your image should be only a thumbnail, for you don’t want to take up
too much space. This image could be your corporate logo or a graphic
from a current promotion for one of your products or services. By having
this image and tag line strategically placed on a Web site, the chances
that a viewer will click through to visit your Web site are much higher.
Here is an example of what it should look like:
To Add or Not to Add with Free-for-All Links
There are thousands of free-for-all links on the Net. These sites allow
you to add your URL to a long list of links, but they provide little traffic
unless you make your link stand out from the rest. One advantage you
can get from these sites is in search engine ranking. As mentioned previously,
some search engines use the number of links to your site in their
ranking criteria.
Figure 16.4. By adding a small graphic to your link, you can make your link
stand out from the others.
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Add Value with Affiliate Programs
Another way of benefiting from links to your Web site is by developing
an affiliate program. Affiliate programs (also called reseller or partnership
or associate programs) are revenue-sharing arrangements set up by
companies selling products and services. When another site agrees to
participate in your affiliate program, it is rewarded for sending customers
to your business. These customers are sent to your site through links
on your associates’ or affiliates’ Web sites. By developing and offering
this type of program, you generate increased business and increased
links to your site and increased link popularity for search engines. Affiliate
programs are explained in more depth in Chapter 17.
Maintaining a Marketing Log
Record all new links to your site in your Internet marketing log. It is
important to maintain this log and review it regularly. You must periodically
check to make certain that links to your site are operational
and are going to the appropriate location. Along with the URL where
your site is linked from, you should also keep track of all contact information
gathered when communicating with the Webmaster.
A Word of Caution with Link Trading
You must be aware when trading links that all links are not created equal.
• If you provide a prominent link to another site, make sure you
receive a link of equal or greater prominence.
• Be aware, when trading your links with sites that receive substantially
less traffic than you do, that you will probably have
more people “link out” than “link in” from this trade. Consider
trading a banner ad and a link from their site for a link from
your site, thus making it more of an equal trade. If their site has
more traffic than yours, don’t mention it unless they do.
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• Never put your outbound links directly on your home page. Have
your outbound links located several levels down so that visitors
to your site will likely have visited all the pages you want them
to visit before they link out.
• When incorporating outbound links, make sure that when the
link is clicked, the Web page is opened in a new browser window
so that the visitor can easily return to your Web page.
• Sometimes when people update their site, they change the Internet
address or delete a page altogether. If you have placed a link on
your page to that page, and one of your viewers tries to link out
to that page and receives an HTTP 404 error, this reflects badly
on your site. You should frequently check your Web site for
dead links.
• When you change content on a page within your site, don’t create
totally new pages; just update the content on your current
pages and keep the same file names. There might be links to
your pages and if you delete them, anyone trying to click on a
link to your site from another site will get an HTTP 404 error.
This results in a dead link on the referring page as well as in any
search engine listings you might have.
Internet Resources for Chapter 16
I have included a few resources for you to check out about developing
a dynamite link strategy. For additional resources on a variety of topics,
visit the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.
susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you will find additional tips,
tools, and techniques.
Tools That Check for Dead Links
NetMechanic
http://www.netmechanic.com
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To find out if you have any dead links with NetMechanic, simply enter
your URL into the query box and view the results. The site generates a
detailed report, which outlines whether you have any dead links—and
if so, where.
Dr. Watson
http://Watson.addy.com
Dr. Watson is a free service to analyze your Web page. You give it the
URL of your page and Watson gets a copy of it directly from the Web
server. Watson can also check out many other aspects of your site, including
link validity, download speed, search engine compatibility, and
link popularity.
Site Owner
http://www.siteowner.com/badlinks.cfm?LID=229
When using Site Owner, you can check your site for various Web site
criteria. To check for dead links, you must enter your URL into the
query box. The results outline any dead links that are on your site.
BizLand SiteDoctor
http://www.bizland.com/product/sitedoctor.html
This Link Check tool searches your site, tests each link it finds and
reports the status of each link it tests.
Reciprocal Link Information
Virtual Promote
http://www.virtualpromote.com/guest6.html
This tutorial covers how to promote traffic to your Web site with reciprocal
links. This is a free service for all Web site developers who want to
learn more about announcing their Web site and promoting more traffic
to the Internet.
Automate link exchange
http://www.linkautomate.com/index.html
Reciprocal Link Exchange software and automate link exchange management
software.
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Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 277
Free-for-All Link Sites
FFA Net
http://pages.ffanet.com/links/list.pl
This page has a detailed listing of thousands of free-for-all link pages. It
also offers you the opportunity to set up your own free-for-all link pages
on the FFA network.
Link-O-Matic
http://www.linkomatic.com/index.cgi?10000
This site allows you to submit your URL to more than 450 quality promotional
sites with one click, driving traffic to your Web site and saving
you loads of time.
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17
Affiliate Programs
It is a well-known fact that referral business is the easiest and most
efficient business to generate. When doing business on-line, affiliate programs
enable you to capitalize on this concept. The concept of setting
up a referral business model was first started in 1996 when Amazon.com
started paying other Web site owners for referring customers to their
Web site. This referral business model caught on, and now many sites
are incorporating this model into their everyday business activities. The
idea and the corresponding software technology have come a long way
since 1996. The software available today makes the process so simple
that anyone with basic Web skills can set up an affiliate program.
There are many different affiliate programs available on the Internet.
These programs vary in terms of reliability, quality, and the amount of
commissions offered. E-tailers use these programs to develop repeat
business and increase sales. A side benefit to having an affiliate program
is that every affiliate provides a link to your site, which in turn
improves link popularity, which in turn improves your ranking in a
number of the popular search engines. On the downside, developing
and implementing the affiliate program takes time and effort, and you
must be competitive with other affiliate programs to encourage participation.
In this chapter, you will learn:
• How to distinguish among the different types of affiliate programs
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Affiliate Programs 279
• How to pick the appropriate affiliate program for your Web site
• Tips to succeed with affiliate programs
• The benefits of affiliate programs
• How to start your own affiliate programs
• Important features for affiliate-tracking software
• Affiliate program resources.
Affiliate Programs: Increase Traffic to Your Web Site
To understand the opportunities available, you must first understand
the different types of affiliate programs. All pay for referral business,
but in different ways. Before you decide to implement an affiliate program,
you must first look at your objectives, your products and services,
and your target market, and then decide whether an affiliate
program is appropriate for your site. If so, choose the type of program
that works for you.
Commission-Based Affiliate Programs
The most common type of affiliate program is commission based. This
type offers the referring Web site a percentage of sales income resulting
from its referrals. Commissions typically range from 1 to 15 percent.
Some programs offer a two-tier commission structure, and some offer
an increased commission for higher-traffic sites. In a two-tier commission
program, an affiliate is paid a commission on each sale (or lead or
click-through) it refers plus a commission on each sale referred by any
affiliate it told about your program. Some examples of commissionbased
affiliate programs include:
• Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com)
• One and Only (http://www.oneandonlynetwork.com)
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• WebPositionGold (www.webposition.com—see Figure 17.1).
Flat-Fee Referral Programs
Flat-fee referral programs pay the owner of a Web site a fixed amount
for every new visitor who links from the referring site to the host site
and takes certain predefined actions. The required action often is making
a purchase on the host site. Some flat-fee programs do not require a
purchase; the predetermined actions might be joining its e-club, signing
up to receive its e-specials or newsletter, downloading a free demo, ordering
a catalogue, requesting a quote, or taking another action desired
by the host site. A good example of this is eBay (http://www.ebay.com),
which offers affiliates compensation when visitors to their Web site click
through and bid on an item (see Figure 17.2).
Click-Through Programs
A click-through program is one in which affiliates receive a fee for every
unique visitor who clicks through on the referring link on the affiliate’s
Figure 17.1. WebPositionGold (http://www.webposition.com) has a very
popular affiliate program.
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Affiliate Programs 281
Web site or from a link the affiliate has included in a signature file,
e-zine article, advertising or elsewhere. There are many click-through
programs on the Internet. For example, Google AdSense (http://www.
google.com) and ValueClick (http://www.valueclick.com) have clickthrough
programs that eliminate the problems of finding individual advertisers
and allow you to place banner advertisements on your Web
site. Whenever a visitor links out from your site through one of these
banner ads, you receive a flat fee. Two other popular click-through programs
are:
• AllClicks (http://www.allclicks.com—see Figure 17.3)
• SearchTraffic.com (http://www.searchtraffic.com).
Selecting an Affiliate Program That Is Right for You
The first step in deciding whether to start an affiliate program is to
ask whether this fits in with your Web site objectives. Click-through
programs can serve to increase traffic to your Web site as long as your
banner ad is designed with your target market in mind and the banner
Figure 17.2. Ebay.com has a flat-fee referral program.
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282 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
ad is placed on sites that are of interest to your target market. Commission-
based and flat-fee affiliate programs can further encourage
the referred visitors to do what you want them to do when they get to
your site. The referring site knows that it receives a commission only
when a certain action has been taken by the visitor, whether that action
be a purchase, a quote request, or something else. The referring
site has a vested interest in having the referred visitor take the desired
action and is in a position to suggest or recommend that the visitor
take that action.
How to Succeed with Your Affiliate Site
You may have an affiliate program, but are you really doing all you can
to exploit it? There are several things you could do to be successful with
an affiliate program. You should go out of your way to help make the
links stand out on your affiliates’ sites. Provide different-sized icons
that grab visitors’ attention and are designed with the target market in
mind. Also prepare the proper HTML coding and a tag line linking to
Figure 17.3. AllClicks has one of the top click-through affiliate programs on
the Internet.
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Affiliate Programs 283
your Web site, and you help your affiliates get the attention of their
visitors. You can also inspect your affiliates’ Web sites regularly to determine
whether there is anything you can do to help them add value to
the links on their pages. You could offer them advice about where they
should locate your links if they are in an obscure place on their Web
site. Remember that you don’t run their Web sites, so be diplomatic.
Other affiliate program operators offer more advanced tools to
their affiliates. For example, a program operator might offer affiliates
a generic e-mail newsletter, which the affiliate could easily download,
personalize, and send out in its mailing list. This generic newsletter is
written in an enticing manner and encourages the affiliate’s mail list
subscribers to visit the affiliate Web site and click on the affiliate program
link.
Some affiliate program operators provide a weekly e-mail to their
affiliates with new material, icons, articles, banners, etc. as well as recommended
actions to be taken by the affiliates for the coming week.
The key point is that you should take advantage of as many opportunities
as possible to leverage the power of your affiliate program.
Through providing your affiliates with these value-added services, you
not only strengthen the power of your affiliate program, but you also
show your affiliates your commitment to seeing that they are successful
with your program.
You should also make sure that you, the affiliate administrator, do
your best to be prompt with reporting and referral payments. People
will not want to participate in your program if you are late with payments
or don’t provide them with detailed reports of their referrals from
the previous reporting period. By sticking to the program schedule and
doing the best you can for your affiliates, you not only keep your affiliates
happy, you also advance the interests of your affiliate program.
Benefits of Creating an Affiliate Program
There are many benefits to participating in an affiliate program, especially
if you decide to create your own. There are also some not-soobvious
advantages that you can benefit from. By creating your own
affiliate program, you could generate a significant increase in traffic to
your own Web site. When your affiliates place links on their Web sites
linking to your site, you will increase your link popularity and, if you’re
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