With so many affiliate marketing networks, how does a person choose one from the other? According to Chad Waite, a Network Specialist with AvantLink, their affiliate network is different. Most people associate affiliate marketing with banner and text ads, but as Waite explained, AvantLink's tools set it apart. The company's tools allow publishers to go beyond these types of ads and lets them advertise on a product level.

"When affiliate marketing becomes something like that, it becomes an enhancement to content and not so much an advertisement," said Waite.

The company also has a WordPress plugin that brings all its tools and functionality to one place to make it easier for bloggers and publishers. read more..

We quietly rolled out Affiliate marketing's first app marketplace yesterday (think platform), and this is the first blog post about it (although we did a #sneakpeak tweet yesterday). Hopefully there will be many more to come. It's AvantLink Affiliate network integrated, and there are no fees to submit or use the ad technology.

AvantLink has introduced the AvantLink App Market to encourage innovators to build capabilities within our architecture that will enhance business relationships, provide new technical tools for Affiliate marketers, and in general, continue to add functionality to our platform.

Yessir. Game on. Learn more HERE or HERE...or watch the Prezi below.

Oh, and not bad launch timing in light of the Google Rant going around.

This is a no brainer solution for manufacturers or brand names who publish online product info, but do not have ecommerce enabled on their web site(s).

Attention brands and/or manufacturers: Are you considering going direct-to-consumer with an ecommerce platform? If so AvantLink has an alternative option for you. Join AvantLink as an Affiliate, and through the use of their existing network functionality, you can partner with your retail vendors to drive customers their way...instead of competing with them!

Options include placing a "Where to Buy" widget on your site's product information pages that displays links to merchants who carry your products (as long as the merchant is offering their Affiliate program through AvantLink). Or you can use their Affiliate Link Encoder to automatically convert links you might already have to your retail vendors, to referral tracking and revenue generating links.

It's simple. Create brand loyalty by referring customers to your retail partners while increasing revenue. If your retail partners are not already part of the AvantLink Affiliate network, refer them and earn a commission for that as well. See the flyer below, and contact AvantLink if you would like more information.

I suppose I should get some thoughts down here. I posted an intro to Affiliate marketing video nearly a year to the day since the previous post before that. Terrific. It's pretty much the story of my life that although I try, well.....

So here I am, over a year later, with the motivation to outline how to create a niche Affiliate site from scratch using WordPress.

WordPress (Wikipedia, 5/31/11): "WordPress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It's often customized into a Content Management System. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites."

First Thing's First

1. Pick a topic. Make a firm choice in your area of expertise because you only get one. Let me say it another way: if you try and build content as an expert for ten different sites, with ten different topics, it will not work. Your time will be wasted and you will walk away defeated. I cannot emphasize this enough.
2. Decide on a domain name. You are better off with a short, brandable domain rather than a long-hyphenated-keyword-match.com domain. If you can get something short and unique with a .com that's perfect, but you can still get creative otherwise. For example you have probably seen people use actual domain extensions as part of the branding (think del.icio.us or shopsocial.ly).
3. Find a web host. There are plenty to choose from, and if you're just starting out all you'll need is a shared hosting platform...I use Hostican.com. Lucky for you the shared hosting providers are more similar than they are different, but you should still spend a bit of time looking around the web for consumer reviews of the different hosts.

WordPress & Configuration

The inherent nature of the WordPress CMS allows for easy categorization, tagging and archiving of your web content. Content can include anything from photographs, editorials and articles, to podcasts and videos. As Gary V says, "just make sure and put out good shit." Be authentic. Be yourself. Be the authority on your topic. Build your personal brand online. Whether you're a true authority or just a poser will come out clear as day in the content you put out.

Most shared web hosting platforms have one click installs of popular tools and scripts via admin interfaces like cpanel. If that's the case with your host (this might be something to find out before you choose on a host), installing WordPress literally takes seconds. If that's not the case don't sweat it because installing WordPress manually is not that difficult. Start here.

Once you have WordPress installed find a theme (or skin) that works for you. There are countless themes out there, but use this Free WordPress Themes database to search from. You can also find higher quality paid or custom themes, but to start out get a simple layout that's free. If you have some basic HTML or CSS skills than it's fairly easy to do some of your own customizations.

Now that you have a theme, tweak two important admin settings before you get started from within the WP panel: Permalinks & Privacy. More info on each below, including screen grabs.

Settings -> Permalinks

You can assign a custom permalink structure to the content you produce, and you should. Personally I think it's best to structure URLs to include the keywords you use in page or post titles, as well as categories. To do this simply go to "Settings" then "Permalinks" page, select "Custom Structure" then apply the following value to that field:

/%category%/%postname%/

This allows permalinks (or URLs) of the content you produce to include category and postname keywords. So for example if I posted a fact on GeekArm.com about how bad it is to try and build ten thin Affiliates sites at once, the title might be something like: Focus or Lose. With the custom permalink structure in place, the archived URL would include the category (Facts) and the post title (Focus or Lose): http://www.geekarm.com/facts/focus-or-lose/

WordPress Permalink Settings

Settings -> Privacy

If you're building a niche Affiliate site it's essential that you allow search engines to get in and index your content. There is a specific setting for allowing or disallowing this on the "Settings" then "Privacy" page. Real simple...just select "I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers" and then click "Save Changes".

WordPress Privacy Settings

If you own high profile SERPs with good content, for competitive KWs/product searches in your niche, you will convert sales and earn commissions. Of course the trick is going to be to win those SERPs, so dig in and do it right. You will not succeed by gaming the search engines. Build something from your knowledge and passion that's sustainable.

Essential Plugins

There are a handful of plugins that you should download and activate right away (see arrows below in "WordPress Plugins List"). As you get more familiar with WordPress, and become more familiar with it's plugin capabilities, you will be able to easily add or delete others. There are lots to choose from and you can read reviews or view ratings before you download and activate them. In the dashboard sidebar of WordPress just click "Plugins" for access to your list of plugins.

WordPress Plugins List

Akismet should come with the install, and yes you should activate it right away. It effectively controls and filters comment spam that will become rampant once your site gains some traction. You'll first need to sign up for an API key, though, and there is a small monthly fee...no complaining, it's entirely worth it.

AvantLink WP is the most innovative Affiliate marketing plugin on the market. It is completely integrated within the AvantLink network, and it's free of charge for qualified Affiliates. With this plugin you can add a multi-merchant ProductSearch API module to your WordPress sidebar in minutes, and much more. Click here for more info and a list of screencast tutorials on AvantLink WP.

Others I recommend starting with include a video embed plugin of some sort (there are lots!), WP Super Cache and ShareThis (or a similar plugin that helps others share your content). Downloading and of course activating plugins can be done from within the WordPress admin panel by clicking "Plugins" then "Add New".

WordPress Install Plugins

Final Thoughts

Remember it's not brain science to follow the guidelines above for WordPress. Your two main challenges will be to 1) focus your efforts, and 2) dig your heals in for the long haul. Do yourself a favor and focus on your area of knowledge or expertise with one web site and put out good content regularly. If you do this you will earn natural inbound links over time, which naturally builds site authority...preserving the integrity of your efforts to build a profitable, niche Affiliate site.

This video is part of a "Grab Bag" series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, answers questions from webmasters.

This year at the 2010 Internet Retailer Conference (on June 10th) there is a meet & greet from 5:30pm-7:30pm, presented by AvantLink.com. This will be a casual networking event for Affiliate marketing professionals, much like our receptions we've put on in the past at Outdoor Retailer.

If you're planning to attend IRCE 2010 in Chicago, please join us. You could win an iPad just for showing up!

RSVP by emailing rsvp@avantlink.com.

CLICK HERE for more info...

We recently hit our distribution channels hard with mentions of AvantLink Mobile, a new Android phone application for Affiliates and merchants. This Android app allows people to check their Affiliate program stats, and do some other cool things from their smart phones. As you might have guessed, the impact my social media contacts had on further distributing this news was significant.

I spent about an hour in the morning posting the smart phone app news to various channels we have at our disposal like ABestWeb, @AvantLink on Twitter and our network Affiliate marketing blog (not to mention a custom RT @GaryMarcoccia and @GeekArm, etc., which automates to my Facebook status update). By noon quite a few people had re-tweeted the news, and there were even Affiliate bloggers writing it up!

BTW there is an iPhone app available as well, in case you're wondering.

Although I have been dabbling over the last few years, it's been tough to really sink my teeth in fully to social media channels...what with building our Affiliate network from the ground up and all. But now that I'm getting more time to really test and measure the effectiveness of Twitter and Facebook (among others), I'm a believer all the way.

The value of industry peers and contacts advancing your news far exceeds the exposure you get on any one web site...like you didn't already know that

Despite our rigorous authentication and acceptance processes for our Affiliate network, we periodically bust Affiliates who are sending bad traffic by various unethical tactics. Just the other day I wrote up some specifics on the Affiliate traffic fraud we find periodically. Well last week Scott was dealing with yet another scammer, and he gave us the same old song and dance when asked to disclose traffic driving methods. Apparently his "trade secrets" had been stolen before, so he wasn't about to explain his unorthodox traffic patterns, lack of any referring URLs, and not a single Affiliate link active on any of the sites configured within his account. So by failing to provide transparency, as per our terms of use for Affiliates, we said bye bye to him.

We know how to make an analysis of web traffic that makes it 99.9% probable that Affiliates are using CPV/PPV Networks to drive traffic, as in this case. We have the secret sauce, and the cheaters don't know what that is. And neither will anyone reading this article...

At any rate, during the vetting this individual didn't seem to understand what we meant by "bad traffic", so Scott spelled it out for him in an email. I thought it was worth posting here to help others understand what we believe to be Good vs. Bad traffic:

We would consider "good" traffic to be (but not limited to):

1. Sites that visitors come to naturally or through search results, and then click through affiliate links to merchant sites.
2. PPC bidding (not on trademarked terms and that follows our network level and merchant level terms and conditions) on search engines to drive traffic through affiliate links.
3. Opt-in email campaigns (not SPAM) that drive traffic through affiliate links.

We consider "bad" traffic to be anything not covered by the above, including (but not limited to):

1. The use of browser toolbar/add-ons that trigger content including affiliate links to users and as a result intercept the natural click stream of the user.
2. Trademark-term PPC bidding and/or any PPC bidding that violates our network level or merchant level terms and conditions.
3. Spamdexing, or any attempt to use black hat SEO methods to game the search engine results.

1. Self-documentation. With a phone call you spend the first ten minutes on small talk, and then by the time it's wrapped up thirty minutes or more have passed. Then (and here's the best part), ten minutes later you can't remember details or a course of action from the call!
2. Correspondence history. You can't just say you did something or lie over a digital conversation. Trust me, there are plenty of opportunities in this business to forward a previous correspondence to corroborate your side of a dispute or disagreement.

Of course when it comes down to it, when it's absolutely necessary, I'll get on the phone...kicking and screaming. But I'm not into a scheduled call for the fun of it so don't be surprised if I politely ask: email your questions please. If you have 3-5 questions email them over, I'll answer them one by one. But be warned, for those who insist on a call, don't expect me to ask about the weather.

Image Courtesy of MirrorCracked