Today I will review just one of many Click2Sell Affiliate Network system modules: affiliate management.

Unlike some other affiliate networks, in Click2Sell you, as a merchant, have a great control of your affiliates. There are many tools, features and tracking options which allows you to be successful with affiliates.

However, not everyone has discovered full potential of affiliate management module. So I will present you almost every aspect of affiliate management in Click2Sell.

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Hi again,

recently Click2Sell.EU was reviewed by a few well known internet marketers. In general, all of reviews were praising the system, however I once again noticed fear of a fact that in our system merchants pay their affiliates themselves.

So I want to talk about this fact in this post.

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Dear Click2Sell.EU members,

We are proud to announce that we have installed a new database system on Click2Sell.EU production servers. This new database system allowed us to increase overall system's performance speed around 70 times on some reports.

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This article is intended to guide you, as (potential) Click2Sell affiliate, through our system and show how you could benefit from various Click2Sell Affiliate Tools to promote products successfully.

These points will be covered in the article:

• Click2Sell marketplace
• Various details of products and merchants
• In-depth affiliate tracking reports
• Collaboration of affiliates and merchants
• PayPal – Moneybookers affiliate commission payments

I have illustrated almost every aspect of this article because I believe that various screenshots will tell you a lot more than hundreds of words.

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Hello again!

We are very proud to announce that finally we have just developed and tested Moneybookers payment processor system and merchant account provider in Click2Sell. On March 27 Moneybookers became available for all Click2Sell.EU members so now all merchants can use this merchant account provider to accept payments for their products via Click2Sell.EU and send affiliate commission payments for all affiliates.

At first let me present you what is Moneybookers and how this payment processor could benefit you.

Generally speaking Moneybookers is just like Paypal. It is a widely respected payment processor. Having Moneybookers merchant account allows you to send money to someone, to receive money from someone, go shopping, setup some kind of buy-now buttons on your website and thus accept payments for your products/services.

There is one thing about Moneybookers that should be interesting to some people. Moneybookers are less restrictive than PayPal regarding countries. Moneybookers cover more countries where you can send or receive payments. So if you weren’t able to get PayPal account, you should definitely check out Moneybookers and it is very likely that you will be accepted there.

Let us talk about what Moneybookers will be doing in Click2Sell.EU.
Until this moment merchants were able to receive payments from their sales directly in to PayPal, Authorize.net, Worldpay or Google Checkout accounts. From now on they will be able to receive payments to Moneybookers accounts too. Moneybookers claim that they have 4.3 million account holders. We can safely assume that quite a big part of them are buyers who prefer to pay via Moneybookers. So there are more potential buyers of your products. 

However, I guess that the more important aspect is that merchants get another option to pay their affiliates. They won’t be restrainted to PayPal. This means that merchants can expect more affiliates as Moneybookers cover more countries than Paypal.

Many good affiliates cannot promote products online just because they can’t have Paypal account. Anyway, from now on there are no restrictions…

Although a lot of people have only PayPal account, it is very easy to get a Moneybookers account, so within minutes merchants could be able to pay affiliates who have Moneybookers accounts only.

If you have only Moneybookers account and you’re not able to get PayPal, you shouldn’t worry about the fact that there are a lot of merchants in Click2Sell who pay via PayPal only. I’m sure that if you would make some affiliated sales for "PayPal only" merchant, he/she will get MB account just for paying you.

For the end let me remind you that now Click2Sell supports not only Moneybookers, but also PayPal, Google Checkout, Worldpay and Authorize.net and other Merchant Account providers.
Soon I will announce about another new exciting feature of Click2Sell. Stay tuned!

Vytis

What is an affiliate link cloaking and why is it required?

It’s a program or script created for a few main purposes:

1. Protects the affiliate (who promotes a certain product) from another unfair affiliate who could easily modify the affiliate code and buy the product via own affiliate link – affiliate link hijacking.

2. Protects the affiliate from visitors who delete the affiliate link and buy products instantly – affiliate link bypassing.

3. Cloaking makes an affiliate url completely ‘unknown’ to visitor and more search engine friendly.

The Biggest Problems Each Affiliate Face When They Promote Products Online

Problem #1 – Affiliate links are too obvious

Most people who frequently use the Internet know that this kind of url:

http://www.someproduct.com/?affiliateid=affiliate-name

Is obviously an affiliate link and that an affiliate will get the commission if the visitor buys the product. Some visitors just don’t like the idea that they were referred by an affiliate… So they are quite reluctant to buy a product via such link.

Problem #2 – Visitors delete affiliate usernames from the urls and buy products directly

A lot of affiliate marketers face a huge problem online. They signup for an affiliate program, get their affiliate links and then start promoting a certain product. In most cases all affiliate programs provide unprotected affiliate links. E.g.

http://www.some-product.com/affiliateprogram/buy?id=affiliate-name

Affiliates start driving targeted traffic and making sales. But the problem is that a lot of  visitors can easily see that he/she was brought to the website via affiliate link. The browser just shows ‘affiliate-name’ at the end of an url. Such type affiliate links are made to ‘make’ the life easier for affiliate (to easily create an campaign, etc). However, they also make an affiliate’s life much harder in other areas.

Some visitors who see an affiliate’s name in the url just delete it and purchase the product themselves directly from www.some-product.com . This way merchant receives a sale, but the affiliate gets nothing in return for bringing this kind of visitor-buyer. The affiliate commission is lost, because the visitor just ‘bypassed’ (deleted) the affiliate link. Of course, in most cases the ‘affiliate cookie’ is set on the visitors browser, so even though he/she deleted the url, the affiliate is still credited. However, in most cases such ‘buyers’ never forget to delete the browser cookies to make sure you (affiliate) don’t receive your affiliate commission.

Problem #3 – Visitors replace affiliate IDs with their own IDs and this way receives a product for rather low price

Another problem is that many product buyers know about affiliate programs. Once they enter a product’s sales page and see that their browser displays a link:

http://www.some-product.com/affiliateprogram/buy?id=affiliate-name

They could easily enter www.some-product.com and search for a page to signup as an affiliate. Then, once they have done this, they create their own affiliate link and buy the product via their link. This way unfair buyer steals the commission from you and actually cheats on the merchant – gets the product at "discount" price. The real affiliate who brought the unfair visitor-buyer is left without any commissions.

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Every day we get a lot of new questions from affiliates. They ask us questions on how they could jump in and start promoting products online using Click2Sell.EU system. When Click2Sell.EU system was being created, we tried to simplify the affiliate signup and product promotion process as much as possible. However, we also feel that we need to educate our members more, so they could understand Click2Sell.EU better and their way to success would be shortened.

Let me show you what steps you need to take in order to start promoting products via Click2Sell system.
This guide won't be long as the whole start-up process is simplified as much as possible.

So, those few steps are:

1. Go to Click2Sell marketplace.

   
    

2. There you will see a list of products, search box and products categories.
   You can choose your desired categories or search for something (eg., "kids" if you feel that you're best at promoting products related to such keyword).

   Look at the list of products. There are some statistics about each of products and at the end of each entry there are two links: "Promote" and "More Info" (an example below).

   

   By clicking "More Info" you will see merchant's name, commission payment ways, various statistics, history of performance in the marketplace.
    

3. If you decide to promote this or that product, you have to click on "Promote" link of appropriate product.

   (If you are not logged in, at this moment you will be asked to login).

   Unique affiliate link will be shown to you in various forms. Choose one of them.

   Please note that your chosen affiliate program won't be shown in "For Affiliate" section until you refer/make 1 visitor through your affiliate link. So if you are going to choose several products for promotion at once, I suggest to write down given affiliate links. 
    

That's all!

If you want to review your affiliated products campaigns, you can find everything (statistics, promotional tools, affiliate links) in "For Affiliate" -> "My Campaigns" section:

Click2Sell affiliate links lead to merchant's provided sales-pages, so you don't need to create a sales page yourself.

Once you make an affiliated sale, you will be automatically credited and the merchant will pay you your commission on the beginning of the next month.

I hope this guide helps you. If not, just contact us and tell us your questions.
Vytis

Hot products in the Internet will give you chances of earning big affiliate commissions online. You just have to know the right approach, discovering and choosing the right product that you will sell online will be the key for you to start earning money online. Excellent strategies are also needed for your success. There are ways for you to learn how to start affiliate marketing. Here are six steps that will guide you where to begin.

Step 1: Follow Your Passion Doing something you love will be a big plus factor for being successful. Your passion will steer you to the right direction which is the market of high profitable products and services, it will also be the driving force that will lead you to achieving your goals and be a successful person in the future. Using your interests and hobbies as a means of earning money online will help you discover great products or services to sell online.

Step 2: Research your product to know if it is going to be the profitable one Step two is done by conducting appropriate research and studies with the particular product or service you have chosen to sell online. Once you have discovered the right market for you in the Internet, the next step you have to take is to discover products that are selling like ‘hotcakes’ online. By having an instant and right discovery of hot selling products online you’re bound to be successful and you’ll soon start earning big bucks as soon as you established you networking market. It is very important to be aware of what people want and what product is more sellable in that particular market. The product’s current demands should also be taken into consideration and the state of the competition you’re going to be involved with. Reading article directories or other articles related to your chosen affiliate products will give you edge on your chosen field.

Now, I bet you would like to know how to search for the ‘hotcakes’ online. It’s easy! Just type in ‘keyword search count’ into Google or Yahoo and they will give you a list of websites that offer the keyword search count tools. Such tools allows you to find out how many times the certain keyword was searched last month. So, just type in ‘product niche’ you are going to promote into that keyword search count tool and you will find out if your selected product is in the ‘hot’ and very good selling niche. The higher search count for a certain keyword – the better.

Step 3: Research allotted to the expectations, wants and needs of your potential customers The products or services you have chosen should meet the requirements of the customer’s reason to purchase. A customer may look for a particular product or service for the ‘need’ of it alone, considered to be the qualifying dimension or a gatekeeper dimension of a purchase. Determining dimensions are ‘wants’ of considering such a purchase. Intangible aspects or values of certain products are associated with the ‘expectation’ involved in a purchase.

Do not target niches where people basically search for free information. E.g. free tattoo photos, etc. Because in most cases people that are searching for ‘free’ stuff, doesn’t want to buy anything. You won’t make any sales.

Step 4: Be wise when it comes to the competition leveling of you chosen product or service. You can easily find untapped and low competition niches online One of the considering factors to your quest for hot products to sell online. The total market share versus your brand, product or service determines the level of competition you are going to be in. the competitive frame is decided by market affiliates who exercises their power for product or service purchasing. A leadership role should be considered, if what you want is not only to satisfy the expectation and needs of your potential customers but to be more profitable and successful than other affiliate businesses on the Internet.

You need to search for products that are doesn’t have high competition. E.g. ‘make money’ niche is a very competitive niche, a lot of affiliates target it and try to sell the products. Of course, you can make some sales, but you will also face a huge competition.

The best way is to find a quite narrow niche. E.g. ‘lcd monitor repair’. Such monitor repair niche doesn’t have much of competition and the best thing is that not much affiliates actually even thinks about this niche to promote the product. Such niches can bring you huge money. Why? It is because the competition is low, you can get high rankings for your pay-per-click campaigns on Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing for a very low price… This way you can make money. There are a lot of untapped niches that most affiliates never consider promoting… So all you need to do is just to make some research to find the niche.

Step 5: Identify your potential competitors on the net Affiliate products should be examined for their features and benefits. One you know how the competition works on your chosen market field, you’ll be able to conduct effective strategies on how to sell your product better than other affiliate marketers.

Step 6: The benefits and features of your product should be well disclosed to your customers Remember to make a list of the benefits of your affiliate products. The features of your products and services will be the one to tell your customers what they really are. There is a marked difference between features and benefits, be sure to advertise them both.

The thing is that if you know your promoted product really well – all the benefits to the user, etc. In most cases the client won’t know that… The problem is that the client doesn’t know that he/she ‘doesn’t know’ something. Sounds strange but let me clarify.

In most cases, all similar products look completely the same to the customer. Customer sees them all the same. So you need to educate your website visitor about the certain product and show its all unique selling prepositions. What does this product do? What kind of benefits it gives? Why is this product so good that customer must buy it? What differentiates this product from the competitors?

I think you get an idea. You need to educate and show your website visitor that the product you are offering just can’t be refused… By showing all the benefits and unique things that such product gives, you will make the customer want the product even more. You need to provide an affiliated product in a way so that it would solve one or the other problem – easily, fast and without much work… All people want to hear such things, so if you can market the product in such way, you will definitely have a hot seller.

Oh, and don’t forget… It doesn’t really matter about the product’s price or if such product is really unique. All you need to do is to make customer think that such product is ‘a key to its success’ . This way you will achieve the affiliate marketing success online.

Step 7: Use affiliate programs networks to find hot selling products online There are numerous of affiliate programs networks online that offer products for affiliates to promote. One of the reputable affiliate marketing network companies is Click2Sell Affiliate Network. Such companies make your job finding a hot selling affiliate product easy. All you need to do is just to search for the product in your just found ‘hot niche’ and select to promote. Soon your affiliate commissions will start rolling in and you will achieve a real success online. Happy profiting!