Last week I spent around 30 minutes talking to Wade Tonkin of GTO Management and Ian Larsen. We talked in depth about some of the innovative Affiliate tools that Scott and David have worked hard to create, of course with the direct input from our valued Affiliates and merchants. The podcast is available on the GTO Blog, directly below a nice post by Wade. Here’s a snippet…

We talked in detail about a few features in particular, the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE) which allows bloggers, webmasters and forum operators to put affiliate tracking in place for any AvantLink merchant without having to actually login to the affiliate UI or so any special coding. Once the ALE javascript is in place, the affiliate tracking is put in place on the broswer side of the equation.

Ian chimed in with his experience as an affiliate and applauded the flexibility of the AvantLink datafeed tools and the accessibility of support and development to get what you need as an affiliate. Gary applauded the affiliates out there for driving innovation.

Read Wade’s entire blog post & listen to the podcast: GTO Podcast #3: Gary Marcoccia of AvantLink

Gary for AvantLink

Just a quick post to highlight an upgrade to our Affiliate Recruitment tool. For those who may not be familiar, in AvantLink merchants have the ability to send out recruitment offers to Affiliates that have chosen to opt-in to these recruitment offers.

We do not disclose Affiliate contact information, however; until the Affiliate has applied, or is active, with a program. The recruitment tool uses an email form we provide in the management interface to send out offers to the email addys Affiliates have configured in their AvantLink account.

At the request of Krystofer from the REI Affiliate program, and some other merchants, David added a filter option that will allow you to select from among “Available recruits”, “Pending offers”, or “Declined offers”.

Hope this is helpful to the program managers out there!

Gary & AvantLink

Introducing a new exclusive AvantLink merchant:

Alpaca Direct

Started in 2004, Alpaca Direct is a leader in Luxury Alpaca and Pima Cotton apparel, accessories and yarn for fashion oriented men and women as well as craft oriented knitters the world over. Alpaca Direct’s apparel line is a unique luxury offering available only through the AlpacaDirect.com website. At Alpaca Direct your customers will find warm and durable socks from Dahlgren footwear, luxury Pima cotton apparel, Peruvian jewelry and luxury yarn and wool rovings for knitters and spinners.

Folks, this is a category with little competition. Add Alpaca Direct to the mix right away and be one of the first Affiliates promoting their unique product line! Combine the low competition factor with a high-converting web site, widely searched for products, great promotions and dedicated program management; and you can’t go wrong.

Please note that this program offers an 8% baseline payout with performance incentives available. Cookie life is 120 days, and all orders over $50 are shipped for free. Alpaca Direct has also launched their program with an active Deal of the Day campaign which will populate daily with products at a minimum of 30% off the retail price.

From the Alpaca Direct Affiliate program description:

Alpaca Direct’s staff is committed to customer service can provide relevant, experienced help to satisfy the customer’s needs best. Alpaca Direct provides customers with superior products, terrific prices, top-notch customer service and risk-free shopping…

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting Alpaca Direct. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Jim Hobart, jimh/at/alpacadirect.com.

Gary & AvantLink

Introducing a new AvantLink merchant:

VoIPYourLife.com

VoIPYourLife is committed to providing the highest quality telecommunications solutions with the best features, service and savings. VoIPYourLife offers a one-stop solution for VoIP products including: access points, local phone numbers and feature-rich services that work just like your regular phone.

For each new customer you refer to VoIPYourLife, you’ll be paid a flat rate $30! It doesn’t matter which package or term your new customer selects, VoIPYourLife will pay you $30 for each successful sale you generate. Additionally, for anyone who generates 100 validated referrals, you’ll receive a one-time bonus of $250. Lastly, note the 365-day cookie life and the fact that they offer a product datafeed!

From the VoIPYourLife Affiliate program description:

Program benefits:

• $30.00 USD for online signups / $15.00 USD for phone orders
• 100 validated referrals receive a one-time bonus of $250.00 USD
• 365 day cookie
• Product Datafeed
• Dedicated program management

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting VoIPYourLife.com. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Todd Reagor, treagor/at/vylaffiliate.com.

IMPORTANT: Please note that sales/commissions will not post for 30 days due to a fraud verification process.

Gary & AvantLink

Last year we introduced reporting functionality for showing “Hit Trails” for sales. To summarize, a “hit trail” is the list of ad impressions and click-throughs that a visitor followed, leading up to an actual sale.

Recently, there was an ABW post that discussed this functionality and how to derive some useful statistics from the information. With that in mind, we’ve added a summary section to the “Sales Hit Tracking Trail” report that displays those very statistics!

Included in the summary are the calculated average, minimum and maximum values for each of the following:

• Time from last click through to sale: visitors may sometimes click through your affiliate links multiple times before actually completing a sale on the merchant site. This set of statistics measures the time between the last recorded click-through and the eventual sale.
• Time from first visit (impression or click) to sale: this set of values measures the full duration of the hit trail. In other words, it covers the span of time from when the visitor first viewed an ad on your site (if you are using ad impression tracking) or first clicked through one of your affiliate links, until the time of the sale.

The aforementioned ABW post by Donuts provides a good starting point for ways to use these statistics to form conclusions about your own traffic. As an additional example, it’s possible to use this information to partially validate the “referral days” (a.k.a. “cookie days”) value for a merchant (the lifetime of the tracking cookie that is set when a visitor clicks through one of your affiliate links). For instance, if a merchant allows only a 30-day cookie, then you should expect to see a maximum value for “Time from last click through to sale” of less than 30 days. The longer the lifetime of the tracking cookie allowed for a given merchant, the more likely you are to see higher maximum values for this statistic.

For those of you data mining affiliates out there, we hope this helps you in your research!

David & AvantLink

Recently Dave MacLeay, a valued Affiliate partner on our network, was asked by an AM why he was migrating his links from the large network they had been on, to AvantLink (where this particular merchant just launched with us, too). Here was Dave’s answer:

Why AvantLink? In a nutshell: they have robust, reliable tools for datafeeds and reporting, outstanding personal customer service, and a great philosophy and approach to the business. They’re more flexible and nimble than any other network I’ve worked with, and are very responsive to new ideas from both merchants and publishers. Rather than trying to enforce a top-down, network-centric relationship, they really seem to understand that their role is to facilitate, enable, and support productive relationships between merchants and affiliates. (Ironically, that puts them in a stronger, more trusted position than other networks that try to control or limit contact between affiliates and merchants.) Because AvantLink is selective about who they work with, they’re able to provide customer service that’s head-and-shoulders above anyone else in the industry. Most of all, they just seem to “get it” — it’s about giving partners the tools and support they need to be productive and then getting out of their way. For all those reasons, whenever I have a choice of networks, AvantLink gets my business.

Dave MacLeay
Co-Founder, Publisher
Trailspace.com

There you have it. Thanks Dave, for your valuable feedback, kind words and support!

Introducing a new exclusive AvantLink merchant:

C28.com

C28 is the leader in Christian-themed apparel and accessories for youth and young adults. From the description on their site: Your Source for Bold Christian Gifts, Christian T-shirts, clothing, and Jewelry! The Christian clothing, music, jewelry and accessories from this merchant reflect a bold and positive Christian lifestyle, and the products are intended to serve as conversation starters that enable sharing of Faith.

It should be noted that this program is managed by GTO Management, so you know you’re in good hands. We’ve gotten to know Wade and the team over at GTO recently, and we’re psyched to have one of their porgrams on board with AvantLink! With C28.com Affiliates can earn 15%-20% commission on a 30 day cookie.

From the C28 Affiliate program description:

C28 combines a Christian mall store chain and website, offering an alternative to the mainstream mall stores. The Christian clothing, music, jewelry and accessories reflect a bold and positive Christian lifestyle and are intended to serve as conversation starters to enable sharing of Faith….

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting C28.com. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Wade Tonkin, wade/at/gtomanagement.com.

Gary & AvantLink

We are proud to introduce our newest exclusive AvantLink merchant:

FlyFishingOutfitters.com

Leland Fly Fishing Outfitters has been supplying San Francisco Bay Area Fly Fishing anglers with the fly fishing gear they need at great prices for over 23 years. They are still serving the Bay Area community from their brick and mortar shop in the area but online they are now able to extend their reach to anglers everywhere with FlyFishingOutfitters.com!

Several of the FlyFishingOutfitters.com staff have been fishing for decades giving them the ability to provide knowledgeable customer service while informing there visitors with all they need to make a satisfying purchase with quality reviews, personal testimonials, and more. They also have all products in stock and ready to ship in order to get gear to their customer as quick as possible with free domestic same day shipping. That’s the kind of stuff that has created a loyal customer base and keeps customers coming back! It has also made them the largest retailer of every manufacturer that they sell!

With their new affiliate program this Full Service Fly Shop will be offering affiliates 8% Base Commissions and a 120 Cookie Duration, that gives you about 4 months to pick up commissions on some their top name brand products. combine this with things like - Free Same Business Day Shipping and their confidence boosting Price Guarantee promoting these guys will be an easy choice!

Leland’s FlyFishingOutfitters.com is going to be an exciting program to watch grow with help from affiliates and access to some of the best Affiliate Tools in the industry combined with all that Leland offers to the fly fishing community!

Here is a bit more straight from the Leland Fly Fishing Outfitters Affiliate Program description page:

We are a seasoned marketer and advertise all of our properties across all channels; Paid Search, Email, SEO, and P2P linking from our manufacturers. Matter of fact, we have direct links from all of our major suppliers.

Our product selection is the best gear at all price points available in fly fishing. We carry only the finest brands. The companies with impeccable reputations, so you can be assured that your traffic will be happy that they arrived. We currently carry Sage, Scott, Winston, G Loomis, Thomas and Thomas, Abel, Tibor, Waterworks, Galvan, Hardy, Hatch, Simms, Cloudveil, Fishpond, Umpqua, Rio, Scientific Anglers and more. . .

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting FlyFishingOutfitters.com. Contact anyone at AvantLink or email Joshua Frazier, josh@flyfishingoutfitters.com.

Mark & AvantLink

Just a quick post to announce that the PawsUpPetSupply Affiliate program has launched their dedicated Affiliate program blog on AvantShare! This long time pet supply store recently changed ownership and completed a killer site re-design. The Affiliate program was also re-launched, and Jeff is committed to building and sustaining a program that will be worth your time and effort. Look for regular communication from Jeff through their dedicated blog category on AvantShare. He’ll be posting promotional materials, sale details, new products added to the catalog and special Affiliate only offers. Here’s a snippet from Jeff’s intro post:

I would like to take this opportunity to let you know that we at Paws Up Pet Supply are planning a lot of stuff that is going to happen in the next six months or so. Ever since we took over the site in November 2007, we have been on a mission to reinvigorate the the site and the affiliate program. We are beginning to see so light at the end of the tunnel…

Read the full article: Welcome to the Paws Up Pet Supply Blog

Click here for more info on our branded blog categories for merchants.