One common issue I hear all the time from affiliates, especially people who are new to the affiliate space, is “how do I get my affiliate links?”. In  most affiliate networks this is a fairly simple process and some of the networks have put together some great tools to make this very easy. One big problem arises when you have dozens or hundreds of merchants spread across multiple affiliate networks. Disclaimer: This post is monetized with affiliate links. Of course it is. You are reading an affiliate marketing blog… what did you expect? If you sign up for the FMTC toolkit I earn a commiss ..read more

On March 1st Amazon.com is making a fairly substantial change to their commission structure. In the past they had a tiered structure based on the number of units you sold. Their commission rates started at 4% and went up all the way to 8.5% if you sell more than 3131 items per month. This was a great structure for some larger affiliates who could drive significant volume. Even if you just sold 7 items you got bumped up to 6%. Some categories had their own commission structure but the vast majority of products sold on Amazon were included in this tiered structure. With the new commission struc ..read more

The time has come once again for the long awaited (by nobody) Affiliate Summit 2017 Pinnacle Awards Handicapping post. I have done this post for quite a few years now and my record of picking the winners isn’t all that great but this is always a fun post to write so here we go. If you want to read the past year’s posts here you go: 2016 – 2015 – 2014 – 2012 – 2011 – 2010 (BTW, this is an affiliate marketing blog… of course it will be monetized with affiliate links. If this disclosure is even necessary for anyone reading this send me your address and I will send you a ball peen hammer for you ..read more

This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you click and buy something I will probably make some money.  I just returned from my first Type-A Parent Conference and was able to connect with a ton of awesome bloggers. Some of them are well seasoned in affiliate marketing, some have dabbled in it a bit, and some have never used an affiliate link in their life. Along with Greg Hoffman and Karen Garcia I was able to speak about the basics of affiliate marketing as well as show off a few tools that make monetizing a blog post quick and easy. We had some great questions from the audience an ..read more

If you are a blogger you know one of the biggest challenges you will face is how to make money blogging and justify the time and cost of running a blog. In a perfect world we would all love to just share information from the goodness of our hearts but every blog post we make costs us something. It could be sleep, it could be an extra hour with the kids, or it could even be something as simple as relaxing and watching a movie instead of writing. Most bloggers will never come close to making a full time living with their blog. An extra $50 a month for a dinner out with the family (ok, a tri ..read more

ShareASale.com has done an awesome job of putting out some great tools for bloggers over the past few years. If you were at the ShareASale ThinkTank this year I am sure at some point you saw some of these tools but maybe you weren’t able to get a feel for all they can do and how they can help you. In the video below I will show you how you can use the Product Discovery Bookmarklet, the Baskets, and the Make A Page tools together to quickly and easily build out a product display unit featuring products you select. All in all it is about a 2 minute process once you get the hang of it. The Produc ..read more

Once again, Shareasale hit a home run with their ThinkTank event in Chicago. This is the 8th ThinkTank I have been to (Scottsdale, San Diego, Newport Beach, Half Moon Bay, Austin, Denver, Charlotte are the others). I attended 4 of those as primarily an affiliate and 4 as primarily an affiliate manager and while the show has taken on different formats over the year, been in many different locations, and has had different vibes to them they have all been top notch events and this one was no different. Brian, Erica, and the rest of the Shareasale crew really know how to connect their affilia ..read more

For many, many years banner ads and text links were the primary ways affiliates drove traffic to a merchant and sadly in many cases those two forms of links are still the primary affiliates promote a merchant. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against banners and text links. They are an awesome tool to use and definitely have their place on your site and in the affiliate industry. But over the past few years many of the affiliate networks have developed tools that make it much, much easier to integrate products into your posts and on your sites. Some of them are dynamic tools that update whenever t ..read more

For the past few years I have Handicapped the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards (2015, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010). I am not going to look up my track record for my picks because I am too lazy but I know I have gotten a few right and missed a few. Off the top of my head I would put my percentage at around 65%. Of course these picks are just meant for fun and aren’t meant to hurt any feelings. Well, maybe a few feelings but those people have it coming to them!!! There are 6 categories for the Pinnacle Awards and these awards are for the best of the best in the affiliate industry. Nearly all the nom ..read more

We are only 9 days away from Q4 which means nearly every merchant and every affiliate are coming into their three busiest, three most lucrative months. There is a lot of money to be made, a lot of work to be done, and a lot of opportunities in the next 3 months and the more affiliates can be ready the better off they will be. As an affiliate there are many things you should have been doing months ago to get ready for Q4 and the holiday shopping season but there are still a lot of things you can do now to make your life easier (and earn more money) over the next few months. This isn’t an exhaus ..read more