If you are interested in promoting eBay as an affiliate, you should know that they are no longer using CJ as the affiliate platform. They have their own in-house affiliate program now called eBay Partner Network.

This is something you should really consider if you’re interested in promoting a brand that’s recognizable worldwide.

Be sure to read the terms and conditions before you join. Specifically, you’re not allowed to do direct linking from a PPC search engine ad to an eBay landing page. Going through your own site first is okay. Maybe you can check out BANS if you aren’t already using it. That’s a great way to construct highly targeted landing pages for this purpose.

The compensation is based on a tiered structure and you’re paid based on a percentage of the winning bid (promote high ticket items!) or the number of active new members recruited.

Technorati Tags: eBay partner network, affiliate program

Popularity: 93% [?]

I just read a post on a blog that had 6 (yes, I counted them all) affiliate links to the same product - all in a single post. This is a bad idea if your target audience is in the make money online niche.

C’mon, your readers aren’t stupid and having that many affiliate links will surely turn them off. I don’t have anything against using affiliate links but to overdo it is being shortsighted while chasing near-term profits and sacrificing the long term sustainability of your blog.

Here are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t overload your posts with affiliate links:

1. Your readers will start to distrust your motives. Trust is the highest commodity in the blogosphere. Once you lose the trust and respect of your readers, it’s extremely difficult to get it back.

2. Even if you think your readers are that dumb, the search engines aren’t. Don’t you think it will raise a few red flags if you have 10 links in your post and 6 of them all point to the same product? Search engines like natural linking patterns.

A few words about the make money niche

While you will hear the advice that you should stay away from this crowded niche, ignore that. People will always want to hear about ways to make more money. This is a HUNGRY crowd and it’s a great niche to be in. Of course, you will have to find your own voice and give a reason for why people should be listening to you.

With the economic downturn, the opportunity is even bigger. As companies downsize, people are nervous about losing their jobs and look for alternative ways to support their families. Working online is a great way to supplement your income. So again, there will always be interest in this niche and the marketplace will support a large number of players.

Technorati Tags: affiliate links, make money online

Popularity: 34% [?]

I thought it would be fun to look back at the gifts I have received from the companies that I have worked with online.

Here’s what I got from Google for Christmas 2006:

And for Christmas 2005:

You can see more photos of the goodies here.

For Christmas 2004, it was a mood radio:

This was something I got when I was a YPN publisher. I think it was from 2005.

These little gifts are thoughtful and makes us affiliates feel appreciated and motivated to achieve loftier goals.

Technorati Tags: Google Christmas gifts, Yahoo Christmas gifts

Popularity: 32% [?]

It’s nice when the people you work with appreciate you and send you a Christmas gift. I got a nice surprise in the mail today from NeverBlueAds.

My total earnings with them in the last few months were somewhere around $6,000.

Here’s what they sent me:

Some nice comfy slippers for the cold winter months…

Some things to help me curl up in front of the ‘virtual’ fireplace with a good book. I can pop the DVD of the virtual fireplace in and settle in my favorite chair to enjoy some NeverBlueAds popcorn.

Thank you NeverBlueAds, especially to my affiliate manager, Jason!

If you’d like to join a great CPA network, you can sign up with them here.

Technorati Tags: NeverBlueAds, Christmas gifts

Popularity: 30% [?]

Danny Choo is a blogger who has nearly 10 million pageviews and 56,610 unique visitors PER DAY in Oct. 07 (see his Oct stats here). What draws visitors to the blog is content and DannyChoo.com has tons of it, some of which are user-generated. The blog is primarily drawing anime fans and folks who came through the various stormtrooper videos posted on YouTube. (Hint, hint - that’s a good way to draw traffic to your blog if you have something funny that you can post on YouTube)

Yeah… videos like this one:

Revenue generation is through AdSense where he uses a revenue sharing model. Affiliate sales also generate revenues for the site.

So what are the earnings for DannyChoo.com?

Here are some quotes from the site:

“Google Adsense is actually the lowest generating form of income for me.”

“On a good day I get about 50 USD and make enough from it to pay for all my monthly bills (hosting, telephone, electric, gas yada yada), my monthly mags and a few figures.”

“The most I have ever made through all my affiliate programs is just over 1000 USD per day last December (06) - my next goal is to keep it a steady 1000 by Q4 of this year - nearly there. ”

Since these data are a bit dated (from around April 07 or thereabouts), going by the reported affliate+AdSense earnings, I’m guessing that the site is now making around $40,000 - $50,000 per month.

Danny used to work for companies like Amazon and Microsoft before deciding to venture out on his own. He is using the earnings from his blog to fund his company rather than taking money from VCs. You should definitely check out his site and learn from his success.

Technorati Tags: Danny Choo, blog earnings

Popularity: 80% [?]

Some folks just love it and others hate it. Well, it really boils down to how your promote it. Can the Amazon affiliate program fit into your blogging strategy? Absolutely.

Don’t be fooled by those who claim that it has a poor commission payout. The often quoted 4% commission applies only to the first tier of payouts. With Amazon, your commission increases based on the number of orders shipped in each month. So when you get to the next commission tier, your commissions increase for ALL your sales for that month. Everything except electronics, which is capped at 4% commission, is following the sliding scale.

As you can see, you can have a maximum commission rate of 8.5% if you can push the large volumes.

Here’s proof that it works:

Here are some good reasons why I love Amazon:

1. Trusted brand. It’s a lot easier to sell something when everyone knows that the vendor is a trusted name that isn’t going to keep their money and not ship the product.

2. HUGE selection. Yes, if you haven’t shopped at Amazon lately, take a look at the different categories of STUFF that they have there. They’re not just about books anymore. They sell a lot of third-party stuff too - even groceries!

3. People know what to expect. Since they’ve been around for so long, people know just what to expect when they buy something from Amazon. The checkout process is familiar. People are comfortable making purchases online when they are familiar with the process. Again, this ties in to reason #1.

4. Great prices. Amazon often has the best prices anywhere online. Another great selling point.

5. Constantly improving. They are continuously trying to improve their offerings with new widgets and new creatives for promoting their stuff.

6. Electronic payment. Payment goes straight into your bank account!

Ways that I think the Amazon affiliate program can improve:

1. They don’t seem to really care that much about communicating with affiliates. Even though I make 4 figures a month with them, I’ve yet to receive any special gifts like the Christmas gifts I’ve gotten from Google and Yahoo.

2. Payment timescale. You won’t get paid for the current month’s earnings until 2 months later. So expect to receive September earnings at the end of November. This can create some cash flow problems if you’re using PPC.

The bottom line is that you should really consider adding Amazon as a part of your blog’s income stream. Find out more about it here.

Technorati Tags: Amazon affiliate program

Popularity: 46% [?]

DealDotCom is a new program that is set to launch on Tuesday, September 18, 2007. It will feature daily deals on internet marketing and online business related products. The way it works is that when you refer someone who joins the site, that person will automatically be placed under you for the rest of their life. While other sites offer 30, 60 or 90 day cookies, DealDotCom gives you lifetime commissions. So someone who is referred by you who doesn’t buy anything now but decides to buy something in 2012, guess what? You’ll still get the commission.

The program is still in pre-launch and you can only join by getting an invitation.

Because the affiliate program is two-tiered, more people will scramble to join just to get in on the action early. Like many multi-tiered programs, the earlier you join in, the better off you are. By the way, the first tier pays out 35% and the second tier is 15%. This can become a lucrative source of passive income for your blog.

Get an invitation to join here.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Good news for those of you who want to blog but don’t want the hassle of setting one up with your own hosting account. Now you can host your blog on WordPress.com. You can customize the templates and posting is as easy as typing into a form and clicking on a button. Just head over there and grab a subdomain.

Your blog will be named [something].wordpress.com. “Something” is whatever name you choose.

The thing I like about WordPress vs. Blogger is that with WordPress you can set up categories to sort your posts and that makes your blog more organized. It also helps your readers find stuff on your blog.

At this time, you can’t manually tweak the template yet but I expect that will be a feature added in the future. If you would like to earn affiliate income, here’s one suggestion.

Get an account at Commission Junction or LinkShare if you don’t already have one. You can then set up a product blog and post product items to your blog. Make it more interesting. Write your own reviews. If you own the product yourself, tell people how you’re using it. Then encourage them to buy.

There is a tradeoff between promoting high-priced and low-priced item. The tradeoff is between volume and the amount of commission that you’ll make. Let’s say you’re promoting a book off Amazon. You may make a few more sales than promoting a massage chair. But one sale of the massage chair makes you a much bigger commission. You’ll have to test out what works best for you.

Popularity: 21% [?]

There is another way that you can add an income stream to your blog and this is called Chitika. It works better is you have a site that’s related to consumer products such as electronics and gadgets.

This is an example of what you can put up on your blog:

You can sign up for a free account at here. A word of caution if you are using WordPress. You cannot just paste the code provided by Chitika. I tried that and nothing showed up when I viewed my blog. But fortunately, I found a WP plugin specifically for Chitika.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Want to know what’s hot and what’s not? What are the products that people are searching for? A good place to start your research is Google’s own shopping search tool called Froogle. It will show you in real time the searches that are being performed. For example, I just went to the site and right now it’s showing these searches:

sleeping bag
compact flash memory
diamond earrings
belgian chocolate
sapphire ring
lawn gnome
kodak easyshare
coffee table
iomega zip drive
diablo 2
red sox sweatshirt
patio heaters
jogging stroller
dominoes
rio mp3
chaise
radio scanner
glass coffee table
jukebox
gel pens
waffle iron
thank you cards
lanyard
king size mattress
rain gauge

If you click on the ‘Refresh’ button on your browser, the list will automatically update. If you want to find out more about one of the items, just click on it and you will see the results page that has pictures of the product. I just found out what a ‘chaise’ and a ‘lanyard’ are.

Popularity: 22% [?]