One of the most exciting things about working in the online world is that it is constantly evolving and growing. Those who are able to remain on the leading edges of new technologies will continue to be the most competitive players in what has become a world in which only the savviest survive. And in what might seem like a bit of a paradox, the ever-growing online world is actually becoming smaller.

No, the amount of opportunity for business is not shrinking, but with new technologies like iPhones, and Google Android devices – to name just a couple – tech-savvy marketers are finding ways to shrink the sizes of their marketing materials to fit onto these new devices.

It’s not unusual to see teenagers or twentysomethings with smart phone devices these days. In fact, you’re almost as likely to see someone walking along the sidewalk while accessing a 3g network as you would be to see a young hipster with a laptop in a Starbucks. A recent survey done by Sprint says that 80% of those in the 18-34 demographic cite their cellular phone as their “lifeline” to others.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing with their phones: they’re communicating. They’re heavily invested in social networks and, according to one source, the top 20% of those using social networking sites are spending up to 31 minutes a day on them. What that means to marketers is that those people are spending more time with ads.

The opportunity to reach out to that market is there— it’s just a question of how to best market to your target audience. More people with mobile devices means that they are going to be spending more time online, which makes them easier to reach. It’s definitely worth looking into ways of reaching these consumers. In 2008, smart phones accounted for 13% of the total handset market, and this number will only continue to grow. The more you can adjust your marketing campaigns to accommodate new technologies, the greater your market share will be.

For more information on how to best market your campaigns in this exciting new market, you can contact our SEM Agency to get some advice on how to get started.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the AdditionElle/Penningtons/MXM Affiliate Program in Share Results!

Together, these three sister brands are the leading fashion experts for plus size women.

ADDITION ELLE celebrates the “body confidence” of its plus size shoppers with an exciting array of contemporary and classic fashions. In addition to superb collections of work and weekend styles, Addition Elle carries a beautiful selection of intimate apparel, sleepwear, outerwear and accessories designed to address all of its customers’ lifestyle needs.

Penningtons Featuring a beautiful assortment of classic as well as contemporary styling, Penningtons offers the plus size customer a great selection of affordable career, casual, intimate apparel and accessories that fit her lifestyle.

MXM, a trendy 14+ fashion brand, is 5 years young and has quickly grown in popularity by featuring the latest, hottest looks and trends.

With orders averaging $100 CDN, affiliates can easily promote Addition Elle, Penningtons, and MXM styles to shoppers looking for fashionable pieces at affordable prices. Customers can purchase from all three brands in a single checkout and benefit from a low, flat shipping rate.

Join the affiliate program and take advantage of these three top plus size fashion brands.

Placements permitted in this program include:

• Banner & Text creative
• Content
• Coupons
• Incentivized
• Email traffic
• Deep linking
• 45-day Cookie
• Canadian/American traffic

Affiliates earn 6% commissions on each transaction with opportunities for increased commissions and bonuses. Affiliates are also able to leverage the banners with additional coupon codes that can be accessed through their affiliate portal.

A variety of regularly updated text links, coupon codes and banners are available for use on your website.

If you are a retail affiliate with a strong female audience (especially in the plus size category) and/or are a search, coupon or blog affiliate, you are an ideal partner for this affiliate program.

For more info or to join, please visit:

http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=16648

With our recent affiliate dashboard makeover, we couldn’t let our merchants go without a new dashboard makeover as well.

Here now, are a few of our merchant interface changes in a little more detail.

New Welcome Dashboard: The redesigned merchant interface allows our clients to get more information, with less effort. Merchants can immediately see their KPIs, allowing them to quickly change their marketing campaigns in response. This new interface reduces the number of clicks, and more importantly the time spent searching. So with new graphical reporting, merchants can analyze their program performance from the moment they log into the Share Results system.

Top Performing Affiliates: Displays in descending order the top 10 affiliates earning commissions in the merchant’s program for the current month. Includes quick links to affiliate details such as IDs, username and website URL. Other info in this section includes impressions, clicks, click-through-ratio, registrations, approved transactions, total commissions earned for the current month.

Top Banners: Displays the best performing creative by EPC for the merchant’s affiliate program. Includes thumb nail version of creative where applicable. This includes creative by type such as banner, flash, text link, coupon and widgets.

Period Comparison: Displays a graphical trend of the overall program stats over a specific period. Compares stats by number of transactions, impressions, clicks, number of affiliates generating clicks, amount of revenue share commission generated, amount of CPA commission generated, total program commissions and program EPC (earnings per click).

Reports: Allows merchants to quickly access top-level reports directly from the welcome dashboard. Reports include Quick Summary, Traffic, Earnings, Transactions and showing results month-to-date.

If you are a merchant of Share Results we encourage you to take some time to log into your account and provide us your feedback about the new appearance. Email us at: merchants@shareresults.com

It’s no secret that affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing industry. What makes it so unique and successful is the very foundation that it’s built upon – the affiliates. As such, it is vital for merchants and affiliate programs to appropriately search out and recruit affiliates that pertain to their vertical. But how are the affiliates supposed to choose between programs? What makes a good affiliate program? What affiliates are looking for—and remember that they are what drives the industry—are incentives. So, what kinds of incentives are crucial to successful recruitment during a launch?

To help you answer these questions, we have found two blogs that identify several key factors and give a comprehensive look at effective incentives.

Conversion Counts explains 10 Affiliate Incentives that Work for affiliate programs. Conversion Counts offer a wide array of online marketing solutions and publish a blog that is designed to help readers earn higher revenues and boost conversion rates.

Avangate Blog evaluates why programs with high commission rates don’t necessarily mean a successful program unless coupled with strong affiliate incentives. Founded by Bob Walsh, Avangate Blog is a great resource for software vendors on the Internet that focuses on how to sell software, ecommerce solutions for software vendors, internet marketing for the software industry, and reviews of important events.

If you want to keep up-to-date, you can download the OPML file on our BAMroll page.  We also have badges for your blog, if you’re already a BAMroller.

eLearners is one of the largest aggregators of online education leads in the industry and as such, is also one of the most popular programs among affiliates during the back-to-school season. Typically, August and September are peak seasons for eLearners, as are January and February. But one of the reasons why affiliates like eLearners is due to the variety of edu and financial aid opportunities, and marketing tools available for promotion all conveniently supplied under one program.

For instance, eLearners affiliates get the advantage of promoting with widgets that link directly to school pages based on a prospective student’s choices from the drop down menus. This is a major factor for appeasing students who want direct access to a school that will offer a course or program in their career of interest. Banners and text links are highly popular, as are the co-branded creative by profession, which appeal to prospective students who want to pursue careers in nursing or criminal justice, just to name a few. The more targeted, the better. Even affiliates in the Christian education area have been given a boost – recently, the Christian edu tools have been upgraded and have a fresher look to help appeal even more to students who want a faith-based education.

Signing up to this edu affiliate program simply requires that affiliates show samples of their education site(s) being operated. Affiliates also can offer details about how they intend to promote and what tools are needed to help them attract the attention of prospective students. This type of transparency helps expedite entry into the program, as does emailing eLearners@shareresults.com with any inquiries about promoting in this program.

We’re delighted to announce that the Share Results website and affiliate software will have a completely new look next week.

The new design focuses on enhancing software usability and reflects Share Results’ approach to relationships. Changes to the software interface include instant access to critical information and added customization features.

For a complete rundown of our upcoming updates, check out the full PR here.

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:

Read More…

Like most people, I like to share my interests with others. So I started pushing some of the Share Results team on the idea of video blogging. Sooner or later, push came to shove, and I finally convinced Le and Kunal to sit down together in front of the camera.

We chatted a while, but this is just a bit of an introduction. I wanted everyone to get to know them a bit before I start posting their actual thoughts on affiliate marketing and new media.