I get asked this question at least three times a day, but I finally decided to answer one fellows e-mail as a blog post to save myself from having to e-mail back on all of them.  Chris C. From Ohio writes:
“  I’m just starting out making my own sites.  I’m past the basics, and I understand all the 101 stuff of how everything works.  What I need now is a focused idea.  Can you make a suggestion of an affiliate site(s) that I can create?  I’d really love some direction, and if I take it and make money I’ll send you a consulting fee!…;-)  ”

I’ve been using SaS for a couple of month’s now, and I have to say, I’m very impressed. ShareaSale has an excellent selection of smaller advertisers, companies I really like to work with in the marketing realm. Smaller businesses really have an excellent selling position, and are almost always less competitive in the affiliate marketing realm.

Their only real problem I see right now is the lack of functionality in the reporting tools. The “Today’s Stats” for previous days only lists a few advertisers, not all of them. This is not a difficult problem to remedy, and should have been done before the tool was even released.

Adding on to my assortment of affiliate related Firefox extensions, GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension that allows the user to customize the look and usability of a set of specific websites.  I use it mostly for my Gmail account, color coding the labels, setting up different themes, and more, but it also plays a useful role at Commission Junction.  This script requires you to have a Firefox browser, with the GreaseMonkey extension installed.  Then you simply download and install the CJ Enhancer and you’re off and running.

You know eBay makes money.  Million dollar affiliates, million dollar super sellers, million dollar  baby.. wait, the last one was a movie.  eBay is known for the easy money it has to offer, if you know what your doing…and we do.  JDSign Interactive pulled in 82k in February commissions from eBay, and its always growing.

The first thing you need to focus on is the PPC engines, products that sell well on eBay, but don’t charge a ton for PPC bids.  (*Who reads this blog, here is a tip.. Tooth Whitening, USB Memory, CDs, Label Printers).. Thats my members tip for now.  If you are reading this, test these products, but I bet you don’t pass it along to friends.

Affiliates using Commission Junction now have something else to be excited about. This tool allows you to connect to the CJ.com website with your browser and view your current account balance. This is a very useful browser addition to keep you out of CJ.com, and working on actually promoting your affiliate programs! The second image here is what you see with a mouse over.

It allows for you to check your account balance in different intervals, defaulting out at 30 minutes. Download the Extension Here If you receive a pop up because schlottke.org is not added to your accepted list, simply click “Options”, and Add Schlottke.org to the accepted download’s section. Then Click the download link again.

I would love to see ShareaSale provide more information about their merchants, especially how they feel about them. Based on the websites current selling ability, I would like to see a metric used to guide marketers in choosing merchants.

ShareaSale has a great thing going, and my company will really be promoting programs over the next six weeks, but I would love to see them help the Super Affiliates (and everyone, really) in selecting partners.

Have you received this error, and know you didn’t do anything wrong?  Your only problem was not getting any sales, right?  Don’t worry- Commission Junction does not hate you- they simply need to have you selling things (or at the very least, sending traffic to their clients).  First, contact CJ.com to make sure that your account was simply shut down because it had not been active enough for the past 6 months, and then once you find out that is the case, sign up for an account with a different e-mail.

I found these questions posted over on Shawn Hogan’s Digitalpoint forum.   If you have questions for me, send them over and I’ll post my responses.
A) What level of traffic do you need to a site to get people clicking on the affiliate banners?

Depends on your audience, the ads category in relation to your page, the quality of the banner, and the placement of the advertisement within your website.

Here is an update to my previous reviews of Commission Junction, Linkshare, and ShareaSale. I decided to leave the category out of the review previously because although it is a very important part of the company’s success, I could not review the companies based only on my personal experiences. I went out and talked to 25 of my closest internet marketing friends, with varying incomes, internet experience, and affiliate marketing experience. The test group’s income ranged from $0.00 from a brand new affiliate, just starting up, to an elite list of webmasters that make over $50,000.00 a month doing affiliate marketing.

Time for everyone to think outside of the box. A lot of people don’t do this when their marketing for an affiliate program, and that is why they fail.

What I am about to tell you will give you the ability to run the gamut of affiliate programs, promoting them great, in large numbers, without spending a lot of time on each.

Why would I tell you? First, because I want to help you grow as a marketer, but also, because I love to see how people invent upon what I offer for free. So all I ask is that you let me know how you used this tip… (*Plus, I know Im better at marketing, so I don’t need to worry about someone entering my turf )