I met Marc Chase in a affilaite focused forum. He's an Affiliate Manager trying to fire up a new affiliate program for MyCreditGroup.

Marc's got some strikes against him, as he's got a spanking new affiliate program in a niche that's flooded and really hard to rank in.

Marc's Affiliate Program is in the Finance niche with a focus on Credit Repair, Debt Settlement and Mortgages. It's one of the toughest to break into, and most expensive to participate in.

I know this niche very well as I used to own a business that generated leads for Merchants as large as Bank of America. I used to earn upwards of $50 per lead. That's per lead, not per sale. Money was good way back then, but not anymore if you're new to the game.

So, when I saw Marc's post announcing his offering to the affiliates … I saw some really good things and I saw a few things that could be better.

Marc's post read something like this…

We've put a lot of effort into building a flawless reputation before launching our affiliate program.
We put just as much effort into creating support for our affiliates. 

Some Features:
- Multi Tiered: $50.00 per 5% second tier
- $1000.00 bonus per 100 sign ups
- Additional bonuses of 500.00 for second conversion
- Huge industry and we are hands down the most trusted.

We're even working on health benefits (lots of details of course)

The affiliate page can be found here:
The Best Credit Repair Affiliate Program - My Credit Group

Feel free to research our company thoroughly and you'll see the effort we've put into ethics and integrity.

If you have any questions, or suggestions we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you in advance
Marc Chase

• They're listed with Dunn and Bradstreet.
• They have a flawless seven year old BBB record, which in that niche is unheard of.
• They are registered with the Attorney General and Secretary of State.
• They offer the affiliate a lot of incentives.
• They offer the affiliate revenue potential for the client's many possible trasactions.
• Their payout for sales seems generous.
• They offer a second tier opportunity.
• They don't compete with the affiliates.
• They are very responsive to their affiliates.

What I didn't see caused me to ask Marc a few questions and offer some suggestions:

• I wanted to see a short form for affiliates to put onto their websites to generate sales easier.
• I wanted to see a 365 day cookie set because in this niche clients take a long time to sell to.
• I wanted to see a first-in cookie so that affiliates who really work it can benefit and not have to worry about cookie theft.
• I wanted to know what states they could service, because this niche has lots of legal limitations.
• I wanted to know who owned the company.

Marc was prompt to respond to all my questions, and lightning quick to supply all the elements I suggested. He also gave me some more insights into his company and their ethics:

Debt Settlement. Its rather lengthy so I'll paint some broad strokes
1) Greed - average fee is 14% we charge 8%. It still makes a ton of money. I dont understand 14%.

2) Because we have a credit repair mentality, credit scores are first things we think of. So, while client is saving their "settlement" money, we keep the debts tied up with validation, method of validation, FCBA requests etc. What this does (not always) is prevents them from marking the accounts late while they are saving. Goal being to get them debt free and preserving their credit.

3) Greed again: Settlement companies get paid on the total amount of debt settled. Many debts that arent even necessary to settle are included because its more commissions. We work on repair first (where applicable) if we can get something removed, then its less the client has to pay. Again, still a ton of money.

4) We always attempt to pay for deletions (credit repair mentaility). Collection agents usually just care about money and will delete the tradeline entirely as long as they get paid.

Again, settlement companies don't do credit repair, so those things aren't their concern. Since we want everybody to eventually turn to a mortgage, it is in our best interest to perfect their score no matter what service we're providing.

I am impressed with company's business model, and after chatting with Marc, I'm also impressed with their attention to details and customer service for their affiliates.

I decided to join their affiliate program and if you have finance sites that focus on CPS more than CPM/CPA, this would be a good affiliate program for you too … very ethical todate.

I just posted a great page on Google's Supplimental Index with an explaination of what it is and how to avoid it. And if you can't avoid it, then how to get out of it.

To get access to the page, you need to be a member of my Private Posts group.

By beoming a member of my Private Posts group, you gain access to my hardcore SEO knowledge and Affiliate Marketing tips.

To Get Tips on SEO, Design and Affiliate Marketing … Subscribe Now! 

It's the big yellow box to the right above my Affiliate Blogger image. 

Okay, I think this hilarious myself. I could have blogged about this under SEO topics, but at this point it's gone into the That's Too Funny category.

You guys know who the Rich Jerk is right? Well, maybe not who he is, but you know of him. In fact, Linda Buquet blogged about him not too long ago … http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2006/09/11/rich-jerk-cj/

If you've been following the presentations put out recently by Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon (two SEO experts with good basic SEO tips for everyone), then you're in the know about the things they've been teaching. If you haven't been following, then here's a link to get started … http://www.stomperblog.com.

At any rate, Brady and Andy have released a few videos teaching some basic SEO, and I guess the Rich Jerk is taking all the credit for their SEO knowledge. And, apparently Rich Jerk is taking credit for Sydney Johnston's SEO rankings as well.

Sydney is the 63 year old woman who signed on with Brady and Andy with regard to her eBay business. I guess when she got wind of the Rich Jerk's comments … she made her own video.

I think it's pretty funny … gotta love a good cat fight amoungst the SEOers.

Here's the link to Sydney's video: http://www.convertlinks.com/smackdown.html

This thing is just heating up! Enjoy!!!

Joining solid affiliate programs is a good start. But the affiliate program is usually only going to give you banner ads and text ads … most don't provide the content part.

Here's my advice, do a search on "free rewrite articles." Pick an article repository, go there, search on your keywords … not sure what they are for you, but an example would be "music" … be as specific in the keywords as you can. Music might be too general.

Grab yourself some articles. You must publish articles with the author's signature at the bottom. Give credit for the content where credit is due.

Now, keep yourself out of trouble with Google. You have to write some content too. You need to have about 20-40% of the content on the page be unique. On every page!

So, if I were you I'd write a few paragraphs about the article's topic, maybe getting a little focused on the keywords you're going for on that page. Definately use your keywords as the anchor text for the affiliate program's links.

Meaning, if you're talking about electric guitars on a page and have an article on electric guitars, then in the part you write, link the words "electric guitars" to the affiliate program's link to their electric guitars. See?

You can't touch the content of the author's article. It's a matter of honor on that reguard. It's your way of valuing that author giving you free content.

Basically, you're writing an intro to the article and you need to make a clear distinction between what you're writing and what the other guy wrote. This should resolve your content issues for now.

It's a lot of work, but that's how it's done. Dig in!

Currently, I don't offer any one-on-one tutoring at Affiliate Guild … yet! If you guys think that's something I should do sooner rather than later, then let me know. I would have to charge a fee, but I also could keep it reasonable. Affiliate Guild has a complete school already in place, so it's not that hard to do.

You might have read my posts about the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp. Taking this course is really helping me to be more aware of what the newer affiliate's needs are. It's all information I already know, but it's always good to hear it again. I'll be blogging and posting about things I think could benefit others. Maybe some of that will help you as well?!

Reseller has pulled out a post at WebmasterWorld linking to a Google Groups post by a Google Employee saying;

There are a few things to consider about our overall crawl and indexing pipeline. As part of some recent updates (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdaddy/) we're taking a much closer look at affiliate links, linkfarms, duplicate content, and other factors as described in our webmaster quality guidelines.

As with the Florida update, when Google went after sites that were perceived as going against Google Quality Guidelines, some good & clean sites were hit in the cross fire. With this, the same has happened, and it will always happen.

So if you are suffering, you can try posting in the Google Group or emailing Google, as specified in the thread.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

I received a nice email from Google today letting me know that they've upgraded their analytics tool. Here's the deatils….

We are happy to announce the release of a new version of the Google Analytics reporting interface. Since you are an existing user, you will automatically be upgraded - there is no action required on your part. To access this new version click the "View Reports" link next to any profile in your account by logging in at http://www.google.com/analytics.

For a smooth transition, we've listed some helpful resources and notes below.  Also, you will still be able to access your old reporting interface for at least a month by clicking "Previous Interface" below the "View Reports" link for any profile in your account. Other than a few improvements detailed in the version notes below, your data and configuration settings remain unaffected by your choice of interface and your data continues to be tracked in the same way as it was prior to this redesign.

*What is new?* In the new version, your reports have been redesigned for clarity, greater visibility of important metrics, and ease of use.  Here are just a few of the features you'll notice:

- Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.     

- Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.      

- Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.     

- Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.The new interface has everything the previous interface had and more. In addition, links within reports make it easier to navigate related information and explore your data.

The following resources are available to help you get the most from the new Google Analytics interface:

- Report Finder Tool: will help you see where data from the previous interface is located within the new version (it is also linked to from within your reports on the left nav menu.     

- Product tour:        http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html     

- FAQs for more details about the new version:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/static.pypage=FAQ.cs

- Help Center: includes articles related to the new version:         http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/     

- Support: if you encounter any issues with the new version that you can't resolve with the help center, you can contact our support team through the Contact Us link at the bottom of the help center web page, or receive higher-touch support through a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. Find one here:        http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html      

- Analytics Help Forum: If you would like to discuss the new version or get tips from experienced users, please visit the Analytics Help Forum in English within Google Groups at:        http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help