Introducing a new, exclusive AvantLink merchant:

Commuter Bike Store

We have an outstanding addition to our Cycling category. Commuter Bike Store carries the top brands in all cycling categories; road and tri bikes, cruisers, folding bikes, trekking bicycles, mountain and more. They also carry a line of commuter cycling accessories. Michael and team at CommuterBikeStore.com are a class act, Take a look!

From their Affiliate program details: The bikes and accessories that we sell are upper-mid, to high-end – which means that you earn a generous commission for every bike or accessory sold. For the bloggers out there – we carry the brands you are already writing about – so we can quickly add an additional income stream to your blogs and websites…

• Earn 5% commission
• Payout on 100% of the order total
• Award Winning Products
• 120-Day Cookie
• Complete Product Data Feed
• Coupon Feeds
• Strong Conversion Rates
• Dedicated Support

Let us know what we can do to help you get started promoting Commuter Bike Store. Contact anyone at AvantLink or the program manager Michael Espejo, info/at/commuterbikestore.com.

We want to know what new or improved functionality the affiliates and merchants in our network want us to create! If you have an idea, please take a minute to visit our Facebook fan page and share it with us on our “AvantLink Feature Requests” discussion topic.

We’ll take some of the top ideas posted to this discussion, announce the winners and then we will get to work on implementing them.

Scott Kalbach
AvantLink.com

If you’re an AvantLink user and have an Android mobile phone, well this one’s for you!  We recently released a new application, creatively named “AvantLink Mobile” to help you keep in-touch and up-to-date with AvantLink wherever you go.

To install, search for “AvantLink” in the Market app on your Android phone, or just scan the barcode at right with your phone’s camera.  (If you don’t already have a barcode scanner installed on your phone, we recommend “ZXing“).  Scanning the barcode will cause your phone to automatically download the application from Android’s Market and start the installation process for you.

After installation, look for “AvantLink Mobile” in your menu of applications (you can see our icon in the picture below, second in from the top-left):

When you run the application for the first time you’ll be prompted to log in with the same information that you use to enter AvantLink’s website.  After that one-time setup procedure the application will be fully functional and you won’t have to login again.

Once you’ve successfully authenticated as an AvantLink user, you’ll be returned to the “Statistics” tab of the application, where you can review the performance summary highlights for the current day, e.g.:

There’s also an “Applications” tab whose function differs slightly between merchant and affiliate users:

• For merchant users, the “Applications” tab displays any pending affiliate applications to your program. You can accept (activate) or reject (deny) those applications with a touch of a button right from your phone.
• For affiliate users, the “Applications” tab displays any recently launched merchant programs at AvantLink that you’re not already affiliated with. You can apply to those new programs with a single button press from this screen.

If you like what you’ve seen here, be sure to check out the “Account” -> “Notification Center” page from your AvantLink account – we have a slew of other tools there for retrieving information from AvantLink without logging in, including a Firefox add-on that was the inspiration for this application.

-David & AvantLink

P.S. Are you an iPhone user?  We’re currently working on a version of the “AvantLink Mobile” app for your platform too – we’ll be in touch!

I’ll be honest: I was a bit skeptical when we first released our Firefox add-on for displaying real-time reporting results as part of our Notification Center tools back in December 2007.  At the time I didn’t think very many of our affiliates or merchants would choose to use the QuickStatsBar, as we called it.  But over the years, as we’ve updated the add-on to support each new version of Firefox – often being prompted by users who were a little ahead of us in browser adoption – I’ve come to believe that it really is a valued utility.

And I think after our latest round of improvements our affiliate users in particular will find the QuickStatsBar more useful than ever!

We’ve incorporated two new tools into the QuickStatsBar for affiliates, providing functionality previously available only by logging into the AvantLink website:

• the ability to easily generate a custom link to any page of a merchant website
• the ability to quickly retrieve ad campaigns for any merchant

For the first feature, if you’re browsing on a merchant’s site and decide you would like to build a custom link to the page you’re currently on, you just click on the QuickStatsBar icon in the bottom of your browser, and choose the “Create an affiliate link to this page” option from the pop-up menu.  So long as the site you’re on is an active merchant program that you’re affiliated with in AvantLink, you’ll see a screen like the following:

The full custom link HTML (or plain URL if you prefer that method) is displayed on that screen, along with functionality for personalizing it even further – such as by adding a custom tracking code.

As you would probably expect, if you’re on a website that is not associated with a merchant program at AvantLink, you’ll see a message to that effect if you try to build a custom link.  Similarly, if you happen to be on the website of a merchant that is active in AvantLink, but with which you’re not yet affiliated, instead of the above screen you’ll be given the option to apply to the merchant directly within the add-on – again, without logging into AvantLink’s site at all.

For the second feature, use the “Retrieve merchant ad campaigns” option from the QuickStatsBar menu.  You’ll be directed to a new page in your browser that lets you cycle through any of your active merchant programs, and retrieve the JavaScript or HTML necessary to embed any of their ad campaigns (banner/image, Flash, HTML, text, or video ads) into your website.  See the following for an example:

If you’re interested in these new features and you already have the AvantLink QuickStatsBar installed, just go to your “Tools” -> “Add-Ons” menu in Firefox and search for updates.  The new version will be found automatically and a quick restart of your browser later, you’ll have access to these new features.  If you don’t already have the QuickStatsBar installed, log into your affiliate account at AvantLink and go to the “Account” -> “Notification Center” page for the installation link.

As always, questions are welcomed and feedback is appreciated!

-David & AvantLink