The Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Internet Marketing Advisory Board announced a Best Practices for Online Advertising Networks and Affiliate Marketing.

The DMA list is a simple five rules, but important rules that set a generalized guildline for the Affiliate Marketing Industry … something sorely lacking.

The only rule I see as having possible difficulty in obtaining,is the full disclosure of their eligible sites. These Marketing firms keep their sites a virtual secret to stay on top of their game … not something they would readily share.

Author: [Jim Kukral]
Friday May 12th 2006, 1:39 pm
Filed under: Forge Corporation

To download the white paper… Please visit www.forgebusiness.com and use the contact form in the right-hand side navigation to get your free copy of the PDF. It will be emailed to you instantly.

Affiliate marketing is hard work, and takes a lot of skill and insight to do it successfully. Want to learn more about how to run a successful affiliate marketing program? Now you can. Forge used their years of experience in the Affiliate Marketing Industry to create this comprehensive white paper entitled Affiliate Marketing Do’s & Don’ts.

Follow our link to read more about Google's new CPA affiliate network.

https://affiliatesblog.wordpress.com/2006/06/22/google-finally-launches-their-affiliate-network/

Google Launches CPA Affiliate Network

Pepperjam Announces Sponsorship of Linkshare Affiliate Marketing Symposium and Golden Link Awards

Pepperjam, the industry’s leading search, affiliate, and media management firm announced today co-sponsorship of the 2006 Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards, which will be held in New York City on June 20–21. The Linkshare Summit and Golden Link Awards are the premier affiliate marketing conference and awards ceremony for leading Linkshare merchants and affiliates.

To learn more about Pepperjam please visit http://www.pepperjamsearch.com and http://www.pepperjammanagement.com

Kristopher B. Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjam said, “We are excited to co-sponsor this year’s Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards and are honored to be part of this prestigious affiliate marketing event. In particular, these Linkshare events provide an excellent opportunity to unveil Pepperjam’s newest affiliate marketing initiative, the Pepperjam Comparison Shopping Blog. Unlike other comparison shopping engines, such as shopping.com and shopzilla.com, the new Pepperjam website will offer merchants the expertise of a leading search-engine marketing firm (pepperjamsearch.com), as well as a revolutionary cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model designed with pay-for-performance marketing in mind.”

This year's much anticipated LinkShare Symposium 2006 will take place June 20-21, 2006 in New York City. For more than ten years, LinkShare merchants, affiliates, and leading companies doing business on the web have convened at the LinkShare Symposium to forge business relationships and discuss issues facing the industry at large. Over 500 leaders from companies in the retail, catalog, financial and business-to-business sectors will be in attendance. To learn more about the Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards please visit http://www.linkshare.com/symposium.

About pepperjamSEARCH:
pepperjamSEARCH offers powerful search-engine marketing management solutions based on an advanced search analytics algorithm. The company offers an experienced staff of certified Google Advertising Professionals and Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassadors. Working with advanced, proprietary API-Driven management tools, pepperjamSEARCH offers the ultimate ROI available through the advertising medium of search. Using the model developed over the past seven (7) years by Pepperjam, pepperjamSEARCH offers cutting-edge solutions to many of the nation’s leading online merchants. In addition, Pepperjam is one of only 20 search-engine marketing firms across the United States designated by Google as a Google Adwords Qualified Company.

About pepperjamMANAGEMENT:
pepperjamMANAGEMENT was created in 2002 by a group of industry-leading super affiliates and search-engine marketing experts, including Internet marketing expert Kristopher B. Jones. The company offers pay-for-performance outsourced affiliate marketing management solutions, as well as online media management and consultation in the areas of search, strategic partnership acquisition, and overall market share capitalization.

pepperjamMANAGEMENT is a division of the Pepperjam Network — the world’s largest search-engine marketing super affiliate with over $100 million in annual sales generated to over 2,500 merchant partners, including BabyAge, 1-800-PetMeds, igourmet and Foreclosure.com.

For more information, please contact Robyn Martin, Director of Public Relations at 1.877.796.5700 or visit us at http://www.pepperjamsearch.com and http://www.pepperjammanagement.com.

The Affiliate Guild has posted an interesting article in their Affiliate News blog about cloaking affiliate links. The article gives some nice instructions on how to do a redirect from your server to hide your affiliate link identity from the initial user click. Of course, after they click it will all become transparent. Take a look and read more … it's good stuff.

CORRECTING and REPLACING Internet Retailer's Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites Reveals Online Merchants Prefer Commission Junction to Other Affiliate Marketing Providers
Wednesday May 24, 8:02 pm ET

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May 24, 2006–Please replace the release dated May 23, 2006 with the following corrected version due to multiple revisions to the headline and first graph.

The corrected release reads:

INTERNET RETAILER'S TOP 500 GUIDE TO RETAIL WEB SITES REVEALS ONLINE MERCHANTS PREFER COMMISSION JUNCTION TO OTHER AFFILIATE MARKETING PROVIDERS

Commission Junction Powers More Programs Than the Next Two Providers Combined

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK - News), one of the world's largest integrated online marketing companies, today announced that its affiliate marketing division, Commission Junction, is used by more advertisers on Internet Retailer's Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites than the next two affiliate marketing providers combined. In addition, Commission Junction leads in powering programs for 10 of the 13 market categories being used by advertisers to expand reach and increase online revenues. Among Internet Retailer's list of top retail Web sites, Commission Junction powers brand names such as SonyStyle.com, Zappos.com and Real®.

Performance marketing continues to be one of the most cost-effective channels for driving online revenues. As a result, it has been widely adopted by the online retailing industry with 324 of the top 500 retailers running affiliate programs either through networks like Commission Junction or in-house solutions. Commission Junction powers more of these affiliate programs than any other single network provider, and is the preferred provider for the majority of the advertiser categories tracked by Internet Retailer, including Apparel/Accessories, Books/CDs/DVDs, Computers/Electronics, Flowers/Gifts, Hardware/Home Improvements, Health/Beauty, Office Supplies, Specialty/Non-apparel, Sporting Goods and Toys/Hobbies.

"Internet Retailer's independent survey reaffirms Commission Junction's leadership in providing affiliate marketing programs to the top 500 advertisers. Our CJ Marketplace is specifically designed to assist our clients in increasing their online revenue and expand their reach into market segments best suited for their target audiences," said Tom Vadnais, general manager of Commission Junction and Mediaplex. "We are committed to meeting our clients' needs. As the channel grows, Commission Junction will continue to develop, deliver and drive the best affiliate marketing solutions in the industry to support our clients."

About Commission Junction

Commission Junction (www.cj.com) provides advanced performance marketing solutions that help marketers increase online leads and sales. By facilitating strategic relationships between advertisers and publishers, Commission Junction leverages its proven expertise in affiliate marketing and search marketing to drive measurable results for its clients.

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq:VCLK - News) is one of the world's largest integrated online marketing companies, offering comprehensive and scalable solutions to deliver cost-effective customer acquisition for advertisers and significant revenue for publishers. Through its individual brands, ValueClick's performance-based solutions allow advertisers and publishers to reach their potential through all online marketing channels, including display advertising, affiliate marketing, lead generation, search, e-mail, and comparison shopping. ValueClick brands include Commission Junction, HiSpeed Media, Mediaplex, PriceRunner, ValueClick Media, and Webclients. For more information, please visit www.valueclick.com.

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, ValueClick's ability to successfully integrate its recently completed Fastclick and Webclients mergers, trends in online advertising spending and estimates of future online performance-based advertising. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements are detailed under "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission made from time to time by ValueClick, including: its Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 31, 2006 and amendment to its Annual Report on Form 10-K/A filed on April 21, 2006; its current report on Form 8-K filed on February 27, 2006; recent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and Form 10-Q/A, other current reports on Form 8-K; its amended registration statement on Form S-4, filed on September 27, 2005; and its final prospectus on Form 424B3 filed on September 28, 2005. Other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the risk that market demand for online advertising, and performance-based online advertising in particular, will not grow as rapidly as predicted. ValueClick undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Contact:
ValueClick, Inc.
For Media:
Ronda Grech, 1.818.575.4511
rgrech@valueclick.com
For Investor Relations:
Gary J. Fuges, 1.818.575.4677

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes.

Joining an affiliate program is a neat way to make money from your users. But just as you can join someone else's affiliate program, so you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to sign up. Here are my top 3 tips to succeed with your own affiliate program.

1. How to attract affiliates

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners from getting started with affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates may not be very difficult. Given below are some tips that may help in attracting new affiliates.

Find complimentary sites - "Complementary" sites are sites that sell products or services that compliment your offers. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate.

Find content sites - There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

2. Classifying Affiliates for Better Management

The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But, by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can easily determine what their needs are and how to accurately meet them.

The first step is to pick at least three types of affiliate. Take a look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be compared across the board and choose at least three types of the characteristic.

The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your affiliate types will have different needs; some of their needs will overlap, but you should find a distinct difference in many of their needs. If you find that all of them have the same needs, go back to step one and re-think your types.

The Third Step involves the process of creating and compiling linking methods for each group of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified in Step two, create and compile linking methods for each type.

3. Safe Guarding Against Spam

Any time you run a program where your affiliates rely on other signups to generate profits, you will eventually have a problem with spam. One of your affiliates will inevitably get it into their head to blitz the Web with unwanted garbage.

When this happens you need to be ready to take action otherwise it will cost you! Your Internet company can boot you off your server and you can find yourself blacklisted. Not good for business. If you get an email from someone claiming they received spam with your URL, then take it as an early warning.

I am not advising you to immediately terminate the affiliate's account, but be sure to contact them to follow up on the complaint. Let your affiliate know you received a complaint and advise them to remove this person from their list.

If you only get one or two complaints, it's probably not spam, the complainants might simply have signed up for an email list and forgotten all about it. You will know when one of your affiliates is spamming, because you will get anywhere from 10 to 100 complaints in the same day all regarding the same URL.

The best thing to do in this case is to immediately terminate or disable the account of the affiliate URL that was spammed.

Running your own affiliate program can become an extrememly profitable venture for your business. You can recruit a HUGE sales force promoting your products for you, and ONLY pay them when you make a sale!

About the Author:
Andy Murray is a marketer and publisher writing informative reports to help grow your online business. Get his latest offering "Get Stinking Rich From Affiliate Programs" for FREE by simply following this link: http://www.zerohourmarketing.com/Affiliate-Marketing-Report.htm

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