Click-throughs

There are a lot of ways to approach affiliate marketing. Here are a few of my favorite tips.

Feature Co-branded Messaging –
Among the fastest-growing areas of affiliate marketing, loyalty and cash-back sites have come to play an increasingly important role in affiliate programs. Given that these types of sites are responsible for delivering a huge number of sales and often have a very loyal member base to benefit from, maximizing conversions is obviously key.

How does one achieve this? Through co-branded initiatives.

You can maximize the performance of your marketing campaigns by consolidating all of them under a single ad platform. This will save time on administrative tasks, offer comprehensive analytics on campaigns across multiple channels and help you optimize them accordingly. Affiliate software is in a unique position to consolidate campaigns from across different channels because it monitors the entire acquisition process. By supporting and tracking different marketing models and offering comparative reports, the right software will provide the intelligence you need to maximize your return.

What's in a name? According to Shakespeare's Juliet, not much, but if the name is trademarked it has value worth protecting. Successful companies spend millions developing a brand name and promoting their Web domains online. Some publishers, however, treat others' trademarks like their personal ATMs by generating commissions through misleading ads.

"As search marketers, we are the insiders. We are supposed to know and understand search in all of its dimensions. We are moving into uncharted territory. It is not territory that I am excited to explore, but I will go there nonetheless," writes Amanda Watlington of SearchForProfit.com.

Despite her status as an expert on blogs, RSS and search marketing, Watlington is still trying to put a finger on what may be coming down the pike for search this year. Her pondering may sound a bit gloomy - because in many ways, things have never been better for search.

In the May/June Affiliate's Corner column, I wrote about the ways super-affiliates prefer to be approached by affiliate program managers and merchants for the purpose of program recruitment.

Wooing a super-affiliate over drinks and dinner with offers of exclusive landing pages, significantly higher-than-advertised commission rates, or showering them with free product samples will certainly get their attention, but it does not guarantee that you will get the heavy hitters to join your program, however.