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.

We are now offering Affiliates data on merchant reversal rates. This published reversal rate is based on the previous 30 days of transaction data, and calculated in the following way: (Number of sales adjusted / Number of sales) * 100

Affiliates, access each merchant’s reversal rate by logging in to your Affiliate account, then by clicking on “Merchants” from the main menu.

We’ve added a new merchant tool in the account admin interface that allows program managers to view a spam analysis for their Affiliate email messages. We included this functionality as part of the “Email Affiliates” tool so merchants can better gage whether or not messages they are distributing to their Affiliates will be caught in various spam filters.

Merchants, you can find this spam analysis tool by following these steps:

1. Login and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
2. Click on ‘Email Affiliates’ from the tool list.
3. Notice the ‘View Spam Analysis’ button at the bottom of the form.

Once you configure an email message you can view the spam analysis by clicking that button. Results from the analysis will look something like this:

Your message appears unlikely to be filtered as spam (score: 4.10 out of 5.00). Scoring details:
+1.30 - BODY: HTML: images with 2800-3200 bytes of words
+1.70 - BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
+1.10 - HTML-only message, but there is no HTML tag
Higher scores indicate a greater likelihood of this message being categorized as spam by your affiliate’s mail servers.

Note that you can also retrieve previously sent emails and run an analysis on those as well. Email your account rep if you have questions, or feel free to comment here.

Late last week we rolled out new functionality that allows merchants to create specialty subsets of their existing datafeeds in AvantLink. For example, merchants can now build datafeeds for Affiliates that feature only sale products, top selling products, etc.

Merchants, please find the Specialty Datafeed Administration in the tools and management interface. It’s very simple to configure any unique specialty feed you want, so let those creative juices flow. Follow these steps to configure specialty feeds in minutes:

1. Login, and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
2. Towards the bottom of the tool list, click ‘Specialty Datafeed Administration’, where it says “You can create specialized subsets of your datafeeds to help call attention to certain products (e.g. featured products, top 10 lists, etc.)”.
3. This page will display your current configured feeds in AvantLink. Click the link next to the feed you want to work with that says ‘[Create new specialty feed]‘.
4. At this point you’ll have the option of manually adding the skus you want to include in the specialty feed, or using the search tool we added that will allow you to automatically select products.

Affiliates, by all means share your ideas for specialty feeds with your merchant partners. I am sure they would be all ears! I’ll also mention that once a merchant you’re active with creates a new specialty feed, you’ll see that option in your configuration when setting up new datafeed subscriptions. You can also use special datafeeds to create more targeted displays with the Product Display Builder.

Please let us know what you think.

Gary M

On January 4, 2007 we announced the launch of the FetchDog Affiliate program. This is an exciting new program managed by Chuck Hamrick, and so far so good with a conversion rate of over 2% on all Affiliate traffic, and climbing. Chuck made the announcement yesterday to active Affiliates that FetchDog.com will be offering double commission for the month of April. It was news that warranted an article here on our network blog. Here are the details of this promotion, from Chuck’s newsletter:

FetchDog.com affiliates all qualify for double commissions during the month of April. That takes you from the basic commission of 6% to a whopping 12%. And you don’t have to do anything but generate a sale to qualify because AvantLink automatically handles the increase in commission through April 30th…

About FetchDog.com, from their site:

Ideas for the best-ever dog website came by listening to those in the know—dog lovers like you. Here’s what we heard: in addition to beautifully-designed dog products and a hassle-free shopping experience, people wanted a place to explore health questions, find training tips for new pups or older ones with bad habits, discover tools for researching breeds, get adoption tips and advice from canine experts, and of course, find cool videos and stories about everyone’s favorite subject—dogs.

This is a unique opportunity to make twice the earnings on a high converting dog supplies Affiliate program. Current AvantLink Affiliates can click on the “Merchants” link from the main menu, then to the FetchDog.com program info page to get started. Or, if you’re not yet active in the network, Apply Now.

Today we rolled out functionality that will allow each merchant to utilize a co-branded application page for their AvantLink Affiliate program. These co-branded application pages pull in respective merchant logos on our Affiliate application page, as long as the link reference uses the “mi” parameter with a merchant’s unique id.

So for example if the Peter Glenn Affiliate program used the following href on their site’s Affiliate information page, their logo will show up on the application form: <a href=”https://www.avantlink.com/affiliate_app.php?mi=10242″>. Click their logo below to see what I mean.

Merchants, if you don’t know your merchant id in AvantLink feel free to email support/at/avantlink.com and we’ll send it over. Or you can just go to your public branded detail page, click the gradient yellow “Apply Now” button, then note the URL in your browser’s address bar. Your public detail page is linked up from our Merchant Directory.