There are affiliate programs for almost everything on the Internet. Flowers, shoes, jewelry, car parts, books, astrology and the list goes on. Promoting all these affiliate programs in one website is not the solution even if the site has traffic. How to choose then the affiliate programs to promote?

If you have a website or a blog about Travel, affiliate programs in the same “Vertical” or topic have to be selected as visitors of the site are people looking for information about the topic. They may want information on a country, but also book an hotel or buy travel insurance, and it is what you have to promote. It is unlikely that they will be interested by an astrology ad.

Google does just that with its “Ads by Google” you see on websites. They match the ads with the content of the website so the visitors see and click an ad related to the information they are searching. Knowing what kind of affiliate programs to promote is already a good step. Now, what Hotel booking or travel affiliate program to choose?

You will have to consider your options. Is the company you want to partner with a trusted company? How do they pay? Is their tracking software in-house or do they work with a Network? Many questions need to be answered before investing time and money in promoting their products. A higher commission being not always the best in a program.

An important element of the affiliate program is the affiliate manager. This person’s job is to assist affiliates in giving advices, make links and creative, answer to questions and help affiliates when necessary. This person is your interlocutor and you have to make sure that the partner programs you selected have a responsive affiliate manager.

As a conclusion, you have to do your homework to select an affiliate program that will be a good fit to your site and convert well.

Go to Pantika Home Page. Article by Michel Gerard

When starting affiliate marketing choosing a good Network is important. Commission Junction is one of the most trusted Network by merchants and affiliates alike. In CJ, affiliates have access to a huge directory of products, and when promoting several merchants, the earned commission from each of them is added and paid together.

The network is trusted by affiliates as commissions are paid by the merchants to the network and then paid back to the affiliates.

Unfortunately, Commission Junction penalizes small affiliates who produce impressions and clicks but no sales. One of my friend affiliate recently saw her hard earned commissions, that were paid by the merchants to the Network and credited to her CJ account, vanish. After writing to them, this is what she received:

“Thank you for your inquiry. The $10 fee you see in your account is a dormancy fee, due to not having generated any commissions in six consecutive months. After six months without having made a sale, your account will be deducted $10 per month until the balance is $0– then the account will be deactivated. All this is stated in the Publisher Service Agreement, “PSA”, which you agreed to upon signing up for an account with Commission Junction.

Once an account is deactivated the relationships you had with advertisers prior to deactivation have been terminated and your links are no longer valid until you restore your advertiser relationships. You will need to reapply to advertisers and, in some cases, create new links.”

This dormancy $10/month fee is really unfair for small affiliates who may not have been making sales but still advertise the merchants as impressions and clicks are still recorded. The bottom line of this is that CJ is great for experienced affiliates who know they will constantly make sales but it is advised for newer affiliates to start working with networks that won’t penalize them with fees.

Go to Pantika Home Page. Article by Michel Gerard

I have been using Dropbox for more than a year as a sharing service, and the recent failure of my iBook G4 made me understand that it is also a great backup solution. Now, my Dropbox is basically the “My Documents” folder where I place all my files accessible from multiple computers.

After signing-up for a Dropbox account using your email address, you have the possibility to use 2 GB of free storage right away. In the web interface folders can be created, files uploaded or downloaded.

Folders can be shared with friends or co-workers in just clicking a “Share this folder” button. An invitation is then sent by email to the person you want to share with, and after they have created an account the folder is shared.

A software is downloadable for Mac, Linux Ubuntu & Fedora, and Windows, in order to have a Dropbox folder accessible directly on your machine. Whatever is placed inside this Dropbox folder is synchronized with the online storage service and then to any other linked computer, but also iPhone, iPod and Blackberry. You may have folders you share and folders you keep private as a back-up facility.

Drop Box as also a paid service for those who need more than 2GB per month.
Sign-up or read more info on DropBox

Go to Pantika Home Page. Article by Michel Gerard