Sharper Image may not be doing well financially but they are back online.  Sharper Image is using their Affiliates to drive online traffic to their stores. They are currently offering a number of specials right now to entice Affiliate to market Sharper Image and to attract customers with their bottom floor pricing.

Sharper Image’s Program is run through Pepperjam’s Affiliate Network and has no discernible Affiliate Manager, but rather an Affiliate Team.  I feel this is hurting their program.  While it is smart of them to send out monthly newsletters and to offer tools to Affiliates, I feel they are not managing their program effectively.  They never offer Affiliate any bonuses or incentives since I have joined their programs, and I feel as though most of the coupons that are offered aren’t “Exclusive to Affiliates”.  It seems like every month that they send out their Affiliate Newsletter they are just copying their mass email newsletter and sending it to Affiliates as well.

Clearly they do organize and piece together the newsletter and offer the creative sections, which I do like.  However, the newsletter is weak and doesn’t ever really address their Affiliates.  Other than tools offered by Sharper Image’s Affiliate Team, they seem to be lacking in effort and originality.  I do recommend signing up for their program as they do have some products that are fun to market.

Affiliates use a number of different methods to market their websites. Advertising products is very important, even if through a free avenue, such as search engines.

The question is … when the customer arrives at your Affiliate site, are they going to make you money or are they going to leave?

Is your Affiliate page captivating enough to get the customer to click through your Affiliate links? And once they do, can the merchant help you make the final sales pitch?

Free trials aren’t applicable in every industry or for every product. However, when they do apply they can be a great way to close a sale. Customer enjoy testing what they want to buy. In some ways it makes the customer less impulsive, however, if the customer likes the Free Trial there is an increased chance the customer will make the purchase, making you money.

Free Trials exist for games, software and other products/services that can’t be tested through the Internet.

MicroSoft offers a great example why Free Trials are so effective and help close the sale. They are offering a Free Trial for 60 days for their new MicroSoft Office 2007. They are offering a Free Trial for all versions, including Home and Student, Professional, and Small Business.

Once people take the Free Trial from MicroSoft they will realize that the new Office 2007 is far superior to any previous launched software. Customers are going to want to replace their out of date software after trying the Trial Offer.

This example shows you that Affiliates who work with merchants who offer free trials on their products/services are getting an extra bit of help from the merchant to help put money in your pocket. Utilize these companies and do check out the Free 60 Day Trial of MicroSoft Office 2007.

Google is at it again.  This time they have bought a hefty share of a Chinese Social Network located at Tianya.cn.

China is the 2nd largest country in terms of people using the Internet, so it is no surprise to see Google attempt to conquer the far East.  Although, currently Google is not the number 1 search engine in China.  Baidu.com, INC is the leader in web searches in China with close to 60% of searches.  Second is Google with close to 25% and Yahoo a distant third totaling 10% of searches.

Reports say that Google is eying more companies in China and to expect more activity in the Far East.

Affiliates main goal is to sell products/services for other companies.  Obviously the more you sell means more money in your bank account.

Predicting trends and preparing ahead of the crowd will net you a lot of money as an Affiliate.  Whether the trend is seasonal or a release of a product that is going to become a major hit, recognizing these events and preparing a website ahead of time will put you ahead of the competition.

Once you have realized an opportunity, developing a quality website around that opportunity and optimizing it for the Search Engines will pay benefits when the opportunity presents itself.  While Pay per Click strategies are effective, it is much smarter to rely on “free traffic” to send targeted visitors to your Affiliate site.

Everyone knows the major Holidays and seasons, if you want to take advantage of them, act months in advance.  If you want to learn about which products/services are being developed and when they are being released, do your research reading various publications, checking the Internet, and visiting popular retail stores.

Each major Affiliate Network has something different to offer both Merchants and Affiliates. In this article I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of three of the major four Affiliate Networks: Commission Junction, LinkShare, and Share a Sale.

Commission Junction (Merchants)

Merchant Pros

• Ease of Recruiting – large number of Affiliates associated with CJ makes the recruiting process slightly easier for an Affiliate Manager.
• CJ is a trusted and well-known network.
• Strong tracking of Affiliate stats.
• Fast Account Service.
• Excellent for mid-larger companies.
• They offer Search Marketing Solutions.
• CJ will run your program for your company.

Merchant Cons

• High visibility of your program leads to a lot of Affiliates applying to your program that don’t really belong.
• Fraud is a major problem for CJ’s Merchants.
• Website downtimes happen too often, frustrating Affiliates and Merchants alike.
• Since there are so many merchants on CJ, it makes the competition stiffer within like industries.
• Monthly and overall costs.
• Datafeeds are expensive.

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Affiliates who rely on Pay per Click campaigns to drive their revenues must be dedicated to the products/services they are selling.  Pay per Click can be a dangerous game if proper research and testing isn’t accomplished.  If you go into a PPC campaign with no prior thought, get ready to watch the money fly out of out pocket while not a single person who clicks buys your Affiliate product or service.

Researching the company that you will use PPC for will tell you whether or not it will be a profitable venture.  The most attractive companies are niche companies whose industry or products sees little competition on the Internet.  Once you have found the Affiliate program that you will run a PPC campaign for, you must create a landing page that offers an incredible pre-sell followed by links only leading to the company’s website.

Once you have your webpage up and running you need to commence your research of keyterms.  Develop a list using long tail keywords, it should be long, so don’t stop until you can not think of anything else.  There are a number of tools that are worthwhile for doing keyword research, but I have always enjoyed using the Keyword Research Tool at SEOBook.com.

Determine bid prices, your daily limit and start inputting your keyterms.  Next you will need to test the ads themselves.  A/B tests work the best in my opinion.  Test until you find the optimal conversion rate combined with click through rate and you will have your campaign set up.  This is a lot of hard work and it needs to be repeated throughout the entire campaign, but after this work is done you will reap the benefits.

Affiliate Marketing does involve a certain level of skill and money in order to grow your Affiliate site.  The money is important for buying your domain name and paying for hosting.  Other than these two purchases you don’t necessarily need money anymore to be an Affiliate Marketer.

Skill is also rather important, however, a person endeavoring to become an Affiliate Marketer does not need previous experience to be successful.  Everything can be learned from doing research, asking questions and by trial and error.  Even if you are intimidated by building a website, you can learn to create your own site from reading advice from the experts.  For the most part all of the information you need to become a success is free on the Internet.

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I noticed today on the front page of msn.com that they were offering free trials and demonstrations for the release of Microsoft Office 2007. I signed up for the Free 60 day trial for the Office Professional 2007. There are definitely some flashy new features on Office 2007, enough for me to want to try it out.

These are the programs included in the Office Professional Edition 2007:

• Access 2007
• Accounting Express 2007
• Excel 2007
• Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager

• PowerPoint 2007
• Publisher 2007
• Word 2007

One of the cooler features of the new Office Suite is that you can create your own site to host your work. Overall this seems to be a pretty neat set of tools released by Microsoft. I highly recommend checking out the free trial at the very minimum.