The holidays are the most wonderful time of the year, and present merchants and affiliates with tremendous earning potential. In fact, holiday shopping can account for up to 50% of an online retailer’s yearly sales, meaning that affiliates too have an equal opportunity to leverage this peak shopping season.

In 2008, an estimated 85 million people shopped on Cyber Monday, known as the kick-off date to the online shopping season. This year, many online retailers are looking to the Monday after Thanksgiving to bring another sales surge.

The Black Friday – Cyber Monday weekend accounts for a significantly large portion of the holiday sales for online retailers. Yahoo Advertising reports that Black Friday is the new Cyber Monday, stating,

“When compared with the average day in November, Black Friday showed a 147% increase in conversions, while Cyber Monday had a 73% increase in conversions.”

This year, the lucrative Black Friday – Cyber Monday weekend falls between November 27-30; affiliates, make sure your campaigns are ready!

The 2009 forecast looks promising, when compared to 2008. Amazon.com has reported its third quarter income has increased to $199 million from $118 million last year. It’s forecasting 4th quarter growth of 21% to 35% over last year.

To leverage your earning potential, it’s important to note what shoppers will be looking for:

1. Deals
2. Discounts
3. Coupons

As economic difficulties continue, consumers are looking for money-savers now, more than ever. Coupon sites have seen monumental growth this year, with shoppers looking for discounts and deals. Sites such as RetailMeNot are seeing over 200% growth over last year.

According to Netelixir , keyword search advertising is expected to be the most important customer acquisition channel during the 2009 holiday season. With Google reporting a 7% increase compared to the third quarter of 2008, PPC affiliates will have a great opportunity to increase their search revenue. For affiliates looking to try their hand at PPC, the holidays are the perfect time to get started. And with Share Results’ recent launch of their SEM Agency , it’s easier than ever to get the support you need to drive the success of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

For more techniques, tools, tips and great resources to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of your affiliate marketing campaigns, be sure to come back to the Share Results blog . Until November 27, Share Results is throwing a big Holiday Blogging Event, packed with all kinds of seasonal information regarding trends for Q4, tips to get the best deals, consumer trends and how best optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns.

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.

With the economy ad it is, there is a great opportunity for affiliate marketers to help consumers find savings. This is back-to-school clothing coupons, for example, are such a lucrative promotion for affiliates.

But there is one area where consumers where consumers will spend more this back-to-school season, and that’s Back-To-College. As a recent survey by the National Retail Federation reports:

Even with the uncertainties the economy continues to present, college-bound students and their families are prepared to shell out a little extra this year. NRF’s back-to-college survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that college students and their parents will spend an average of $618.12 this year, up three percent over last year’s $599.38. [emphasis my own]

So affiliates should be consider promoting products that college kids will need to head back to the campus.

One thing that all college kids need are supplies to write those grueling term papers, such as ink toner. So the Love Toner and Excel Toner affiliate programs are excellent opportunities for affiliates. Love Toner is perfect for affiliates with US traffic, and Excel Toner lets affiliates target Canadian college kids. They also both have coupon code promotions running until the end of August.

With the Underground Hip Hop affiliate program, for example, affiliates can promote 1,000 different t-shirt designs, 100 different sweatshirt/jacket designs, and 100 hat designs to urban-minded college kids. UGHH.com also offers a number of coupon deals, so affiliates can also help those college kids save money. Affiliates can offer their users coupon codes to save 10% off on all orders, $10 on orders of $75 or more, or $25 on orders of $150 or more. The UGHH.com affiliate program also offers a 60-day cookie and flat CPA of 10%.

To target college girls, affiliates can also get in on the Stylefly affiliate program. Emphasizing wearable, feminine pieces from popular women’s designers, it’s the perfect opportunity for affiliates looking to target girls who want to head back to campus looking smart. Stylefly also offers affiliates coupon codes so that they can offer consumers a 25% savings on orders until September 30th, 2009.

Another great opportunity for affiliates who want to target college kids is the T-Shirtmonster affiliate program. In addition to featuring a 60-day cookie, affiliates can promote thousands of cool designs. The really cool thing about T-Shirtmonster is that it lets consumers create their own custom T-Shirts within minutes!

With the cost of books, computer accessories, and the clothing they wear, college kids can be much bigger spenders than other student demographics. So affiliates can’t afford to pass-up targeting them during the back-to-school season.

Not only are there so many things that college kids need, from clothing to supplies, but they’ll also be looking for some savings. By offering them saving on those items, then, affiliates can really take advantage of the back-to-school season.

Because that back-to-school season is such a big one for retail, it’s also a hard one on families going back to school. They’ll be spending a lot of money, so they’ll also want to save wherever they can. What this means for affiliates is that there’s a great opportunity to promote back-to-school savings.

Coupons are going to be particularly good this back-to-school season, because consumers will be spending less. As a recent survey by the National Retail Federation reports:

[...] the average family with students in grades Kindergarten through 12 is expected to spend $548.72 on school merchandise, a decline of 7.7 percent from $594.24 in 2008. Total spending on back to school is expected to reach $17.42 billion.

[...] 56.2 percent of back-to-school shoppers hunting for sales more often, [...] and 40.0 percent are planning to increase their use of coupons. [emphasis my own]

To target school girls, affiliates can use coupons from the Stylefly affiliate program. to offer consumers a 25% savings on orders until September 30th, 2009. And to target the urban-minded student, affiliates can promote clothing and music through the Underground Hip Hop affiliate program and offer coupons that will save consumers 10% off on all orders, $10 on orders of $75 or more, or $25 on orders of $ 150 or more.

Antoher item college kids will want to save on is ink toner, so the Love Toner and Excel Toner affiliate programs both have coupon code promotions running until the end of August. And for helping students save on their multi-media needs, the Nero affiliate program is currently offering affiliates coupon codes that will save their customers 10%.

Just because consumers will spend less this back-to-school season, it doesn’t mean that they need less than they did last year. So by helping back-to-schoolers save on the things they need, affiliates can help get them back into the classroom, and earn commissions for that good-deed too.

Nearly every affiliate has considered making the leap from being a part-time affiliate marketer to being a full-time one. Well, in the latest episode of Coffee with Nicky, our CEO, Nicky Senyard, explores what’s involved in taking that step. From the experience it takes, to how it’s a leap of faith that be based on your what you’re passionate about, Nicky goes over some considerations that every affiliate should make when taking their affiliate marketing activities to the next level.