Affiliate Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 1

Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:44 pm Posted in Newsletters 1 Comment

AvantLink Newsletter
January 15, 2009
Vol 1, Issue 1

Affiliate Newsletter

Introducing the first AvantLink Affiliate Newsletter. In our newsletters we will feature technology news, promotional opportunities, new merchants, industry insight and much more.

Anyone interested in being featured on our Affiliate network blog? If you have something good to say about your experience on our platform, send us your Affiliate Testimonial and we’ll consider publishing it with links of your choice. Email your AvantLink contact or use the site form to find out more.

Affiliates, this newsletter will be distributed bi-monthly, and we’ll also send out a periodic email featuring compelling merchant promos for the high-profile shopping days. You can manage your contact settings by clicking on “Account” from the main menu, then “Contact/Payment Information”.

Table of Contents:

1. AvantLink Screencast Series
2. Flash Ads for Affiliates
3. Best Practices: Link Building for Datafeeds
4. Affiliate Tools: Affiliate Link Encoder
5. Welcome our New Merchants

AvantLink Screencast Series

In late 2008 we produced a series of screencast tutorials for Affiliates and merchants. We have already covered a lot of important topics, and there are more to come. You’ll find that each screencast tutorial/how-to has a permalink in the Tutorials category of our Affiliate network blog.

Below is a list of the version one Affiliate and merchant screencasts from AvantLink. These screencasts will also be accessible via our YouTube account.

Affiliate Screencasts

Dynamic Coupon/Deal Feed

Coupon Feed Syndication

Deal Of The Day

Affiliate Link Encoder

Merchant Screencasts

Intro for Merchants

Ad Management

Affiliate Management

Affiliate Recruitment

Affiliate Group Tagging

Datafeed Administration

Emailing Affiliates

Managing Program Terms

Notification Center

Reporting Overview

Standard Email Templates

Flash Ads for Affiliates

Get your Flash Ads here! Did you know that there are several merchants now offering Flash Ads in AvantLink? Flash is one of five pre-configured ad types merchants can offer you through our platform. Other advertising types include banners, text, html and video ads.

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.

more information…

Best Practices: Link Building for Datafeeds

It’s getting easier and easier to add product catalogs to your site(s) using any number of different tools and scripts. In fact, we have some of the most robust Affiliate tools right here at AvantLink. But remember more datafeeds does not necessarily mean more sales. Adding the feeds is the easy part.

Below find tips on how you can help product pages get good search engine placements, and some of the best converting Affiliate traffic on the web. This article assumes the use of our Web Service Datafeed Client, but the link building techniques can be used with any Affiliate datafeed.

The most successful Affiliate sites have authority, and good standing in the search engines. A vast organic presence on the SEs takes hard work, dedication, perseverance and original/useful content that naturally gains links over time. But you already know all this, so now the question might become: How would I pass that authority on to my product level datafeed pages?

There are a number of ways you can help the crawlers get to and index these pages, but let me first mention that each Datafeed Client subscription you configure allows you to target that feed to specific categories, product groups or even brands. So consider this when working out your strategy. For example there is no real need to publish the entire Backcountry.com datafeed on your ski related site, when you can just utilize their Ski category.

read full article…

Affiliate Tool: Affiliate Link Encoder

In October of 2007 we rolled out the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE). This is an innovative tool and concept that converts direct-to-merchant links to Affiliate tracking links. The ALE conversion takes place on the end user’s browser, and does not change the html source code of the web document. v2.0 of the ALE was released in November 2008, adding a new layer of technology that matches and converts keywords in addition to URLs.

If you’re a blogger or forum owner, you can add one line of javascript to a page or site template and instantly convert all direct-to-merchant links (or even keywords, now with the ALE v2.0!) to Affiliate tracking links. This will track any transaction back to you as the referral, and rightly earn you a sales commission. Of course, the merchant will have to be in the AvantLink network for the ALE to work properly.

This saves you from the need to log in to the network and generate a tracking encoded link everything you link to a product or merchant. There are other creative applications of the Affiliate Link Encoder. For more information browse the list of articles and discussions below.