New at Clickbank: Recurring Billing
On June 19th, Clickbank announced that it will offer a recurring billing option to merchants that sell subscription services and/or have membership sites.
This is great news for merchants and affiliates alike.
As an affiliate marketer, I’ve always specifically sought out those affiliate programs that pay recurring monthly commissions on product sales, such as for dating site memberships and web hosting services.
So, the next time you’re in Clickbank looking for a recurring product to promote, do a search sorted by “Future $” which is the average total rebill revenue earned by the affiliate due to sales from a site. Generally this equates to the average sum of all rebills.
Granted, it may be awhile before anything shows up in this category, but well worthwhile to keep checking Clickbank to see who comes on board to offer recurring commissions.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Affiliates: What Do YOU Want?
Jeremy Palmer, Scott Jango, Vinny Lingham and I are ramping up for our panel discussion at the next Affiliate Summit called “What SUPER Affiliates Want” to be held on July 9th in Classroom C at 11:30am.
We’ve built a BIG list of all the things that we, as affiliate marketers, would like to see improved in relation to affiliate programs, merchant site conversions, communication between managers and affiliates, and more.
But we don’t want to miss anything at all, so you’re invited to add to that list. Please leave a comment and share what affiliate program aspects you really appreciate and/or those that absolutely peeve you the most.
Go ahead, don’t be shy - you’ll be helping to improve our industry. 
Popularity: 21% [?]
WordTracker Eliminates 1-Day Subscription
I noticed awhile back that WordTracker was no longer offering their 1-day subscription service, but as of an email sent to affiliates today, they’ve made it official.
“We have eliminated our base one-day subscription level. We are confident that this step will improve our average revenue per sale without being detrimental to our conversion rate.”
Subscription rates are now as follows:
1 Year: $275.88 / £140.00
1 Month: $ 55.18 / £28.00
1 Week: $ 27.59 / £14.00 (still a great deal!)
Affiliates promoting Wordtracker should change their promotions to reflect the change, otherwise you might be disappointing your site visitors and losing sales.
Please note also that Wordtracker has a new affiliate tracking system that requires you to change your current affiliate links.
Popularity: 19% [?]
eBay US Affiliate Program Changes
On June 1st, 2007, eBay US made a payment structure change to their affiliate program that could increase your affiliate earnings.
See the image below for the compensation model, which is only available through Commission Junction
Note: An “ACRU” is a new eBay active user, who registers for eBay for the first time, then confirms their registration and lastly places a bid on eBay or uses BIN (Buy it Now) to buy an item within 30 days of registration.
That’s pretty straight forward. The more users that you recruit and the more revenue you generate, the more you make.
On the flip side, here’s a policy change that could see your earnings drop.
If you are driving traffic to eBay via paid search, you will not be compensated for traffic purchased from Google, Yahoo, MSN or the associated content networks (Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds) if your ad links directly to any of the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains. This change only applies to the U.S. program and the search engines mentioned above.
So, if you’re direct linking to eBay with paid search, change those ads ASAP.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Got Bills?
Of course you have bills!
But, this post isn’t really about your bills. It’s about your merchants’ search policy and restricted trademarks.
By using “Got Bills?” in the title of this post, I may be in violation of LowerMyBills affiliate search policy, as ‘GOT BILLS?’ is a ‘Restricted LowerMyBills TMs’.
Here is a portion of the LowerMyBills.com search policy:
There are many ways for affiliates to market LowerMyBills.com. While we encourage entrepreneurial creativity among our publishers, we would appreciate your adherence to the following regulations regarding our affiliate marketing practices.
The email mentions specific promotional techniques and Restricted LowerMyBills TMs to avoid, including:
- Linking to our site directly from any search engine.
- Using triggered-event headlines such as “Get a $600K mortgage for $300 a month”
- MORTGAGE QUOTES. FAST. EASY. FREE.
- EASY COMPARISONS. MORE CHOICES. BIGGER SAVINGS.
- LOWERMYBILLS.COM
- LOWERYOURBILLS.COM
- GOT BILLS?
- BILLPAY PLUS
- LOWERMYBILLS.COM
If it seems ludicrous to worry about using the phrase ‘got bills?’ in the title of a blog post simply because it is one of my merchant’s registered trademarks; you may have missed my ‘Affiliate’s Corner’ column in Revenue magazine in late 2006.
In it, I wrote about the struggle I had to retain affiliation with a credit card merchant after being accused of allowing their trademarked terms to appear in comment spam on one of my blogs.
That accusation was completely ludricous because I didn’t own the ’suspect’ blog, and their failure to do proper research cobmined with a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach wasted so much of my time that I could not in good conscience continue to promote their product. BTW, I get more junk snail mail from this bank than all the others combined. How’s that for ironic?
Anyway, if that merchant took issue with blog comment spam - how might your merchants react if you post their trademarked terms in your blog titles? Is that an infringement of their policy?
The point is that if you don’t know — ASK.
Read your merchants’ search policies, ask questions and abide by the rules if you want to continue your affiliation. Most reasonable merchants will send you a warning - however, as you now know, not all merchants are so reasonable.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Join Our Affiliate Program - Just $2000!
Here’s a portion of a letter I got the other day about a site and affiliate program built to profit from the overwhelming current interest in the movie, “The Secret”.
Please note that the emphasis in italics is mine.
“I am writing now to invite you to join me in an affiliate opportunity called The Science of Getting Rich (SGR) Program. You can read all all about it and join at my site (link removed). In brief, for an initial cost of $2000.00 you purchase the SGR program AND the opportunity to become an affiliate!”
What a joke!
First of all, I would NEVER consider paying 2 grand to join an affiliate program — and I hope you wouldn’t either!
Secondly, I guess this promoter has never heard of Rebecca Fine whom I met at Yanik Silver’s first Underground seminar and is by every account a first-class human being who really cares about giving her very best on every level.
Rebecca has built an entire business around the “Science of Getting Rich” book by Wallace D. Wattles, which she offers as a free download to her visitors. Her site model is much like this one, in that she offers additional value through a free newsletter, open forum, articles and more. Furthermore, Rebecca’s affiliate program is free to join and pays up to 35%.
So, here’s a caution for you.
DON’T pay to join an affiliate program just because it coattails on the book or movie of the moment - despite that book or movie’s great content or popularity.
DO your homework and you just might find a better program that is not only equally relevant, but provides more value for your valued visitors and subscribers at lower cost.
How’s that for a good-for-the-soul-and-pocketbook profit model that makes everyone happy?
Popularity: 11% [?]
FreeIQ Gaining Momentum!
Brad Fallon’s FreeIQ is getting BIG fast.
A respository of ecommerce-related products should be a great thing, provided the products are of high quality. Sadly, the first thing I came across under the ‘affiliate’ tag was a PDF file by ‘freeiq1′ called ‘The Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook‘. The first clue that this ebook would be a waste of time was lack of author name and bio. Sure enough, this is the first paragraph:
Being in the affiliate marketing business is not that hard now with the Internet at your disposable. It is much easier now compared to the days when people have to make use of the telephones and other mediums of information just to get the latest updates on the way their program is coming along.
Ya sure, and affiliate marketing got so much easier when we started using smoke signals. Sheesh. The whole thing is so absurd as to be funny.
Fortunately, videos and content are rated and reviewed by the user community, so those posting crap won’t rank highly. I guess it’s just a matter of time before the turd mentioned above gets flushed.
Marketer? Got a freebie or paid product you want to promote more widely? Upload it to FreeIQ.com soon and get good exposure. Be prepared to wait for the server, though. It’s SLOW… a testament to its popularity — although a big pain in the butt, as I haven’t had any luck setting up an Author Page, getting links to track, etc.
Affiliate? Join the 2-tier affiliate program for free, promote the site and get a cut of downline affiliate sales for the first year. You better get in there now, or there won’t be any downline left, though.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Batter’s Up!
Got a baseball, a sports site or thinking of starting one? If so, you can earn commissions selling both free and paid Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball League accounts from Yahoo! Sports which offers live drafts, custom leagues, multiple scoring options, expert analysis and commentary, and real-time stat tracking for your team.
Here are a few baseball-related items that you can sell on your baseball site:
Base accessories, baseballs by the dozen, bases, bat accessories, bat bags, batting helmets, batting tees, bleachers, books, caps, catcher’s chest protectors, catcher’s helmets, catcher’s leg guards, catcher’s masks, catcher’s mitts, cd-roms, coaches apparel, college & high school bats, duffel bags, equipment bags, field maintenance, fielding gloves, first base mitts, fungo/training bats, helmet bags, kids footwear, little league bats, metal footwear, mlb customized team jerseys, molded footwear other training aids performance tops, personalized bats, personalized gloves, pitchbacks, pitching machine baseballs, pitching machines, pitching machines-accessories, pitching rubbers, practice nets, protective screens protective screens, senior league bats, short sleeve tees, sliding shorts, sliding shorts, socks, starter sets, supporters, team accessories tee ball bats, tote bags, umpire apparel, umpire needs uniform-blank tops, uniform-customizable tops, uniform-jackets, uniform-pants, videos, and wood bats. Don’t forget that you can also sell tickets to major league baseball games!
All these items are available through Commission Junction merchants such as Baseball Warehouse, Baseball Express, Hat World and many others.
The Yahoo! payouts are as follows:
- $1.00 per FREE Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball Account (45 day cookie duration)
- $5.00 per Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball Stat Tracker/Draft Kit purchase (120 day cookie duration)
- $12.00 per Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball Plus purchase (45 day cookie duration)
But hurry and get your offers up there… the Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball League program expires April 28th, 2007. Batter’s up!
Popularity: 7% [?]
Four Questions to Ask Your Merchant
Here’s a commission-increasing tip that Willie Crawford picked up from the Super Affiliate Handbook and then wrote about in his blog. (I’d point you to the entry, but Willie isn’t moderating comments on his personal blog and some of that stuff is just nasty!)
Rosalind Gardner has put the most direct dollars in my pockets. When I read her Super Affiliate Handbook it was a real eye opener. Here was a woman earning nearly half a million dollars a year selling affiliate products and she’s telling me exactly how she does it.
OK… one of the biggest tips I picked up and ACTED UPON in her book was that even though affiliate programs have stated commissions, you CAN negotiate that. So I now get a higher than advertised commission for many of the affiliate products that I sell.
Yup, it’s that simple. Just ASK for a better deal.
Want to increase your own commissions? Here are 4 questions that you should consider asking your merchants…
Popularity: 16% [?]
Whose Customer is She Anyway?
Here is an email that I received regarding my affiliate policy for the Super Affiliate Handbook…
Hi, I promote a lot of ClickBank products, but when I clicked on your affiliate signup area on the Super Affiliate Handbook website, I came across something I’ve never seen before:
“Customers who purchase products and services through the Affiliate Program will be deemed to be customers of SuperAffiliateHandbook.com.”
ClickBank provides all affiliates with the name and e-mail address of the individual who buys through our affiliate link.
I’ve typically imported people who have bought through my affiliate links into a database and have treated them as “my” customers and as legitimate leads for similar offers in the future. The truth is, aren’t these people *CLICKBANK* customers?
I already wrote to ClickBank to ask them about this, but also though I’d ask you where you’re coming from in saying that ClickBank affiliates can’t legitimately make use of the information that ClickBank (not you) provide us regarding people who buy through our affiliate links.
I look forward to your response,
Max
Here is my take / response on the matter for Max and all other Clickbank affiliates…
Popularity: 9% [?]
