While I do not necessarily advocate the use of credit cards, I think this one may be of use to the responsible card users out there…

The Affiliate Credit Card, it is a card that is geared to and faciliatates our business activities.

You can brand it with your business name and you earn cash back (with no limit) on:

• PPC Advertising (Yahoo, Google and MSN)
• Web Hosting Fees
• Computer Supplies
• Cellular Services
• Ebay seller fees (if applicable)

Some of the card features are:

• Up to 5% cash back with NO CAP! If your doing a lot of PPC this is for you!
• 0% APR on balance transfers - 15months
• 7.99% Fixed APR thereafter
• You can brand it with your company name
• Open to non-incorporated businesses (sole proprietors are welcome)!
• $0 Fraud liability - cannot get that with a debit card!

If interested, Apply now

Happy Valentine’s Day! Another great week last week! Our top 5 are tightening up and growing by leaps and bounds each week! Three affiliates joined the First Lead Club Congratulations go to:

Prakash C.

Ben L.

William W.

Angela D. joined the $1,000 Club, earning $1,000 in a week for the first time!

The top 5 affiliates last week earned:

$19,002.25

$16,457.90

$16,004.00

$13,205.72

$11,937.10

Congrats to all of you and to the five affiliates who had personal record weeks!

By Matt McWilliams, Affiliate Manager, HometownQuotes Insurance

There approximately 4 gazillion (unofficially) web sites in the world. Every teenager, mother, businessman, well pretty much everyone has a web site.

But you are different. You are monetizing your site, not trying to find a soulmate or post pictures of your latest fishing expedition. Your site should be clean, professional, and instill confidence in the buyer.

In finance and insurance, more than anything, you must gain the customer’s trust and confidence in your service. Unlike retail, flashy sites with bright colors and animation don’t work. Most of my suggestions below will apply mostly to the finance and insurance sectors, but lessons can be learned by all affiliates.

I have found that most affiliates (at least in the finance and insurance vertical) tend to leave the following four necessities off of their sites. Is your web site missing any of these important components?

To read the rest of the article click here

Apparently ViewSourceWith has been around for a while but I did not know about it…

I am not much of a programmer or designer, but our tech guys and designers love this tool.

Essentiall it allows you to choose the editor that is used when you “View Source” on a Firefox page. You can also use several editors (such as Dreamweaver, HomeSite, or Frontpage) and toggle easily between them.

More information available here

Earlier this week we posted (read it here) about Google’s New Link Analysis Tool
Mike Murray of Fathom SEO posted a handy reminder on Revenews that Link Popularity is not dead yet.

It’s a very quick read and serves as a good reminder that while Google’s new tool is helpful, in the long run, it is still only a small help to most webmasters.

Read Mike’s Post here

This is definitely one of the cooler things I have seen in affiliate marketing in a while. Webinarstock is an event being run by Alan Townsend on March 14.

According to the web site, Webinarstock will bring together dozens of merchant affiliate program managers and potentially hundreds of affiliates in 1 webinar for 3 hours of learning and earning. Participating affiliate managers will each give presentations about their programs, answer affiliate questions and hold contests and giveaways for affiliates in attendance. Affiliates will be able to interact with the affiliate managers and learn more about each of the participating merchant programs in a fun, festival type atmosphere.

I will be presenting and look forward to being able to share some tips and ideas with all of you!

To register to attend click here

Geordie Carswell just posted on the PPC Super Affiliate Blog a great article about testing keywords and adgroups.His question: When do you give up on a keyword or adgroup? His answer: Read here. I agree with this post entirely, but will throw in one wrinkle with regards to insurance. If you are on the fence about a keyword or adgroup and are not using dayparting or ad scheduling, try using that for a time.

Not only will it reduce the amount you spend, but will ensure that you are running the ad at optimal times. What may not work at the worst times of the day, may work great during the peak hours for conversions.

Not sure about dayparting or ad scheduling? Read this post about conversions by day and hour. It will show you what times are optimal to run your ads based on hour and day.

Also, here is a link to Google’s description of ad scheduling. MSN and Yahoo both have it as well and you can find information in your respective accounts.

That, in combination with Carswell’s suggestions is a great way to test and refine keywords and adgroups!

The ONLY (thankfully) shot of me on stage prior to my “singing”

I have yet to figure how this picture was taken at such an angle…from the buy.at Pure Party Saturday night.

This is one of the more interesting blog posts I have seen in a while and is definitely worth trying out!

Many of you may already know some or all of the information in this post, but the “trick” is the cool part about this.

My explanation would be nothing more than repeating what was posted on ShoeMoney’s blog so here is the post from Jeremy Schoemaker (one the top affiliates in the world):

Google Adwords Arrow Trick To Increase Click Through Rates

Hanging out at the ShareASale Sing-a-long, shortly before I sang the worst rendition of Counting Crows’ Mr Jones (thankfully there is no known video or audio of this). Me, Danny Kautt, and Paul.

Paul Playing Hold My Hand by Hootie and the Blowfish

The reason we were there. Affiliates that night helped raise $23,000 for the Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Southern Nevada!

Last week rocked!

4 of our top 5 affiliates had record weeks and another 6 had record weeks as well. And 5 affiliates broke $10,000 byt a WIDE margin this time. Not bad for the first week of the mid-winter slow down!

Three affiliates joined the First Lead Club
Congratulations to:

Marilyn K.

Mark M.

Chris J.

One affiliate joined the $1,000 Club, breaking $1,000 in leads for the first time. Congrats to Nina E.

The top 5 affiliate payouts last week were:

$18,912.05

$17,376.50

$15,000.75

$13,118.00

$11,588.25

Congrats to all affiliates this week. We paid a record number of affiliates for a record total amount. Keep up the great work!

We finally got some of the pictures from Affiliate Summit.

We will keep posting them as we get more! You can view more pictures of this great event here

Here are some of our favorites so far.

Welcome to Vegas!

Paul Playing Drums at the ShareASale Sing-a-long

Another Shot of Paul on the Drums

Stumbled upon this site on a forum but forget where…

I played around with it for almost an hour before I finally backed away from the computer.

Check out thePeoplesToolbox Tools for Web Designers