Affiliate Profit: Are you losing money?

Dear Affiliate, I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn't pay attention to it! Let me explain... When you joined affiliate programs you probably considered the following factors: - The commission - The conversion rate The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don't manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them: - Price: A high price means a higher affiliate commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn't be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied affiliates is what you should look for. - Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money! This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers' expectations or going beyond what they could expect! - Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don't associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top. How much money are you losing today? The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick. The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less? There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program! A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates. If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money! What are good, medium and poor refund rates? Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale: 2% or less: Excellent 3% - 5%: Good 6% - 10%: Medium 11% - 15%: Poor 16% - 20%: Very Poor 21% or higher: Run away! With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote. What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program? There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program: 1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760! You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program. 2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program. The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs. The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank? As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money affiliates can lose when promoting these programs: - SurveyScout: 16.2% refund rate! - Survey Platinum: 20.9% refund rate! - My Consumer Survey: 35.2% refund rate! To get into the details, on November 29th 2005 figures were as following: SurveyScout Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $19.69 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 19.69) / 23.50 = 16.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,969 because 16 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Survey Platinum Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $18.58 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 18.58) / 23.50 = 20.9% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,858 because 21 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! My Consumer Survey Affiliate Commission: $40.84 Average $Earned/Sale: $26.43 Refund Rate: (40.84 - 26.43) / 40.84 = 35.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $4,084. In fact you will get only $2,643 because 35 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Remark: My Consumer Survey has a poorly designed site and a high price for buyers. We estimate its conversion rate to be significantly lower than other paid surveys programs. Despite its high commission, affiliates will lose the most money with this program. We learn three lessons about these paid surveys affiliate programs: - A lot of customers are dissatisfied. - Affiliates lose big money. - The quality of these programs is very questionable. What should you do to stop the bleeding? You have no influence on the quality of the affiliate programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation! Giving your top recommendation to a very professional affiliate program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible. In the field of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs, the most professional program available today is MaximumPaidSurveys.com. Maximum Paid Surveys is a premium database of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs. It delivers a superior value to both registered users and affiliate partners due to its very high quality. How to identify quality in affiliate programs? Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can't define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in affiliate programs? The most qualitative affiliate programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to affiliates: 1. Value to customers – It includes: - Rich content - Good looking website - State-of-the-art organization - Friendly functionality - Affordable Price for most visitors - Detailed documentation - Bonuses strengthening the main offer - Timely Customer Support 2. Value to affiliates – It includes: - High conversion rate - High commission - Low refund rate - Commission paid on time - Good affiliate support

Affiliate Marketing Online: Super Affiliates Reaping The Rewards Of Success

Getting ahead in the affiliate marketing industry is not as difficult as some may assume. Depending on the aspirations or the purpose behind a person joining the affiliate programs, there are ways in which anybody can earn anything from a small subsidiary salary to a major income. Personal website owners everywhere have been able to host advertising in exchange for a few dollars here and there, whilst large businesses have been able to generate huge sums by representing other sites through their own. It is an advertising medium that has no barriers and no boundaries. People with vast Internet experience and huge budgets are just as accepted as those who know nothing about computers and have a very limited financial backing. Companies may prefer to be represented by people who are likely to draw in huge numbers of new customers, but in truth any advertising that they can achieve they are more than willing to exploit, especially when it is free. For a person new to the industry, the first thing that must be done is choosing a company, or even a range of companies for your site to represent. There are hundreds of sites that offer affiliates the chance to sign up directly through them, as well as a number of affiliate program sites that represent a number of clients, ordinarily from the same industry or the same Mother Company. Larger industries with the potential for extra growth or a huge turnover of business and custom are possibly the most likely to flourish for a new affiliate. The online gaming industry is one of a few that are experiencing huge gains, turning over billions of dollars every year. With worldwide appeal and an ever-increasing clientele the sports betting industry is one of the largest of those contained under the wider banner of online gaming. Sports betting is and always has been a popular pursuit for people all over the world, therefore its attraction is not limited to individual nations or regions. This makes it the ideal market in which to start your own affiliate business. Like many of the gaming industries affiliate programs, sports betting offers their affiliates a percentage of a players money that has been generated for the site. Money is generated essentially when they lose a bet, therefore each time they don't win, the affiliate does. With affiliates picking anywhere up to 35% of a player's money that has signed up through their site, it is not hard to see how the money can easily start pouring in once you gain a few clients. Unlike in most industries the affiliates are not quite as cut-throat in their competition for new customers, therefore it is not hard for newcomers to corner their own market. But to become a successful affiliate you must first entice a steady flow of traffic through your own site. Without human traffic you can never expect to achieve the vital clicks on your links and the subsequent windfalls. Therefore as with all sites it may be in your best interests to increase your own visibility, through advertising, forum addresses or special search engine orientated articles within the site. However you choose to market yourself is entirely up to the affiliate, but with time and careful planning an affiliate can generate significant traffic to their own site and then start reaping the rewards for themselves.

Affiliate Marketing Is Revenue Sharing

One of the most popular and undeniable methods of earning money online is the setting up of an affiliate marketing business. Anyone who is determined, resourceful, and willing to learn can become successful in affiliate marketing. But how can affiliate marketing result to earning money? First, the business of affiliate marketing can be described as a joint effort of two businesses. That is, affiliate marketing is basically a relationship between two businesses in which, the common purpose is to increase visitor traffic. One business is called the Advertiser, and the other is called the Publisher or the Affiliate. The financial relationship of the Advertiser and the Publisher is based on revenue sharing. The Advertiser will place ads in the website of the Publisher. These ads are links towards the website of the Advertiser. And when a visitor clicks on the link, the Advertiser will pay the Publisher. The payment or compensation given to the Publisher will be based on any of these arrangements. Cost Per Click In “cost per click” or CPC, the Advertiser has arranged to pay the Publisher or Affiliate each time a visitor ends up in the Advertiser’s website from the link in the Publisher’s website. What actually happens is that the Publisher has articles or products that have attracted Internet users. And while the Internet user is in the website of the Publisher, this Internet user will be aware of the existence of the Advertiser’s website. In the ads or banner of the Advertiser, there will be one or two sentences that will entice the Internet user to visit the Advertiser’s website. Of course, the Advertiser may have several Publishers and it will have a system that will identify which Publisher has referred the visitor. Cost Per Lead In “cost per lead” or CPL, the visitor that was referred by the Publisher must sign-up or fill-up a form before the Publisher is entitled to a commission or compensation. When the visitor signs-up, he becomes a lead for the Advertiser to more target clients. Since a lead is more valuable than a simple visitor, the compensation given to the Publisher for each lead is relatively higher than the pay for each visitor. Cost Per Acquisition In “cost per acquisition” or CPA, the visitor that was referred by the Publisher decides to purchase the products or services from the website of the Advertiser. The visitor becomes a paying customer. When there is a paying customer, the Advertiser earns income. And when the Advertiser earns income, a part of it is shared with the Publisher in the form of a commission.

Affiliate Marketing In E-Zines

Affiliate marketing is all about promoting the product. But it is not cold or hard selling. The affiliate lures the Internet user to visit his website by offering information and even free online courses. The visitor of the affiliate’s website will find the free information and will even enroll in the free online course. And while reading the informative articles, the visitor will slowly be convinced of the value of certain products.
And when the visitor realizes the value of certain products, he will most likely click the banner that links to the website of the merchant who manufactures the product or who officially sells the product. The affiliate does not do the direct selling. The affiliate simply sets the mind of the visitor, who is the target client, so that this visitor will be easier to convince to proceed to the purchase or order form of the merchant’s website.
Thus, for an affiliate marketing business to be successful, the promotional strategies carried out by the affiliate should also be successful. One that will contribute to the success of such promotion is the utilization of e-zines. An e-zine is basically a newsletter which is emailed to the subscribers of the e-zine. This newsletter contains the types of information that the subscriber has already expressed a willingness to read about. And when an ad is placed together with such information, the subscriber will be made aware of the presence of the products promoted by the affiliate.
There are two types of e-zine ads that an affiliate can pay for. The first type is similar to a banner ad. It contains a couple of sentences composed of well-chosen words that will entice the reader to visit the website of the affiliate. An affiliate can easily write such an e-zine ad since he already has promotional materials for the products.
The second type of e-zine ad is called the solo ad. In such e-zine ad type, the newsletter being mailed to the subscriber contains only the advertisement of the affiliate and nothing more. Usually, such a solo ad is mailed separately from the regular newsletter. For example, if the newsletter is sent every Tuesday of the week, the solo ad is sent on a Thursday or a Friday. There is no limit to the number of words placed in a solo ad. But the affiliate must keep in mind that such a solo ad is sent through email. Therefore, the solo ad should not be too long that reading it will take up so much time that the subscriber is not willing to sacrifice. The usually suggested number of words is 500.
With e-zine ads, the opportunities of earning more increase. And the affiliate moves closer towards that goal of affiliate marketing success.

10 Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.


Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

1) Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings.
Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. The more content you have the better. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but more important than a quantity of content is the quality of the content that you are providing. You cannot just put out three hundred words of jargon and expect your visitors to find it interesting and stick around for the long haul.

2) Your website’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings – you need to do more than just that.


3) Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. The alt tags in your pictures are almost as important as text. It’s also a good idea to put some of your key words in links to other pages. In the eyes of a search engine it is almost as good to have a link to a page full of the content that the visitor is looking for as it is to have the content that the visitor is looking for on your page. If a visitor is looking for something that you are linking to and he or she finds your page, they may look around your site on the way through.

4) The title of your page is very important, and making sure that you choose it wisely will make a big difference.
Terms such ‘free article on safe children's toys’, or ‘contact the children's toy expert today’ are good to use as titles, for example – they would get you a high ranking. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you put them all in.

5) The navigation menu that appears on each page of your website should include your page’s title.

6) Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some niche keywords too.

7) Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely related to your site your links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.

8) You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change, as websites like sites that are kept updated.

9) You need to consider the fact most search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions – submit once, manually.

10) Always be on the look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competition.

10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.
Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.
Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.
1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic. 2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site. 3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them. 4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing. 5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam. 6. Relying on hidden text. You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible. 7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this. 8. Assuming all search engines are the same. Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility. 9. Using free web hosting. Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.
10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements. Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free. This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website. Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

8 Great Tips: Selecting A Professional Search Engine Optimization (seo) Service

Search engine optimization is increasingly being accepted as a powerful and critical component of the marketing plan. With the costs involved in other forms of online marketing growing significantly, it has become almost a necessity for companies to include SEO in their overall marketing mix.



It’s thus no surprise to know that professional SEO today is big business and this industry is growing at a fast pace. There are however many different types of SEO firms out there and finding a reliable service can be a daunting task.

Search engine optimization firms employ varying methods to get high rankings for websites and not all of these techniques are considered ethical. With the increasing number of ‘black hat’ SEO firms, (companies using unethical and unfair methods and techniques to manipulate search engines), and the thin line between actual ‘black hat’ and ‘white hat’ SEO practices, it is crucial to be well informed of the methodology the company plans to use for your website before you decide to hire them.

Here are 8 simple tips to help you in your evaluation and selection of a trustworthy and professional search engine optimization service:

1.Educate yourself with the basics
Make sure to do your homework carefully before you venture out to hire a SEO service. It’s imperative you understand in advance exactly what a firm can and will do for you to enable you to evaluate them. There are several resources online dedicated to search engine marketing and search engine optimization and taking the time to understand and learn the basics will go a long way.

2.Fee structures and your budget
There are no standardized fee structures and most companies offer a range of packages instead. A package may in itself contain a variety of services like keyword research, optimization of a certain number of pages, directory submissions etc. Selecting a company should not be only about cost. A firm that charges more may not necessarily be better at SEO and likewise a firm that charges less may not necessarily be providing you the same services. Use prudence while understanding pricing models and the risks behind them. One way to go about deciding what your budget should be is to first identify your website’s and business’ unique needs, tailor a package to meet these requirements and then compare firms’ pricing models to decide a realistic baseline budget.

3.Size and specialty of the firm
Depending on the size of your website and requirements of your company, it might be a good idea to check out whether the firm is adequately staffed and what their customer to SEO team ratio is.

Another important thing is to ensure that the company specializes in all areas of SEO and has a team of professionals experienced and accomplished in each of the areas including design, development and actual coding.

4.Location
The location of the firm largely depends on your comfort level. You may favor a local company or one at least within your country or prefer to outsource completely to another country to benefit from their lower costs. There are also few companies using a blended offshore delivery model with marketing and client services offices in one country and the actual design and development work being done in another. With the combination of lower costs plus client servicing available within reach, this upcoming balanced model may be a good option to consider.

5.Client testimonials and references
References are a great way to start and should be freely available. If they haven’t been provided, ask and make sure to use them to find out exactly how credible and trustworthy the company really is based on their past client’s experiences.

6.Guarantees
Most firms won’t guarantee top position results and shouldn’t. It is justifiable for a company to guarantee increasing your traffic or rankings from its current positions; however if any SEO service is guaranteeing you a specific position/ranking in any search engine, make sure you read the fine print of the agreement.

7.Ethics / Spam
Ethics is of paramount importance when it comes to selecting a search engine optimization company. There are a variety of unethical practices a firm can use right from while selling their services to you, to, the actual methods they employ while optimizing your site (keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc to name a few). Make sure to ask as many questions as possible and specifically about the methodology they use. If the firm does not offer you ready explanations of the process they undertake to optimize websites, you probably need to look elsewhere.

8.Reporting and success measurement
Some of the key questions to ask – How long will it take to see results? What type of reports will the SEO firm furnish and how often? How will success be measured? Will a maintenance plan be included?

It is largely up to you to define the goal and success level of your SEO campaign. It may be an increase in the traffic to your site, potential leads from a mailing list subscription, or an increase from last years sales. Make it a point to discuss and articulate your goals with the SEO firm and come to an agreement before you hire them. It is however important to set realistic expectations. Unlike PPC and other forms of paid advertising, SEO is a time consuming process, both in terms of implementation as well as results.

To conclude, hiring a SEO services firm can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line, however the decision to partner with a particular SEO firm should only ensue after a careful evaluation of the firm and after you have done the groundwork necessary to help you decide your own goals for the program.