Affiliate Marketing

 This past week I was honored to be a guest on James Martell's Affiliate Buzz Podcast. James and I have been friends for about 10 years now since we met at an affiliate event sponsored by Shareasale in Manhattan in 2004.

While we did have a plan on what we were going to talk about when James and I get going we covered a lot of topics. We mentioned taking photos and getting traffic back to your website.

Our ordeal with Hurricane Sandy was another topic we discussed. I had no idea James was watching my Klout score during the storm. I still find that funny.

Sit back and have a cup of coffee or two and listen to James and I discuss affiliate marketing.

 

Today I got an email from Lynn who bought “25 Ways To Improve Your Website” asking about putting a plugin on their site that puts in an affiliate disclosure. I am a big believer in running only the amount of plugins that you need. I think I run about 5-7 plugins that are essential. The more plugins you have

The plugins that you see that generate these affiliate disclosure pages are usually nothing but cookie setters or backlink builders for the affiliate that made the plugin (Those sneaky affiliates) I suggest making an affiliate disclosure page instead.

This is another great opportunity to build more trust with your website readers. You can fill the page with more things about you to get your readers more comfortable with taking out their credit card. Think of it as a second “About Us” page.

I suggest making it as personal as you can and keep any fancy lawyers words to a minimum. While I could go on all day I don't have to since Copyblogger already has a great page on affiliate disclosures. For more on this read Copybloggers thoughts.

A few years back I did a story on two guys that were not doing the right thing by people. Ben and Dave came on my radar as I was doing affiliate approval applications and saw the same lousy site every day about 20 times. I would decline the affiliate and then send an email telling them what the scam was.

Here is a link to the original story about Ben and Dave and falling for affiliate scams.

I am thinking the FTC was already acting on complaints when I originally published the article. If you lost money to these guys you should Read the update on the FTC website. Maybe you can add your name to the list and get some money back.

From the release:

“According to an FTC complaint filed in November 2012, the defendants sold the “Six Figure Program” to consumers as a purportedly no-risk, money-back guaranteed opportunity to make money via their own website, falsely claiming that, for a $27 fee, they would enable consumers to affiliate with well-known companies’ websites and earn commissions. After purchasing the program, consumers learned that they had to pay $100 or more in additional costs just to set up their websites. The court subsequently halted the allegedly deceptive practices, froze the defendants’ assets, and put the companies into receivership pending a court hearing.

The settlement order announced today permanently prohibits The Online Entrepreneur Inc., Ben and Dave’s Consulting Associates, Inc., and David Clabeaux from selling business and work-at-home opportunities, misrepresenting that consumers are likely to earn money and misrepresenting any material fact about a product or service. They also are barred from failing to clearly disclose the terms of any offer before consumers provide billing information, and making a representation unless it is true and the defendants have competent and reliable evidence to substantiate the claim. In addition, the order prohibits these defendants from selling or otherwise benefitting from consumers’ personal information, and failing to properly dispose of customer information.

The order imposes a judgment of more than $2.9 million, which will be suspended when Clabeaux has surrendered real estate, personal property, and bank and investment accounts. The full judgment will become due immediately if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition. Litigation continues against the remaining defendant, Benjamin Moskel.”

You can read the whole release here