I’m sure you’ve noticed many blogs (and sites that syndicate content) use an array of RSS subscription icons from well-known aggregation sites or reader services. This makes it easy for web surfers to click and subscribe to content as their moving from site-to-site around the web. For example, if you have a Bloglines.com account and stay logged in all the time like I do, when you find a site you like and see a Bloglines subscription icon bar all it takes is one click and you’re subscribed! Pretty nifty…

Now, as a web publisher, have you ever wondered how to acquire all those subscription icons? It’s a little daunting at first to think about going to each RSS reader/aggregation site and grabbing the graphics, then configuring each one to work with your feed. Sure there are plugins for WordPress and other blogs but that too is daunting for content writers or bloggers. It was for me, anyway. Last week though, I found a cool site called the RSS Icon Gallery where they’ve done all the hard work for you. Just add your RSS URL to customize for your feed, click submit and that’s that! Next, add the output code to your blog’s sidebar or the page you’re syndicating content from and you’re done.

I used this tool to add the RSS subscribe icons you see to the right on the AvantLink Blog’s sidebar.

Check it out here: RSS Icon Gallery

Gary & AvantLink

As a follow up to Gary’s post on ‘Quality Focus = Better Support‘, we would like to find out what both Affiliates and Merchants need to make them more successful.

We have a pretty good list of enhancements and tools planned for development in 2007, but we would really like to hear from you on what functionality/tools you would like to see us develop this year.

Please feel free to post comments here or use the Contact Us form to submit your suggestions.

Scott & AvantLink

I have been intently watching a thread in the Midnight Cafe category of AbestWeb.com today: What Makes a Good Affiliate Network?

There is a new ABW member who chimed in on that thread (BG4512) and posted:

“Get rid of hucksters selling out of the box affiliate sites to John Q. Idaho as work-at-home & get rich quick schemes and watch the affilaite support improve by leaps and bounds.”

We agree with this statement and feel it’s important that Affiliates and merchants both get VIP treatment. A long these lines, I thought now would be a good chance to highlight our quality over quantity focus. As some know already, we have not opened up the flood gates to anyone. We’ve decided to not work work with CPA networks, lead generation arrangements, and merchants with limited platforms or products that do not convert. This is an effort to stay focused on our strengths.

We’re selective with both Affiliates (they must demonstrate some degree of technical knowledge and/or Internet marketing experience) and merchants (high-converting catalog-based merchants dedicated to Affiliate marketing). Our belief is if we maintain this focus on quality, we’ll be able to fully support everyone, remain responsive in this quickly changing industry, and stay committed to getting Affiliates exactly what they need in order to expand their businesses and succeed.

I would love some thoughts and opinions on our network philosophy. Feel free to comment here.

Gary & AvantLink

I thought I would jot down a few notes on my experience at Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. I just returned and it was well worth my trip down. AvantLink stayed somewhat low key for the event. No booth…in fact it was just me in Levis and my DC Shoes – I wanted to dress like an Affiliate as I read prior to attending the summit that Affiliates dress in jeans, OPMs in casual wear and networks in suits. Suits.. Bah! Now that’s funny..to think of me in a suit.

At any rate, my objective for this event was to meet as many folks I have been interacting with online as possible. I did just that. I think it’s great when you know someone online for a period of time and then get to shake their hand. It’s nice to have that human contact and put faces, personalities and smiles to emails, instant messages and phone calls.

I had the chance to meet and greet many ABestWeb members. What a loyal bunch. It’s great to see those relationships in real life. It certainly is a thriving community that stands for truth and integrity in our industry. I also got to hang out with our friends at AffiliateCrew.com quite a bit…Chuck ‘the Hammer’ Hamrick and the two Ryans as well. Good to see you guys there!

I would put the networking opps way ahead of the sessions in terms of importance from my perspective…but I did hear some good things in the few sessions I attended. Apparently all sessions will be available on video for attendees soon so I’ll go through them all again. I hope to get to know more of you at events to come and thanks to everyone who had kind words and encouragement for AvantLink!

BTW, there’s a category at ABW about the Affiliate Summit so check it out for post event photos, stories and information.

Gary & AvantLink

OTProf, an ABestWeb community member, posted a good article today from MSNBC’s The Red Tape Chronicles Blog that talks about the next generation of email spammers. Ever wonder what all the jumbled, nonsensical words are when you get those spam messages in your inbox? Or how about the messages that only include .gif images of nonsense?? It’s all tactics by likely the same spammers to avoid word filters that detect spam email messages. If you think email spam is getting better, think again. From the article:

“There are 62 billion spam messages sent every day, IronPort says, up from 31 billion last year. Now, spam accounts for three of every four e-mails sent, according to another anti-spam firm, MessageLabs.”

What motivates these people to send email spam? Could it possibly be working for them? I sure hope not but unfortunately it must be or why would they work so hard to not only spam in a traditional sense, but also infect unsuspecting user’s PC as “spam-churning” machines!

“New computer viruses have contributed to the uptick, also, particularly a surprisingly prolific Trojan horse program called ‘SpamThru’ that turns home computers into spam-churning bots.”

Read Entire Article..

Just a heads up to our merchants. Although we have always collected the referrer URL data on Affiliate traffic, we’ve recently made viewing these referrer URLs available in the standard reporting interface for merchants. To view Affiliate click-through data login and follow these steps:

• Click on ‘Reports’ from the main menu.
• Drill into the ‘Click Throughs’ by clicking on the hyperlinked number for the ‘Performance Summary for Today’.
• Next, drill further down into the reporting by clicking the hyperlink under ‘Total Click Throughs’ to view the ‘Click Through Details for Today’.
• Click on ‘Total Click Throughs’ once again, and there you’ll see table rows that output the following reporting details for each Affiliate record on that particular day: Click Throughs, Publisher Website, Advertiser, Product Ad, Campaign/Subscription, Custom Tracking Code, Referrer URL, Tool Name, Date

Please drop us a line if you have any questions on our robust reporting!

Gary & AvantLink

I wanted to highlight the Merchant Referral Program press release that went out through PRWeb.com this morning. We decided to post this news through their baseline contribution level of $40 this time. So far so good. As of this posting time we’ve already received around 10,000 reads of this news piece and 5 have even printed out the article.

With the baseline distribution level you don’t get the in-depth reporting stats or the direct outbound link from the actual article, but you do get to be in the distribution none-the-less and you also get a link from the sidebar of the press release. This is a permalink so it’s worth every cent of that $40. Ideally, if you can swing a $40 press release and a $200 level release (this includes a full SEO benefits package…get an account at PRWeb and login to see details) per month you’re laughing at the positive results. But a $40 release every 4-6 weeks or so is worth it, too. Here is a snippet of this latest news we syndicated:

“What we’re finding is that many of our Affiliates are actively marketing our platform because they know that bringing on their best converting merchants will make their jobs easier,” says Scott Kalbach, AvantLink CEO. “We provide industry-leading technology for Affiliates and a secure environment for them by keeping out spyware companies, spammers or scam operations.” Kalbach adds.”

Read Entire Press Release..

More info about our Merchant Referral Program:

AvantLink Merchant Referral Program Detail Page

ABW Referral Program Announcement

More info about Press Releases in ABestWeb‘s Effective Advertising Category:

Press Releases and Your Site

Sincerely,

Gary & AvantLink

We’re now live in our own network We’ve launched our Merchant Referral Affiliate Program!! Our new referral program announcement was posted around 11am MST on ABestWeb today. It’s a very generous payout for anyone in the biz that has contact with online retailers/merchants looking to launch an Affiliate program or merchants interested in growing their existing programs. Merchant service levels include standard integration, jump start package, managed solution and branding package. Merchants please Click Here for more info.

The commission/payout is a one-time finder’s fee of $100. NOTE: From now through February 2007 we’ll pay $150 bounty to anyone who refers a merchant that signs a contract and integrates. You can retrieve banners or text links by logging in, clicking on ‘Merchants’ in the main menu, then ‘AvantLink Merchant Referral Program’ from the list.

If you’re not yet active as an AvantLink Affiliate please Click Here for the Affiliate Application.

AvantLink Merchant Referral Program is Live! thread on ABW.

AvantLink Merchant Referral Program detail page on AvantLink.com

Gary & AvantLink

In May 2006 McAfee Siteadvisor released a search engine study comparing the safety of leading search engine results (SERPs). A new report just released on December 11, 2006, updates the May study with new data and deeper analysis of the specific types of threats posed by SERPs. The five search engines included in these findings were: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL & Ask.com.

Search Results % of Red and Yellow Sites as reported by McAfee Siteadvisor

It’s very interesting to note that, on average, 4.4% of all search results from both paid and organic placements on these engines link to risky Web sites. These five search engines comprise of 91% of all search engine use in the United States, and 80% of site page visits originate from search engines!

That’s a pretty staggering statistic and one that would suggest that the major gateways to the web would take a stronger stance on serving up risky web pages. I guess the big question is are they or are they not doing all they can to protect users from spyware installs, sites that exhibit poor e-mail practices and scam sites? Here’s a quote from the study that may surprise you and make you wonder: “search engines earn approximately $1.28 billion annually from their U.S. operations by sending users to risky sites.” Yikes!

Take quick look below at the key findings from this study. If you’re interested in reading the whole report there is a link to it below:

• In the United States, the top five search engines all include some dangerous results.
• AOL returns the safest results with 3.6% of results rated red or yellow by McAfee SiteAdvisor. At 5.1%, Yahoo! returns the most results rated red or yellow. On average, 4.4% of search results link to risky Web sites.
• 8% of sponsored results are rated red or yellow – almost three times the percentage of red and yellow sites found in organic results. Scam sites are found at a much greater frequency in sponsored results.

Read The Entire December 11, 2006 Study…

Whoa 2007!! Wasn’t it the turn of the century just the other day? I just wanted to add an official Happy New Year post to our blog.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year holiday. Ours was pretty dang slow as she goes: We met up with some friends for a long snowshoe in the Uinta Mountains. We decided on a low trail head (Yellow Pine off of Mirror Lake Highway – I think it’s State Route 150 from Kamas, Ut to Wyoming via the national forest), because on this particular trail they don’t allow stinking, loud, and obnoxious snow machines (there is a difference between ‘snow machines’ and recreational ‘snow mobiles’ BTW). Well there were no snow shoes needed! The snow pack is taking its sweet time this year so we just walked in hiking boots about 4-5 miles in to a frozen lake and back on the packed down trail. Was beautiful in that winter wilderness and the dogs loved it!

After the day hike we went home and ate (grilled medium rare tri tip) and drank (I am a red wino) the night away. Well, we ate and drank until our 10pm bedtime, anyway

At any rate, back to business. Here’s to a very profitable and exciting 2007. Can’t wait to get to work with all our network Affiliate and merchant partners. 2007 is going to be a good year for all of us!!

Gary M