Jelly Belly Affiliate Program

Easter is just around the corner and as such, we wanted to review an affiliate program that is selling Easter related items.  I know, what an amazingly original idea :)  Well, the fact is, if you have the right audience, Holidays can be a great time to boost your commissions, people pay more for things when they are buying it for a holiday, even in a down economy.

When I think of the non-religious aspects of Easter and more specifically when I think of Easter baskets, the two big candies that come to mind are chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.  I have never had or put together an Easter basket for my kids without those two items.  In my opinion, no company does Jelly Beans as well as Jelly Belly.  They have a huge breadth of flavors and products built around that tiny little confection and parents are going to buy tons of them to fill the bottom of Easter baskets over the next couple of weeks.

Jelly Belly runs their own online store and has some great promotions going on for the Easter holiday.  Luckily for us, they also have an affiliate program so as an affiliate marketer, we can profit from the demand for the product and the promotions they have put in place. The affiliate program is run through the Pepperjam affiliate network and they just recently posted some Easter banners and a coupon that you can use to drive traffic to their site.  They pay out a 10% commission and seem to be pretty active on the network.  If you have traffic that would respond to an offer like this, the Jelly Belly affiliate program is worth a test.

If you aren’t an affiliate at Pepperjam yet, Sign Up for the Pepperjam Network and Get a $10 Sign On Bonus

Becoming a Merchant on ShareASale

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of ShareASale that focused largely on becoming an affiliate and promoting their offers.  I did mention a little bit about becoming a merchant with them but there is much more to tell.  Deciding on which network you are going to become a merchant with requires more than just a quick blurb so I am writing this follow up.  If you would like to read the original review, you can click here.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me tell you where I am coming from (in case you are new to this blog).  Over the years, I have managed my own affiliate network (LeadCrunch.com used to be a CPA network) and I have managed affiliate programs on Direct Track, Kowabunga’s MyAffiliateProgram, Click Bank, and ShareASale.  I have been involved with programs on Commission Junction but I was never the active lead manager of any programs, they were mostly companies I was doing some consulting work for who also happened to have a Commission Junction affiliate program running.

The only network I am currently managing any active programs on as a merchant is ShareASale.  For my money, it is the best network for small - medium sized businesses, particularly if you are in the B to C market.  They do an excellent job with B to B programs as well but I would guess that B to C offers get the lions share of the traffic from ShareASale affiliates.  If you are looking to become a merchant with one of the major affiliate networks, I would suggesting adding ShareASale to your short list.

What is the quality level of the affiliates?

ShareASale does a pretty good job of pre-screening affiliates who apply to be in their network, however, I have found that like any other network, the bad still gets in with the good.  The good news is, you can be certain that before an affiliate applies to your program, ShareASale as a network has already done an initial review of the affiliate before they could apply to your program.  However, I don’t suggest you open your program to anyone that applies.  What we do is auto-approve affiliates from the USA and have all others set to be reviewed before they can participate.  Their are other options and this policy is nothing against our International affiliates, it’s just simply that affiliate fraud is more likely to occur from affiliates in other countries.

Affiliate Tools

One of the things to look for in any affiliate network is the tools they provide you to market your program.  In order to have a successful affiliate program, you, the merchant, has to provide your affiliates with a good selection of ads and tools to market your site and your products.  If the affiliate network you are going to list your program on doesn’t offer you the tools you need to deliver to those affiliates, your affiliate program isn’t going to be very successful.  ShareASale does an excellent job on delivering in this area.  As a ShareASale Merchant you can offer your affiliates: text links for both site and email, banner ads of any size, forms, product data feeds (you control who has access), custom widgets, dynamic HTML creatives, coupons, gift cards and even video.

How Much Does it Cost

They charge a network access fee of  $550 to get signed up with them, that is a very reasonable cost to have access to the huge affiliate base that they have built up.  If you compare them to the other choices at this level, $550 is a pretty small amount.  The initial minimum deposit to activate an affiliate program for any merchant is $100.  That deposit is what they will use to pay your affiliates.  You will need to pay the network access fee and the initial deposit when you sign up so be prepared to pay $650 to get started.  After that, ShareASale charges 20% of the payout rate.  So, if you are a merchant and you are running a pay per sale program for your store and you are offering your affiliates a 10% commission, you would be paying ShareASale an additional 2% of that sale (20% of 10%) for a total of 12% per sale.

In Conclusion

If you are looking to open up an affiliate program and become your own merchant, ShareASale is more than worth your time.  It’s what we recommend as a first choice for most of our clients.  Commission Junction is larger and presents themselves a little better but the cost are so much higher.  In our experience, Commission Junction usually doesn’t out-perform ShareASale enough to justify the increased cost.  Certainly, their are companies that do better on CJ and companies that make sense to go to CJ but they tend to be the larger companies with established brands that are able to stand out from the masses a bit more and absorb the cost.

Find out more about becoming a merchant at ShareASale by clicking here.

ShareASale wins Best Network of the Year, Again!

ABestWeb is one of the largest, if not the largest, affiliate marketing communities on the Internet.  They have the distinct advantage of having many of the major networks and players in the industry as participating members of the community.  Many networks and programs even use ABestWeb to host their own message board within the community.

Every year they have a contest that their users participate in and vote to choose the best of the previous year in a bunch of different categories.  For the 4th year in a row, ShareASale has won the Best Network of the Year award.  You can check out all of the award winners by clicking here.  If you aren’t currently an affiliate of ShareASale, sign up today and check out their offers.

Profiting from Niche Mini Sites

I have been a long time subscriber to Phil Wiley’s “Letter From Phil” newsletter. Phil is an expert at affiliate marketing and he wrote the first book on making and profiting from mini niche sites. It was the road map I used to build my own network of mini affiliate sites. His stuff was straight-forward, made sense and most importantly it worked. Phil makes enough with his mini sites that he doesn’t send out his newsletter very often anymore but when he does, it’s one that I pay attention to. I was surprised to read in his latest newsletter that he was recommending a competing product to his own niche marketing ebook. When a competitor, sends out a newsletter to his entire database, and recommends someone elses competing product, especially when that person is a respected expert in his field, I pay attention.

Many niche affiliate guides have popped up since Phil’s book way back when but none of them seemed to add any additional value, until now. Joel Peterson just launched his Mini Site Formula, an impressive course consisting of 31 videos, templates, sample sites and more. Joel averages $75,000 - $125,000 a month with his affiliate marketing business, that is insanely impressive. So, if he is this successful at it why would he reveal his methods? The answer is pretty simple, to make more money. He isn’t giving away his methodologies for free, he put together a very impressive course and is selling it for a good price. He knows that the affiliate marketing space is enormous and he stands to make more by selling his knowledge to you than he stands to lose by having more competitors in the field.

The strategy is not new but it’s implementing that strategy that can be hard, especially if you don’t know where to start. That is what Joel’s course is best at, getting you started towards making your first profitable web site and then what to do once the site is complete. The amazing thing about this strategy is that he isn’t trying to make thousands of dollars a month off of one site (although that can happen). Both Phil and Joel’s strategy is similiar, make a niche site that can generate just $3 - $5 a day, then move on to the next mini site and do it over and over again.

In his course, Joel will show how to:

• Pick a profitable topic
• Build a publish a web site even if you don’t have any technical skills
• How to use that site to make money
• How to get immediate traffic without having to spend a lot of money buying that traffic
• And how to repeat the process over and over.

I know it sounds like a lot of hype but I have been making mini sites for years and this course showed me quite a few things that I know will help increase my bottom line. Check out The Mini Site Formula web site for proof of earnings and lie video testimonials from customers that have taken the course.

The Harlem Globetrotters Launch Affiliate Program on PepperJam

The Pepperjam Network announced today that the official Harlem Globetrotters affiliate program has gone live on their network.  The Harlem Globetrotters have such a wide interest across the sports fan spectrum which gives the program a great advantage.  They are loved by many different sports fans regardless of what team they follow.  What this should mean for you is that if you have a sports related site, a larger percentage of sports fan may be tempted to click through and buy something than if you were running an ad that targeted Boston Celtics merchandise.  It’s a perfect campaign to test for more general sports sites or sites that segment their traffic but are looking for some default ads to run.

They offer most of the things you want in a good affiliate program, banners, text links, advanced links and coupons.  They pay 10% per sale and the cookie lasts for 45 days.  Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, they do not seem to offer a datafeed which is a big drawback.  Maybe it’s in the works and they just haven’t posted it yet but for a site like that, it’s a must have.

If you have an audience that may be interested but you aren’t currently an affiliate of Pepperjam, read our Review of Pepperjam Network.  If you already read it but haven’t signed up, you can sign Up for Pepperjam Network and Get a $10 Sign On Bonus