Arg, Warning, Self Promotional Post: !!!

I recently added affiliate software to my site which tracks sales through PayPal.

Join the affiliate program today and get a free $20 bonus credit.

More information in the extended entry...
Most of my sales are generated through PayPal, which has substantially lower costs than ClickBank. In addition to saving me money that also means that saves affiliates money too.

Good Deals with the New Affiliate Program:

• Triple Redundancy Sales Tracking - Session management, IP logging & cookies.

• Allows affiliates to send traffic to the home page or to a sales letter page.
• The affiliate software makes it easy for affiliates to use various banners, text links, or text ads.
• Since most of my ebook sales are through Paypal and since that payment option is on nearly every page of this site that means affiliates stand the greatest chance of getting commission for their sales. Also the triple redundant tracking makes it easier for affiliates to ensure they get credit for their sales.
• The new affiliate software does not use 302 redirects, so I do not need to worry about Google or Yahoo! penalizing my site by not properly following a 302 redirect.
• I am crediting all affiliate accounts with a $20 bonus credit.
• My affiliate software allows me to set result based compenasation levels. This helps me give added incentive and added reward to harder working affiliates. This also helps give better affiliates a benefit in the marketplace.
• The affiliate software also allows me to roll out pay per click advertising options. I have not yet turned this on but may do so eventually.
• The affiliate software allows two tiers. I have not yet turned this on but may do so eventually.
• Top affilates will get $40 per sale, which is over 50% of the sales price.

Bad Deals with the New Affiliate Program:

• New affiliates will be started out at $25 per sale, which is lower than the current program level. The affiliate payment amount goes up by $5 after each 5 ebook sales. Though after 15 affiliate sales affiliates make $40 per sale.

• The new affiliate program pays once a month, whereas ClickBank pays twice a month. My program will pay out quicker than ClickBank does though.
• I have set the minimum payout to $50. New affiliates that do self sales will not be able to profit from self sales until they sell at least 1 additional copy of the ebook.
• Currently my affiliate program requires PayPal accounts to receive payment.

When Can I Sign Up?
If you would like to join the new affiliate program you can do so today.

I am phasing out the old affiliate program and intend to have it fully phased out by March 5th.

If you are a current affiliate under the old program and have made multiple sales already please send me an email and I will see if I can start you off on a higher tier to credit you for your past sales.

I realize that changing affiliate programs sucks for affiliates (being an affiliate of many products myself), but I do not intend on doing it often. I appoligize for any inconveniences this change may cause.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback please email me or post them below.

Information Retrieval and Text Mining
Information Retrieval and Text Mining PDF (PDF with different info in it)
and a bunch more PDFs & the like here

found on WMW forums

I think I see a similar thread about once a month or so. What small engine provides underpriced traffic?

Many people tend to be stuck on a product or service or marketing angle. We tend to view these as good and then place our problems on others.

• Overture and AdWords are too expensive.

• blah doesn't provide enough traffic.
• blah has too low of traffic quality.
• etc.

Before looking to smaller engines I usually recommend creating a product or service offering which does decent on AdWords OR Overture.

Google AdWords and Overture have some fundamental significant differences in how they operate which means that some ads can fail on one and succeed on the other. If an offering fails on both networks then refine it. Change the offering. Target the ads better. Bid on a different position. Position 1.0 might be the guy who is losing the most money. There are lots of things you can change.

When people just give up on Overture and AdWords it means that they are settling for

• small streams of traffic

• slow feedback loops
• potentially lower traffic quality. If the traffic source is a good one why would they partner with a second rate PPC instead of one of the larger ones?

All that combines to likely lead to small streams of sales.

If you can't compete on the larger networks refine until you can. Create a profit stream and then look to duplicate the results.

If you corner yourself to the smallest networks as time passes you may be continually marginalized until your business goes under.

Some SEOs I have spoke with have seen sites that had many deep links do exceptionally well in this past Google update. One of them recommended having at least a 2 to 1 ratio of deep links to links pointing at the root URL. This of course makes the SEO process far more expensive, but should make the results far more stable than just building links to your home page would.

Do you build many deep links?
Have you noticed a similar pattern with the sites doing well in this Google update?
Do you have any tips for maximizing your deep link ratio?

Google Print:
Recording history, 1 digitized Anglo-Saxon book at a time

SMA UK:
to launch soon

Funny Jon Stewart Clip:
on blogs

More Malcolm:
Malcolm Gladwell on IT Conversations again (about 20 minute audio clip).

Malcolm is also going to be at the South by Southwest festival, which is looking rather appealing. I am thinking of going and seeing if I can snag is autograph on my copy of The Tipping Point or Blink. Anyone ever went to South by Soutwest? What did you think of it?