Affiliate promotion via blogging

Why is blogging big and how can I make money from it?
Blogging is popular because it makes website editing easy. You may post articles, images, and many other forms of content without having hardly any HTML experience. You do not need to worry about uploading or downloading and with some blogging software you can just send it an email to be posted.

I know many of you understand what is blog is, but making money from it is another story. The money is to be made when you blog has lots of eyes on it. Many search engines like blogs because of the frequent update aspects. Usually good blogs are updated a few times per week and if the information is good you can start to get blog subscribers.

Blogging tools from Click Kingdom
Some of our websites already have blogs and if they do you can use our content which is syndicated via the blogging software. We have also added some RSS (Real Simple Syndication) tools for you to add to your blog. We have product descriptions, products reviews and more. The Click Kingdom RSS tools are available here.

Good Resources for getting started with Blogging.

• http://Blogger.com (Google's Free Blogging Software)
• http://FeedBurner.com (Syndication tool for getting your word out there faster)
• Wikipedia's Blogging dictionary
  
• http://www.squidoo.com/ (this is not a blog but something called a lense, still very useful)

There are many famous people with blogs as well as many famous bloggers who got that way from writing. One of the blogs that gets the most traffic is celebrity gossip blogs like Parez Hilton and more.

If you have any resources that you would like to share please post comments.

Getting the best results

Getting the best results

Many of you ask how can I improve my conversion ration (number of clicks to number of sales), after all the better your conversion the more money you make. One of the best ways to do this it to improve the pre-sale information on your site or blog.

Many of you post product information such as price, photos, and maybe some content. What I see a lot of the time is old or out of date images or product information. When a potential customer sees two totally different product shots or prices etc... it will not help your cause.

What we have done for affiliates is to create simple syndication tools for product information (photos, prices, descriptions). As long as you use the code from our products page you will always have up to date information on your site.

One of the best items on our products page is the ability to customize product shots. For example some of you have websites with white background colors others have blue backgrounds etc... some of you need very large images, while others need very small images. We have provided the ability to customize images to exactly what you like. The image has information in the image address which is totally customizable. Below we have added an illistration to explain how it works.


We have included an example below using the above information:
http://zenmed.com/!global/imageGen/?id=145&w=200&h=239&c=FFFFFF&m=10&p=true
The resulting image is, for sake of ease though we suggest using the image tool

New Click Kingdom Flash Banners

We are excited to introduce new banners for signing up affiliates. Remember with Click Kingdom you get 10% of what any affiliate below you earns in commission. Below are some examples of the new eye catching banners. Remember to visit the banners page to get your code with tracking links.

New Rosacea Banners

New Rosacea Banners Added

We have added new Rosacea banners, these should keep your conversion rates high and will work in almost any site. As per usual to see all of the banners or to get your personalized code including tracking please visit clickkingdom.com/banners/index.html?bannerCat=2

Here are a few examples

New Banners (Hemorrhoids products)

New banners are available again. We have posted the new hemorrhoids banners which may now be accessed in the banners section of Click Kingdom. We have included as included a few examples below, but for actual tracking code please visit http://clickkingdom.com/banners/index.html?bannerCat=7

New Skin Care Banners

New Banners (General Skin Care)

We have received a lot of requests for new banners, so we though it may be a good idea to produce a bunch of banners for general skin care because a lot of you like to link to the home page of zenmed. I have posted the new banners below, but in order to get your linking code you will need to visit the new banners page at http://clickkingdom.com/banners/?bannerCat=3

We will also be releasing a lot of new promotional tools for our hemorrhoids line very soon

FYI-SPY 60% Comissions

The latest site added to click Kingdom, FYI-SPY has become very popular. Many affiliates are seeing a great ROI with the high converting content. Combine the conversion with the 60% payout and this has turned into a real money maker.

Take a look at this site and I think you will see the value

http://fyi-spy.com

We have seen the best conversion coming from those affiliates who are using the contextual links or the larger banners ads. Give them a try today.

Contextual Ads from Click Kingdom

To put it simply, you put a piece of code on your pages, and we underline words which if the visitor to your site hovers the mouse over, they get to see an ad for the related product.

The thing that makes this so effective is all of the ads that are served are totally relevant to the words they are served on and that the user has to click on the hover ad to get to our site with your tracking code. This more selective process makes the quality of traffic coming to our site much high and should enhance your conversion rate accordingly.

To be as quick to the point as possible we created some common questions and answers for you to read.

• What does it look like?
• We could describe it, but better yet have a look by clicking here.
  
  
• Is it hard to install?
• No, just put in code, like any other link. The one difference is that it must be put at the bottom of the page, just before the closing body tag .
• Can I restrict the area where it shows up?
• Yes. Simply add a div tag with the class ckNoLink to areas where you do not want any links to appear
• Can I limit the category of ads that appear on my site?
• Yes, there are two options. One is all categories and the second is to choose the category that you want from the banners page.
• Where do I get this code from?
• All code for the contextual links is found on the banners page under the category of contextual ads.
• Can I add additional words to link?
• Yes, use the contact form and send us the words you would like, in most cases we can add that word for you in 24 hours.

Please contact us if you still have any questions or concerns. We are always looking for ways to improve, so please give us your feedback.

N/A Referring URLS in your reports

It would appear that the lack of referer information that was occurring on direct purchasing links to the old shopping cart (Example: http://zenmed.com/shoppingcart?AddToCart=2&aid=123) was caused by a feature in the legacy cart which redirected to the new cart prior to tracking the click.

The new cart does track click information as normal, but due to recent security patches to Microsoft IE the refer information was unfortunately being dropped prior to the user reaching their final destination, this issue did not effect Mozilla based web browsers.

We have resolved this issue by moving the tracking module to the top of the code on the legacy shopping cart, this will ensure that all information is tracked prior to the redirect to the new shopping cart.

Google Webmaster Tools Set (Important Stuff)

Ok, they only have at least 60% of all searches performed on the internet, so is being well positioned in Google that important? I guess you could say yes. Google is the biggest player in search and they want to help you place well in their search engine.

They have introduced webmaster tools that are in place to help you figure out if what you are doing will get you placed at the top or kicked out. These tools include:

• Site Map, so Google can locate all of the pages in your site
• Site Status - you will be able to tell if you are index and all of the details with the indexing
• Content Submit, where you can add your URL or other forms of content.
• Google's webmaster blog which includes information on what they are up to.
• Google's discussion group for webmasters - where you can discuss Google with others
• Google help, no explenation needed

The URL where you can find this word of knowledge is:

• http://google.com/webmasters

The art of making money with Click Kingdom and PPC

How can I spend less then I make. The best way is to have clarity on what is performing for you. We know that the price of PPC from both Google and Yahoo have become out of control, but sometimes it is worth the money and other times it is totally not worth it.

We have created a set of tools to allow you to know what is working and what is not.

Here are a list of tools that will help and how they help.

1. The first tool is the campaign tool, this tool allows you to seperate off diferent promotional methods. Say for example you are advertising in Google and Yahoo. You would probably want to know atleast did my last sale come from Google or Yahoo. This tool allows you to do this. On the PPC link creater page there is a button which allows you to create a new campaign, click on this link and a window will pop up asking you for a name, you may want to call it something like Google PPC and then press the save button. You will now have the option to select this campaign. You will now notice the link it provides you with will look something like this:
   
   http://zenmed.com?a=YOURID&c=NEWCAMPAIGNID
   
   This new campaign ID will allow you to seperate the sales that came from Google on the reports page. Now you know atleast where the sales have come from and you can figure that Google was worth the money or not.
   
   
2. To make tracking even better, wouldn't you like to know what keyword did this for you? We have thought of that as well. The keyword tracking utility alllows for this as well. Simply add your keyword to the address and it will be tracked through to your reports. An example of what it looks like is
   
   Http://zenmed.com?a=YOURID&C=CAMPAIGNID&q=KEYWORD

If you would like to use this tool now, we have made it easy. The PPC Link builder is available right now and it will help you make money.

Blank Referring URLs in your reports

The reasons you may not see a referring URL are:

• The clickthough opened in a new window
• The user has a firewall that blocks this
• They are using a proxy server that blocks this
• The traffic is infact a Search Engine Spider ( we have updated our reports to display this information for most major spiders)
• There is a bug with the latest patch in windows that sometimes blocks this

We are not putting these items out as an excuse, but to give you as much clarity as possible. Everytime we can get where the traffic is coming from we will display it in the reports.

We do provide the simple text links and banners that a lot of you use, but we have also provided you the tools that you may want to look at. Some of the new items that are available are:

• Contextual links (double underline links)
  
• Custom Skin Care Questionairs that are filled out on your site
• Spanish Banners
• Google Adsense like ads
• XML Syndicated product pictures and content
• Product pictures with changable background colors

We are always looking for more ideas, so if you would like to see a new type of ad please send it to us.

First lets talk about where is the traffic coming from. Here is a ranked list from the latest web statistics as of July 2006:

1. Google (49.2%)
2. Yahoo (23.8%)
3. MSN (9.6%)
4. AOL (6.3%)
5. ASK (2.6%)
6. All OTHERS (8.5%)

What are the major web directories?

1. DMOZ
2. Yahoo Directory
3. Best of the Web

More information to come regarding where to get listed. Your input is desired

PPC Click Fraud Keeping your eyes open

So with Google and Yahoo getting in all sorts of legal trouble for click fraud are you thinking what does this mean to me?

We like many of you got the notices about Google and Yahoo Click Settlements. Did we take part in these settlements? NO, not because we want to give them more money then we had to. We did not take part in these settlements because the reward that was being offered was not even close to a slap on the wrists to them.

Has click fraud slowed down? We do not think it has, why would it, they make more money from more "traffic". The only thing we have done to make this feel better is to employ the servies of a click fraud prevention service.

Should you use one of these services? I guess it comes down to the question if there is really 20% click fraud, then is 20% of your advertising budget more then the cost of the service? If your answer is yes then it makes sense for you to give one a try. Who know maybe you will increase your bottom line.

Pay Per Click General Information

The most common way of promoting product sales on the internet is Pay Per Click promotion. Everybody know the big players:

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Search Marketing

What about the other guys are they worth marketing with? We in the past have experimented with other PPC players with mixed results. I am not totally sold on their ability to drive quality traffic.

With Google having a monopoly of Internet Search and Yahoo being the closest thing to second place is it worth advertising with others? Some of the other players in the game which include:

• Miva (formerly Ah-Ha.com)
• Knoodle.com
• GoClick.com
• and the list can go on...

We would love to ask your feedback on what you have heard and what you experienced with these engines and if they are worth setting up ads with.