Here are some examples of what a datafeed can do:
http://pajamatree.com/store – datafeedr
http://herbabystuff.com/baby-shop/infant-strollers popshops

If you launch our product datafeed for either Kidorable (CJ) or Buy Cute Aprons in November you qualify for a Commission bump – so let us know!

If you already have content in the form of a site or blog, consider how you can present products to your visitors. Maybe you will simply create a weekly post featuring a merchants product, or your are considering creating an online store as an addition to your current site or blog.  Maybe you want to create an online store with a specific theme.

Product data feeds can help you do all these things and more. To show you what a product datafeed can do, I created an entire site from scratch in three days using the product data feed from a merchant that sells one thing. Pajamas.

First I selected a topic or niche that I thought would perform well in the next few months. I considered how I can promote it and what sort of budget I have to promote it. My promotions will focus on: PPC (google adwords), organic traffic via social media, organic traffic via optimized SEO.

I then determined a keyword friendly domain url and I obtained some affordable web hosting  that supports WordPress. I installed wordpress and the plugins that optimize SEO and user experience.

Then I signed up for a third party Data feed service ( i.e. popshops or datafeedr). I decided on Datafeedr as I like their ability to create categories. Datafeedr was easy to use and has a WordPress Plugin. I then created the images, navigation and store.

A product datafeed, and a third party data feed service allowed me to create an entire product specific website/store without needing to worry about the overhead costs of running an actual eccomerce online store. By partnering with established merchants my ‘online store’ was up and running in just three days (a realistic time frame would be two weeks).

View the site at www.PajamaTree.com

So how can you utilize the product data feeds for your merchant programs?

If your head is spinning don’t worry – Matt Cutts hosts free videos on Youtube form the horses mouth of Google to help you make sense of it all. Here are some topics you will find:

If I don’t need to block crawlers, should I create a robots.txt file?
What are the best practices for PDF optimization?
Do multiple links from one page to another page count?
What role does being in DMOZ play in rankings?

There are over 300 video’s based on ‘questions’ fr m readers so I can’t list them all. These videos’ should be on your list of things to watch while I don’t know say ‘washing the dishes at night’. Throw your lap top onto the kitchen counter and multitask:)

Here is one that you might find interesting;

Underscores vs. dashes in URLs; Underscores vs. dashes in URLs

First  – check out  this newer affiliate forum that has some great affiliates and managers hanging about:

Full of some great affiliate forum threads- I am keenly interested in the Affiliate Manager thread along with the affiliate forum threads related to;  Affiliate resources  on email marketing, compliance, and data Management & acquisition.

The SpeekEZ affiliate forum is new – but it looks as tough the goal really is to share and present information for affiliates that is useful and teaches REAL affiliate skills like promotion, optimizing creative etc. With so many affiliate forums spammed by network marketing offers – I think this one will quickly become a great resource for those wanting to learn more about promoting legitimate affiliate and CPA offers.

Best of all – all those tips will help any blogger or website publisher wanting to promote their own Internet platforms as well! Visit the SpeekEZ affiliate forum.

Here are some other affiliate forums you should consider creating a membership on. (Remember to brand your presence by using the same USERid on each one.)

Her Affiliate on a BestWeb
Her Affiliate on a 5star Affiliate Forums
Her Affiliate on AFFspot affiliate forum
Affiliate Program Directory AffiliateMount.com

Her Affiliate has created a free affiliate training pdf, based on the notes from the webinar.

Click here to download Septembers Free Affiliate Training notes.

Today’s tip is Article writing.

Write some quality, unique, articles on topics relative to your website or blog.  Consider what type of visitor you are looking for and write content for that audience.

For example, if you blog about family, write a series of short articles related to parenting. Something as simple as ‘Funny things children do’ sharing stories of your child’s antics would be unique and well received.

Write a short author bio that contains the search terms for promoting your website. If your blog is a cooking blog don’t write a bio about your teaching background. It should outline your cooking background.  Share your bio with others and ask for feedback ( post your bio here in the comments and I will provide some feedback). Pick three relative keywords for your website link.

My sample below shows that my link words are Outsourced Affiliate Management not my blog or business name. Consider what keywords  people search for.

Article Bio Sample;

About the Author: Karrine McFarlane is the owner of Her Media Marketing and Design Ltd. Established in 2006. A certified affiliate manager, Karrine has over 13 years of experience developing Internet presences for businesses and has been working within the  Internet advertising industry for over 7 years. Outsourced Affiliate Management Solutions http://www.her-media.com

Submitting your articles

Many website publications will only accept unique content. Before submitting your article to bulk article directories consider submitting your articles to some top website publishers within your audience profile.

There are thousnads of article directories out there. Our goal is not backlinks, but developing organic traffic so you only need to submit yoru articles to a few of the top directories such as;

Article Circle

Amazine

Article Geek

A list of top article directories can be found here.

The first is – Internet advertising metrics are already established.

It doe snot matter how wonderful your content is, unless you are in the top 25 of bloggers within your niche (in which case they are paying for your representation and endorsement as a celebrity not ad space) your advertisers will be expecting a Return On Investment (ROI) for their ads. They WILL be tracking your ads performance and they will determine the VALUE of your ad space based on that performance.

Any blogger who is expecting to earn ad revenue is a website publisher – The blogger part is about your writing. The ad revenue part is being a website publisher.

The items your advertisers track are the SAME things you should be tracking when you run affiliate ads to optimize the revenue potential of each ad space and link. So paid ad spots OR CPA ads.

These are things you MUST do in order to wear the hat of a ‘professional website publisher’.

1) Your ad spots should be optimized to increase the Click thru rate. (Think design, layout, and limited outgoing links.)

2) Know your audience /readership and target your ads to their interests and your content. Don’t make your website or blog overly general. A ‘parenting blog’ isn’t specific enough to provide search engine traffic. If you go general – you need to categorize to allow for better ad optimization.

i.e.  A parenting blog about ‘raising boys’ will provide better ad performance then a general parenting blog. Most merchants can target their ads to land on the boys clothing pages which will convert better for a unique audience of moms raising boys.

You should place ads on relevant audience pages. If your blog posts are parenting related don’t put up ads for high end ladies fashion.

3) Know the real value of your ad inventory and understand the terminology used in buying and selling online advertising.

Most blogs do not have enough unique visitors to qualify for advertising buys. This is why you will see (with the exception of those few blog celebrities mentioned above) most successful revenue generating blogs using an ad network.

That big advertiser isn’t going to cut 500 $10 cheques for a banner ad. They are going to cut ONE $5000 cheque to a network for 250 000 unique banner impressions by category, in the top fold, served to UK viewers only.

Unless you can provide a min 500 unique, geotargeted, with a time cap of 1 or 2 in 24, your ad space isn’t likely to perform enough to justify a large brand purchasing banner ad space.

If your goal is to earn advertising revenue as a blogger, it is time to put on the publisher hat and start learning the industry standards for buying , selling, and tracking ad inventory online.

A great way to do just that is to run affiliate program ads. When you can convert an affiliate program, you know you can also make your paid advertisers happy and you will have the performance stats to back up the claim.

Does Facebook Like Your Brand? Info
Our rank and score for top brands across a variety of vertical industries
Which brands are “liked” and “friended” by their loyal customers
Ways to use paid and organic search and social to get more lift in Facebook traffic and search engine results

Powerhouse Holiday Marketing Strategies for Online Retailers info
The webcast will include an overview of online retail and how select categories performed — as well as discussion of how to evaluate your own performance from last year, and what opportunities may exist in the coming holiday season.

And don’t forget to register for our free affiliate training webinar - Friday September 15th 2011.

You’re right. I hear that from bloggers a lot. Why don’t they convert?  There are a few reasons but the top two are;

1) Your content is not a close enough match or to generic.

2) You have too many outgoing links

Allot of bloggers find that sidebar affiliate banner ads don’t convert. Affiliate ads can be tricky, the content has to match (i.e. seo’d posts). They work better as they create organic search engine sales down the road …

So if you have a generic parenting blog skip the sidebar banners this month but don’t just give up on affiliate ads. Instead look at your archived content.

That’s’ why we offer a 500 by 100 banner that fits on the bottom of posts. A lot of our affiliates simply place the banners on old archived posts that are relevant each month – keeping their new content clean while monetizing their older content.

Give it a try, you won’t see large volume or immediate results but you will build more consistent ongoing affiliate revenue down the road.

As a publisher you have limited prime ad space on each of your pages. With each page you create you are faced with the decision of what to place in these spots (ideally you will have an adserver tag which will rotate your offers/campaigns but that is another training post).

An in house ad would mean that you are promoting an offer to your visitors that benefits your website over an advertisers campaign.

Here are some examples of possible inhouse campaigns:

1) Announcing something new on your website such as a ‘giveaway page or new tool’.
2) Encouraging sign ups; (register now) or newsletter subscriptions (get offers to your inbox for free)
3) Featuring another page of your website
4) Visitor surveys

Sometimes (especially with a new site) increasing your subscriber base is more important then a paid advertisement . Why? The  value of your ad space is based on your traffic volume. So until you have enough visitors and subscribers (those who return to your site) the spot has little or no value as a paid advertisement.

To recap:

1) In house campaigns are not paid advertisements but your own ads and offers that increase your traffic /subscriber base or announce new features on your site.

2) When you first create your design and page layouts the top spaces should be used to increase your followers and encourage return visits to your website.