It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…BAMrollers! This week’s additions to our Big Affiliate Marketing blogroll aim high, and with good intention. They blog because they want to share their wealth of knowledge so you can get wealthy.  Both blogs document projects, and were created just a few months ago–in April and May 2009, respectively. To continue to track their projects, and to stay updated with the other 50-some-odd awesome BAMrollers, download the OPML file on the BAMroll page. They can all be your heros, baby. Already a hero/BAMroller? Get a badge! We hope it matches your cape/site

• Answer Hero blog is the story of the creation of a website called, you guessed: Answer Hero. The keywords of their blog are user-generated content, and the long tail. The keywords of the site are just about everything else…
• Danger Brown is ‘your best friend in affiliate marketing,’ and what’s not heroic about best friends? He tells you his secrets and is easy to communicate with. He gives good advice and is honest…and will introduce you to popular people! This IS what best affiliate-marketing/SEO/social media best friends are for!

Affiliate software needs to do a lot more than just calculate commissions. Those calculations also need to be transparent, and affiliates need reports they can use to analyze campaign performance and optimize their efforts.

Well, in the latest episode of her video podcast, Coffee with Nicky, our CEO, Nicky Senyard, discusses just this. Specifically, she goes over what affiliates should look for in the software that powers the programs they promote — from overall transparency to the specific reports they need to optimize their online marketing efforts.

When you hear about how successful some affiliates are at using Twitter, it’s hard to ignore it as a potential traffic source. For Shoemoney, it’s his second biggest blog traffic source, and Ted Murphy get’s 40% of his blog traffic from Twitter. But those are blogs, not affiliates sites, so the question still remains: does twitter convert for affiliates? Will twitter-networking drive sales?

Well, some numbers from Hitwise indicate that Twitter doesn’t even drive that much traffic to ecommerce in the first place — at least in the UK, anyway.

During May 2009 Twitter was the 30th biggest source of traffic for other sites in the UK, accounting for 1 in every 350 visits to a typical website. Over half of this traffic (55.9%) is sent to other content-driven online media sites, such as social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites. However, only 9.5% of Twitter’s downstream traffic is sent to transactional websites (i.e. travel, business and finance sites, plus online retailers). By contrast, Google UK (the country’s biggest search engine and source of traffic to other websites) sends 30.7% of its traffic to transactional sites, while for Facebook (the UK’s most popular social network), the figure is 14.7%.

Does this mean that Twitter is a waste of time? Maybe not. As the Hitwise blog posts goes on to note, Dell claims to have generated $3m in sales via Twitter. So what does this all mean for affiliates?

Well, for starters, maybe most “transactional websites” just haven’t started using Twitter strategically.

But ore importantly, it’s also possible that many ecommerce sites that do use Twitter aren’t using it properly. Twitter is a social network, and a social network is a place where people interact with other people. So using Twitter to post repeat adver-tweets is going to fail.

A strategic use of Twitter would be using not just as a brand, but as a person who builds actual relationships with other people. People are on Twitter to interact, not spend money, so they have to trust you before they’re going to buy from you.

So can affiliates use Twitter to drive referrals? Probably. But only if you’re:

1. focusing on building actual relationships by interacting in a meaningful,
2. and reaching out to a targeted audience that might actually be interested in the products you promote.

Once people trust you, then they might visit your site or blog, and subsequently convert into referral, but you have to first earn that trust, and you’re not going to do that by spamming them.

That being said, before investing too much of their time in Twitter, affiliates should bear in mind that it’s just one of several potential acquisition channels. As Hitwise pointed out, search is still driving way more ecommerce traffic. So while affiliates are building up their trust and Twitter network, they should also keep doing what still works for them elsewhere.

This week, we are adding award-winning blogs to the BAMroll. They were recognized at the a4uawards in June in the category of “Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009.” We agree with the judging panel that the following blogs are about affiliate marketing in a big way. By ‘big’ we mean it’s worth downloading our OPML file from the BAMroll page so you can stay updated on their insightful and applicable posts…

• Affiliate $tuff is the Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009, and what a well-deserved award! This blog manages to be endlessly informative without overwhelming. It’s like an encyclopedia-yearbook hybrid: useful, searchable, entertaining, and with notes from the popular crowd written in the margins. Check out her wonderful glossary.
• Lee McCoy was highly commended for this award, and again, very well-deserved! Easily absorbed, with a hands-on approach, and very good foresight–such features make it worth your time to read. Social media aficionados will be particularly satisfied with his defense of it’s value to online marketers.

A very sincere congratulations to Kirsty and Lee! There are badges here for you to put on your blogs.

The recent growth in the mobile web is something that any serious affiliate can’t ignore. But as quick as it’s grown, it’s still a very new channel, so the questions remains: what’s the best way to enter this market?

Well, it looks like mobile apps are going to be particularly well positioned to help affiliates earn their mobile bread and butter. A recent article in AdAge reports that while Google remains the leader in mobile web content, they are now focusing more on apps and less on mobile web pages:

While Google has been able to translate its lead in desktop search to the mobile environment, owning 47% of the mobile search traffic to Yahoo’s 25%, according to ComScore, the web may turn out not to be the de facto entry point for search on the phone the way it had been for wired PCs.

[...] According to the Kelsey Group, U.S. mobile search advertising revenue, including mobile web and in-app search, is expected to grow from $39 million in 2008 to $2.3 billion by 2013, a compound annual growth rate of 126%.

Meanwhile, the latest data from AdMob suggests that more traffic is migrating to apps: More than 60% of the ad requests in its iPhone network come from applications, vs. 40% from the mobile web.

In a sense, that mobile apps seems poised to out-pace the mobile web scarcely comes as a surprise. After all, the user-experience of the mobile web is too distinct from what’s offered by the conventional web, so all kinds of marketers need to think differently about how to reach mobile users.

What this means for affiliates is that they should start thinking about how to reach their target market through mobile apps. A mobile app is better suited than a mobile site for delivering content and offers because they use technologies such as GPS, NFC, and LBS to hyper-target users, and that kind of hyper-targeting is exactly what the mobile web offers marketers over the conventional, desktop web.

Have you seen the movie Big Fish? It is directed by Tim Burton, and is about a son telling of his father’s life. As the title of the film suggests, there are tall tales galore–from conjoined twins to circuses to catching really big fish.

Our additions to the BAMroll this week don’t exaggerate their experiences or mislead you, but they do approach affiliate marketing in a way that you’ve never seen before and keep you intrigued just like the storyteller in Big Fish.

• Can I Make Big Money Online? is the question, and the answer is, yes! This blog’s greatest asset is the relevance of their posts to internet marketers. The posts are about specific case studies, and reviews of trendy products.
• SEO by the Sea is an in-depth look at all that is related to search engines. The site map here is as vast as the sea, but very navigable, thanks to well-categorized posts in a user-friendly blog design. If you only have time for one new blog this week, month, or year…this is the one.

To keep biting, you can download the OPML file on our BAMroll page.  We also have badges for your blog, if you’re already a BAMroller.

Is the market for online EDU affiliate programs too saturated? Well, from our experience this past spring our merchant eLearners did not think so. The affiliate program saw great success with the announcement that it was launching a third installment of its Project Working Mom… And Dads, Too! campaign. Select finalists appeared on the Tyra Banks show and many working moms and dads received financial aid to help them pursue their online education endeavours. After a high response rate and positive feedback,  eLearners recently decided to make PWM/D as a regular offer for affiliates to promote.

While it’s always great for parents to shine on celebrity talkshows, there’s actually a greater reason why PWM/D is a big hit with working parents. It means getting free money to pursue an education at a time when many offline schools are cutting back on financial aid. A recent New York Times article highlighted Reed College’s unenviable task of cutting back on financial aid due to the recession:

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We’re happy to announce Nero program has gone live on Share Results

Nero is an industry leader in software products for creating, editing, burning, sharing and enjoying digital media of all types. Nero offers solutions that are simple enough for a novice to

use but powerful enough to tackle even the most demanding projects.

Nero’s two most popular products Nero 9 and Move It are available to promote through SR

Placements permitted in this program include:

• Banner Creative
• Text Ads
• PPC/Search Marketing (Trademark on “Nero” are forbidden)
• Coupons (Customer can save an additional 10% off on Nero9 orders - Offer expires after July 2nd, 2009)
• Incentivized
• Email traffic not permitted
• 45-day Cookie
• Canadian traffic

Commission Offer

As a new affiliate to the Nero program, you will earn up to 20% commission on all Canadian sales

Publishers that promote in the software, coupon and search categories are ideal for this affiliate program.

For more info or to join, please visit: http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=14602

If this is your first time here, OR if you just happen to be looking for about 50 mini reviews of Big Affiliate Marketing blogs…then check out the BAMroll and let us know what you think!

I present the following worthy additions to our blogroll:

• PPC Blog is pretty self-explanatory. The very qualified blogger writes about search marketing trends and business, adwords optimization, Baidu and Yahoo search marketing, second-tier PPC strategies, SEO, and social media marketing.
• Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog is written by Matt, but that’s all we know about who he his. We know what he does though: write about advertising, creatively…and usefully!

May they inspire you to download the OPML file on the BAMroll page, and/or grab a badge.

Recently Share Results affiliates received the latest edition of our monthly Hot Deals Affiliate Newsletter. Featuring the latest customer and affiliate incentives, our June newsletter gives affiliates the inside scoop on what new offers are available from merchants in the network. This month, as you know, is when North Americans celebrate Father’s Day. As we approach this and other holidays throughout the year, one of the most common questions we receive from affiliates is “what offers can I promote for this holiday?” Here are 3 great categories in which affiliates can optimize their traffic. Some of these offers are featured in our newsletter, a few are niche, and they are sure to help you make the most of your traffic.

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