One Little Duck - Affiliate Blog » Great Inventions

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #6

jason — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:41:37 +0000

What could possibly be the next great invention? Surely there’s not another blog post that isn’t grumpy? Enjoy it, it might be the last! Remember that these great inventions aren’t in any particular order – they’re just randomly thrown together, a bit like many of my websites! Anyway, number six is a website that wasn’t just cobbled together and it will be familiar to many UK affiliates, merchants and networks!

6. Affiliates4U – A Forum & A Community

For some Affiliates4U is the hub of the UK affiliate marketing industry. For others it is simply a nirvana and refuge where people who “earn money by doing stuff on the web” can hang out and communicate with others who understand them.

Featuring a forum, community pages, thoughts section, blogs, user profiles, it really is the numero uno place for those involved in the UK affiliate marketing industry to congregate in this virtual world. I’ve been involved as a member of the forum for several years now and it has been an invaluable resource, not only business wise but also for developing friendships with other people in the industry.

If A4U was a cleaner it’d have been a Dyson, and that would make Matt Wood – Mr Dyson! Starting from a lowly Proboard, A4U has expanded to become a root cyclonic, no clogging and no loss of suction success story – all of which will transpire itself to the masses at the forthcoming A4UExpo.

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #5

jason — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:59:09 +0000

Oh no.. not more adulation on One Little Duck? Yes the grumpiness is well and truly on holiday now as the fifth in the series of useful affiliate tools swings into view. Once upon a time affiliates were lucky if they could get a nice looking 468×60 banner to promote a merchant! Then came nice banners, and search tools and gift wizards – plus now of course the video content unit, but one network has pushed the boundaries of content units further than most. Boldly going where no other network has gone before, step forward Paid on Results and their next generation of affiliate tools!

5. Paid on Results Content Units

Here’s an example:

These units are fully customisable! They are available in various sizes, with and without image zoomovers, floating and standard appearence (the above is standard, floating just means the products appear when you mouseover). You can select the number of products you show and products too.

The best thing though – you can integrate them with php so that they become part of your site. Units are available for BeCheeky, Dead Good Undies, Designer Pitstop, Euroffice, Everything But The Music, HQhair, Not Designer, Prezzy Box and QED-uk.

Other networks have taken up the challenge for content units – which is great news for affiliates. I’ve been particularly impressed with Buy.at’s Content Engine but is it good enough to be a great invention?

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #4

jason — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:26:11 +0000

The fourth Great Invention in affiliate marketing in a series of however many it ends up is a method of being paid commission that makes all other methods of being paid commission seem small and inferior. If this payment method was a doughnut it would be the glazed doughnut that everyone salivates over as opposed to the manky squashed sugar encrusted jam lacking affairs you often get at the supermarket. Step forward top notch payment system and king doughnut…

4. Revshare (featuring customer base)

Why get paid for one action when you can get paid for lots of them!

Whoever decided that paying affiliates for the lifetime of a customer hopefully is sitting on their laurels right now because they don’t have to come up with anything else as inventive … ever! Their work here is done! And for all those who advocate the use of lifetime revshare in your affiliate programs – you too should take a bow. If “lifetime” however means 3 months or 6 months, then take half a bow but go away and lose the fixed time period before you start getting proper adulation.

Of course this method of revenue generation is often limited to selected sectors, but it has been embraced in retail by the likes of Prezzybox with their customer base feature through Paid on Results (customer base is quite possibly a worthy great affiliate invention in it’s own right).

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #3

jason — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:07:20 +0000

Next up on this tour of great inventiveness in affiliate marketing is one of the first widgets offered by a network. Affiliates are stat junkies and like to know whether they’ll be feasting out on McDonalds Filet-O-Fish or Filet Mignon for the next week. This handy little gadget just sits on your desktop and saves time logging in and checking stats! When it does activate itself there’s a reassuring kerching to let you know that sales and leads are appearing.

3. The Affiliate Window Desktop Alert

According to the Affiliate Window blurb:

“The Desktop News Alert sends live information directly to your desktop, including regular commission alerts and important news. Alerts appear throughout the day, without you having to log in to your account”

The only way this could be bettered is if it climbed off the desktop, ran to the kitchen and brought back a cup of coffee and a packet of chocolate digestives.

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #2

jason — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:44:46 +0000

Everyone in affiliate marketing has probably heard of Prezzybox and Zak – and year upon year they continue to raise the bar when it comes to creative. Their banners are always colourful and they are one of the few merchants who understand the need for content units and search boxes. However, for their christmas offering 2007 they have surpassed just about everything in the form of….

2. The Prezzybox Video Content Unit

Not only does the content unit describe the product, but customers can see the product in use via a small video. If Einstein was in affiliate marketing, he’d have put given up work on working out the theory of relativity and invented video content units!

Great Inventions In Affiliate Marketing #1

jason — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:39:11 +0000

In a bid to try and stem the tirade about the various things that strategically distribute cow pats along the affiliate marketing highway to make our lives a total and utter misery, over the next few days there’s going to be a few blogs about great inventions in affiliate marketing… those wonderful tools or ideas that make life easier and help sprout roses from the manure!

1. Affiliate Links In Emails

Webgains and Affiliate Window are the two networks who spring to mind when it comes to sending out newsletters with links already included. No having to worry about logging in, finding the merchant, finding a deeplink code and messing about trying to create the right code. I can just simply copy the link and start writing and/or promoting the offer straight away.

It’s so simple, so useful, so effective and so appreciated. Thank you!

Apologies if other networks do this, but if you don’t please try and implement it. If I receive two emails and one contains ready to use links and one doesn’t – guess which one gets priority?