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Forbes: How to Become an Affiliate

On the surface, affiliate marketing (also known as performance marketing) seems simple. Brands offer affiliate partners a percentage of every sale or lead the partners generate via their online promotional activity. Anyone can join these affiliate programs and easily monetize their online content and influence and get paid for promoting any brand they want.

If only it were that easy.

You can read the full article here

Yazing Reaches 50k Members!

Yazing, the influencer monetization and cashback shopping platform, launched by Adam Viener in 2015, recently announced that they have reached 50k members after a record breaking year in 2020.  Yazing now has over 3,600 brands on that platform that any member can instantly start promoting and earning cash rewards for generating sales.  Members have generated nearly $4 million dollars in commissions on the platform.

“Companies have long offered affiliate programs, but these deals can be difficult to navigate and out of reach for the average individual, influencer or blogger.” said Adam Viener, Founder of Yazing. “I believe that EVERYONE has influence and deserves to be compensated for the sales they help generate. I launched Yazing in 2015 with the goal of making these often elusive opportunities accessible to anyone looking to earn some extra money from home promoting and supporting the brands they love.”

Anyone with an email address and the ability to receive payments via PayPal is welcome to join Yazing for free and start earning money.

Yazing Opens Limited Beta

Yazing is a new platform that is turning every mommy blogger into an affiliate and allowing them to easily earn commissions recommending brands they love. 

With a quick easy signup, Yazing members get access to promote the latest deals and coupons offered by the site's growing list of brands.  Anytime someone referred by our members makes a purchase from one of those brands, the Yazing member earns the affiliate commissions for the transaction.

"Mommy Bloggers work hard to build their audiences and provide valuable recommendations.  We created Yazing to help them, and others, be fairly rewarded this value and the transactions they are creating." said, Adam Viener, Yazing's Founder.

Yazing is an ongoing work in progress, and they have recently opened up their platform to a limited number of beta testers.  If you want to test out the platform and start earning money on your recommendations, visit Yazing.com and click on Join at the top of the page.

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Introducing Yazing

Imwave Animation Explains Performance SEM and Affiliate PPC

We love talking with new potential partners at Imwave, and have found that many of these partners have the same questions.  What does Imwave do?  How can we work with you when our company does their own search campaigns, etc... 

We recently posted the following video animation that explains a lot of these questions about performance search engine marketing (affiliate ppc / affiliate search) and hope to produce another video in the near future that gets into some of the more technical details that eventually come up.

We hope you enjoy the video, please let us know what you think!

PMA Illinois Lawsuit Victory Upheld

The PMA has announced today that the Illinois Supreme Court has uphelp a lower court ruling making the Illinois Affiliate Nexus Tax unconstitutional.  Not sure what this mean for affiliates yet.  Stay tuneds.  Nice work PMA.

 

http://thepma.org/pma-illinois-lawsuit-victory-upheld/

 

Here is a link to the opionion:

http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2013/Summaries/114496s.htm

 

 

Affiliate Tax / Amazon Tax / Nexus Tax.... Be Proactive.

Today I met with my representative to the Pennsylvania State Legislature.  The purpose of the meeting?  To discuss the Amazon Tax and its implication to Imwave’s business.

Pennsylvania is not currently discussing this (at least not that we are aware of), but in light of recent events in Illinois it has become clear that these issues can rise up and catch us off guard very quickly.

I know what many of you are thinking….I’m not going to bring it up….I don’t want to give them any ideas.

Well believe me….THEY ALREADY KNOW!  You are not going to give them an idea they don’t have already.  

With state budget deficits what they are, Legislatures are all looking at way to fill the budget gap.  They are looking at other states and they know that they are losing sales tax revenue to online sellers.    

The questions are: 

Are you going to educate them on the impact to your business before the legislation hits the Floor of the Chamber? 

Are you going to tell them that depending on the way they redefine nexus they:

• will probably NOT gain not new sales tax? 
• could kill your business? 
• will reduce your revenue and in turn the amount you pay to them in income tax?

Why not present your case in advance?  Why not give them the ammunition to have the conversation early in the fight?

Don’t be worried if you’ve never met your Representative!

Don’t be worried if you’ve never talked to a Representative before. 

I’ve done neither before today!!

My Representative was very gracious when we met.  He gave me an hour of his time.  We talked, we built up some report.  I asked him if he was aware of the nexus issue.

He was!  He was fully in FAVOR of increasing the nexus to capture lost sales tax revenue.

I LISTENED!!!  I did not talk. I did not plead my case (at first).  I needed to understand what his thinking was; what his position was. 

When he was finished I explained New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Illinois.  I didn’t lecture, I educated.  I informed him about the loophole that would allow merchants to remove affiliates as means to get around nexus and what that would mean for Imwave.  I also, with the help of the PMA, was able to let him know that there were thousands of affiliates in PA that would be affected…not just Imwave.

He listened, he took notes. 

Now, he understands the loophole of removing us from the program and what that would do to both our business and the sales tax.  He can educate his colleagues in advance.

I asked him to keep his ear to the ground and let us know if this issue heats up. 

Which he said he was more than happy to do. 

We now have front line warning and an ally.

Also, he asked for me to gather some data on how this law has failed in other states...more ammunition should this issue heat up.  I will be engaging the PMA to help with this and will send him whatever I can. 

I plan to be his resource for info on this matter, his expert….oh and by the way, one of his constituents as well.

Bottom line, we need to get out in front of these issues, we need to educate and inform.  We need Legislatures to understand the unintended consequences of these bills and how they can kill small business.

Get out in front now, before there is too much momentum.

KaChing - Turning your Passion into Profits - Joel Comm does it Again!

I have been a big fan of Joel Comm for a long time.  For me, it started with his AdSense Secrets Book. He showed me how ANYONE could make extra money with your websites using the power of Google's AdSense program.  I had known about AdSense, and had even toyed with it on some of my sites, but it wasn't until I read his first eBook that I started to really understand how to optimize the placement of the ads and really generate good money from these contextual ads.

Since his first eBooks, Joel Comm has gone on to become a New York Times Best-Selling author.

Joel and I have become friends, since then.  We often see each other at the Affiliate Summit conference in Vegas and enjoy getting lunch and catching up.

So I was intrigued at Christmas time when I got this box with a Green "Easy Button" that goes KaChing every time I press it.  (It also goes KaChing every time my kids go by my desk).  Perfect for me as for some time the "KaChing" sound was my AIM tone.  What better sound for an Internet Marketer?

The Kaching Button was just a teaser.  The other day I received his latest Book, "KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays"

What I like about KaChing, is that it brings me back to when I first started IMWave.  For me it wasn't about making millions of dollars online, it was about taking this $1,000 debit card my employer had given me and seeing if I could turn it into $2,000.  Once I had done that it became about seeing if I could earn enough each month to cover my car payment, then my mortgage, then replace my Salary.  These incremental goals lead me to building IMWave into the Inc 5000 company that it is today.

Joel's book will walk you though what it takes to build a website that brings in an extra $500-$1000 per month. With the skills he provides, you can then determine how you want to apply them.  Think about it, What does an extra $500 - $1000 per month mean to your lifestyle?

When you couple the great book with all the extra bonuses that Joel has been able to "squeeze" out of his internet marketing colleagues, it turns buying his book into a no-brainer.  Once you have purchased, visit his site and fill out the form to claim the extra rewards and gain access to his member area!

Take a look at his video and learn more!

CPA Network Survival

Chris Trayhorn wrote an interesting CPA Survivor article for mThink, in which he looks at the landscape of CPA networks and the number of failing networks and those that are "refinancing, merging or crouching in a defensive posture" and questions which ones will survive.

Chris believes that BRAND is the key to survival in the CPA network space.  While I think having a good brand is important for standing out from the crowd, I believe that in this space brand is but one small piece of the puzzle and won't be the key to survival and it's hard to create a real brand without differentiation!

For too long the CPA networks that have been popping up have been focusing on "offers" and pushing the same offers that can be found in almost all of the other networks.  In fact a lot of the platforms are specifically setup to be able to share these offers from one network to the other.  This has lead to the commoditization of the networks.

Traditional affiliate networks have always stood out by 3 main factors:

1. The Quality of the Companies (Advertisers) on their Network.  
2. The Quality & Quantity of Affiliates (Publishers) on their Network.
3. The Confidence in their Tracking and Payment Technologies.

Of course there are other factors, but these are the 3 key points. 

So how does a CPA network make the transition and secure their place along the sides of Commission Junction, Linkshare and the likes?

Here is what I would do to change the game:

Exclusive Distribution Partners

For a long time networks have focused on bringing in the top advertisers, and affiliates have come to those networks in order to be able to promote them.  Now that the industry has matured, these top Advertisers are finding that 5% of their affiliate partners are driving 95% of their sales.  The network that controls these 5% of top affiliates writes the rules going forward.  The market is fragmented, and many of these top affiliates are ripe for acquisition.  A strong network with good cash flow could acquire these top affiliates and would find it a lot easier to win the exclusive relationships needed to differentiate themselves from the pack.

What is Performance Marketing?

Michael Mothner, the founder & CEO of Wpromote Inc. posted a well writen blog post, A Look Inside Performance Marketing - Part 1.  Michael does an excellent job of explaining the concept of performance marketing and defining some of the terms in our industry.  If you are new to performance marketing, this article should help!

"with pay-for-performance marketing efforts, companies are able to remove risk from their advertising, and for the first time marketing budgets can directly relate to sales"

We look forward to reading Part 2!