Introducing a new AvantLink merchant:

Oregon Mountain Community

Yet another top outdoor retailer goes live on AvantLink! The Affiliate marketing world’s strongest Outdoor/Recreation category just got stronger. Oregon Mountain Community consists of a group of Northwest mountain enthusiasts with the knowledge and expertise to help your customers with all their outdoor gear and apparel needs. This company is a class act, with solid program management and regular, compelling promotions for you to push out.

Their ecommerce web site is e-OMC.com and you can expect high conversions, a baseline payout of 8%, and a $145 average order value. We’re excited about the potential of this program on our network, and you should be, too! Add links for Oregon Mountain Community asap to take full advantage of the upcoming busy shopping season. Which BTW, will start to really crank up any day now.

From the Oregon Mountain Community Affiliate program detail page on AvantLink:

e-OMC carries the best in outdoor apparel and gear from brands like The North face, Arc’teryx, Mountain Hardwear, Marmot, Patagonia and many others. By partnering with Avantlink and Oregon Mountain Community you will be able to offer these fantastic brands along with our rock solid customer service to your visitors.

• 8% Baseline payout
• 120 cookie days for conversion
• 145.00 Average order value
• 110% Price matching offered
• 90 Day return / exchange policy

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting Oregon Mountain Community. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Chris Bessmer, chris/at/e-omc.com.

Gary & AvantLink

Introducing a new AvantLink merchant:

SummitOnline.com

At SummitOnline.com your customers can shop for their favorite gear from their favorite brands at the best prices on the web. No matter the season or sport, your referrals will find the deals and the gear. SummitOnline.com, launching today with Skis.com and TheDailySteal.com on AvantLink, offers the same killer 10% payout, with a 120-day cookie. Promote top brand skates, skis, snowboards, kayaks and more from this specialty sports store.

Here’s an exerpt from the SummitOnline.com branded Affiliate page on AvantLink…

Become a part of the SummitOnline.com affiliate team and begin generating sales in any of the many sporting goods categories we have to offer. We carry the top brands in the sporting goods industry and have a tremendous product catalog. Our team of customer service and support individuals is available to guide all customers in the direction of the right product for them. We offer a 110% price match guarantee and a customer rewards program as well.

• Commission Payout: 10%
• Cookie Duration: 120 Days
• Avg. Order Size: $150+
• 30 Day Return/Exchange Policy
• 110% Low Price Guarantee
• Product Datafeed
• Powder Points Customer Reward Program
• Product Video Reviews
• PayPal and All Major Credit Cards Accepted

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting SummitOnline.com. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Andrew Schaad, aschaad/at/summitsportsinc.com.

Gary & AvantLink

Introducing a new AvantLink merchant:

Skis.com

This is a killer additon to our already strong Outdoor/Recreation category. Skis.com (a long with sister sites SummitOnline.com and TheDailySTeal.com) went live today, and this is the ultimate online ski shop. They’re offering a generous 10% payout on all sales referrals! Promote The best brands in the ski industry including The North Face, Fischer, K2, Atomic, Rossignol, Patagonia, Bogner of America and more.

Skis.com offers a 110% price match guarantee and a customer rewards program, both of which increase conversion. Additional highlights of the Skis.com Affiliate program include:

• Commission Payout: 10%
• Cookie Duration: 120 Days
• Average Order Value: $200+
• 30 Day Return/Exchange Policy
• 110% Low Price Guarantee
• Product Datafeed
• Product Video Reviews

Read the program launch announcement on ABestWeb.

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting Skis.com. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Andrew Schaad, aschaad/at/summitsportsinc.com.

Gary & AvantLink

We’re pleased to report that another affiliate-requested feature has been implemented in our tools: ad groups.

Ad groups provide a simple method of collecting advertisements from one or several merchants and grouping them all under a single designation.  For instance, you  might define an ad group such as “160×160 Shipping Ads”, and then add all banner ads that you can find that fit those specifications to your group.  Then you can use that group in calls to our AdSearch API module to refine or restrict such requests.

There are two places in particular where this type of functionality comes in very handy:

(1) Contextual ads.  Suppose you have a site with a very strict appropriate content policy.  Some merchant ads may inadvertantly violate that policy and our contextual ad tool could subsequently trigger the display of inappropriate content on your site.  By using ad groups to flag any advertisements that you deem inappropriate, you can then configure the contextual ad tool to ignore those ads, and only serve up “safe” content.

(2) Ad Rotators.  Take the banner ad group example mentioned above.  Plug this ad group into our AdSearch API module and you can build a JavaScript call that will cycle through the list of ads and randomly select one for display.  Voila – you now have an ad rotator on your site!

So, how can you take advantage of ad groups?  First log into your affiliate account and go to the Tools -> Get Merchant Ads page.  Then click on the link for “Looking for a way to build groups of ads?” and choose a name for your first group.  Once you click “Submit” and the page reloads, you’ll see a new column all the way to the right of the list of merchant ads that are shown.  In that column you can click a “plus” icon to add an advertisement to your new group (and click again to remove that same ad from the group).

When you click the “Get HTML” link to retrieve the source code for calling a particular ad, we’ll automatically show you the appropriate Ad Rotator call, if the ad you selected is a member of a group.

If you’re building API calls directly (or through the Tools -> API Request Builder) and want to take advantage of this same functionality, just look for the “include_ad_group_ids” and “exclude_ad_group_ids” parameters.

Hope you enjoy, and please let us know what you think!

-David & AvantLink

The-House.com and ProBoardShop.com and their affiliate programs here at AvantLink thought the September Sales Contest went so well their doing it again. Here are the details for these contests and bonus opportunities for the Month of November:

• Each affiliate in The-House program through AvantLink that generates $25,000.00 in sales for the month of November will receive a $1,000.00 cash bonus.
• Each affiliate that generates $5,000.00 in sales for the ProBoardShop program in AvantLink for the month will receive a $250 cash bonus!

Also running through November both programs are offering the following: New affiliates or those affiliates who have not produces sales in the last 6 months a chance to win $100.00 bonus if you produce at least 5 sales in the month of November. To keep up to date on contest and other bonus opportunities like these sign up for the feed to their branded blog categories.

Subscribe

Subscribe

We were copied on an email today from Andy at SierraDescents.com, to a prospective AvantLink merchant. The merchant was asking him which network would be best for his store. Andy runs a great blog and resource about backcountry skiiing in the Sierra Nevada. Here’s the contents of his email…

I’m cc’ing Avantlink so they can provide you with more info from the Merchant side.

From my (Affiliate) point of view, Avantlink distinguishes itself with unbelievably good customer service & affiliate tools.

Normally I just get ignored by other networks.

With Avantlink, I get prompt responses and prompt solutions. Beyond that, I have written several times with ‘wish list’ suggestions. I continue to be astonished by the way Avantlink not only listens to these suggestions, but actually implements them, even when they require considerable programming changes. Let me say that again: Avantlink has changed how their network works so that it will better suit my needs — and I’m by no means a Big Fish in Avantlink’s pond.

That kind of attention and service just doesn’t exist anywhere else.

From the merchant side, I have heard that merchants value Avantlink’s commitment to partnering with ethical and professional affiliates.

Hope this info helps, and hope to see you in the backcountry this winter!

Andy
SierraDescents.com

We appreciate the kind words and encouragement, Andy! If you’re ever skiing in Utah let us know and maybe we can meet up for some resort skiing, or even a ski tour.

Here’s another Affiliate testimonial from one of our valued partners. Thanks Charlie!!

Hello Avantlink,

I wanted to share my testimonial with you about our recent experience of using your Datafeed scripts.

I have been on a quest to learn how to add product datafeeds to my site for some time now. In fact datafeeds are what brought me to Avantlink in the first place. It doesn’t take long to find out that one of the biggest industry wide problems with datafeeds is that they are not consistent or standardized from one affiliate network or merchant to another.

I am not a coder but I finally with much brain damage, figured out how to put raw datafeeds on my sites and then the first question I asked was “now how do I update the datafeed?” only to find out that was a whole other complex issue that I didn’t want to tackle. Certainly someone with the coding skills could do this but I wanted something better. So I went on a search to find a way to add dynamic datafeeds to my sites that would be auto-updating.

We joined Avantlink just over a year ago but just after joining Avantlink our online direction changed suddenly and we ended up not using the datafeeds, only some banners and coupons.  So we really did not have a clue about the power of Avantlink’s Datafeed Manager and the “custom datafeed web service script” and how this script will allow you to quickly and easily install dynamic datafeeds on your site. All I can say is I sure missed the boat on this one this last year!

This is by far one of the most powerful yet easy to implement datafeed scripts that I have personally found on the market today and it is doesn’t cost you a penny to use if you are an Avantlink affiliate. I would have purchased a script like this or paid a monthly fee to use it – it is that powerful. Avantlink’s merchant datafeeds are very consistent in quality overall and I like the new datafeed rating system that was just released.

The datafeed script is easy to use once you get the hang of it…..I say this after putting David Clark through the paces till I learned how to install and use it. See I told you that I am not much of a coder but I can usually figure something out given the time and proper guidance.  David, I can’t thank you enough for all your help setting up the Datafeed Client on our www.BarksWorld.com site. We are just really getting started building our online business and websites and have a long ways to go with adding Content, SEO and getting Traffic but we are so very excited to have this tool to so easily and quickly add the product datafeeds to our sites.

I encourage any affiliate interested in adding datafeeds to your site to explore this very powerful script. And thanks to David Clark in support I have learned a few ways to modify the script to get the most out of it for our sites. If I can do it certainly anyone can. I have been trying to figure out how I overlooked this awesome script for so long. I keep up to date and follow all the RSS feeds and emails and blog posts. I have been into the Tools section many times. I have read a few blog posts about how to tweak the datafeed script but I still just didn’t realize how powerful and easy to implement the datafeed script was and I am now on a mission to make sure that other affiliates don’t miss out on this exclusive Avantlink script.

Thanks Avantlink! We really appreciate your dedication to your affiliates by providing these quality tools and scripts. Now….what else I have been overlooking?? You bet I am going to be digging deeper into the other tools now and in fact I have been checking into the Affiliate API and trying to figure out its secrets….hey go and explore the Datafeed manager today! Don’t waste a minute!

Charlie Barks and Barbara Sandgren
BarksWorld.com (Quality Dog Supplies)

We are happy to announce that two new branded blog categories are now live on AvantShare.com. Avantshare is where our Affiliate network blog lives, and where a number of our merchants sponsor branded categories for their Affiliate programs. This is a powerful distribution channel, not only because AvantShare is tagged with authority from the major search engines, but because every merchant blog headline gets published as one of the “Latest Merchant Blog Entries” on EVERY Affiliate’s login screen (not just the Affiliates active in the merchant’s program).

If merchant blog headlines are compelling enough, it proves to be a very effective new Affiliate acquisition/recruitment tool.

The two new blog categories we just introduced include a branded presence for both The-House.com and their sister site Proboardshop.com. Click their respective logos below to visit their new blog categories, and be sure to subscribe their RSS feeds for up-to-the-minute promotions and import news about these Affiliate programs.

Subscribe

Subscribe

We’re excited to announce that we now offer a 5th ad type on the AvantLink platform: Flash Banners!

(Five Ad Types now available on AvantLink: Banner, Text, Html, Video, and Flash)

Merchants can now easily integrate Flash banner ads into their ad list by simply uploading a compatible .swf file (1MB size limit)*, which we’ll store and serve to Affiliates through one line of Javascript. Affiliates can then embed flash ads by pasting this Javascript on their site pages or blogs.

Rich media such as Flash has been measured as a more effective ad type, converting at higher rates than static or animated banner campaigns.

Merchants also have the option of including an alternate image file for Affiliates that will display whenever browsers do not support Flash, so there is no risk of a blank ad display. You can’t go wrong with this ad type!

Affiliates, to view all the Flash ads currently available from your active merchants follow these steps (note that we just released this new ad type functionality so you may not find very many Flash campaigns yet):

1. Login to your Affiliate account and click on “Tools” from the main menu.
2. Under Ad/Link Tools, click on “Get Merchant Ads”.
3. Leave the Merchant drop down menu blank, then select “Flash” from the Ad Type menu.
4. Click “Get Ads” to see all Flash campaigns associated with your active merchants.

You could of course filter by any of your active merchants, then select “Flash” from their respective Ad Type drop down menus. If the merchant has Flash ads configured, you’ll be returned with their Flash Ad options.

Merchants, to include Flash campaigns to your ad list it’s the same process as adding a banner campaign. Simply select the “Flash” Ad Type when creating a new campaign, and follow the instructions.

Let us know what you think, or if you have any questions.

* In order for Flash ads to function properly it must make use of the “clickTAG” parameter, as described by Adobe in their guidelines for rich media tracking. The “clickTAG” is how we provide your Flash movie with the tracking information necessary to credit the appropriate affiliate with click-throughs.

The Official Store of Speed Racer offers their Affiliate program exclusively through AvantLink.

On October 2nd we announced the launch of the Speed Racer Affiliate program. I’d like to post a follow up to that announcement to let Affiliates know that Speed Racer is offering a $100 cash bonus to the first 20 Affiliates who send $1000 in sales! Great opportunity to earn an extra $100, in addition to the generous 10% you’ll be paid on each referred sale.

Remember, the Speed Racer Affiliate program has a number of effective promotions available right now for you to push out to your customers…including a site-wide coupon and some great deals for the coming holiday shopping season. Happy converting