tracking link. Now your video display page will look like this:

When anyone shares your video URL on FaceBook, your YouTube tracking link will also be share and will be clickable (unless they just clicked on “Like”), as you can see below:

This will go a long way in helping you track clicks from your YouTube videos and shares, and also with your YouTube conversion tracking efforts.

However, this is only useful when someone views your videos on YouTube itself. It doesn’t appear when someone embeds your videos on their website. For that you need to work with “annotations”.

YouTube Conversion Tracking With Annotations

Annotations are another great way to implement YouTube conversion tracking, especially due to the fact that annotations appear on all embedded videos on any website or blog.

Since YouTube only allows you to link to other YouTube videos or pages, enter the full tracking URL as per the example below. It will not be click-able but at least you get to display the entire link. To make it even more effective you may also want to use domain name cloaking or cPanel link cloaking for shorter, easier to remember links.

Other YouTube Conversion Tracking Ideas

Here are some other ideas to make your YouTube conversion tracking more effective:

  • Video Splash Screen – Create a 5-10 second introduction “splash screen” with your tracking link displayed on a plain background with some text, so viewers know where to go to get more information.
  • Video Credits – Just like the splash screen, but at the end of your video. Make it play for 5-30 seconds so your viewers can actually remember or write down the URL.

YouTube Conversion Tracking with LinkTrackr

With LinkTrackr’s dynamic campaign feature and TID conversion tracking feature (which is available in all accounts), I can clearly see how may people registered / opted in to my free webinar:

I can also see the conversion rate so I know exactly how effective YouTube is as a traffic source for my webinar. If I find that the traffic is too low quality, I may just decide to stop marketing this product on YouTube and turn my attention to more qualified and responsive traffic sources.

With the correct strategy, you will know for sure if your YouTube efforts are paying off or if your time is better spent elsewhere. So start tracking your YouTube conversion tracking campaign now!

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We written a lot about ClickBank on this blog, including our Clickbank review, introduction to ClickBank hoplinks and conversion tracking for ClickBank affiliates. Now we should probably tell about the scary stuff no one told you about ClickBank.

Unlike most affiliate networks, there’s a real good chance that you will never get paid from ClickBank unless you’re making regular commissions via their network. Here are three reasons why.

1. You Need To Make At Least 5 Sales

You will never get paid if you make one or two sales. In fact, you need to make at least 5 sales (best case scenario) to actually get paid the first time.

According to ClickBank:

ClickBank will withhold payment of any account balance until the following criteria is met:

  • Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers; and,
  • Sales made with two different payment methods (either Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or European Direct Debit(ELV)). Note: PayPal purchases do not count toward the minimum 5 different credit card numbers.

This requirement is in place to help prevent Affiliates from abusing the ClickBank Affiliate program by using their accounts for the sole purpose of fraudulently collecting rebates and/or discounts on their own purchases.

Once you have met the Customer Distribution Requirement, your account will begin issuing payments normally, in accordance with our Accounting Policy, beginning on the next payment issuing date.

What this means is that a single sales doesn’t matter. 100 affiliate sales don’t matter either if everyone paid via their VISA credit cards or PayPal. Make sure you understand this requirement, as it closely relates to the next shocking fact you never knew about ClickBank.

2. There’s a “Dormant” Fee Up to $100 a Month

Yes, if you do not make any new commissions, ClickBank will penalize you for it. Deductions start at $1 per “Pay Period” which is every two weeks in ClickBank.

According to ClickBank:

Accounts with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1 per pay period after 90 days of no earnings, $5 per pay period after 180 days of no earnings, and $50 per pay period after 365 days of no earnings.

ClickBank income

The above example is from one of my joint venture ClickBank accounts. Unfortunately, after the initial sales for this product none of the partners (including me) bothered to do anything about the income. We thought we’ll just leave it there till be can get more JV partners to promote the product. That never happened however.

From several thousand dollars in the year 2007/08 you can see how this had depleted to $0 simply because this account was dormant and we had set the minimum payout to $5,000. Last year we had $50 deducted from our account every pay period, which is biweekly, resulting in a $100 deduction per month. Needless to say in a couple of months our earnings were completely wiped out.

I only realized this after checking that dormant account. We should have taken the money out sooner while there was still something to be paid out.

3. You May Never Get Paid

If you decide to promote Clickbank products, you need to keep it going till you get past the minimum 5 sales requirement, and set your minimum payout as low as possible, to actually start getting paid. If you decide to “take a break” from ClickBank you may return a year later to find that your earnings have disappeared.

There’s a real chance that you may never get paid from ClickBank despite all your hard work promoting their products as an affiliate. Be glad you read this!

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