The Affiliate Guild has recently posted a great affiliate help list tips of 25 things that new and struggling affiliates trying to make a go of affiliate marketing should take a look at and give careful consideration to.

The Good Advice for New Affiliates post was inspired by Linda Buquet's super affiliate contest going on at 5 star affiliate programs.

Good Advice for New Affiliates
from the Affiliate Guild

25 Affiliate Tips To Success
1. Too much time building websites will bog you down. Make easy to maintain sites.

2. SEO does matter if you want targeted traffic.

3. Get a newsletter email opt-in on every page of every website you own.

4. Either get a forum or get a blog going. (Need one built?)

5. Write about your affiliate programs (article-repository.com). Tell everyone!

6. Focus on conversion not payout. Commissions are important though.

7. Get really, really niche.

8. Find affiliate programs that will be around awhile.

9. Find a search engine friendly cloaking script for your links.

10. There is more to affiliate life than Google! Diversify!

11. Learn about your affiliate programs and speak intellegently about them.

12. If you don't see what you want to represent, go get it. Consider your own affiliate network.

13. Make friends with Affiliate Managers … and if you have a lot of traffic ask for a bigger percentage on payout.

14. Work with reputable leadership (affiliate guild)

15. Buy from the affiliate program if you want to know how they work. We do it.

16. Monetize your websites.

17. If you have enough traffic sell ad space. If you have good SEO ranking, charge more for ads.

18. Ask for the sale. Most affiliate program banners don't close sales, you must do it.

19. You must work 8-10+ hours daily to be a successful super affiliate.

20. Keep it really simple … accomplish your goals with focused resources.

21. Find affiliate programs that offer a wide variety of advertising opportunities from banners to datafeeds.

22. Find affiliate programs that require strong marketing ethics and follow them, WIN-WIN.

23. Find affiliate programs that payout on schedule everytime. You're in control here!

24. Look for affiliate programs with affiliate tracking for phone sales you generate.

25. Look for affiliate programs with solid servers and software that works 100% of the time. Other affiliates write about the bad ones, so be aware and read the affiliate forums and blogs.

Posted by Bobbie Grennier on August 10, 2006 05:53 PM | Permalink

The first Affiliate Bootcamp class was pretty much what you'd expect of an online class with a bunch of folks who aren't too good at using online formats. We had to help everyone get that hang of using the on line communication interface. There were lots of newbie questions asked, but surprisingly not about affiliate marketing as much as about how to use their own computers … things like how to plug in microphones and speakers.

That's a great eye-opener for me because I try hard to help the newbies and I put all of that information over on the Affiliate Guild. I'm realizing I probably need to add some information on computer basics as well.

So, the first class wasn't all that earth-shattering, but I wasn't expecting it to be. It was a get-to-know-you and get a feel for the room type of thing.

One thing that I did come away with was the communication environment that James used. The company is called iVocalize and the environment is pretty nice … not too hard to figure out. It allows for chat, voice by all members, slideshows, and a whiteboard … there might be more features, but those are the ones I saw. If you've a need for a fairly sophisticated conference room, need something more than your IM can handle, then you might check this one out.

Affiliates and Bloggers, finally the wait is over. BlogKits has opened it's doors for business!

And guess what, those who use Google's AdSense don't have to worry about chossing. According to BlogKits you can use both without running any risk to your Google account. Sa-weet!

The BlogKits system is very easy to use and the intuative. Just create an account, login and you'll see right away what I mean. Although I have to admit I wanted that cup of coffee they were using as an example.

The tools section for more advanced users is pretty cool tool. It will be fun to watch Jim Kukral grow this site and features like these tool. You can find more tools at the Affiliate Guild.

BlogKits is tied to OfferForge too, in case you didn't know. So, their offers are also listed there for you. Nice to have one stop affiliate linking.

I just received an email that made me laugh out loud … and I had to share. Everyone needs a good belly laugh once in a while. Here's the email with a few private informational parts removed:

This email is to notify you that you have made a sale.

You have earned $0.01 in commission for this sale, which was placed by (I removed the name here).

This will be added to your total commissions for this month.
To verify your stats online please visit ….

Please note that this sale and commission is based on the approval of the order and receipt of funds. If the order cannot be confirmed, or funds are not received, your commission account will be updated accordingly.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

AC Support
Affiliate Classroom

For the record, my affiliate links to AC are more about helping other marketers. So, no I wasn't planning on getting rich off this. The funds earned will go to supporting my work on the Affiliate Guild, where I'm tying to help newbie affiliates get going in this business. But still … this is pretty funny!

 Okay guys, here's my findings for you on this Affilistore software … it's freaking brilliant … as in the English word for quite nice.

You have to have some knowledge of how a datafeed works. You need to be able to hook up a database and some php/html/chmod abilities. The install was pretty simple if you know these things.

Once the data is pulled in there are certain parameters that there's no way to update, and others that easily can be. It's very important to do the install correctly, otherwise you'll end up re-doing it.

The templates are easy to work with for the most part. It comes with one already there for you. You do have to select it after the install process is over. So, don't panic when you notice there doesn't seem to be styles. The pages it creates are very clean and easy to navigate.

It is SEO friendly (could be more so) and it's a bummer is that it doesn't update your feeds automatically. I'm guessing that's what's coming in their paid version … I hope so.

All-in-all I'd give this a BIG thumbs up from Affiliate Blogger, the Affiliate Guild and Best Affiliate Network. Thanks to 5 Star Affiliate Marketing for bringing it to my attention.