Affiliate Dogma

Totally Shoes RadioHead Banners

Totally Shoes has just launched a new banner group, Celebrity. As the brands stocked by Totallyshoes are increasingly popular with bands and celebrities we have started to produce banners reflecting this.

We have started with RadioHead.

The five piece started their long career 15 years ago with the launch of their first single Creep and album Pablo Honey.

Last year they made musical history with their pioneering album ‘In Rainbows’ where an honour payment system was used.

TotallyShoes has launched the Celebrity banner category with a large selection of banners based on this iconic band.

Just log into your account and have a look.

We also have some outsized 850×150 pixel banners if anyone is interested please contact me in the usual ways

Brian Edwards
AffiliateProgramAdvice
t: 01480 890417
m: 07952 987265
skype: scifind

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January 29th, 2008 Posted by admin | TotallyShoes | no comments

Quick Guide to Building Affiliate Sites and Promoting Via Social Networks

An absolute beginners guide.

I presume that the reader has some knowledge of how to use wordpress or blogger. If you can install wordpress or drupal on your own site all the better.

Pick a topic, something you know loads about or you just find interesting.
Content always wins, without interesting, funny, relevant content why would anyone visit your site?
Use a Blog package (blogger or wordpress) or CMS (Drupal) to organise your content. (Cost effective web hosting for multiple sites can be found here with fantastico control panel so it takes seconds to add blog or cms software)
If you are using WordPress or other CMS / blogging software RTFM – Read The Flaming Manual. Read how to guides and search support forums for the best configuration options. Especially SEO. Make sure you have any relevant SEO plugins and SEO URL options ticked etc. Get a google sitemap tool if possible
Pick titles carefully. These should contain keywords relevant to your subject and ultimately what you are promoting.
Build your content for a few days / weeks then get started with submitting to sites and services.
Sign up with google webmaster tools, claim your blog or website, submit the sitemap – what no site map? If there is not a sitemap option for your software you can submit the RSS feed as a sitemap.
Sign up with google analytics its free and it will tell you where your traffic comes from.
Claim your blog at Technorati. Look at and add their widgets to your site
Add more content. Keyword and keyphrase loaded content is great for search engine fodder, but I would prefer if it was readable to the site user.
Look into using other social network software
1. del.icio.us
2. http://www.youtube.com/
3. www.myspace.com
4. www.flickr.com
Set up a profile with your URL and add content relevant to your site – mentioning your site where you can, linking where you can. Add URLs to videos and images.
Go to Squidoo and set up a Lens ( this is a page that takes RSS feed from sites and blogs.) Think about the message that you want to achieve and write some unique content for this page. Add the RSS feed from your blog or CMS to squidoo. Look at using the other tools on squidoo to build a lens relevant to your site. (you can add your Flickr photos and Youtube videos here aswell. - If you ebay you can also add your products here)
Take your blog feed and any other social network feeds you create (Youtube, myspace, flickr etc) and add it to
1. www.wink.com
2. www.jaiku.com
3. www.mugshot.org
4. www.tumblr.com
5. www.profilactic.com
6. www.feedboy.com
Being lazy – you can add your feeds via software. See here for more
Add submit link tools to your blog / site. Wordpress and Drupal have social bookmark addons.If you have no addons that cover this try http://www.socialbookmarking.marketersgiveaway.com . See below for a list of some of the top social sites. (in no particular order)
1. http://del.icio.us
2. http://www.furl.net
3. http://www.simpy.com
4. http://www.backflip.com
5. http://www.blinklist.com
6. http://bluedot.us
7. http://de.lirio.us/bookmarks
8. http://www.diigo.com/user
9. http://www.shadows.com
10. http://www.markaboo.com
11. http://ma.gnolia.com
12. http://linkagogo.com/
13. http://www.reddit.com/
14. http://www.shoutwire.com
15. http://netvouz.com/
16. http://www.mister-wong.de/
17. http://www.spurl.net/
18. http://www.rawsugar.com/
19. http://www.stumbleupon.com/
20. http://www.digg.com/
21. http://www.blogmarks.net/
22. http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/
23. http://www.netvouz.com/
24. http://www.taggly.com/
25. http://www.lookmarks.com/
26. http://socialbookmarking.org/
Get your friends to bookmark your site.
Look for sites covering a similar topic, email for a link request – or submit a unique article with a link back to yoursite.
Use forums, but with respect. Contribute but don’t spam. Add your URL to your forum signature (if allowed) and only post your URL when it is relevant. Make sure that you don’t blatantly plug your url on every post.
Add more content – fresh content a couple of times a week is a must.
Revenue – ah yes you actually want to make money from your site. Getting relevant adverts from affiliate networks is easy, just sign up to each network and carefully select products and merchants that are relevant to your subjects. By all means add banners, but be sparing with these. In context links convert the best.
Affiliate Networks: List for starters:
1. Affiliate Future
2. Affiliate Window
3. Online Media Group
4. Paid On Results
5. Profitistic
6. Tradedoubler
7. Webgains

(Back to getting traffic) Check out Yahoo Answers for your subject – answer questions and make sure that you site your own site as the source for the answer, what your site doesn’t cover that exact question, well you should feel another blog post coming on.
Look for Wikis – sites like wikipedia, add relevant content and links back to your site.
Did I mention keep the content up to date?

Well that is a little food for thought. The social media sector is for ever expanding and new sites become more important and some of the older sites less important each week. This is just a starting point and I hope that it helps some people out there.

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January 22nd, 2008 Posted by admin | affiliate marketing | 8 comments

Hints and Tips for promoting Premier Cookware in 2008

Thank you to everyone who promoted PremierCookware.co.uk on Affiliate Window in 2007.

PremierCookware stocks high quality, stylish, cookware, bakeware, tableware and chefs knives.
Key customers are domestic use, catering companies, restaurants, tea rooms and public houses.

Why promote PremierCookware in 2008?

I will let the statistics speak for themselves:
Basic Commission: 10%
Top Commission: 12%
Cookie Duration: 90 days
Average Basket: £80
Conversion Rate: 7.5%

Top Items
La Cafetiere - Le Teapot Premier Cookware
Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker - 4 colours Premier Cookware
La Cafetiere - Thermique 8-cup Premier Cookware
Rondeo Tea Pot Premier Cookware
Bialetti - Moka Express Premier Cookware

Please note we only have Limited Stock of the So.eat children’s cutlery set Premier Cookware

Product Feed - a simple guide.

PremierCookware has a full product feed. Don’t know how to use one? Well, simple. If you go to Affilistore , check out their Affilistore 2 software. This is easy to install software.

Requirements

Webspace with php and mysql.

Affiliate Window account (and to be signed up to the Premier Cookware affiliate program)

Your product feed URL:

How do you add the product feed?

Again this is simple. All you need is your affiliate window affiliate ID and your encrypted productfeed password:

http://datafeeds.productserve.com/datafeed_products.php?user=AFFILIATE_ID&password=ENC_PASSWORD&mid=1594&format=CSV

Replace AFFILIATE_ID and ENC_PASSWORD

Want to know your encrypted datafeed password - login to your account on affiliate window - go to update details (https://www.affiliatewindow.com/affiliates/accountdetails.php) and click the Change Password tab - the password you need is listed in the Datafeed Password section you need the part after the MD5:

Then just:

Make sure you have a database set up - make a note of the username / password / database name.

Extract the zipped files

FTP to your website

go to www.yoursite.vvv/install.php and follow instructions.

Write some intro text and maybe an about page and get links into your site.

For more information on the Premier Cookware Affiliate Program, and to sign up please see:
Affiliate Network - Affiliate Window

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January 16th, 2008 Posted by admin | premiercookware | no comments

There is a Future to Affiliate Marketing

Yes, Virginia, there is a ~~Santa Clause~~ future to affiliate marketing.

There has been alot of discussion of the value of Affiliate Marketing past Voucher sites, Product feed / price comparison sites and Cashback sites. But affiliate marketing should not just decend into these three models.

There is a future for niche / review sites / content sites and generally interesting blogs (Lee). But there is more than that.

Affiliate marketing is not a case of jumping on the backs of brands, catching traffic by PPC / SEO or by offering rewards (financial or otherwise) for people who would shop at a particular store anyway . Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting a site, service or product to a new or undecided customer. We need to not loose sight of this fact.

More innvation is needed in Affiliate Marketing. It is happening, but typically by the big boys (thinking big social media sites). The fact is that a good idea should come first addressing what would people want / what do people find fun / what are people interested in. Then affiliate marketing come as a way of renumerating the site. NOT people looking at affiliate marketing commission rates and saying “I can get 6% on sales through XYZ - how can I get some one to do this”.

Look for a need. Be it good content, social interaction or something completly different and then build yourself a useful, interesting (and thus viral) site. Then look at offering merchants offers to your customers through their affiliate program.

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January 9th, 2008 Posted by admin | Uncategorized | no comments

New Year - New Look

As promised around Christmas we are currently putting the finishing touches to our new website to replace the old www.scifinddigitalmedia.com website.

With this we have also aquired a new domain for our company site, which I am sure you will agree, is a lot tidier and easier to remember than the one mentioned above.

While I cannot release the new site domain yet I thought I would give you a sneek preview with our new logo:

Scifind Limited has some nice new clients in the pipeline and is working hard on some top new projects. 2008 will be an exciting year for Scifind Limited and should see some nice new innovation in the world of affiliate marketing in order to stir up the cashback, price comparison and voucher sites. (yes there is more to affiliate marketing than these three business models)