Hello,

I have affiliate software built into my shopping cart. It's very simple - someone signs up, and they get a special URL. They place that URL on their site, and if someone clicks it, comes to my site and buys something, they get 5% of the purchase price as a referral fee. It's a sweet deal.

However, I want to use this program to boost my backlinks/PR. I want people to put this link back to me on less link-cluttered pages with higher PR in more visible places on their site. The 5% bounty should encourage that.

But their "special" link back to me looks like foo.com/affiliateID=123

That is not exactly like foo.com. So will the affiliate link still boost the PR of that page? Or because it's got that that affiliateID=123 crap on the end, will it negate any PR count?

Thanks!!!!!!

Questions:
is the inbound link foo.com/affiliateID=123 or foo.com/?affiliateID=123 with a question mark?

Also, what type of sites are linking back to you? Are they all related to the same topic, industry, or field?

What type of anchor text is on the pages from sites linking back to you?

What does the google spider see when it comes to foo.com? I am assuming this is your home page so there is probably something there to be spidered.

To answer your initial question, google will give you credit for the inbound link to foo.com/?affiliateID=123 if the page the link is coming from has good anchor text, the site the link is coming from is seen as authoritative in your industry, you are not linking back to them, and a few other minor details.

Sounds all well and good, until you realize that Google will see foo.com/?affiliateID=123 as a different page than foo.com/?affiliateID=456 and so forth.

In the end, you don't get much benefit, because each affiliate is in a sense voting for a different page, so there is no commutative effect.

If you are a programmer, or have one on staff, there are a number of ways you could reconfigure either your server, or the affiliate scripts so that your affiliates can all link to the same URL.

If you are a programmer, or have one on staff, there are a number of ways you could reconfigure either your server, or the affiliate scripts so that your affiliates can all link to the same URL.

ie, write a javascript snippet that loads a cookie into the user's browser with the value for affiliateID. Have the affiliate site put the code on the page the link is coming from. When the user gets to your site, check to see if the cookie is there.

Cool thing about doing it this way, is that you could set the cookie to not expire for a set period of time, say 60 days, so that if the user does not buy today, but comes back two weeks later, you can still credit the affiliate for the sale.

However, I want to use this program to boost my backlinks/PR
If you want affiliate links to boost your PR and backlinks, then those special affiliate URLs need to redirect to your site via a 301 Permanent Redirect.

If you want affiliate links to boost your PR and backlinks, then those special affiliate URLs need to redirect to your site via a 301 Permanent Redirect.And then, if your affiliates have deep-linked to specific section or product pages, you'll have to redirect to the pages the affiliates intended the visitors they sent to land on or else you'll have them hollering that your links aren't working and if it continues you'll lose some.

OK...I think I got it.

For now at least, I will only ever have one landing page for all affiliates - my home page.

It actually reads exactly like:

www.foo.com/default.aspx?Affiliate=5 (or 6 or 7, etc.).

When someone enters my site from such a link, my shopping cart software registers which affiliate it was from (5, 6, 7 etc.).

If I give all affiliates the same URL to link to me, but have a cookie placed when someone clicks that link, then my site looks for that cookie (presumably to give the affiliate credit), how does my system know which affiliate it was from? Does my site somehow read the user's cookie, see that they were just at www.affiliate#5.com, then forward my user to www.foo.com/default.aspx?Affiliate=5?

OK, backing up now:

I have affiliate software built into my shopping cart. It's very simple - someone signs up, and they get a special URL. They place that URL on their site, and if someone clicks it, comes to my site and buys something, they get 5% of the purchase price as a referral fee. Can the affiliate software built in to your cart handle affiliates landing at your choice of pages, or is it a built-in default?

5% of the purchase price as a referral fee. It's a sweet deal.Well with all due respect, it may be a sweet deal for you, but depending on the product line 5% commission is nothing to rave about. And no return days is anything but sweet for affiliates.

I want people to put this link back to me on less link-cluttered pages with higher PR in more visible places on their site. The 5% bounty should encourage that.5% bounty on what? 5% of what? 5% of 5% commission? For only pages you like, and how will you differentiate when there's more than a dozen IBLs to manually inspect? How would you monitor where all their links are, and how would you track and monitor the 5% bounty and provide tracking statistics and reporting available for their inspection?

However, I want to use this program to boost my backlinks/PR.That's mixing it all up. SEO and link development are for boosting your backlinks, PR and rankings, and utilizing an affiliate sales force is for increasing your sales through the affiliate channel.

The naive and uneducated may not realize wassup, but any affiliate with a little learning, street savvy and experience in their head doesn't give a rat's asteroid about your backlinks, PR and search engine rankings. Let's get real - surely any affiliate would rather outrank you in the SERPs. An affiliate is a performance based partner with regard to sales, but for rankings you are a competitor.

A cookie can hold exactly one variable. affiliateID=7 is such a variable. You could write the javascirpt to save a cookie with the the var affiliateID=7 to the user's browser.

Than every time a user comes to your site, you check for the cookie. Your script will check to see A. Does the cookie exist, and B. if so, what is the value of affiliateID within the cookie.

Because you can keep the cookie on the user's browser for any specified period of time, this allows you to give credit to your affiliates for sales that result from the link even if the end-user does not buy on the first visit. ie, if they visit three weeks later, the affiliate still gets credited for the purchase.

As far as counting towards inbound links, I think it is a brilliant idea, why not! Just so long as a lot of things are setup correctly, like they are all coming to the same url, they are all from your industry, and there is good anchor text. Bare in mind that inbound links are still king, but they need to be from authoritative sites for your industry.

What about users that don't have cookies enabled in their browser?

Great question.
The number of people who disable cookies is very low. Around 5%.

As one of their affiliates, what would you rather have? Credit for 95% of customers you send to them for the next 60 days, or credit for 100% of the customers you send to them for 1 visit. Even if they buy the same day, but not until four hours later, you don't get credit.

Actually, my e-comm software has settings, and a cookie is already automatically placed on the users machine, and the affiliate will get credit for 60 days.

Also, the average purchase price of items from the site is about $500. So 5% commission is $25. Certain items sell for $1000s. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that given then nature of my products and their high-dollar sales price, this affiliate program is stellar.

Bottom line, however, is that I simply want to get a SEO PR boost. If I sell cars on my site for $4000, you referred someone to me, and you'll get $200 just because someone clicked on a link on your site, I believe that gives me leverage.

Thus, I want to say "I'll only accept affiliates with PR6 or higher, and my link has got to be just how I want it.". Therefore, I've got to be able to have all affiliates use the same link so I get that unified PR boost.

This also allows me to weed out weaklings, and deal only with solid businesses. A page with a PR6 must be high in the rankings, thus, will get me more visibility. Win win, and the rich get richer.

To be honest denemante I think you are getting a little greedy here. Affiliates are a lot more savvy that you are giving them credit for. You might find affiliates avoiding your program for more profitable niches where the merchant (you) is not outranking them and they are getting a larger cut (unless your onto something real special and missing a lot of KW's yourself).

PR6 sites are quite often outranked by lesser PR pages (and sites), it all depends upon where your links came from - think theme and trustrank (not page rank). Have a good look around the serps.

Besides would you not rather an affiliate with a PR3 and a homepage that garners say 1000 uniques a day linking to you than a PR6 with only 300 uniques?? Your still making money right?

Food for thought! ;)

Also, the average purchase price of items from the site is about $500. So 5% commission is $25. Certain items sell for $1000s.Are you aware of the fact that items with high dollar amounts have a far lower conversion rate than lower priced impulse or consumer type items?

Thus, I want to say "I'll only accept affiliates with PR6 or higher, and my link has got to be just how I want it." Oh, so if their homepage is PR6 and the interior pages are PR5 or PR4, then you want a link from their homepage?

Therefore, I've got to be able to have all affiliates use the same link so I get that unified PR boost.Experienced, capable affiliates know better than that. They know from where, to what and how to link to maximize conversions. It's their business to know.

This also allows me to weed out weaklings, and deal only with solid businesses.Affiliates who are solid businessmen or businesswomen are in it to make money, and if they have to conform to a merchants requirements or whims that aren't in their best interests, which yours aren't, IMHO, then they simply won't work the program. Yah, it's the weaklings or the n00bs who don't know any better.

A page with a PR6 must be high in the rankings, thus, will get me more visibility. Win win, and the rich get richer.Affiliates are not in business to give you visibility and make you money. They are in business to make a living for themselves - and savvy business-people aren't reputed to be too altruistic where business is concerned. Keep that in mind.

I know from experience how hard it can be to drive traffic to a site and convert a sale. But I own the store and keep nearly all the profit.

An affiliate will be taking just a percentage of one of my sales, and that sale will be just a percentage of ALL the sales I've had.

So I've always assumed that an affiliate would be someone interested in getting something for nothing. They have a site, so why not put a banner or link on it that if used, might earn them a couple of bucks. I know some might even go a bit further and actually promote their site. But even if they had a few banners for a few different sites at which they were affiliates, they still would not make nearly as much money as if they owned their own store.

Likewise, if they know of some promotional method which will drive so much traffic to THEIR site (enough to get lots of banner clicks and earn the affiliate cash), I'd hire them outright and pay them a ton more than they'd make from some affilates program.

So if you know of some super-pro affiliate who makes a ton of money with it, I'd like to know:

1. Why not apply whatever promotional tactics they do on a new store that they open/run and keep all the money?
2. Why not seek freelance employment with someone like me, willing perhaps to pay 15% of ALL sales if they bring in traffic?

To answer your Q's:

1. Too much hastle, super affiliates are specialised at what the do, bringing in traffic and converting it. They like numerous eggs in different baskets to diversify their business model.

Starting and running a business on the side would distract from what the currently do. Super affiliates often have large stables of websites and spend a lot of time maintaining them, acquiring new traffic and optimising conversions. In addition to rounding out the offerings with adsense and advertising (banners, links etc.).

2. If your aff program happens to be a winner and you have a super affiliate working for you expect them to know they are driving you a lot of traffic (read:sales) and therefore expect a larger cut of sales. This is another reason they are busy, renegotiating % rates with the merchants. Often a super aff is too busy working for one merchant with a great % to offer to even look into your program.

So I've always assumed that an affiliate would be someone interested in getting something for nothing. They have a site, so why not put a banner or link on it that if used, might earn them a couple of bucks. Right. ;)

So then, all someone has to do to become a super affiliate making $10K+ a month is put up a banner ad on the homepage of their site about their cat? Easy-peasy. It's surprising that everyone hasn't thought of doing that.

Right. ;)

So then, all someone has to do to become a super affiliate making $10K+ a month is put up a banner ad on the homepage of their site about their cat? Easy-peasy. It's surprising that everyone hasn't thought of doing that.

Very true Marcia, but that's only if they have time to do so... :D

I know one guy who is flat out even keeping up with banking his incoming checks. hehe, now wouldn't that be nice. :cool:

My business plan allows for a large % of profits to be reinvested into marketing. If I found someone who would bust their butt to drive traffic which converted to my site, I'd gladly set a very fair commission. So where are these people?

My business plan allows for a large % of profits to be reinvested into marketing. If I found someone who would bust their butt to drive traffic which converted to my site, I'd gladly set a very fair commission. So where are these people?You're too late for the seminar, it's just past, but if you're serious about developing a strong program long term, I'd suggest a consultation with someone of this calibre (http://www.andyrodriguez.com/) (Andy Rodriguez), who's got a proven track record, knows how to attract the finest and the best affiliate marketers in the business, treat them fairly - with ethics and respect - and keep them happy for the long term.

The same can be said about Chris Sanderson (http://www.amwso.com/), who's also got a loyal following of high earners, industry trust and respect and a proven track record.

There certainly are others of course, but the idea is that if you're just starting out in the business and serious about running a quality program, you'll get off to the best start possible by making an investment in getting advice from people who know how, have the right attitude toward the business AND their affiliates, and an exemplary history behind them.

So then, all someone has to do to become a super affiliate making $10K+ a month is put up a banner ad on the homepage of their site about their cat? Easy-peasy. It's surprising that everyone hasn't thought of doing that.
$10K a month is a nice income, but I would not consider that to be a super-affiliate. I work with a company that does nothing but affiliate marketing. I say company, but really they are just two guys. Good friends of mine. They are banking upwards of $10K a day!!

10K a month is only 120K a year. I make that much just off of selling advertising (adsense) on my content sites. Working in the affiliate marketing segment takes many more hours, more research, more stress, and more risk than running a content site.

Why do it unless the rewards are far higher. My friends recently called me, and asked me to come on board with them. I told them NO WAY!! Yes, you guys are making a lot more than me and my content sites, but I have virtually no stress. I can take two weeks off if I want, and my content is still making me money.

But your point is well taken. These guys are making a lot of money, and are not going to mess around with anyone who does not play it their way.

Experienced, capable affiliates know better than that. They know from where, to what and how to link to maximize conversions. It's their business to know.
Agreed. The guys I know are brilliant. They have affiliate marketing down to a science. Nothing they do is spur of the moment. They are talking today about products they will not be representing for three or four quarters, researching the individual markets, developing strategies, etc. They are not going to jump on board with a product unless it is something they can make a lot of money with. They don't even consider big ticket items. Their model is based around selling a lot of smaller, cheaper items.

They are going to demand that things be the way they want them, and are going to link to what ever they want, or they will just go and sell someone else's products.

All of that said, I am still convinced denemante you can come up with a program that would allow you to take advantage of the incoming links, using a mix of server-side programming, and cookies.

I agree with the other posters however, that you are not likely to attract super-affiliates. But thats ok, you can do just fine if you attract several less aggressive affiliates, and than take advantage of the IBLs. JMHO