Archives for June 2012

Text links are not as popular as banner ads with affiliates, according to data in the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”

But text links are the second most popular method for promoting affiliate links, and for good reason.

A text link is simply a link made out of text on an affiliate site.

So, you would select a keyword or phrase of content on a site and make it into a link.

For instance, if you are writing about health insurance, and you have the phrase “affordable health insurance” within your content, you could turn that phrase into a link to eHealthInsurance:

affordable health insurance

Text links are really effective, because they are relevant to the content your visitors are reading, and since they've already indicated that they're interested in that subject, a link to more information is available to them at just the right time.

But this isn't just my opinion – this is based on my experience as an affiliate since 1997.

Basically, if you're running a content site, the text link will likely be the best performing type of affiliate link for you.

If you're not clear on how to create a text link in WordPress, I created a video with an example of how to do it: How to Insert an Affiliate Link in WordPress

Banners are the most popular types of affiliate links, according to data in the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”

A banner ad is a rectangular or square shaped advertisement on a website, usually above, below or on the sides of the site's content.

The banner ad is linked to the website of the advertiser running the affiliate program with a link that is unique to the affiliate. The banner is usually hosted by the affiliate program or network, though some affiliate programs will give the option of hosting the banner(s) yourself.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) oversees Display Advertising Guidelines, which are their recommended dimensions for banner ads.

You can typically find a variety of these sizes in a given affiliate program.

But the affiliate marketing community doesn't fully adhere to these guidelines, as the IAB delisted a variety of ad units as of February 28, 2011, including many that are still very common among affiliate programs.

Anyhow, while banners are readily available in affiliate programs, and they are the most popular way to promote companies through affiliate marketing, I would suggest that you focus on text links instead, and I'll talk about them in the next section.

This is because my experience has been that people have “banner blindness” when they visit sites. They simply don't see those banners, and mostly click and buy through text links, at least in the case of my sites.

Affiliate programs and networks typically offer a variety of ways to link to them, but two that are standard are the banner links and text links.

My example here will be to grab the code for a banner link.

The process is very similar across the various affiliate programs and networks to get the code. I am going to use the Affiliate Summit affiliate program, which is on ShareASale in this instance.

After logging into ShareASale, I then go to Links, followed by Get a Link / Banner from the top navigation bar.

The next step is to click on the dropdown box on the left and select the specific merchant I want to promote. So I'll pick Affiliate Summit and then click “Refresh Report to View Below” on the right side.

On that screen, I click the text that reads “Get Links”.

You may have noticed that my commission level is 0% here. That is so I don't earn commission from the affiliate program, since I run it.

Anyhow, then there is a menu with tabs for the various affiliate link options in this affiliate program. I'll go and click the “BANNERS” tab.

After this page loads in, there are a variety of banners to consider. When I see the one I want, I click on it to get the code.

As I hover over it, I can see the dimensions.

At this point, I have to go highlight the code, and then copy it.

Now that I have copied the code for the affiliate banner, the next step is to paste it on my WordPress blog.

I want to put it in a sidebar that will show on every page of my site, so I go to the admin screen in WordPress, and then to the “Appearance” section and click on “Widget”.

From here, I'll put my mouse over “Text” in the “Available Widgets” area, click and keep my finger down to drag that widget to the “Sidebar 1” area on the right.

Then I let go of the mouse.

This will pop open the text widget, and I will paste in my affiliate code. You can add a title to go over the banner, but I won't bother here.

After pasting the affiliate code, click Save on the widget box.

That's it – now that banner is up on my affiliate blog.

Next up, I'll discuss the various types of affiliate links and how and when I use each one.