Archive for the Affiliate Tools Category
Another Outdoor/Recreation merchant recently started to populate their Deal of the Day tool for Affiliates. The main requirement for eligibility, and use of this tool, is that the products featured must be minimum 30% off the retail price. Integration methods of Javascript, RSS, and datafeeds (CSV, tab-delimited and XML) are available. There are also options in the configuration interface that allows Affiliates to customize the layout of the daily deals they feature.
A quick reminder, Massey’s Professional Outfitters launched four distinct programs in AvantLink back in September. These programs include:
And let me add so far so good with these programs. How does 5.9% conversion rate on ALL Affiliate traffic sound to you?! That’s what we’ve seen with the MasseysOutfitters Affiliate program so far.
Remember, if you’re featuring dynamic daily deals for your customers, you can also promote RSS subscriptions to these daily deal feeds. Wrap your mind around that for a second. If you get one of your site visitors to subscribe through creative we give you, then you’re Affiliate cookie will be set on outbound clicks from that feed for the life of the subscription.
To see what I mean, login to your Affiliate account and follow these steps to get RSS subscription icons and syndication tools you can place on your site:
- Click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
- Click ‘Deal Of The Day Sign-up’ under the Deal Of The Day Tool.
- Select your Website, then Merchant, you want to configure the DOTD tool for.
- Select one of the RSS options, then click ‘Get Html’.
Once you click ‘Get Html’ we’ll return the RSS feed URL that includes the dynamic daily deal, in addition to code you can place on your site (much like banner code) that will display subscription icons from popular aggregators including Bloglines and Technorati. Here’s the messaging you’ll get from the tool center console once you configure an RSS version of the daily deal:
Add the following links to your website to allow your visitors to subscribe directly to your Affiliate encoded Deal Of The Day feed.
Best Practice: Place the dynamic deal of the day HTML ad on your site, then underneath the dynamic display add the subscription icons and a call to action to your customers like “Subscribe now and have these daily deals delivered to you!”.
Daily deals are hot on the web now, and these deals convert huge on a price driven requirement of 30% off retail. Please take a look at what Masseys and the other merchants using the daily deal tool have to offer. BTW, we also offer these syndication creative options for the Dynamic Coupon Feed as well. See the Coupon Feed Syndication tool for more info.
As always, contact anyone at AvantLink if you have questions or suggestions. Happy converting!
Gary & AvantLink
*Note the WeGotYourPack.com program has not launched their DOTD offer yet, but it’s coming soon enough!
I wanted to let Affiliates know that one of the merchants that make up our top Outdoor/Recreation category just rolled out a dynamic Deal of the Day campaign at AvantLink. Proboardshop.com will now feature daily discounts at least 30% off retail from the world’s best board sport brands. Proboardshop now joins The-House Affiliate program and several other stores who offer this unique online marketing tool for Affiliates.
Affiliates, to configure Proboardshop’s Deal of the Day login, click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu, and then ‘Deal Of The Day Sign-up’. Select your website, the merchant and integration method…and you’re off and running with a powerful piece of creative for your site page(s)! Optimize a page around outdoor gear deals, then utilize the RSS options of our tools and the end output result will be spiderable fresh daily content. Google food, if you will ;).
Login -> Tools –> Deal Of The Day Sign-up
Please note: We upgraded the Deal of the Day tool. We’ve now added the ability to customize the layout of the DOTD campaigns during the ad configuration. Fully customize the Text/HTML Ad (RSS), and the Text/HTML Ad (JavaScript).
Gary & AvantLink
We rolled out the Affiliate Link Encoder tool in the network just over ten days ago. I highlighted the technology by announcing the release on ABestWeb and on this blog post from October 30th. Well so far so good with the results on this little gem! In fact I was just emailing an Affiliate this morning who runs a renown backcountry ski blog, and I was happy to report to Lou that he already referred over two dozen clicks and a sale for $859 through the Backcountry Affiliate program…in just two days! These clicks were all a direct result of the ALE script he added to his blog header template. Outstanding!
The latest news distribution surrounding the Affiliate Link Encoder happened today through PRWeb.com. You may or may not know, but we’ve been loyal for nearly two years to the PRWeb distribution (read about effective uses of Press Releases and Your Site). It’s been a consistent and powerful way for us to get the message out on our Affiliate tools, network technology and new merchant partnerships. Review the Press/News category of the blog, or the AvantLink Press Room for more info.
As far as this latest news distribution is concerned, below find a quote and link to the full article:
AvantLink Affiliate Greg Blasko, owner and operator of AlpineZone.com, explains “This tool is a must have for forum owners. We have an outdoor gear forum and members post links to merchant products all the time. Now we can get some deserved commission on sales from these links!” Additionally, bloggers with years of archives have added the ALE JavaScript and instantly hundreds of direct to merchant links on their blog archives now track and credit sales accordingly.
Read Article: AvantLink Releases Technology for Optional Direct to Merchant Affiliate Links
Yesterday we rolled out the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE), yet another innovative tool that offers Affiliates the option of direct linking to their AvantLink merchant partners in the context of articles, blog posts, forum threads or anywhere else for that matter! A simple JavaScript we provide takes direct merchant links and appends Affiliate tracking details so credit will be applied for all customer referrals, not just those referrals that click through configured tracking links from the network.
With a couple of weeks of live BETA testing from select Affiliates, the ALE has proven extraordinarily handy to forum administrators or bloggers because often times their members post direct links to merchant web sites. Now those direct links posted through user generated content will credit referred sales accordingly. It can also save substantial time for a content writer because they will no longer have to configure tracking links using the Custom Link Builder or prefabricated campaigns through the Affiliate tool center.
Affiliates, for active partnerships with any merchant in AvantLink, just add the ALE script to your site template or page and direct link away. The ALE will take care of the rest!
From the Affiliate Link Encoder detail page on our site:
Once the javascript is installed on a page or site-wide template, Affiliates using the ALE will not have to login to the network to get tracking links. Simply add the merchant homepage URL or any deep link URL and the ALE will take care of the rest. Check it out! When the ALE javascript is in place test by hovering or clicking on a direct AvantLink merchant link, then viewing the source code of the document.
So far, the ALE has seen good reviews and attention from a few ABestWeb heavies (we announced the ALE there yesterday). Note the following comment from Haiko de Poel, Jr., owner of ABestWeb.com:
I think it’s an invaluable addition to the Avantlink repertoire of linking options and wicked smart also … WTG!
Read the tool announcement thread on ABW for more comments: Introducing the Affiliate Link Encoder
We welcome your comments at ABW or here on the blog. Thank you for your continued support.
Gary & AvantLink
In addition to the Product Display Builder upgrades we announced on 7/24/07, we have rolled out a couple new advanced options to the Product Display Builder that adds some great new functionality and flexibility to the tool.
- Affiliates now have the ability to easily configure contextually relevant product displays. You’ll notice a new checkbox option that reads “Use contextual analysis to scan the calling page for relevant keywords/phrases. These results will then be used as the main keyword filters for selecting products.” This option should make it easier for you to monetize your website content pages with relevant product displays.
- We have added “Advanced List” and “Advanced Grid” layout options. These options allow you to create your own list or grid layout HTML templates, define your own CSS styles and use product tag variable placeholders in your templates that will be replaced dynamically with the product information before displaying.
Scott & AvantLink
We recently added some functionality to our Deal of the Day tool that allows Affiliates to choose comma separated (csv), tab delimited, or XML feeds. You can get these feeds either by going through the Deal of the Day Sign-up link on the ‘Tools’ page or through our new DotdFeed API module.
These new DOTD feeds give the most complete product information available for the Merchants product deals. Also, for the first time, you have the ability to get the Deal of the Day information for every merchant that offers one in a single feed.
Here are a couple examples of output from the new DOTD feeds:
Scott & AvantLink
Affiliates, please take note that we now have Direct Deposit (U.S. banks only) and PayPal payment options now available. To configure one of these new payment options follow these simple steps:
- Login and click on ‘Account’ from the main menu.
- Click on ‘Contact/Payment Information’.
- Under Payment Preferences, select either direct deposit or PayPal from ‘Payment Method:’.
- Depending on your choice, a smart form will display.
- Fill out the required information and click ‘Update’.
That’s all there is to it. Let us know if you have any questions.
Gary & AvantLink
A couple days ago we rolled out a few minor upgrades to the Product Display Builder that should make it easier for Affiliates to build displays around the specific products they would like to target.
- We’ve added an ‘All Categories’ option to the Filter By Category selection. This will allow you to start with a broader range of products and fine tune it with the other filter options the tool provides.
- We’ve added a ‘Show only on sale’ product filter. This will allow you to feature on sale products from merchants that supply us with an on sale column in their datafeeds.
- We’ve replaced the Product Name Search with a ‘Filter By Keywords’ search. The new search functionality searches across multiple fields (Eg. Product Name, Brand, Short Description, etc.) in the datafeeds instead of just the product name.
- Also, we added a informational box that shows the number of available products for your current filter choices so that you can see if you’ve restricted the product display to the point where there aren’t any products available.
We have quite a few other features that we’re planning to roll into a more major upgrade of the Product Display Builder in the future. If you have any suggestions for functionality you would like to see in that upgrade let us know.
Scott & AvantLink
On June 13th we quietly rolled out a new Affiliate Network API that compliments perfectly our existing tool set. Now, Affiliates are given the ultimate choice! They can either take advantage of our existing feature set of industry leading tools, or they can use the AvantLink API to create an unlimited number of creative displays using up-to-date merchant product data.
In addition to product level data pulled from the API, Affiliates can also configure reporting subscriptions that will allow them access to network stats without even logging in to their account. Also, Affiliates can get banner/text/deal of the day links using filters and keywords search options right from the API. Links to module detail pages provided below.
We’ve also provided an API request builder for those that aren’t familiar with the technology. Current API modules for Affiliates include:
There are also Merchant Modules:
Merchant Parent Modules:
Private Modules:
A summary of the AvantLink API documentation is available. From there, Affiliates will be able to view all of the API modules that we currently have available (above links), find usage requirements, and explore sample code. Affiliates, to dig in and have a close look, follow these simple steps:
- Login to your Affiliate account and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
- Under API in the tool list click on ‘API Request Builder’.
- The request builder allows you to construct API requests and familiarize yourself with the modules and parameters.
We had a soft launch with the API over a month ago, and we’re just now starting to get some Affiliate feedback and other news in place about the API. I’ll list a few links below, but I wanted to include a snippet specifically from Carsten Cumbrowski (if you haven’t check out his Internet Marketing Resources Portal it’s time to have a look!). He reviewed our API on his blog at ReveNews.com:
AvantLink kept the API simple and does not use any of the fancy XML and Web Services technology such as SOAP, REST or XML-RPC; although XML is one of the possible output formats if you prefer to work with XML data rather than CSV documents, tab delimited data or HTML. Requests are being made via simple HTTP (it is in other words just a link that has all the parameters and your account credentials embedded), that even intermediate programmers will be able to handle it…
We also distributed a press release at PRWeb.com this past weekend about the new API. Here is a quote from the article by David Clark:
“Our API is platform-independent,” says AvantLink CTO David Clark. “We’ve opened up our system to the Affiliates rather than locking them into a ‘boxed’ feature set. For instance, if an Affiliate doesn’t like the formatting of our Product Display Builder tool, they could essentially construct their own via the API,” he adds…
And another quote from Affiliate Dave MacLeay from Trailspace.com:
“What I like the most is that we can define exactly what data we want, when we want it, and in what format,” says Dave MacLeay, publisher of Trailspace.com. “As a developer who’s pulling reporting data from a number of different networks, I’ve found AvantLink’s solution to be the easiest to set up and integrate with our application.”
Read the entire press release at PRWeb: Affiliate Marketing Technology Leader AvantLink Offers API
A few more distribution points and news for this functionality at AvantLink:
- AvantLink API - ProgrammableWeb Profile
- Affiliate Marketing community @ BUMPzee!
- AvantLink API Available - ABestWeb
Let us know what you think!
Gary & AvantLink
In addition to the Hit Trail visibility I mentioned yesterday, we’ve also upgraded to give you the ability to customize your report settings. This functionality is there for both Affiliates and merchants. Follow these simple steps to customize your report settings in AvantLink:
- Login and click ‘Reports’ from main menu.
- Click ‘Customize display settings for this report’ in the upper right corner of the ‘Performance Summary for Today’ table.
- The ‘Report customization’ pop up will allow you to modify your report settings.
This is a nice way to get the metrics most important to you listed in your default report page view, with the ability to update at any time.
Oh yeah and remember to play around with the API for report subscriptions. RSS, Email or Direct API request (HTML, Tab Delimited, Comma Separated, or XML). You could get your favorite report results delivered without even logging in to the network!
I also announced our customized reporting at ABestWeb today.
If you have any feedback or suggestions please let us know.
Gary & AvantLink
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