Internet Marketing Trip

Yesterday I logged in my Commission Junction account and saw a new affiliate program was added. The website is Uneetee. I don’t know all the details, so you may want to contact them to learn more.

Here’s the concept : designers can submit their design to be printed on t-shirts and hoodies. Every day a new t-shirt/design hit the homepage. Each time your design/t-shirt is sold, you earn a commission. They also run contests and the winners (most sold designs) get bonus commissions.

Also since they have an affiliate program at CJ (and ShareASale from their website), you could promote your t-shirts portfolio from your blogs and website. The commission rate is set to 21% at both networks.

I know designers earn more money by selling their designs and logos directly to webmasters and various freelance works but this could be an extra income.

Some web designers are very famous and recommended online. Having a kind of gallery/store on their website could be a nice addition to their portfolios and their clients could reward them by buying a T-shirt.

If you submit your designs there, just contact me and I’ll be happy to promote your t-shirts on my various blogs. You can also join ShareASale using my link  or CJ (no affilate program ).

I know I already blogged about that, it was for a merchant that (still) didn’t answer me for an order of 50 items. One of my visitor asked to have a discount for such a high order and I contacted them 3 times, still waiting.

This time, this is another merchant, and if I say they don’t care about affiliates, they may also don’t care about themselves and being promoted properly.

Okay, you may already know I have started a website and I was going to reveal the name when I make my first sale. The first sale is made, the website is Replicas Suck, Authentic Fashion Deals.

I promote apparel, jewelry, watches, handbags, shoes… only authentic stuff, cause replicas suck, that’s the direction of this blog. I also talk about emerging designers that most of us don’t know, but still offer great quality products, and cool style.

Well it sounds like a press release, it’s not, so let’s get back to the purpose of this article. One of the merchant I promote, Bosca has its affiliate program with ShareASale. I like using ShareASale, it’s easy and convenient and also merchants can publish their whole catalog, so you have affiliate codes for each products on their websites.

This is of course something really cool when you want to promote something as large as fashion, there are thousands of products. Sadly, not all the merchants use this feature, and this is the case of Bosca.

Bosca products are leather made : handbags, travel bags, briefcase, wallets, well… mainly luggage. Excellent quality, a recognized house, leather working from near a century. The products are great but there is a problem, at least for me.

On Replicas Suck, if you look at the bottom of the page, there is a banner for Bosca, that says “Bosca | Life. Luxury. Leather. ” This is the only banner they have to propose. No other formats, not any other link for a special category of products, just this.

Of course, with ShareASale, you can create a custom link to any page of a merchants store.

One banner only, the only problem ?

No. This is not the only one. Since there is no product datafeed I thought I could use pictures of their products, I would have save the pictures of the products I wanted to promote and upload them on my server. But first I needed the permission, so I asked.

Bosca affiliate program is managed by another company, so my email got to this marketing company. A nice guy answered me, said he submitted my request and I’ll get a reply soon.

Now, guess what was the reply. Negative. I can’t use their products pictures on my website to promote them.

This is really something irritating. You are doing work for them and you want to do it right. I could have used the pictures without any permission and they may never see this.

Now, if they thought a little bit they would know that when you have a product, people like to see it, especially in the fashion world, where style is something that influence our choices. Ladies, would you buy a handbag without seeing it ? Or any clothes you could buy online, (gents too) ?

At least, imagine this situation. Let’s say you have two merchants to promote, and you decide to display 10 products from each. Well you can with the first, but not with Bosca. There are 10 more chances that a visitor clicks on a picture to see more details of the product.

If a picture amazed you, or if you find something very original, you will wompletely forget about the others.

Maybe they never heard a picture speaks more than words.

Well, you can do the promotion of a merchant, without his products pictures. But will you do it more than once ? When there are 100 products, you can imagine 100 posts or articles, 1 per article.

Too bad, merchants are lazy. They could ask their affiliate marketing manager to create a product datafeed, or code for each product categories, or for some best sellers.

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The first sale made from this website was for a $139 item, not from Bosca. Damn, the commission was only 6% ($8.34). But that keeps growing

This is being discussed a little everywhere on the blogosphere, so I thought it was my turn. GoogleLady is actually running a case study to make money online in three months, with Amazon affiliate program. Everyone can follow her footprints or just read for inspiration.

I actually am thinking to reproduce her efforts since I just re-apply to Amazon associates, but also because I just started a new blog where I add content every day, but haven’t yet started any promotion, except some links from Yahoo! Answers.

Here is where the case study started : Make to Money Online In 3 Month . She now is in her 5th week and already achieved what we can call a success : 1 month later, almost $1500 for November, and the wesbite is still not ranked well in search engines.

What’s interesting in this case study is that not only she almost teaches people for free how to make money online, but do it with a brand new website. New domain, no traffic and no backlinks at the start of the case study, only $100 to invest.

So if affiliate marketing is something you want to start, with a low budget, then I recommend you visit her blog, and start to read. She gives you tips and resources all the way.

Congrats, Lady, I wish you all the best for this future website. You could even stop your case study, you proved how to make money in one month.

My prediction for the end of December ? It will be over $2,000, and maybe reach the $3,000. Christmas is coming, and there will be lots of sale everywhere, her new website being around coupons, she will profit from returning traffic and new one with word of mouth. Plus she can add more merchants to promote, so it’s more choice for visitors.

Today, still on the way to improve a new website (actually, powered by WordPress) and add content to it, I applied to few more merchants affiliate programs, at LinkShare.com. LinkShare is quite a big network network, with some great offers from merchants like Apple, Toshiba, Toys’R'Us, FootLocker and many more.

When you apply you are :

automatically approved

being reviewed and waiting for approval

automatically rejected

Beign automatically rejected is something I can understand, only if the merchant don’t want anymore affiliates, but I think the affiliate program shouldn’t be first available for application. It’s a waste of time for affiliates to look at conditions if they don’t need any more affiliates.

But there are other reasons that can make your application denied. So as I said at the beginning of this post, I applied to few merchants, some approved me instantly, and others approved me after a few hours. Some also reviewed me and rejected me, here are the reasons.

Actually, these are the possible reasons, they won’t tell you the exact one, you will have to find out yourself.
* inability to access web site – Wrong, I use HostGator as a web hosting, and they have a 99.9% uptime, I doubt they get the 0.1% downtime. I worked on the website today and everything was fine.
* web site not yet live – Wrong, site is live, perectly running, new content.
* traffic levels too low – Of course, the website is brand new.
* inappropriate material on site – Do they talk about pornography, racism, illegal stuff ? Nothing like this on my website.
* content not relevant to merchant – Content is exactly relevant to merchant, their offer IS the topic.
* merchant not adding any new affiliates at this point – already mentioned, I can understand that although the application shouldn’t be available)

So, the only thing I was rejected is because the website is brand new and traffic is not high enough. But, if all merchants acted like this, then I would never have something to offer ! Or I would just have to build all the traffic, but no link to any offer, no money.

I’d like to have any opinion about that matter, of course, I could re-apply when the website gets more traffic. But don’t you think that as long as a website is relevant to the merchants offer, then it should be approved.

If I only have 1 visitor a day, but this one visitor buys something, it is one sale a day for me, but for the merchant too. If my content is as good as a website getting loads of traffic, then it should convert the same, shouldn’t it ?

I don’t know if it’s a generality, but I have the feeling that when you do the promotion work for a merchant, trying your best t increase their sales, you should get some consideration.

Some merchants know that from a long time, and some seem to don’t care about you and. You see, I currently have a nice money-maker page that has just generated more than $1,000 in a week. This is a great achievement and I am very happy with that. The best part is I didn’t use any advertising method, so it’s pure profit, no cost.

But I’m quite frustrated with the lack of communication from the merchant. I don’t mean I want to receive congratulations, I know some are earning much more in a day. So here is the story.

The page I am talking about promotes only one product, and sometimes I receive some potential customers few questions. I always do my best to keep them happy and it seems one has been very happy with the product and, sent me an email asking to buy 50 items.

Yes, 50 ! I receive a $20 commission on the product so it could be a $1,000 more in my pocket. So what’s wrong you ask ? The  customer wants a discount for such a high order and I understand that, this is perfectly normal.

Above all, it’s a win-win-win situation, for the customer who gets a discount, for the seller who makes a huge sale and for me who get the commission. Also, this big order could be renewed by the customer, so the merchant has everything to gain.

Of course, I’m an affiliate, I don’t set prices, so I emailed the merchant to know if they could make a special deal just this time. I submitted this request through the affiliate network members area 2 days ago : no answer. So I did it again today, directly from the merchant sales page, and I’m still waiting.

You see, I can understand they need some time to see how big the discount they could make, and build a special link or something. But, I am waiting an answer, and the customer too. They could just send a message, saying they well received my request and will contact me soon. They didn’t.

To merchants : if you read this, and if you know sometimes you don’t give so much important to your affiliates, please check your stats and learn how much you could be losing without affiliates. Of course, you are running a serious business, and so are lot of affiliates.

I can’t understand why some people want so much a bad reputation…