Blog To Great

Affiliate Marketing, Great Revenue Techniques for Your Blog

BLOG TIPS - Certainly a popular method for bloggers to make money, affiliate marketer is one of the most effective ways to advertise online and is one of the easiest ways for you to make a profit online. Affiliate
Marketing is a simple agreement between a merchant and a blogger, the affiliate, to allow the use of the blog for the promotion of the merchant’s products.  It's accomplished by a simple link to the merchant’s website.

For that, the merchant will pay you a commission on all of the sales generated by your blog / site. Every time a reader clicks on the link on your blog and makes a purchase you'll earn your  commission.

Affiliate marketing programs are said to be win-win situations for both the merchant and the affiliate (blogger) because of the pay-for-performance arrangement. Both the merchant and the affiliate get some benefits in the affiliate marketing deal. For the merchant, they get a wider market and more prospective customers for their product or service.  The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic their product / service gets which may become actual sales.

Live Nation's New Affiliate Program

BLOG NEWS - Concert promotion company, Live Nation has launched their own affiliate program  through Commission Junction, good to consider for your blog, but if you're a ticket broker or reseller, don't bother trying to sign on.  The huge firm says in its “Advertiser Details” page at Commission Junction: “Ticket brokers and other companies involved in the resale of tickets are not permitted. Companies, websites or newsletters that promote ticket presale passwords or access codes are not permitted.”   The company's only quietly launching their site, by advertising and taking applications on their CJ page only, while leaving their own official affiliates site empty, with a “ Live Nation Affiliates Program coming soon!” header.

But before you rush to sign on, note that LN is offering only 1.5 percent commisstion on sales, considerably lower number than the industry average of around 7%. So, bloggers should consider that for a ticket purchase of $350, you'd make just $5.25.

If you're interested in signing up, bloggers must first register with Commission Junction to participate in Live Nation’s affiliate program. Commission Junction tracks orders through referral cookies, but these cookies expire after 45 days, allowing for receipt of commissions on customers who purchase tickets up to 45 days after their initial visit to the site.  

No word yet on which Live Nation events will be part of the affiliate program.

Is Twitter a Good Affiliate Marketing Tool ?

     Blog Tips - The Search Engine Journal reports that Amazon.com is refusing to pay commissions on affiliate sales that were generated via Twitter.  Apparently they adhering to their Terms of Service and  claiming that any link must come from “Your Site” in order to be eligible for commission.

“Your site” means any site that you will link to the Amazon Site (and which you will identify in your Program application)

This has provoked considerable concern from many bloggers and affiliate marketers who worry, because Twitter has the potential for affiliate marketing (provided you do it correctly) and Amazon's move could lead other networks to disallow Twitter leads.  Though I haven't heard many issues over the use of RSS feeds and wonder if Amazon will crackdown here too.

Your thoughts?  Are you using, and have you had success with Twitter as an Affiliate Marketing tool ?

See post, at SearchEngineJournal.com