eBay Duplicate Listing Tool

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Duplicate eBay ListingsIf you’ve been shelled up for the past few weeks, you’ll not have noticed that eBay are taking action on duplicate listings and from mid May in the eBay May 2011 update amongst many other changes.

eBay have released a tool so that you can check your listings in advance for duplicates and take action on them now before they end them automatically in mid may.

You can find eBay duplicate listing tool at the link below:
http://ebay.promotionexpert.com/sellercommunication/uk

As mentioned in May they’ll be automatcially ending any fixed price listings eBay see’s as being duplicates regardless of sales performace and will be happening to all categories with the exception of Cars, Motorcycles and Vehicles, Parts and Events and Tickets.

eBay give you some tips in their update information for duplicate listings, if you’ve not done so already, check to see if your category is having the variation format introduced and learn this forma very quickly as it will change the dynamics of your category. You can learn more about this and the other changes in the previous article Making Sense of the Pending eBay UK Updates in May 2011

About iContact Free Edition

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The following is a press release from iContact regarding their newly release free edition of their product, allowing users to manage up to 500 subscribers and to send upto 2000 emails free each month. Also for comlpeteness, I’ve included the video too, which I thought was rather cool:


New Product Brings Email Marketing & Social Marketing to Individuals, Small Businesses & Non-Profits for Free

iContact-Free-EditionRALEIGH, N.C., April 13, 2011 iContact Corp., a leading email marketing and social marketing company, today announced it is launching iContact Free Edition. This no-cost version of its flagship email marketing and social marketing tool makes it easy for individuals, community organizations and small businesses without a large budget to easily stay in touch with their subscribers and fans via email, Facebook and Twitter.

iContact Free Edition enables anyone to easily manage a contact database, select a professionally designed template, send out an email and social network message, and track the opens, clicks and social views.

“Today, we are announcing a major new product launch for iContact designed to make email marketing and social marketing available to everyone in both their professional and personal lives,” said Ryan Allis, CEO, iContact. “We want to provide easy access to free email marketing and social marketing tools backed by world-class customer service.” Here is more about iContact Free Edition in the words of our co-founders: http://blog.icontact.com/blog/helping-more-companies-causes-succeed-with-icontact-free-edition/

About iContact Free Edition

iContact’s proven email marketing solution empowers businesses to engage, educate and retain customers, targeted prospects and website visitors. Now individuals or small organizations with subscriber lists of 500 or less can have email marketing, social marketing, event marketing and surveying for free.

iContact Free Edition includes:

  • Email creation, sending and tracking capabilities for up to 500 subscribers and 24 designer templates for effective, eye-catching messages quickly and easily – http://www.icontact.com/messagebuilder-templates
  • Social Media Tools Integration with Facebook and Twitter allows users to create and share links to their email communications from within the application. iContact will automatically post a web version of the email message and report related views and clicks on the user’s tracking dashboard – http://www.icontact.com/social-tools
  • Compatibility with iPhone and Android mobile apps allows users to manage contacts, access and send messages, and view detailed tracking reports, all in real time – http://www.icontact.com/icontact-iphone and http://www.icontact.com/android
  • Built-in survey tool enables users to easily create questions and choose a response type, such as text box, radio button, drop-down menu or selector – http://tinyurl.com/3vgl5jj

According to a recently released 2011 Outlook report from Borrell Associates (ClickZ, March 11, 2011), the SMB market accounted for more than 70 percent of all online advertising expenditures including email, search and run-of-site display last year. While individual SMBs on average spent less than $12,000 on all advertising in 2010 – about $2,300 of which went online – they represented 95 percent of U.S. business locations.

About iContact

iContact is a purpose-driven company based in Raleigh, NC, working to make email marketing and social marketing easy so that small and midsized companies and causes can grow and succeed. Founded in 2003, iContact has more than 300 employees and more than 700,000 users of its leading email marketing software. iContact also provides the event marketing platform Ettend. As a B Corporation, iContact utilizes the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model, donating 1% of payroll, 1% of employee time to community volunteering, 1% of equity, and 1% of product to its local and global community as part of its social mission. iContact works hard to maintain a fun, creative, energetic, challenging and community-oriented company culture.

For media inquiries, contact Leigh Anne Varney, Varney Business Communication, 415.387.7250, [email protected].

Visit us on online at iContact.com, Twitter @iContact, iContact LinkedIn Group and our Facebook Fan Page.

Email Marketing. How to Win Friends and Influence People

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John Hayes iContact

John Hayes iContact

The following is a guest article from a colleague John Hayes from iContact. I first met John via LinkedIn a few months back and we had a call and laid foundation for further communications.

After meeting John at the NEC for the Internet Retailing conference a few weeks back, it was only natural that when it came to looking at providers for the email marketing campaigns that were being worked on, that iContact would be a natural choice.

When the pricing turned out to be exactly the same as the other parties we were considering and the company being used for the marketing, said, “Yes, our largest client uses iContact”, that was it, the order was in.

As you’ll see from the article below, email marketing, just like business in general really is a personal affair. I’ve enjoyed reading the article, I’m sure you will do too.

Email Marketing – How to win friends and influence people

Put aside all the science around the art of selling for one minute. The first lesson in any sales course should be the basic fact that people buy from people they like.

If you don’t have chemistry with your clients you can kiss goodbye to their business.

As with any relationship, selling is a two-way street. It’s about engaging your clients in a conversation and like any decent conversation it is as much about listening as it is about talking.

In the online environment, where we are all getting more social, this has never been more important. The Shotgun approach to marketing just doesn’t cut it anymore. This is equally as true in a tried and tested medium such as email marketing as it is on the social networks like facebook and twitter.

How to lose friends and disenfranchise people

Bombarding your clients with untargeted, irrelevant and seemingly desperate sales messages will more likely turn your customers into ex-customers than win any repeat business.

Let’s look at an example of how a good deal turned sour when a lazy marketer didn’t want to make friends with me.

Attracted by a cheap park and fly offer at an airport hotel, I booked a family room the night before an early morning flight leaving the car in the hotel car park for the duration of my vacation. The hotel experience was OK, with smooth transfers to and from the airport, and I was more than happy with the cost which was only slightly more expensive than a week’s parking at a nearby airport car park.

And then the emails started arriving.

Seaside breaks, city breaks, wedding packages, free dinning, two nights for the price of one, turkey and tinsel Christmas breaks, happy hours – you name it, they sent it. Relentlessly. I received an email from them every single day until eventually I hit the unsubscribe button.

It was as if they were desperate for my business (I guessed they were having cash flow problems). They didn’t take the time to get to know me and swamped me with offers I just wasn’t interested in. The experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I’ll probably never stay with them again.

How they could have won me as a friend

The hotel had a lot of information about me and my family. They knew my home address, marital status and the age of my kids. They knew which airport we used, the airline we were flying with and our final destination.

From this information they could have made some educated guesses and targeted their email marketing campaigns more appropriately. They could have even used email to get to know me a little better by following up on my stay with a short survey. Just a little thought and a little targeting and we could have been friends.

Let’s work at this relationship

Email Marketing is perhaps one of the most mature marketing techniques available to today’s online marketers. So why do apparently sophisticated companies continue to blast out irrelevant, untargeted and plain boring emails.

The fact is Email Marketing works. Even for lazy marketers (like the above un-named hotel chain) email remains one of the most cost effective and successful marketing techniques available. Return on investment from Email Marketing can be staggering with an ROI of more than 600% not uncommon. But a failure to effectively target and engage with your customers will ultimately result in failure.

Just because something works in the short-term doesn’t mean it couldn’t be even better in the long term with a little time and effort in building relationships.
You might think you have a great offer that you need to shout about – but when you are selling to your friends the message really shouldn’t be all about you. It should be about your customer’s individual needs, desires and interests. Make them feel part of your business and not just source of income and they’ll stay friends with you for years to come.

John Hayes – iContact, EMEA Business Development Executive

iContact is a purpose-driven company working to make email marketing and social marketing easy so that small and mid-sized companies and causes can grow and succeed.

For a free 30 day trial of iContact’s Email Marketing software visit http://genieandthegeek.icontact.com

eBay as a Business – Three Different Ways of Approaching It

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There are so many different ways that a business can be approached from, however I believe in keeping things simple where-ever possible and here are three top tips for when approaching eBay as a business.

#1 Think Like a Buyer

eBay buyers are a special breed, you need to at least try and understand them and thier whims, desires and fears when dealing with them.

After answering so many questions from buyers, I have come to the conclusion that they are:

  1. Scared of being ripped off
  2. Scared of being ripped off
  3. Scared of being ripped off
  4. Scared of being ripped off
  5. Scared of being ripped off
  6. Scared of being ripped off
  7. Scared of being ripped off
  8. Scared of being ripped off
  9. Scared of being ripped off
  10. Just like any other buyer

9/10 for being “Scared of being ripped off” is a bit harsh, but that is my personal conclusion. If you look at buyers emails, with this in mind, those mindless questions make sense. Why else would a buyer be asking a question, if it is not to test the seller to see if they are real (ignoring their thousands of feedback) and if they respond quickly, then they know if something goes wrong, they feel half assured that something will be done about it.

I never saw myself as a sales person ever on eBay, I saw myself as a provider of quality information, wrapped up in great customer service. Nothing else.

So its your job to ensure that the customer feels safe, by providing:

  • Good product images (although I am now certain that these need to be “exceptional” to make a real difference)
  • Accurate product specific information
  • An accurate description
  • Easy to read postage
  • A clear layout of the information provided
  • Quality branding of your business

The last one has almost become an absolute requirement. With the focus on customers, if you’re presented with something that looks like its been made by a blind monkey in a dog shed, to that of a professional, I’m pretty sure you know whom you’d buy from.

#2 Time Really is Money

eBay can be a very time intensive environment when compared to other marketplaces. There is a steep learning curve and the customer service requirements are high, its very easy to fall into a self centred trap, focusing on just plodding along, without focusing upon expanding and maintaining profit.

eBay can become very personal and its your job to ensure that it does not, a simple tool such as a time sheet can help you work out how many hours each week you are spending on each task.

Taking the time to make a sales projection can also be a good goal setting exercise, this does not have to be power point charts or excel sheets, literally by grabbing a peice of paper and writing “sales projection” at the top of it, will put you in front of 90% of the competition, because you are now working ON your business not IN your bussiness.

Shed Working

Ever considered working from a Shed?

Back to the sales projection, if you can use excel, that would be handy, using your previously recorded sales, use these to map out expected sales and what growth you would like to see. You do not need to worry about being accurate, that will loosely come with time and even the best strategies in hindsight, turn out to be a lot of luck in the right order.

Its also likely that you are working from a home office, if you are struggling with excessive hours, then why not take a serviced office, for what is peanuts a month and actually make the step of “going to work”. Most amusing, you could join the millions that work from a shed, see shedworking.co.uk.

#3 Know that eBay is Going to Change & Embrace it

I was looking at the eBay.com community boards and those on a few American sites and they are littered with people going nuts about the pending updates on eBay.com, there are some hefty changes going on in the eBay May 2011 update that I documented a few weeks back.

Fact. eBay always changes, it always has done and always will do.

My point is simple, let everyone else bitch about the changes, you should be smart and work out how they affect you and then plan to change with them.

Conclusion

Those who know me well, know that I commonly preach and personally aspire to the following statement:

What you focus upon, expands.

I sincerely hope I’ve given you a slightly different outlook on eBay and how to approach it. Not only as a buyer with their ‘concerns’, but as a business, with a simple timesheet and sales projection and finally that eBay always changes and its much easier to work with it, as with anything, than against it.

eBay Turbo Lister Tutorial Video’s

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I first started using eBay’s Turbolister about 7/8 years ago and and it was pretty basic and not particularly stable either. Its come on leaps and bounds in the past few years and is now a feature rich tool to allow smaller sellers to list in volume on eBay.

eBay Turbo Lister

Which Business Type is the eBay TurboLister Ideal For?

eBay’s Turbolister is ideal for businesses that need a tool that is beyond the Sell Your Item form (SYI), can schedule listings and help them grow to the next stage of their evolution.

The following statement is what certain parties will not like being published:

As with any tool, no matter if that is TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro, eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor, 247TopSeller or similar, any form of automation is going to speed up the business and ideally (as not always) lead to more sales.

While there are extremes in all cases, I personally suggest using Turbolister, when a business has an inventory base of around 20 to 150 and the business is exclusively eBay. Where the business has outgrown or outgrowing the SYI form, has a set limit to the number of SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units, or just “products”).

You can also use Turbo Lister to list onto multiple eBay sites, this is a feature that is sometimes missing in paid-for-software products. Ironically Turbo Lister is still defined as being “NEW!” on eBay’s documentation, however has been around on eBay longer than myself :X

Which Business Type is the eBay TurboLister Not Ideal For?

Turbolister should never be dismissed entirely, infact its a great tool to help smaller sellers build up to using more comprehensive tools for running their business from. Its almost a “right of passage” to be able to say, “I’ve toiled with eBay’s turbolister”.

eBay’s Turbolister is not ideal for merchants that are or are aiming to sell on multiple platforms, the reason is simple, its eBay only and there are inexpensive tools/software products that can allow you to sell on multiple platforms at once and still have a similar power to that of TurboLister. Also when trying to manage large catalogs of stock/data, then there are far superior tools out there and inversely, if you have a small number, then Turbo Lister can be a distraction.

eBay Turbo Lister Tutorial Videos

These are not mine, they’re straight from eBay. They will give you an inside view on the tool and how it works in real life.


Download eBay Turbo Lister

You can download the UK version of Turbo Lister here:
http://download.ebay.com/turbo_lister2/setupUK.exe

If you are a USA eBay seller, you can download the US version here:
http://download.ebay.com/turbo_lister2/setupUS.exe

eBay Turbo Lister Links

Here are links to find out more about the eBay Turbo Lister application:

Thanks for the Feedback

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I just wanted to add a quick post regrading the feedback from the first video format post last week and to say thank you.

The response was immense, Skype lit up like a candle, email went crazy and the article itself ended up on AuctionBytes, although I suspect my presentation skills had little to do with it :)

A Better Way

So what a better way to say thank you, would really be another video!

I’ve taken on board your comments, I’ve listed them below and again any feedback good or bad is always welcomed. You’re learning with me on this experience, so its very much valued.

  • Adding an introduction slide
  • Liked the web camera insertion of me in the bottom right
  • Move the web camera down to eye level
  • Make some bullet points to read from/Script. Like if you were giving a presentation
  • Control the um’s and ah’s
  • Don’t include seller information (well blur as much as possible)
  • Sound quality altered between headset and desk microphone
  • @Phil Polish my bold spot
  • @Grek Don’t wear an orange hoody, looks like “Guantanamo Bay.”
  • @Lack of Bristolian accent
  • Shut up

Thanks

Comments?

Any feedback you might have is thoroughly welcomed, the comment box is below or a contact form for email or you can contact me via Skype or phone on the Contact Matthew page

How to Legitimately “Keyword Stuff” eBay Listings

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Keyword StuffingLets be ultra clear here, I do not endorse this practice. It’s the reason why I am publishing this, so that its noticed and then action is taken upon this practice.

In the next few minutes I’ll be taking you through the practice of how to keyword stuff eBay listings in a manner that gives them extra weight to normal search.

Ground Work

Before we can start we need to understand how the eBay search works. A while back eBay introduced something called ‘Best Match’, while I’m not going to cover all the factors right now that i suspect are included, one of the biggest changes that best match allowed was the inclusion of factors outside of the listing title itself and time the listing had left to run. A obvious variant to the search is the eBay Top Rated Seller (TRS) status, this I used to suspect caused a +/-20% increase in sales, now seeing this move on three accounts, its more like a sales increase/decrease of at least 30%, this is how pivitol a single factor can be in the eBay “Best Match” search.

So, we now know that eBay search is based (by default) on a process called “Best Match” and like any algorithm it can be bent and its this bending and the manner in which it can be bent I’ve taken a dislike to.

The eBay Title

In days gone-by, it was only the title that impacted the search result, however with the new best match method of returning search results can be influenced and as suggested its not only the title that can effect the results. However in this instance I’m going to be looking at how the title and crucially the variations can influence the “Best Match” results.

The eBay Title

Up to 55 characters, it used to be less than this and the extra 10 chars were welcomed a few years back. These for most sellers are the main focus of keywords.

Item Specifics

When these were first introduced, it was said that these would not influence the search results, however they do, but not all the time. I not looked at this properly, but it appears there are mixed results on the use of item specifics in main search results.

Variation Detail

Now here is the jackpot. Its become clear, as I will prove in the examples to follow, that the labels for the variations do appear in the primary search result and these effectively extend your items by an extra 31 characters per variation value.

Lets spell this out in plain English:

If you use variations and add extra variations, the values you place in the variation field directly influence the eBay search results.

And then to top this off, again in plain English:

This does not stop at just a possible extra 31 characters extension to the title, you can do this numerous times, if you did it twice, you load your listings up with 62 extra characters

Now, can you understand why I disagree with this?

No Apologies

I’ve pondered whether I should use a live example or not and decided that I just cannot show the results properly without using a real life example.

I strongly disagree with this abuse of search and make no apologies for highlighting this seller specifically, because I feel is wrong, a blatant abuse of the best match and in direct  violation with the eBay Search and browse manipulation policy.

The Example

For this I’m going to be including a new format to the site, video. Now I do apologise in advance, this one of my first attempts and just like the rest of the blog, its a learning experience and you’re learning with me. SO any feedback you have, good or bad, please post in the comments box below.

The Title

From the video, you will see that this seller has in fact three titles, extending their title by up to an extra 62 characters.

Original Title: LADIES PINEAPPLE TOE POST FLAT FLIP FLOPS SHOES UK 3-8
Sub Title: Girls Ladies Womens Woman Bell
Sub Title: Wedge Sandals Comfort Leisure

The following keywords were not in the main title:

  • Girls
  • Sandals
  • Comfort
  • Leisure
  • Womens
  • Women

However as clearly shown in the video, these are in fact part of the search.

I Need Your Help!

This is where I need your assiatance to help me. As mentioned before, this whole blogging experience is new to me and the video format is also very new too and I’m out of practice from the video’s I’ve made in the past and the format is entirely different.

Could you read the questions below and post any feedback either directly as comments or directly via my contact page I’d really value any input you may have.

  • What did you think of the video?
  • Did you like the insert of myself in the bottom right?
  • Did you think I looked a “tool” with the big headset I use?
  • What could I do to improve?

Online Transport Marketplace uShip offers solution for the pickup problem on eBay Germany

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uShip LogoeBay Germany launches new Transport microsite – Online Transport Marketplace uShip offers solution for the pickup problem on eBay Germany.

Berlin, 4 March 2010 – From March, a new eBay Germany Microsite will help eBay buyers and sellers solve the tricky problem of delivery for those hard to transport items such as furniture and household items, cars, and motorcycles. Too often, these items are simply listed as pickup because neither buyers nor sellers know how much it will cost or how to best to arrange transport for things that are simply too bulky to go through the normal parcel services.

uShip’s eBay micro sites solves the Pick Up Only problem by enabling customers to get free quotations for delivery with just postcode details and a few quick clicks of the mouse, before they purchase their eBay items. uShip sends the details out to their many thousands of registered transport companies who then quote competitively the reverse auction platform to the customer, who is then free to select whichever quote they prefer.

The German eBay microsite is a further continuation of uShip’s expansion, building on the successful partnership with eBay motors in the US, and the existing integration with mobile.de, eBay’s German car classifieds subsidiary.

With the launch of the French localised website in January, uShip continues to make its stamp in Europe where it is truly able to offer customers an international service, whether their transport requirements are just a single item going a few miles locally, cross Europe deliveries, or containers for international shipments.

About uShip
uShip helps relieve the stress and high cost of moving hard-to-transport items, such as cars, antiques household goods, boats, freight, heavy equipment, pets and more.  Since it was founded in 2004, the uShip marketplace has attracted nearly £170 million in business transactions, one million customers and 200,000 service providers.  uShip operates globally with localised functionality in the Germany, UK, France, Netherlands, U.S.,  Canada, and Australia.  http://www.uship.com/de/

Contact:
Lutz Philip Hecker, uShip [email protected] Press Officer, +31 (0) 20 7944580

Such a Small World. Happy Wednesday

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20110330-102540.jpg
(Not the best picture, but it was stunning this morning)

Work this out, I’m walking to the third place, it’s raining and a beep appears from the pocket, it’s facebook, I’m now chatting to a friend on the opposite side of the planet. The world now feels really small and he’s enjoying the time out.

I look around, it’s raining, I’m the only one with sunglasses on, stepping in puddles. It appears that starting with the mindset that every day is going to be a ‘Happy Day’ is working well and I take a few minutes to chat to Clive who stands in almost any weather to meet his customers and have those briefest of conversations while he earns a decent wage, working, rather than begging, with the BigIssue.

Another pop up on the phone and it’s a colleague from India, we’re just checking over a few things from the day before’s design and are implementing it today. I’ve already spoken to the PA this morning and the content team are doing well, we had some issues with the quality of work from a new employee yesterday from the Philippines, I don’t think he realised we check the work so excessively with the tools I made, but it was already in-hand and process was working well.

I’m now sat slurping coffee, always black to start with, the blend here always makes a wonderful, full flavoured drink, after a 15 min conversation with Karol, whom I now class as a friend, rather than an counter clerk in some coffee shop, joking about the coffee and service in Starbucks, coaching him on the stark realisation that 1 in 1000 or so customers you’re going to annoy, upset or in their eyes under-deliver no matter what and that it’s knowing this and then dealing with the situations that will arise, makes the real difference, no matter how his ‘boss’ reacts, but being prepared in advance and acknowledging the problem, swings the advantage to him and the manner in which it’s dealt with.

And it’s not even 10am. Happy Wednesday.

Managing Large Adword Campaigns with Google Adwords Editor

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Google Adwords EditorEver wondered how search marketing companies & larger companies deal with more than a few Google Adwords campaigns? The answer is easy, they use the right tool for the job, Adwords Editor is one of them and best of all its free!

Managing Campaigns x 10,0000

A slight exaggeration, however using the Adwords Editor, you can manage literally hundreds of campaigns over several accounts using a single, free tool.

A key feature of the product is the ability to import new campaigns via CSV, you can update them via CSV for external processing and then import them back in again. Its all quite civilised and dealing with hundreds of campaigns at one time is a very simple task.

Why you should use the Adwords Editor

Here are the reasons why you would want to use the Adwords Editor:

  1. You can import and export your campaigns from Excel. That means for geeks like me I can do all the work in excel and then quickly and easily import the campaigns for immediate upload to Google.
  2. It works offline. This is brilliant if travelling or out of signal range. Just send the updates when you’re next connected.
  3. The Editor works with more than one Adwords account.
  4. Finding duplicate keywords is easy, see here for more info.
  5. This is an official tool created by Google,

So if you want one up on your competitors, you are about five up now. Or the biggest feature for me, was the import/export features. Being able to manipulate data outside of the interface and import, was a huge win.

There are other tools, mainly paid for, plus there is an API as well, which for the larger PPC based companies build their own interfaces to our use hugely expensive software to manage campaigns on an epic scale.

Helpful links:

The Top UK Affiliate Networks

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wedge-of-cashFollowing on from my two articles on affiliate networks titled ‘Part 1: What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?‘ and the continuation in  ‘Part 2: What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?‘ today I’ll be covering who the top affiliate networks are in the UK, who’s with them and which one you might want to choose for your affiliate campaign.

There are about a dozen different affiliate networks that operate in the UK, this list is not exhaustive, but are networks I can vouch for through personal experiences. In no particular order these are:

  • Affiliate WindowAffiliateWindow
    Also known as” AWIN”, they have the widest ranging set of affiliates programmes I know of. They are also the most expensive from what I know of too.A company I recently dealt with was quoted £2500 and an on going monthly price of around £500 per month, plus commission on paid commissions too.

    Affiliate Window is in the process of updating their backend to ‘Darwin’ which is a welcome improvement in eye candy, but not entirely sure about functionality. The a short list of merchants using them can be found here and clicking on “Our Merchants”.

  • Buy.atBuy.at
    Now this is being listed as a separate affiliate network, but  they were bought by Digital Window (AKA Affiliate Window) in March 2010.My dealings are only ‘light’ with Buy.at, but they do house some of the much larger clients, names like Very, 3 Mobile, All Saints, BBC Shop, ASDA, BT and so on. I have no idea on pricing for these, but I am guessing its more than AWIN.
  • WebgainsWebgains.
    Webgains are a personal favourite of mine, these were the first affiliate network I joined (as an affiliate, not a merchant) and have used them ever since, while lacking on some of the big names, this team have a large array of merchants and they really know their salt.Pricing is much more affordable, in the region of £1000 setup fees and a monthly charge of ~£250 plus commission’s.
  • Trade DoublerTrade Doubler
    I use TradeDoubler for some clothing suppliers as an Affiliate, this is not their strength but it still brings the pennies in each month. From a Merchants perspective, TD tend to lean towards betting, consumer electronics & holidays. I have no idea on pricing for these either.Trade Doubler’s current client list can be found here, if you were focusing on the EU, then these would be my first suggestion, see here for why.
  • PaidOnResultsPaidOnResults
    Absolutely no idea on these, other than I know several high profile affiliates use them to great effect. When someone mentions them, I do immediately think of children’s toys and lingerie, what a wacky combination. Anyway, a list of their merchants can be found here.
  • AffiliateFutureAffiliateFuture
    These are of a holidays & flights network, although I did pick up a few feeds for clothing and footwear from them (shoes.co.uk was one). Their client list is here and again I’m unable to comment on their fee structure for merchants.
  • Commission JunctionCommission Junction
    eBay used these before they developed their own platform (or skinned someone elses[?]), slightly more American and has a reliance upon banner ads than data.Its extremely corporate and I suspect the merchant fees reflect this. This would be only my suggestion if you are actively targeting the US because of their coverage there. I spoke with their UK Sales manager a while back, while the client did not use them, the was very helpful.

You may be wondering why I have left out the eBay and Amazon affiliate programmes, this is because they are not website orientated, all of the networks above are.

This article should have brought you up to date on some of the UK affiliate networks that are available and that I’ve given you a first hand impression of each. Whoever you choose, work hard at it!

Part 2: What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?

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wedge-of-cashWelcome to part 2 of ‘What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them’, this is a continuation of the article I started yesterday here. Lets get straight to it.

Who’s Using Affiliate Networks To Promote Their Products?

Now this is where I am going to start name dropping, names such as Matalan, OFFICE Shoes, Misco, McAfee, Hilton, Vodafone, BT, P&O, Maplin, Kodak, eBuyer, Marks & Spencers, Littlewoods, Very, ASDA I could run out of this virtual ink listing all the companies that use affiliates to promote their sales.

Marks & SpencersBut don’t let the use of high street brands put you off, there are thousands of smaller merchants working the affiliate scene and some convert better than the big boys!

Companies use affiliate networks for a simple reason, they work and they also work on commission on confirmed sales. Unlike PPC (Pay Per Click) and PPI (Pay Per Impression) the money is spent before knowing the results, affiliate networking is for a confirmed purchase.

Examples of Affiliate Sites

Sadly none of these are mine, I do have an a good idea from old data, on some of the revenue these sites create and its not small amounts, by any means:

Special Networks

eBay UKNow there are two affiliate networks which are worth a special mention, these are eBay and Amazon. Thats right you can use either of these companies to promote your own products. This also explains where some of your fees go to each month, into affiliate pockets. Well the ones that converted browsers into buyers that is. Remember almost all affiliate schemes are based upon commission on confirmed sales.

eBay is a bit ‘funky’ as they have changed their stats and payments to work on a fairer structure is based upon actions, bids and purchasing, with a more true representation on what the customer that was referred by the affiliate is then doing on the site.

Amazon UKAmazon is also a bit ‘funky’ too, unlike the typical affiliate program that would have a cookie period of say 7, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, Amazon has a cookie life of just 24 hours. Yes, as an affiliate they need to convert their browser into a buyer in 24 hours from them clicking the link. Sounds horrific, but Amazon converts like crazy and its one of my largest income streams from affiliate marketing.

Summary of Affiliate Networks

You should now be aware of what an affiliate network is; that affiliate networks mostly have a setup fee, a monthly fee and a commission to be paid to both the affiliates that drive you sales and a commission on the commission’s to the affiliate.

But within this structure lies the key, once you can get over the the monthly overhead, the sales that are generated by the affiliates should be much cheaper than those acquired by other means, plus its your customer to market who you wish after the sale.

In the final part of this series, you can discover The Top UK Affiliate Networks.