Is there a silver lining in these slap-happy times? Of course. Affiliates who learn to roll with the punches and make the necessary changes to their campaigns stand to make more money in the long run.

Watch Our New Google Slap Video For Awesome Pointers!

To help you adapt to the changing landscape, we’ve created a short video covering the basics of what the Google Slap is, the criteria that govern it, and the different strategies you can use to avoid it.

This short video is tailored for affiliates in the digital product niche, with real-world examples of what to do and what not to do with your campaigns. The main goal is to communicate that providing quality, unique content on your sites is the most effective way to stay out of Google’s doghouse and build your business for the long haul.

You can watch the full video here and now right on this page, or scroll down to read the individual segment descriptions and watch the video in 4 parts.

Sign Up Now with RevenueWire to get your one-page summary of The Google Slap video and other great marketing support materials from our Tutorial Center.

Part 1. What Is The Google Slap?
Ever wondered what exactly constitutes a Google Slap? You’ll find out in the first segment of our new Google Slap video, anchored by RevenueWire Affiliate Manager Seth Hornby. Watch It Now >>

Part 2. Tips For Your AdWords
This segment covers 3 tips for how you can meet and exceed Google AdWord Guidelines, including Relevant and Original Content, Transparency and Navigability. Watch It Now >>

Part 3. Real-World Examples
Seth takes 2 real life examples of a Driver Product Landing Page and a Driver Mini-Site that have been blacklisted on Google. You’ll learn in detail the different page elements that can result in a Google Slap. At the end, Seth shows an example of a well-designed landing page to provide you with a clear idea of how your landing pages should look. Watch It Now >>

Part 4. Brief Summary
The Google Slap is not all doom and gloom. Seth shares a few positive changes that have come out of the recent rise in number of Google Slaps, including its beneficial effect on competitive keyword bid price. Seth concludes the presentation by explaining the long term advantages of building content rich web sites as promotional tools. Watch It Now >>

You can also watch the video in 4 segments in the Playlist.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE VIDEO. IT WAS DEFINITELY FUN TO MAKE. MAKE SURE TO USE THESE TIPS AND STRATEGIES IN YOUR CAMPAIGNS!

Google is also operating under the assertion that if their search engine does not return the most relevant results, they could possibly lose both users and revenue.

They believe they could see a drop in their market share and in this competitive climate, that situation would be unacceptable. Both Bing and Yahoo! are positioning themselves with new offerings and partnerships, so the competition is now stronger than ever. Google’s solution to this competition is what is driving the new directive that we have all come to know as the “May Day Update.”

Defining The May Day Update

In the first installment we covered what the Google May Day Update is, and how it may affect you and your web sites. We provided warning signs that you can use to determine if your site has been affected and explained what Google is trying to accomplish by changing their algorithm in this way.

Overcoming The Algorithm Change

In the second installment of the May Day update articles, we explained what factors would cause your web site to lose ranking and relevance under the new Google rules. We provided some ways to help overcome the initial ill-effects and explained how effective back linking could help your web site. The provided examples illustrated what could possibly be done to get the ranking and traffic returned.

Improving Website Quality and Relevance

In the next installment, we demonstrated how to improve our web sites to catch the desired attention and ranking from Google.  We focused on website quality and relevance; two factors that are important to you in the post-Mayday update world. We applied effective strategies and provided some examples to illustrate how they are implemented to our benefit. Our clients not only saw traffic return but they even have seen traffic gains by following this advice.

Internal and External Link Building

Finally, we displayed some effective methods to improve our web site’s relevance through targeted and carefully executed internal and external linking strategies. We showed you how to reduce the link jumps, move products closer to the home page, and even encourage organic visitors. Changes of this nature will render your web site “algorithm proof” and even improve your end user’s experience. This will strengthen the relationship with customers and separate your legitimate web site from the fraudulent ones.

Cultivating Top-Notch Content

To overcome and even thrive under the new algorithm, we have shown how to develop content that is of value to your web site visitors, and explained how to focus particularly on deeper pages within your web site and specifically your product pages.

The content on these pages should always appear to be “fresh” and updated on a regular basis, so we explained how to keep your web site update labor minimized by making the best use of user generated content.  Keep in mind that good quality pages will be rewarded by better rankings in Google in addition to increased rankings for many “long tail” phrases. We described how this strategy will naturally develop some of the back linking we are all striving to create.

Fortunately, Metamend’s clients have seen no real negative affects as they have been following our recommendations for developing and improving their site for the search engine algorithm change.

In some of the more properly executed strategies, some clients have actually seen an increase in traffic compared to their competition, which have lost rankings during the May Day update. Google has given these unprepared competitors a low ranking for not accommodating the new requirements; many are still using the old systems like content farms and blog scrapers, to no avail. While these methods have had a good run, they are less effective now, especially since the May Day update.

Google’s attempt at improving the quality of their search results requires webmasters to also improve the quality of their websites. This requires webmasters to put in time and effort to improve their websites in order to position themselves for relevant keywords and to drive traffic. Many web site owners will now find difficulty in devoting these resources to achieve their goals and as a result, the top ranking positions will be held by those who are seen as providing fresh content on a regular basis. This does not have to be as labor intensive as sounds, as we demonstrated.

By following Google’s guidelines and developing a web site that provides value to the web site visitors, we will ensure that our own web sites consistently rank for keywords and develop the desired authority over time. Then by applying our strategies consistently, we can insure that these valuable sites are never negatively affected by any sort of search engine algorithm update.

To briefly summarize, we have demonstrated what the Google May Day update is, how to determine if your web site has been affected, and what you can do about it specifically with examples and strategies.

You are not alone in this issue, and we hope this article series has been helpful and informative. Remember that you have the ability to not only overcome the effects of Google’s algorithm change, but to actually improve your site’s rank and positioning with a little effort and some dedicated strategy.

The basic elements around this strategy to overcome the ill effects of the algorithm change are quality of data, freshness of your content, and the amount of “related” content that appears on your web site or web sites.

Build For Quality, Not Mediocrity

First, the quality of the data and content is a high priority on Google’s radar now, so you need to make sure you keep our content relevant. Be sure to consider in advance what you’re putting on your site and what the potential value to web site visitors will be.

The most effective technique here will be to use unique, original, and valuable content designed with the targeted visitors in mind. This will be of particular benefit to you, on your product or your affiliate pages, as these are currently the pages most scrutinized by Google.

Make sure that the content is properly formed, both grammatically and in context, and be sure to make use of a spellchecker as a final step. This one simple step could mean the difference between being a victim of the May Day update or benefiting from it.

The spellchecker tool is part of most software packages, OEM operating systems and even most e-mail clients and it’s almost always free.  Consider that a web site full of errors and incoherent content can give the user the sense that your site is fraudulent, and even possibly illegitimate.  This is what Google is trying to prevent with the algorithm change, and you could become an accidental victim simply by not proofreading your own content before publishing.

Also, keep in mind that any content on your web site that is not present on other competitor’s sites will give you an edge both in the search engines and for visitors to your site. Try to add content such as regular product reviews to your product pages, and other user generated content, which will bring the user further into the experience and keep them coming back for more.

Keeping fresh content of this nature on your web site will also entice the search engines to visit much more often. Content like this is most valuable to your visitors and ensures your site will remain relevant in the future.

Here are some tips to keep your site relevant:

1. Know Your Market And Your Competition
If you’re the “small fish” or even the “same-size fish” in the pond that’s “your niche”, then you need to do something to increase your search engine presence. If your site has relatively few pages and you’re a competitor in a somewhat competitive niche, then the obvious solution will be to increase the number of pages for your targeted phrases.  For example, if you’re selling engine parts and you have a page for Chevrolet parts and a page for Ford parts, and that is all for now, then you’ll have a fairly small footprint online.

To deepen your search footprint, if you could add extra site pages for Chevrolet v8 parts, Chevrolet v6 parts, Ford v8 parts and Ford v6 parts, you would see the resulting change in ranking and volume of traffic. You have the same parts as before, but you’ve made the searching experience more relevant and easier for visitors and the search engines to find.

By using the same keywords and properly forming the pages, you have essentially doubled the size of your online footprint. This change will get Google’s algorithm’s attention, and get you the traffic you’re looking for, and enhance the user experience all at the same time.

2. Develop Content That Is Focused On a Specific Subject
Make sure to write this content with a higher level of granular detail. Develop your “long tail” subjects a bit more, and this modification will contribute to increasing your page depth as well. Changes like these will make a much bigger target out of your site for the search engine to hit.

3. Differentiate Yourself From MFA and / or “Thin Affiliate” Sites
You can easily accomplish this feat by providing contact information for your visitors to use, and making sure you have a privacy policy in place.

Having these “Privacy” and “Contact Us” pages as separate and unique entities will also greatly assist your search engine efforts and increase your searchable online presence.  Any addition that demonstrates to Google and to visitors to your site that you’re here to stay, and not fraudulent, will increase your impact on the search engine ranking as well.

The overall goal is to show both visitors and search engines that your web site is truly legitimate and is “in it for the long haul.” Keeping live email contacts, working phone numbers, actual physical addresses and any permanent items will prove that your site is not a scam.

We need to keep in mind that Google has stated that the May Day changes were made in an effort to keep content fresh and relevant. If you follow the suggestions made here, you should be able to keep your relevance and improve the overall user experience in your favor.

Next week we will talk about linking and how with some strategy and careful implementation, we can recover or boost our page relevance. Also, by taking a few proactive steps, we can make it possible to enjoy some traffic increases and even encourage return visitors.

Everyday Google indexes hundreds of thousands of images. Over the years it has probably earmarked billions of images for search purposes. Every time someone searches for an image, it’s an opportunity to put your product or service front and center. If your images can be found easily based on targeted keywords, you’ll probably see a jump in traffic to your site as well as an increase in your conversion rates.

An Image Is Worth a Thousand Clicks
Depending on the search query a person enters, Google will display a number of indexed images that show up in thumbnail format above the regular “text only” search results. These images are linked to corresponding web pages. If the prospect clicks on the image they get directed to the web page that houses the image. It’s easy math. With the added traffic from a properly search-optimized image, you can expect to see more people clicking-through to your page and your conversions should rise.

Making Sure Your Images Are Searchable
For example if you have a website or landing page promoting ParetoLogic’s RegCure, it’s extra good business to have an image from your website that’s listed directly above the regular SERPS. It provides added traction and a boost in traffic and sales. It’s also pretty easy to do. So how do you go about doing it? A little HTML fidgeting, a keen eye, and your set.

Let’s take a closer look…

Choose a File Name that Contains Your Top Keywords
The file name “RegCure-registry-cleaner.jpg” would be a logical start for your RegCure product. Make sure to separate the words out with hyphens to get better traction from the spiders.

Use a Descriptive Image Alt Attribute Text
For your alt attribute text, drop in the same keywords you’ve used for the file name. Just like that. For RegCure, your Image Alt Attribute could be “RegCure registry cleaner.” Here’s how it would look in your HTML coding:

<img src=”RegCure-registry-cleaner.jpg” alt=”RegCure registry cleaner”>

Use The Same Keywords For Your Image Title Attribute
Just like with your Image Alt Attribute, use the same descriptive keyword text for your Image Title Attribute as well. Here’s the HTML:

<img src=”RegCure-registry-cleaner.jpg” alt=”RegCure registry cleaner” title=”RegCure registry cleaner”>

Add Keywords to The Textual Content Around Your Image
Any written content on the page that appears before and after your image gets spidered and analyzed for keyword relevance. That means this text effects the position that your image appears in on the search page. Use the same words “RegCure registry cleaner” again in any text above or below the image for maximum search engine pickup.

Provide Large Image Sizes
Google seems to love big images. So much so that you can bet the bigger the image, the easier it will be to get it atop the regular results page. Include the Width and Height attributes in your image tag HTML to indicate to the  search engines the size of your image. Here’s how it will look in your code:

<img src=”Regcure-registry-cleaner.jpg” alt=”RegCure registry cleaner” title=”RegCure registry cleaner” width=”600″ height=”400″>

Pick Images That Arrest The Eye
If you display ugly or awkward images that no one wants to click on, the previous steps will all be nullified. So use images that grab the eye and make people want to click on them. Magnetic images, bright colors, sleek design, attractive faces, stylish fonts, and graphical elements that speak to the person’s search query will all inspire more clicks.

Try these steps our and see what results you get!

]]> http://blog.revenuewire.com/index.php/2010/02/the-art-of-affiliate-marketing-an-image-is-worth-a-thousand-clicks/feed/ 0 http://blog.revenuewire.com/index.php/2010/02/viral-affiliate-marketing-is-tha-bomb/ http://blog.revenuewire.com/index.php/2010/02/viral-affiliate-marketing-is-tha-bomb/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:43:16 +0000 admin http://blog.revenuewire.com/?p=1003 Viral marketing is based on the age-old principle of “word of mouth.” In the marketing and advertising world “word of mouth” is spelled G-O-L-D. That’s because if you can get people talking about you and your product in a flavorlicious way, you can juice up your popularity and increase your sales through a dramatic wildfire effect.

The key to viral marketing is infectiousness. Whether it’s something shocking, humorous, or emotionally compelling, viral marketing techniques reach out and grab the attention of the audience with a raw human appeal that instantly makes them to want to share it with others. Good viral has such tremendous emotional power of attraction or WOW FACTOR it becomes a phenomenon in and of itself; one that replicates itself over and over in peoples’ minds, much like the meme theorized by evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins.

As a larger and larger audience gets drawn into the excitement, enthusiasm and pure entertainment value of your viral piece, your message subliminally gains momentum and sweeps more and more people up into the eye of the storm, all the while hooking them into whatever product or service you’re selling.

Video Is The Heart & Soul of Viral Marketing

Video is hands down the most engaging, effective, and undeniably infectious form of viral marketing on the planet. It’s no secret that if you want to make a major splash, video is the way to go. In fact these days it might be the ONLY way to go. Hello, YouTube anyone?

If you’re an affiliate, YouTube is a great place to make, post and market a viral video. You can set up your own page, list your affiliate marketing site’s URL, and stealthily plant other key information.

Things start to really get fun when you actually get down to creating your viral video. The common misperception among businessmen and women is that you need to spend millions to make a wicked vid. Truth is that most of the best viral, totally awesome and original videos are done by amateurs. Hello “Chocolate Rain” anyone? Check it out, that bizarre and beautiful homespun croon has banked over 47 million hits!

Consider the possibilities. Since your videos will ultimately be embedded on social media sites and linked to in emails, tons of people will get funneled to your YouTube channel. When they get there, they’ll be prepped for the message and ready to visit your landing page for whatever it is you’ve got to pitch.

Ebooks: A Distant Second To Video, But Still Cooler Than Going To School

There are a slew of free programs out there that allow you to build your own ebooks. The key point again, as with viral video, is to have a magnetic topic to cover in your book. Please. Save the world from yet more boring content. Pick a subject with some flash, an original point-of-view, or some never-explored insight that will enrich the reader’s mind. Do some research on your target audience and write about a dense nugget of opinion that could spark a healthy controversy, enliven the discussion, enlighten and entertain, or delve into some cutting-edge area in the lives of the people who buy your product or service.

Word of mouth about a hot new ebook can catch fire just as fast and gloriously as a viral video, it just doesn’t happen as often. However if you strike oil on a topic that’s on point, you could be in for a groundswell of traffic to your landing pages and websites, and an ample spike in conversions.

There’s one caveat here. Make sure to refer readers to your landing page in your ebook! Put the link where they can see it. The more people that download your ebook and associate you with its stellar content, the more people will buy your affiliate wares.

Silly Rabbit, Widgets Are For Affiliates…

What the smack is a widget? Someone help me out. “Well Bob, they’re these wonderful little marvels of modern technology called mini-applications. They’re totally self-contained and can easily be dragged and dropped onto your websites, blogs and other online spaces.” Why thank you Reginald. And by the way. You better remember that definition of widget folks, because widgets are insane. In terms of affiliate marketing of course. They’re indeed blowing up as I write this.

Why? You can create widgets that highlight the products you sell. When you’re done creating them you can put those widgets on your social networking profiles. Members who see your widget and like it can then easily pass it along to others.

Lesson learned. Support your local widget makers!

Now Bust Your Creative Gut

For some final tips on viral content, we suggest taking a few minutes to descramble your brain onto the page. Come up with some fresh ways to go viral with your campaigns. Go ahead, be an internet maverick. It pays!

Here a few starters to get the fires of inspiration up and burning:
A. Make custom electronic post cards or gift cards and promote them on your website, social networking profile or other cyber real estate.  Embed a link to your landing page URL on the cards so that the consumer can click through.

B. You gotta spend money to make money. So hire a freelancer to design a simple digital game for your exclusive use. Think Brickbreaker, Sudoku or Word Mole for the Crackberry. Super easy and very catchy. Have the designer sew marketing elements into the fabric of the app. That way when users play the game they’ll be getting super-targeted ads directly to their face!

That’s it for this article. Over and out affiliates – keep your neckties loose and your campaigns rolling!

Consistency: Setting Yourself Up For Conversion Success

The key here is to be consistent. You want to lead the consumer along a trail where their eyes see what they need to see in order to take the next step. When you’re not consistent with your keywords and messaging, you’ll lose the prospect quickly. Take Registry Cleaners as an example. An inexperienced affiliate may advertise a product, for example ParetoLogic’s RegCure, on the term “Registry Cleaners” with the following ad text:

Easy Registry Cleaners
Clean your registry 100%
Increase Your PC’s Speed
www.cheapPCcleaners.com

While the ad itself isn’t too bad, when the prospect clicks on it they’re then taken to a page with the headline “Inexpensive Software For Increasing PC Speed“, and a list of names of different registry cleaner products. The consumer’s specific search query for “Registry Cleaner” hasn’t been re-enforced on the landing page, and they’re required to take additional steps to find the product they want to buy.

A much better way to design this page would be to make it product specific page, in this case Paretologic RegCure, with the words “ParetoLogic RegCure” clearly written in large type at the top of the page in a bold header, with testimonials and awards, all immediately in plain view and directly supporting the ad from which the visitor arrived. This shows the consumer they’ve landed in the right place, and tells them that they’ve found the product they’re looking for.

Usability: Streamlining Your Visitor’s Experience

Usability is something a lot of affiliates tend to forget about. The fact is that if you do it right, you can boost your conversions for both your paid and organic traffic. The key to strong site usability is making sure there aren’t any obstacles to consumers purchasing your product once they’ve reached the landing page. Obstacles include a lack of a clear call-to-action, missing trust elements, unclear messaging, and so on.

A visitor who has just arrived at your site makes instant value judgements about all aspects of your business. At this stage in the buying process their behavior is volatile, making them likely to bolt at the slightest inconsistency or point of confusion. Ask the following questions to help prevent scaring your visitors off or losing their attention.

*Is there a clear headline stating your landing page’s main purpose?

*Is the product title and image above the fold, prominently placed and immediately visible?

*Is the buy button and price prominent and visible immediately?

*Are there complicated options, buttons or links that could confuse or distract your visitor?

*Will your visitor know immediately how to use your site and what they need to do to achieve their goal?

Pursuit of Perfection: Testing Your Landing Pages

Start with the most basic kind: A/B testing. Split your visitors into two equal and random groups, showing one group version A of your LP design and another group version B. If A performs better use it as your primary LP, and if B performs better use that one. This is the easiest way to see what elements on your page are working and which aren’t.

Remember to only test one element at a time, such as the header, body copy, button size and button color, etc. That way if you see a difference in conversion rates on each page, you know which element of design it is that’s making the difference. Small differences are very significant. A spike in conversion rate from 1.5% to 1.65% increases your sales by 1/10th with no extra advertising expenditure.

Multivariate testing works on the same principle, only you split the traffic into more groups with more variations of the original landing page. This type of testing is generally used for larger sites with high-volume traffic.

Make sure you test long enough to see statistically valid results or what experts call Level of Statistical Confidence. For more on the subject of valid stats check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance. Be patient. It can take up to a month to meet your standard for statistical confidence.

Unfortunately the only constant with Quality Score since then has been that nothing seems to be predictable or consistent. So what does that say about the true value of article content? In the past advertisers rarely added anything more than a Contact Us and Privacy Policy link at bottom of their landing pages and managed to get along just fine QScore-wise.

When you’re first starting in a new niche with a brand new domain, content matters. Obviously, Google is familiar with landing page best practices, and doesn’t expect their big agency advertisers’ clients to send their clicks to article pages only.

Every big agency client or vendor advertiser that Google is working so hard to attract also has a core domain for their business with lots of content, and likely a corporate site or product catalogue. With that domain content as a solid foundation, Google lets the advertiser send their Adwords traffic to tightly focused landing pages.

RevenueWire’s experience with affiliates has been similar, to a point.  If the affiliate’s core domain has plenty of quality, on-point articles, you’ll get enough creative license from Google to be able to branch out in landing pages with very little other than sales copy and essential conversion elements.

There is one clear & present danger for affiliates though. If you’re promoting the same product as 25 different affiliates and don’t have a unique look or style to your landing pages, you might not pass a manual review.  When you think about it, Google has a ‘no-double serving’ policy, but lately that’s been getting enforced as more than just a way to keep the paid SERPs from being loaded with the ads from the same URL. Just generally, this means that affiliates have to start diversifying their product offerings to stay competitive.

It’s also been applied recently to loads of affiliate pages that show up in the same paid SERPs that look too close to each other, such that the customer might feel that even though the domain names are technically different, they’re ending up at the same landing page again and again as they click back and forth through the paid results.

Moral of the story? Always start out with a solid value-add content base on your affiliate domain and then test the waters as to how much leeway you have to use shorter, more tightly arranged landing pages.

Remember the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard of Oz? Your purchase path SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT look like that. Customers don’t want a buying experience fraught with perils, dense forests, lions tigers & bears, forked roads, poppy fields, twists, tangents or turns. To boost conversions your purchase path should be straighter than an arrow and smoother than day-old pavement.

One Thing Leads To Another

Step one of creating a high-converting purchase path starts with your PPC ad or whatever method you’re using to make initial contact with the consumer, such as email or banner ads. Your first point of contact has to then lead to a landing page that supports and elaborates on the message communicated in the ad/email, and should ideally close the sale right then and there. On occasion you’ll need to ad steps for the purposes of consumer need variance (e.g., detailed product descriptions or feature lists), but as a general rule try to keep your buy path simple and linear in 2 to 3 steps.

If you’re using an entire website or mini-site to sell your product, each page has to offer a first, middle and end step that ultimately leads to conversion. Treat each page on a site as an “independent agent” which provides the necessary steps to conversion all in one place.

Cover All Your Bases

It’s simply smart business to take into account the differences in consumer needs and behavior. Some consumers like to buy right off the bat while others need more information and time to make their decision. Some want to read lots of feature/benefit details about the product you’re selling, while others want to see testimonials or customer support and warranty information.

Your path to conversion should provide each of those different users precisely what they need in order to take the next step. And that means walking the razor’s edge. On the one hand you have to keep your visitors’ options open, and on the other hand you want to be aware that too many options can create confusion and stop them from choosing any path at all.

The trick is to focus enough to be compelling and still be broad enough to attract an increasingly profitable audience. With this in mind, try to narrow your message down to a common-denominator so you can reach the largest majority of your visitor’s needs without becoming too diluted in your pitch.

Use The Third Degree

Once your purchase paths are built out, review them. Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes and take a real live walk-through of every aspect of the path you’ve carved out. Does each step link to the next? Are the questions being answered in sequence? Does the copy anticipate potential objections that come into your head? Is the flow of the pitch seamless, natural and compelling? Are there redundant steps in the process? Are there obstacles to conversion? Is key information missing?

As you review the purchase path look for broken links, grammatical errors, and most importantly missing calls-to-action. Patch holes, fill cracks, take out superfluous steps and add missing ones. Use your analytics to identify problem areas and test different versions to see which perform better. And never lose sight of your goal – to always ensure that each visitor finds exactly what they’re looking for.

Create and Test New Paths

Your initial phase of creating optimized purchase paths is be designed to hit the majority of your target audience. After that perfect trap has been set, it’s time to accommodate the fringe audience and pick up some of the extra loose change jangling around in cyberspace.

This means creating alternate purchase paths tailored to the “atypical” consumer of your product; anyone who is in the market for what you’re selling but whose buying pattern deviates from the norm. For these visitors you’ll want a slightly different content or messaging, which you can provide them by tweaking and modifying your original purchase path.

Don’t Stop Never Stop!

Never stop looking for new opportunities to improve your conversion process. Test, test, and test some more. Sometimes adding new steps in the process can help improve conversions among specific audiences. Just be careful to keep an eye out for any negative effects that your changes incur. The goal here is improvement, not to undermine the quality of work you’ve already done.

Pick The Right Cart

One last point. The shopping cart you use to finalize your transactions is absolutely essential to your success as an affiliate. A shopping cart with a single page, that has minimal steps and uses clear and concise fields always work best. Trust badges and other certification are required to establish trust with the consumer. High-converting carts are an art form so look into a number of different ones to compare conversion rates. If you’re cart doesn’t close the sale, all your hard work to get them there will be wasted!