If you’re a full time affiliate marketer there’s a very good chance that you probably don’t use internet explorer anymore. There’s a number of reasons most people switch, but the most common, is the lack of plugin functionality & 3rd party integration.

Firefox has really embraced these types of applications & allows you to integrate them seamlessly into your regular workflow, helping you to do tasks or use functions that the original developers didn’t hardcode.

I use quite a number of Firefox Extensions that really make a huge difference to my workflow & productivity, but the aim of this post to be the definitive list of Firefox Plugins for Affiliate Marketers:

Foxmarks



When you have multiple computers & workstations it can become painful to always keep your bookmarks in sync, especially when you’ve got hundreds of websites. Foxmarks will store all of your firefox bookmarks externally & then keep them updated & in sync no matter where you go (provided you have the extension installed on the computer). This means that the bookmarks on all of my computers always match, a massive time saver for me.

Greasemonkey



Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows you to write or download scripts that change how web pages behave or look. There’s literally thousands of user written scripts that do all sorts of things from Downloading Youtube Videos to removing the annoying parts of Myspace (I thought it was all annoying though? ) or showing you the Link Data in Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Google Global

This extension allows you to view the Google Search Results from different locations around the world, right down to regions, cities & postcodes. Extremely useful if you’re running PPC campaigns outside your Geo Location & also if you want to see what your international competitors are doing.

SEO for Firefox



I’ve talked about how much I like this plugin before but if you’re planning on quickly analysing a particular keyword or niche or any other search results then this plugin is gold. It allows you to quickly see the inbound links to a domain or page, get an idea idea if the page has pagerank & also plenty of other features.

Search Status

Get an quick snapshot of Page Rank & Alexa Rank when viewing a particular page. Good for quickly analysing the popularity of a particular website/page.

Web Developer Extension



This is a very useful extension that allows you to manipulate many of the design related features within a page. You can disable Java, CSS, Referrers & Meta Redirects; Clear Cookies & disable Cookies; Resize pages & elements & also manipulate forms. Very very useful.

User Agent Switcher

Switch between user agents within firefox to see how web pages react. Useful for getting into areas that only allow Googlebot (naughty naughty) & a few other things.

Live HTTP Headers

Display the HTTP Headers from a website in Real Time. This can be used for debugging, to see what cookies are being set & to check for redirects.

Roboform

I use roboform to fill in forms & also fill in signup details for new websites. Saves quite a considerable amount of time if you set it up correctly.

Screengrab

All webmasters need to take screenshots once in a while. I particularly love this extension because you can grab an entire page as a screenshot.

Gspace

Gspace is a great extension that turns your 2GB of space in Gmail into your very own file storage area. Really useful for keeping backups & also transferring files between locations quickly & securely.

Gmail Manager

Manage multiple Gmail accounts from one extension. This extension is particularly useful if you’ve migrated completely to gmail, outlined in one of my previous posts.

XML Password Exporter

If you like to manage all your passwords via Keepass then this tool will allow you to export all your Firefox passwords to xml or csv format which you can then use to import into Keepass. Nifty. Now all we need is an extension for Firefox that integrates with KeePass (hint hint).

Autocopy

Just like in Linux this extension allows you to select any text & have it copied automatically to the clipboard.

Ref Spoof

Fake your referrer easily. This is pretty good if you want to catch someone out who’s cloaking or test/hack other referrer related things.

If you use any other plugins that you feel enhance your productivity or help you with affiliate marketing then let me know about them in the comments & help grow this list.

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
toddler girls dresses
how to remove spyware
Free Paleo diet recipes
online flower shop
beanbags
www.trekstervids.com
uk bean bags
lubbock seo company
magazine subscription

Is your PPC campaign dull & lacking that oomph? Good, today is the day to take action & turn things around. Follow these simple steps & explode your PPC Campaign:

1. Try to avoid Phrases with less than 3 Words

There’s a huge difference between “affiliate marketing” & “affiliate marketing blog.” The more words contained within a keyphrase the more targeted your keyphrase is likely to be for that query. Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, people looking for information will type “affiliate marketing” people who specifically want to read an affiliate marketing blog will type the latter.

The same works with all industries. Bidding on “doctor” is very different than bidding on “doctor in melbourne.” Start to think more about what phrases you’re bidding on rather than being lazy.

2. Don’t waste money – Lose the Broad Match

Whilst Broad Match generally generates more traffic you’ll often find that due to Adwords “Extended Broad Matching” that heaps of unrelated terms will sneak in. Unless your researching for more terms (by utilising the Search Query Report) you should not be throwing money away on keywords that you don’t pre-qualify. Don’t be lazy & do thorough keyword research before embarking on any Adwords campaign. My rule of thumb is always go phrase (with negatives) or exact. That way you know what you’re getting for your money.

3. Catch people in the late stages of the buying process

As I mentioned in point 1, there’s certain phrases that people will use when they’re in different stages of searching. Identifying these can mean the difference between paying $15/conversion or $5/conversion.

Helpful bidding ideas:

Bid on Brand Names of Products & Items
Bid on Company Names & Manufacturers
Use buy, compare & purchase keywords
Leverage product reviews
4. Watch the Search & Content Networks

Check your Campaign Settings to see if the Search Network & Content Network are switched on. I always switch off both initially as I don’t trust where the traffic is coming from. Once I get the campaign to a solid CTR, Position & Return I’ll then test the Search Network to see if it adds or removes value.

If you want to run a Content Campaign, I suggest that you run it within its own campaign. Alone.

5. Create Highly Targeted Adgroups

Theme your adgroups around a particular keyword. If that keyword is affiliate marketing blog then the adgroup may contain:

“affiliate marketing blog”

“affiliate marketing blog”

[affiliate marketing blog]

[affiliate marketing blogs]

Doing this allows you to write a highly targeted creative which relates specifically to the keywords that you’re bidding on. Keeping things highly related like this will increase your CTR, reducing your cost in the long run.

6. Use Highly Targeted Creatives

As explained in the previous point you can now write highly targeted creatives based around a small group of keywords.

Using the above ad group example your creative might look like this:

Affiliate Marketing Blog
Become an Affiliate Marketing Gun
with Earners Blog Affiliate Marketing Blog
Earnersblog.com/AffiliateMarketingBlog

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
electronic chess
The best deals on musical instrument amplifiers and more
Real Estate Business Cards
toddler girls dresses
best spyware removal
Free Paleo recipes
www.flowersbypost.uk.com
The Linden Method
www.usaflowersonline.com
Olympus Digital Voice Recorder

I’ve been following a thread on Wickedfire closely over the past few days that talks about dodgy affiliate networks. I realised that I’d never really covered this topic in any detail on the blog, so here’s my spin on it all.

Dodgy Merchants

It’s inevitable that if you’re trying out hundreds of merchants every month you’ll eventually run into a few dodgy ones. It’s easy to think that everyone in this industry is nice & “looking out for one another” but if you think that then you need a serious reality check.

You’ve got three types of merchants

Those that manage their affiliate program in house with a dedicated team
Those that outsource the management to a network but still approve the leads/purchases themselves
Those that manage the program by themselves (1 man show)
Speaking from experience I’ve had trouble from all three types. But, most of the time it’s from numbers 2 & 3.

So what are the ways that merchants can cheat you out of your well fought after commissions?

Scrubbing Leads – This is unfortunately very common in our industry (especially in the adult space). It happens at the merchant level & at the Network level. This basically means that the merchant or network won’t credit a certain number of your leads, pocketing the profit for themselves & you won’t even know it’s going on.

How to combat – There’s only one real way to combat this & that’s to generate your leads locally, or get friends to generate leads for you & catch the merchant red handed. Bottom line is, if you suspect your merchant is doing this move on….quickly.

Lead Lag - This is quite common in the financial sector & relates to the processing time of applications for loans or credit cards. Make sure that the merchant is regularly approving or declining the leads that you’re sending through.

How to combat – A quick email to your AM or their manager will usually get the ball rolling on this issue. If the leads lag too long just switch merchants & save yourself the headache, their loss.

High Refund Rates – I’ve come across a number of merchants in my time that have a very high refund rate. This is one to be very wary of, especially in the financial space. If it’s your job to provide someone with a “lead” then the merchant should not be entitled to refund it for a failed application, but some merchants just don’t get what the meaning of a lead really is.

How to combat – There’s no way around this, if there’s a high refund rate then call the merchant & ask for an explanation. If it’s not worthing pursing then just move on.

Test Orders – I also get these ones from time to time, it’s possible that the occasional one or two is fine but any more than that & you should start to get worried. Why on earth are you testing so many orders under my affiliate ID, don’t you have a test ID?

How to combat – Ask the question above.

Bidding on their own Brand with an Affiliate Tracking ID – This is one of the ones that pisses me off the most. I can do all the work & presell to the customer but if they decide to go away, think about it & then come back through typing the brand into Google the merchants Cookie will overwrite mine. This is extremely common & is something that I check for before starting any campaign.

How to combat – If you can, outbid the merchant on their own brand & test how many other affiliates they’re ripping off

Non Payment – Perhaps the worst thing is not getting paid for all of your effort & hard work. Remember from time to time merchants can be late with payments or perhaps forget, but there’s a difference between a late payment & not getting one…ever.

How to combat – Email your account manager or affiliate representative first, if there’s no response then try again. If you’re talking to a brick wall then get in touch with a lawyer, they’ll write you up a letter that may provoke a response. Remember to try & research potential merchants as much as possible before you put any serious volume through them & ALWAYS have a backup incase things go belly up.

Dodgy Affiliate Networks

Running In House Campaigns – If you were an affiliate manager who was paid on the performance of their affiliates & you had access to “what was working” would you run your own campaigns? Well, there’s plenty of AM’s out there that do this & you have to cover your tracks to not give away any secrets.

Keeping your campaigns secret not only protect your profits, but they also protect your niche. Ever been bidding on a keyword with 0 competition then almost overnight you’re up again 1 or 2 competitors?

How to Combat -

Use Redirects: PHP redirects generally pass the referrer string right through so you’ll want to use a redirect that doesn’t. Meta Redirects or Javascript redirects normally do this pretty well (remember that some people do turn Javascript off). When I want to keep stuff really hidden I’ll use double redirects to prevent the AM from back tracing the redirect or seeing the real redirect as a referrer.

Encode your SubID’s: If you rely heavily on Sub ID’s don’t go naming them stuff like subid=affiliate_marketing_blog, you may as well give away your top converting keyword list on a plate. It should look something like subid=9954412, if you don’t know how to code then simply put the real subid value in a spreadsheet. If you’re a dab hand at PHP you could create a simple tracking script of your own that will identify the subid with the real search term in your stats.

Stand your Ground: Don’t let the network bully you into revealing your traffic sources once you start killing it with your campaign. If the traffic stands up on the merchants end then they network have nothing to worry about (except you not giving your campaigns away ) Bottom line is that they won’t risk losing you if you’re sending a decent amount of leads.

These are just my experiences over the years, I’ve learnt to become much more secretive about how I do things (especially when it’s PPC). I’d love to hear your experiences & what measures you take to protect your IP. Please don’t name any networks in the comments.

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
wooden chess
Florida Refi
beds for dogs
Musical Instrument Amplifiers
Herbal Colon Cleanse
Real Estate Business Cards
Marine VHF
serengeti sunglasses
best spyware removal
Olympus Digital Voice Recorder

Here’s a question from Jared:

Do you use an Adwords My Client Center? & if so what are the advantages?

If you’re managing multiple Adwords Accounts upgrading to a Google MCC Account makes perfect sense. You don’t have to log in & out to switch between them & also creating new accounts is a breeze.

I highly recommend making the jump across regardless of whether you have 1 account or several & also especially if you’re spending more than $500 a month.

There’s a few perks to having an Adwords MCC Account:

You can manage multiple accounts from 1 interface
You can split things up much better & assign budgets
You can bill each account seperately
If you spend more than $500 consistently you can take the Adwords Professional Exam
Get your own dedicated Adwords Professional Page
You can qualify for vouchers (only once you’ve completed the Professional Exam)
If you decide to take on clients you’re already set up
If you decide to take the GAP exam (which is valid for 2 years) you’ll be able to show it off on your sites. Not only that but I guarantee it’ll get you a much larger foot in the door if you apply for any SEM related jobs.



Upgrading your account is pretty simple:

Join as a Google Advertising Professional
Input one of your existing Adwords Account
Create a new Google Account to use for the login & you’re done
Now just log in & link any other existing accounts.

As a rule of thumb I normally create 1 account per website that I’m working with, I normally find that this helps me manage spends & budgets much easier.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
FL First Time Home Buyer
Florida Refi
backgammon set
printer copiers
TN Refinance
Marine VHF
Moving To Hawaii
Real Estate Business Cards
Herbal Colon Cleanse

So I’ve been pretty busy lately, at lot of my own projects have been brushed aside for the time being. But because I’ve been so pushed for time I’ve been forced to look for easier & quicker ways to grow my affiliate income stream.

I came across an interesting article not long ago about how one affiliate managed to dominate the Australian Ugg Boots market just as they were becoming popular (I can’t find the article off hand but if you know it kindly post it in the comments). I put this theory to the test by searching for similar items that had an international appeal but no-one was capatilising on yet.

Now there’s two ways that you can approach this method:

Look for a product that’s in demand in your own country but no-one is really selling it, then look for someone who’s selling it abroad. You can either set up a relationship with the supplier/distributer or even see if they have an affiliate program. Problems with going down the affiliate route is that the shipping will be a good deal more. I’ve had good success with the affiliate route even though the shipping is pricey provided I’m about 40% cheaper overall than anyone who’s selling the product locally.
Look for a product that’s in demand abroad & is already well established in your country. The above scenario applies to this too & if the product is well established it’ll probably have an affiliate program.
If you’ve done your research correctly you should already know a few things:

What the international competition is like
Whether or not you’re beating their prices
How they format their PPC Ads (I use the Google Global Firefox Extension for this)
You want to make sure that you can provide the same product cheaper than they can get it locally (including shipping). This will be your selling point. For example I sell one product locally that you can only buy in Australia for around $99 (excl shipping), however abroad I can bring it for around $59 (excl shipping). Which one do you think will appeal more in a PPC Ad?

Now create a minisite dedicated to the product, the site should contain general product information (including variations) & most importantly a review about the product.

I now create a very targeted PPC Campaign using branded terms & other very targeted terms I think will convert well. I know the brand terms will convert & the rest of the terms I’ll constantly test (including tweaking the review landing page) until I’m happy I have a set of 10-20 keywords that’ll convert for a minimal spend. The nature of these campaigns will attract a high CTR on the ads (since they’re so targeted) so you should be able to bring the CPC down gradually & maintain a decent position.

I’ll put this example into perspective for you. Take the Iphone, it’s only just being launched in Australia after being around for quite some time. However, tens of thousands of people in Australia “Already have one.” Now imagine getting on that train in the beginning (I admit that is probably a once in a lifetime product). But you get the idea.

Now sit back, monitor & move onto the next one.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
CO Refinance
wooden chess
FL First Time Home Buyer
Florida Refi
printer copiers
TN Refinance
Marine VHF
Moving To Hawaii

I normally find that the amount I post is inversely proportional to the amount of money I make therefore when I’m onto something good you might find things quiet around here. Either way, on with the show.

This post is in relation to a question I had a few weeks ago (feel free to ask questions here):

Stuart, I have a website that gets around 3,000 uniques per day (in the celebrity space) but I can’t seem to make more than $6 per day from Adsense. What advice can you give on increasing this?

So lets assume you already have a celebrity site getting a decent amount of traffic (anywhere from 1k+ visitors per day), if you don’t then check out some of my earlier posts on affiliate link building & the 2008 link building guide.

Celebrities can be a tough to crack, but you just have to persist:

There’s plenty of niches to pick, I’m not going to go into details but there’s hundreds if not thousands
Traffic is HUGE, millions of people unfortunately lead boring lives & need their celebrity fix. So you’ll be focusing purely on volume here then figuring out testing the best way to monetise it.
These sites are usually littered with ads, so in other words, they also can’t make enough money from just adsense. We need to be smart about monetisation.


Bread & Butter Monetisation Networks
Celebrity Sites are notorious for offering up low CPC’s with Adsense, there’s a few quick methods to increase your income:

Adsense: I normally run with a 728×90 Adsense above the fold, this is tried & tested for me as being the optimum spot for clickthroughs. I’ve recently been playing with YieldBuild, which automatically tests & rotates combinations of ad sizes & colours then continually tries to optimise for the best eCPM. I’ve seen a 25%-30% increase in about 30 days.

You could also go through & filter out the MFA ads but I’ve not had much luck with that.

Value Click Media: I average about $110 on around 420k Pageviews for one site with Value Click CPM advertising. Not the best, but it’s an addition to Adsense.

Right Media: I also run Right Media & let advertisers fight for my ad space, this generates decent returns but since my overall income is split between 4-5 advertisers I end up getting 4-5 US Cheques (I’m in Australia) which cost me $10 each to cash. Bit of a pain but it’s another income stream.

Zango Cash: This isn’t something I’ve exclusively had time to trial but I’ve had reports from at least 4 or 5 contacts that are making some decent bank from the Javascript Overlay on Celebrity Sites. I wouldn’t plan on using this if you don’t want to annoy your visitors, if you don’t care then you’ll make some decent money here.

Ideal monthly income breakdown by Network:
Adsense: $300-$600+
Valueclick: $150+
Right Media: $200+
Zango: $300-2k+
Others to consider: Tribalfusion, Fastclick, Clicksor & Adbrite (Interstitials)

Use your Analytics to Profit / Understanding your Visitors
I can’t stress enough that making money with these types of sites isn’t about slapping up the banner advertising above & moving onto the next project. Always check your analytics on a daily/weekly basis.

An example of this may be:

You notice that a particular page dedicated to Megan Fox is getting a significant amount of traffic this week from a movie website all drooling over her pictures. Do you A, sit back & watch the Adsense dollars trickle in or B try to find an offer that appeals to fans of Megan Fox, it may be the transformers DVD or it might even be a Megan Fox Poster?

Either way you get the idea here, you can target individual pages with different offers depending on where you’re getting the traction. There’s no point setting up a niche offer on every page until you see the traffic come in.

User Interaction
Interaction is key to monetisation. Ask yourself this question:

Once a visitor leaves your site are they ever going to come back?

If the answer is no then we need to find a why to bring them back over & over again. This can be done in a number of ways:

Email List: Creating an email list that mails people when you update the website. The hard part about this is getting people on the list in the first place, try offering an incentive like a competition or a free giveaway.
Forum: Everyone loves a forum, this is by far & away the best way to keep people coming back again & again.
Social Features: Allow interaction with content & users.
Expand your Network
Are you dominating this niche as much as you can? or are you simply moving onto the next one without first capitalising what you have? Remember, it’s easier to grow what you already have than it is to grow something from scratch.

Think carefully around potential partnerships with similar sites & also unique advertising deals that (if you’re the leader in the niche) no one else can provide.

Research!
How are the other Celebrity websites out there making bank? I normally like to check out the Sitepoint Marketplace to see actual revenue figures & where that revenue is coming from. I’ve seen some bloody ingenious revenue generating schemes/ideas on here so that’s my hot tip for the month.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
CO Refinance
FL First Time Home Buyer
menapause
Keller Williams Business Cards
wooden chess set
AZ First Time Home Buyer
keyword research
wheels and tires
alloy wheels
TN Refinance

Apparently now in the UK 1 out of every 200 visits to an online retail site comes from a Voucher/Coupon Code website. As this type of traffic is increasing year on year, your hard earned affiliate commissions could be getting flushed down the drain when your cookie is overwritten by these rogue practices.

How it Works
Many of the big voucher websites have one incredibly sneaky way of overwriting your hard earned cookie (There are legit ones out there that do things by the book, but I’m not naming names here).



So in order to even view the discount codes you first need to click on the button to reveal them, this opens up a popunder which sets a new cookie, overwriting yours. Now this is where it starts to get very very sneaky.

When you have a large database driven site it’s very easy to start creating pages around every merchant / site known to man that has an affiliate program (regardless of whether they have voucher codes or not), some sites have to do this manually others can do it on the fly. They then start optimising the pages for “Merchant Name Vouchers, Discount Codes & Coupons.”

So here’s now a typical scenario:

You send a customer to the merchant via your affiliate redirect
Customer sees a nice shiny laptop & decide to buy
They get to the checkout & see the merchant has a “coupon code field”
Their eyebrows raise ever so slightly & they type “merchant coupon codes” into Google
Up pops one of the Voucher Code sites with a nice shiny button similar to that above
But….low & behold there’s no coupon codes.
The voucher website has STILL overwritten your cookie though.
This is what pisses me off the most, people are ready to buy, ready to commit. Yet you have you sale stolen from you at the last minute (seemingly without any effort).

Networks are turning a blind eye
One of the UK’s large voucher websites last year reported they sent over $250,000,000 worth of sales through to merchants. With this type of volume the networks are turning a blind eye & letting these sites get away with stealing YOUR commissions.

What is the Role of an Affiliate?
It seems this varies considerably, but here’s a few thoughts (I’d like to know yours also):

n
What do you think the role of an Affiliate is?
To presell the product before sending to the merchant
To make as much money as possible
To grab the buyer in the final stages of the buying process & send them to the merchant
To grab the buyer at the coupon stage & steal commissions
To add value to the merchants marketing campaign
To send potential buyers to a merchants website
Add an Answer
View Results
What can be done to combat this problem?
There’s four solutions to this that I can think of:

I look very carefully before promoting some merchants now, if they have a coupon discount field it’s a big RED FLAG for me.
Ban the offending affiliates from Networks
Disable the overwriting of Affiliate Cookies
Credit the Affiliate that sends the consumer to the purchase page before the affiliate that provides the coupon.
What solutions do you see to combat this rising problem?

Other usefull links:

menapause
auction website
chapel hill real estate
GA Refinance
CO Refinance
Plano flowers
Real Estate Business Cards
Safari Roof Rack
Keller Williams Business Cards
computer laptops