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a Rafflecopter giveaway

The first is – Internet advertising metrics are already established.

It doe snot matter how wonderful your content is, unless you are in the top 25 of bloggers within your niche (in which case they are paying for your representation and endorsement as a celebrity not ad space) your advertisers will be expecting a Return On Investment (ROI) for their ads. They WILL be tracking your ads performance and they will determine the VALUE of your ad space based on that performance.

Any blogger who is expecting to earn ad revenue is a website publisher – The blogger part is about your writing. The ad revenue part is being a website publisher.

The items your advertisers track are the SAME things you should be tracking when you run affiliate ads to optimize the revenue potential of each ad space and link. So paid ad spots OR CPA ads.

These are things you MUST do in order to wear the hat of a ‘professional website publisher’.

1) Your ad spots should be optimized to increase the Click thru rate. (Think design, layout, and limited outgoing links.)

2) Know your audience /readership and target your ads to their interests and your content. Don’t make your website or blog overly general. A ‘parenting blog’ isn’t specific enough to provide search engine traffic. If you go general – you need to categorize to allow for better ad optimization.

i.e. A parenting blog about ‘raising boys’ will provide better ad performance then a general parenting blog. Most merchants can target their ads to land on the boys clothing pages which will convert better for a unique audience of moms raising boys.

You should place ads on relevant audience pages. If your blog posts are parenting related don’t put up ads for high end ladies fashion.

3) Know the real value of your ad inventory and understand the terminology used in buying and selling online advertising.

Most blogs do not have enough unique visitors to qualify for advertising buys. This is why you will see (with the exception of those few blog celebrities mentioned above) most successful revenue generating blogs using an ad network.

That big advertiser isn’t going to cut 500 $10 cheques for a banner ad. They are going to cut ONE $5000 cheque to a network for 250 000 unique banner impressions by category, in the top fold, served to UK viewers only.

Unless you can provide a min 500 unique, geotargeted, with a time cap of 1 or 2 in 24, your ad space isn’t likely to perform enough to justify a large brand purchasing banner ad space.

If your goal is to earn advertising revenue as a blogger, it is time to put on the publisher hat and start learning the industry standards for buying , selling, and tracking ad inventory online.

A great way to do just that is to run affiliate program ads. When you can convert an affiliate program, you know you can also make your paid advertisers happy and you will have the performance stats to back up the claim.

Originally posted on Her Affiliate – Sep 13, 2011 @ 18:23

The following affiliate hash tags were provided by @PMGMegan

#LeadGen #CJ #LinkShare #BlackFriday #CyberMonday #coupons #BOGO #HighAOV #EPC #banners #textlinks

Thanks to Missy Ward for these affiliate hashtag suggestions:

#noadtax #amazontax

And Shawn Collins informed me they use #MeetMeAffSum for their affiliate meetups

And a few more…

#SAS @shareasale

#ASW12 Affiliate Summit West 2012

#ASW Affiliate Summit West

#ASE Affiliate Summit West

Thanks to Sarah Bundy for these suggestions:

#affiliates

#affiliatemarketing

#FBAME

Know of other affiliate industry hashtags? Please comment and we will check them out.

Why Do Affiliate Managers Exist?
by: akagorilla

Affiliate Managers exist to help optimize affiliate sales by creating better relationships between affiliate merchants and affiliate partners. How they do that would justify another video.

9/15/2011 10:30 AM (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time

Click here to register

Affiliate or Ad revenue – either way your ads have to click and convert. Learn some of the basics on how to keep your advertisers happy with higher CTR (Click thru rates)by monetizing your site or blog design for ad performance.

20 minute presentation followed by the opportunity to have your site or blog reviewed.

I spend a lot of time speaking with new affiliates and bloggers hoping to earn ad revenue on their blogs and as a result I decided to focus some of my posts on the “Internet terminology’ every publisher (and blogger) needs.

Today ‘s Internet Geek Terminology choice is:

BOUNCE RATE

Where you will see this term ? In your traffic stats .

What is it ? This is a term of measurement that defines the percentage of initial visitors to your website (or blog) who ‘bounce’ away from your site instead of clicking through to a second page within your site.

Example A

Susie lands on your website and sees a second blog post (or page) that she likes – she clicks another blog post to open it and read. Susie is NOT a bouncer

Example B

George lands on your newest blog post and starts reading – George sees a banner for hot girls in your side bar and clicks it. George goes to look at hot girls (and to download spy-ware and Trojans to his site.) George IS a bouncer. (Of course you don’t have those banners on your site it was just a hypothetical example.

What are other ways a person can  ‘bounce’ off their initial visit ?
A visitor can bounce by:

• Typing a new url into their browser.
• Clicking a link on your page to a different website
• Closing the browser window or tab
• The session timing out (inactivity)

So how to you determine your blogs bounce rate ?

Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits`

What is a good bounce rate?

Pick a card, because it’s not a black and white answer.  You have to KNOW the purpose of every page to determine what a good bounce rate is for any page. If you PURPOSE is to get a visitor to click through to an affiliate offer or ad then you want a high bounce rate. If the purpose si to engage the user into registering for your site then you want a low rate.

Generally an AVERAGE bounce rate rate is between 45- 60 %.

Best of all Nifty stats provides  you with a FREE solution to track your affiliate commissions and affiliate campaigns. If you run one, or fifty affiliate programs, even 500! Nifty stats will save you time logging onto all of the affiliate networks.

Download a free copy of Nifty Stats today and check it out.

Take a look at the affiliate banners on your site. Do they have a call to action ?

The 125 banners to the right all have NO call to action. I found these on a blog which is interesting as I often here from bloggers that they won’t run affiliate programs because they don’t earn revenue.

You will find many small affiliate merchants that offer in house affiliate programs do not have hours of experience monitoring large volumes of ad impressions, clicks, and sales that a dedicated affiliate manager has. So their creative goals are usually to brand their business and look great. Or they simply don’t have the expereince to create the banners you need. The same holds true for some graphic artists, they design based on design not sales.

This will NOT help you as an affiliate drive converting (purchasing) visitors through your affiliate links.

I have watched a campaign receiving over 20 000 US only impressions a day go from a click through rate of .05 % to 1.1% simply by changing the creative to include a clear call to action and offer statement.

So how could these banners generate more qualifying clicks ? By including a simple clear call to action such as:

1. Click here
2. Shop Now
3. Buy Now
4. Go
5. Click for free shipping <- call to action & incentive or offer statement
6. Get info here
7. Check it out
8. Go Shopping
9. Subscribe now
10. Join now

I made this banner in about 3 minutes (so pardon the unfinished look) I want to show how just a simple question and call to action can increase your affiliate programs performance. So which of these would you click?

OR this one:

Call to action Call to Action Call to Action. Yes, it’s an affiliate marketing mantra. If your affiliate programs aren’t converting – check your banners.

Your affiliate merchant should be providing you with full sets of IAB Universal Package banner sets for a variety of offers and landing pages that allow you to target your affiliate offers to send them better qualified visitors.

If they aren’t it’s time to send them an email and let them know your sales would increase if they provided better and MORE creative.

One more disclaimer, this post is titled affiliate banners need a call to action. Really ALL banners need a call to action.

If you are searching for affiliate programs to promote for Valentines Day, be sure to register for Cookie Surprises affiliate program.

Her Affiliate Manager will help you with custom creative as needed to successfully promote Cookie Surprise’s Valentine Day Affiliate Campaign.

Cookie Surprises Valentine’s Day Affiliate Program includes;

Fresh New Creative

Animated banners

Dedicated Affiliate Manager to help you create custom articles, creative, and posts.

Key Words for adsense campaigns

Click here to register

If you haven’t yet, be sure to also register as a partner with Her Affiliate Manager.

Online advertising is not new, though the idea of blogs is relatively new, website publishers have been selling ad space long before the days of WordPress.

Account managers have tracked and monitored ads and know what works so don’t try to invent something that will push the big advertisers away from your website.

The guidelines were updated in November 2009 based on the input of leaders from creative agencies, media agencies, and publishers.

If you are hoping to work with large networks and advertisers you need to be able to support the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)’s Universal Ad Package. The sizes are:

300 x 250 – (Medium Rectangle)
180 x 150 – (Rectangle)
160 x 600 – (Wide Skyscraper)
728 x 90 – (Leaderboard)

Additional sizes can be found on their wesbite however, the sizes above are standard to all large media buys.

Kay McFarlane is an outsourced affiliate manager specializing in products and services for parents and women. Become a partner at http://www.HerAffiliateManager.com and receive free affiliate coaching and opportunities.