We’ve recently added a branding strategy as one of our ‘Merchant Service Levels‘ featured on our Solutions page. This service level helps new merchants brand themselves as the expert in their respective categories. This may very well be the ‘missing link’ for new programs trying to get traction in an incredibly competitive space. For example, if a new merchant comes into the outdoor category they are going to have a tough time competing out of the gate with very established programs like Altrec and Moosejaw.

The objective of the branding strategy is to help establish web merchants with new Affiliate programs as the authority online for their products. In other words, when a potential Affiiate is researching a program to determine whether or not to spend their time driving traffic, we want to be sure the content we distribute through this service level is presented to them. Basically, when a potential Affiliate Googles a merchant name, we want to see to it that press releases, blog posts and articles show up in the SERPs.

The main elements of the branding strategy include PRWeb.com press release distributions, a WordPress blog dedicated to the merchant program and ezine article submissions.

At this point it’s appropriate to give Durk Price from eAccountable.com credit for helping to iron out this incredibly effective program. So far Durk is working in this capacity (blogging and other content distribution) for two of our merchants, and we’ve seen very positive results. Durk also runs two Affiliate industry blogs at AffGoo.com and AffiliateNewsReview.com, so be sure to check those out.

For more info on our Merchant Branding Strategy and pricing feel free to Contact Us. Or drop me an email personally.

Gary & AvantLink

We’ve got an exciting program that recently launched in AvantLink. It’s the world-famous Little Giant Ladder Systems! We’re thrilled to have them in the network, and we have some high hopes for the potential and growth of this program. They’ve been breaking conversion records in another network that I won’t mention here ;). I’m confident that our Affiliates can do some amazing things with this opportunity.

Little Giant Ladder Systems is a manufacturer-direct product with nation-wide brand recognition. Their Affiliate program is managed by Chuck Hamrick and AffiliateCrew.com, so you know you’re in good hands.

Here is a snipet from the press release:

“Park City, UT (PRWEB) November 30, 2006 — Avantlink.com announced recently the launch of the Little Giant Ladders Affiliate program in their technology-focused network. Little Giant is the global leader in safe, durable and versatile ladder systems for anyone. These products are in demand from homeowners, contractors, businesses, schools and more. As such, this is an attractive product for Affiliates to jump on board and promote.”

Read Entire Press Release: Little Giant Ladder Systems Launches Affiliate Program in AvantLink

Sincerely,

Gary & AvantLink

Introducing another great addition to the AvantLink network:

Beaucoup Wedding Favors

Great opportunity to promote a wedding and favors merchant with a large selection of unique and exclusive products. Very high conversion rates with this merchant! Check out their site and I think you’ll agree this is a good one to add to the mix.

“Beaucoup is the leading retailer of unique wedding favors, baby shower favors, bridal party gifts, place card holders and other party essentials. They carry a large selection of personalized gifts, many of which are exclusively sold on their website.”

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Drop us a line if you need anything,

Gary & AvantLink

Going to trackback real quick to highlight our Coupon Feed Syndication tool that was officially announced on September 7th 2006 on our ABestWeb public support forum (read the official announcement on ABW).

This tool is important because it allows Affiliates to promote an actual ’subscription’ to an Affiliate-embedded RSS feed, ie, in this case the Dynamic Coupon Feed. Affiliates can easily configure a coupon/sale RSS feed for any merchant in the network, and then promote not only the content of these feeds on their site(s), but subscriptions to the feeds as well.

Affiliates, are you graspin’ what this means? It means that if you get your site visitors to subscribe to your Affiliate link-embedded RSS feed, your tracking cookie will be set on that users computer everytime they click on a sale item or coupon from their favorite RSS reader.

We’ve provided several popular RSS reader icons that will hold your Affiliate IDs in the outbound links. It’s as simple as grabbing and pasting code for banner links. Configure a coupon feed syndication link by following these steps:

1. Login to your Affiliate account and click ‘Tools’ from the main menu
2. Under ‘Coupon Feed Syndication’, click ‘Get Merchant RSS Coupon Feed Syndication Links’
3. Select ‘Merchant’ then ‘Website’ then ‘Get HTML’
4. Thats’ it. Just paste that code on your web site pages, preferably a long side that actual coupon feed.

It’s always best to show examples when possible of the tools in action. We’ve been given the go ahead from Jesse Hoffman to show off his site BikeRackOutlet.com. This is a perfect example of a site using an array of our dynamic tools including the Web Service Datafeed Client, the Dynamic Coupon Feed, Product Display Builder and the Coupon Feed Syndication. Notice on the homepage of this site there is a coupon feed display, then RSS subscribe icons above the display. The icons hold RSS feeds of all those juicy offers, with Jesse’s affiliate ID embedded. Brilliant!!

If anyone else is using the syndication options feel free to post a comment with a URL if you would like to share.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.

Gary & AvantLink

One day to promote the following coupon from ToolKing.com…so grab it now!

Save Big on ToolKing.com’s most popular gifts from DeWalt, Milwaukee, Bosch, Makita and more! Also, your customers can get Free Shipping on Orders of $350 or more. Customers must use Coupon Code LTHPRR at checkout.

Sale Landing Page:
http://www.toolking.com/static/dealType.seam?dealid=250

It’s our first Cyber Monday worth noting. Although we were officially launched as a network in October of 2005, we were starting from scratch so the Monday after Thanksgiving last year was insignificant. It’s an exciting time for everyone in the Affiliate world.

Best of luck over the next couple of weeks to all our network Affiliates and merchants!!

Gary & AvantLink

I’m still working on getting AvantLink’s new blog caught up.. So I’m flashing back to September 18th when we announced the new option for the coupon feed that allowed Affiliates to retrieve a delimited flat file version of our coupon datafeed. This was a direct request from several Affiliates by way of our support forum on ABestWeb.com. Affiliates asked and they received.

This allows more flexibility when presenting/publishing the coupon info but it is static so the offers will be displayed on your site until you run an update. It’s suggested that Affiliates automate this process at least every 72 hours to be sure discounts and coupons are showing accurate info. Outdated offers will result in very low conversion rates and/or clicks to merchants.
Here is a snippet from the new article:

“AvantLink.com has recently upgraded an existing network tool to better meet the needs of their Affiliates. The Dynamic Coupon Feed now has a configuration option that provides flat-file format datafeed files, in addition to dynamic RSS and JavaScript feeds.”

Read Entire Press Release on PRWeb or AvantLink.

Gary & AvantLink

Killer offers from Altrec.com Outdoors for this weekend and through Cyber Monday. Hot off the press from Greg Toledo and Altrec…

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Affiliate Partners:

We have two great promotions for the Thanksgiving weekend. These should give your numbers a strong boost. Your customers can take advantage of both through “Cyber Monday.”

$20 Off orders over $200: expires Monday at midnight, 11/27. Customers enter coupon code at checkout.

Details:
* Coupon Code: earlybird
* $20 Off orders over $200
* 11/22-11/27/06
* Landing Page: http://www.altrec.com/shop/promotions/20off200/

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70% Off Select items: Altrec has ~160 products at 70% Off - end midnight, 11/27/06. These will move quickly. Make sure to update immediately to take advantage of the discount.

* Landing Page: http://www.altrec.com/outdoors/outlet/gdextreme/

I have updated and added banners, text links and the coupon feed. The price breaks are reflected in the datafeed as well.

If you have any questions please give me a call or send me an email. I will be out of the office on Friday, returning Monday morning.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Greg Toledo

Altrec.com Outdoors
541.316.2400 x146 | gregt[at]altrec.com

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Sincerely,
Gary & AvantLink

I mentioned in a previous post that we utilize PRWeb.com as our news distribution service of choice for some of our worthy media announcements and new merchant partnerships. With each release we qualify for a free podcast. It’s a cool process where a PRWeb interviewer calls and records a 3-5 minute conversation of the topic of the news release.. What I like most is that this is a whole separate distribution (news rss syndication, listing on a whole different site - http://prwebpodcast.com). Double the value in terms of getting your worthy content out there.

Here is a quote from the press release/podcast:

“Park City, Utah (PRWEB) November 16th 2006 — AvantLink entered the world of blogging with an open source WordPress blog dedicated to the workings and details of their network. This blog acts as a content distribution system using RSS feeds and severalplug-ins to get the word out on network tools, new merchants, emerging technologies and best practices…”

Listen to Podcast (3.76 MB).. (short and sweet)

Gary & AvantLink