From the category archives:

How To’s for Affiliates

The Decorative Ceiling Tiles affiliate team would like you to get to know more about the products and how they can be used, and promoted. Debbie, Vinny and Liz made a presentation with Milan Jara about his products for about 30 minutes and then we had some great questions and answers.

The webinar was recorded, here is the the replay:

Please watch to learn more about this unique product that is gaining ground in the US decorating industry. Tiles like these are already very popular in Europe.

Visit http://decorativeceilingtiles.net and get your questions ready! Feel free to add questions in the forum thread.

Let us know if you find this format of getting information helpful!

First in a series of merchant spotlight webinars from Team Loxly is Small Biz Theme by Don Campbell. The theme affiliate program is run on Shareasale and is 30% commission, 60 day cookie and managed by Team Loxly :)

This theme is unique in that it can be used by consultants to easily build sites for clients, or for clients to have the site set up once and then not be able to “mess it up” when they need to make updates. The blog is secondary (you can change this) with info pages for the company instead.

Built in are sections to create the mobile version of the theme… no extra charge or extra plugins… and a really cool ability to add content to facebook pages right from within your blog! There are some free apps that allow you to create pages that you have to change on facebook, but this function within small biz theme hosts the pages for your facebook tabs right on your own site. Plugins for that type of functionality start at around $40-50.

If you can make the time to watch the video you will see all kinds of goodies and get info on what’s under the hood so you can better sell this theme as an affiliate. There were many good questions asked and answered throughout the video and we welcome more questions and comments from those of you watching the replay!

Today on AffiliateABCs Shawn Collins joins Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly to talk about taking photographs for and using photographs on websites. They cover topics like what camera to chose, how many megapixels, when to use a tripod and how to resize. In addition they talk a bit about video, green screens and when you might need to use a stock photo service. Feel free to post questions here that we can answer either here or in a future podcast!

A little background (or “why you should pay attention to Deborah”): Deborah has been a professional photographer for 30 years, including photographing weddings, other social events and conferences, on location cat shows, as well as a fine art photographer. She has been creating websites for 15+ years, that all included photographs optimized for the web, because back then they had to be since we were all on dialup! A selection of her photos hang in a hotel here and there, homes and offices, and are published in several cat breed books, as well as being scattered all over the web and some newspaper publishing along the way.

Sites and products discussed in the show:
Sony Alpha Series DSLRs (Deborah’s Camera)
Casio Exilim Card Line (Shawn’s current camera)
Casio Exilim EX-FH20 New camera for Shawn? Looks like a nice all around camera.
Fugifilm S Series Another nice alternative for a general use camera.
Flickr Camera Finder – Click on a camera brand and search for images taken with that camera to help you see the image quality and decide on a camera to purchase

Recommended Tripod (It is less expensive than I stated in the podcast! Yay :) )
Targus Tripod

Photo Editing Software:
Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 or 9 – do a search on Amazon or Ebay for copies of this older software. (Sorry Shawn, version 6 doesn’t even show up on searches! :) )
GIMP Free Image Editing software

Green Screen Software

If you need stock photos of subjects you don’t have images of:
iStockPhoto You can choose from pay as you go or subscription.
ShutterstockSeveral plans from a few images yearly to a LOT on a monthly subscription. Good selection, midrange cost.
Jupiter ImagesPricey, but great if you are a publisher that needs a lot of high res images.

If you are looking for an alternative to stock photos check out Flickr and images licensed under Creative Commons:
Creative Commons on Flickr
Creative Commons Licensing
Example of a search for images licensed for use with Attribution and Share A Like License from Affiliate Summit Social Media event.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a comment or email Deborah at dc at teamloxly.com

Brian Littleton and Carolyn Tang from the Shareasale Network had a presentation at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston about the how affiliates and merchants can use Shareasale effectively. There is good information here for affiliates new and experienced, and the merchant information is good not only for merchants but also to give affiliates a peek at the merchant side of things.

Team Loxly Merchants with Free Shipping Offers

by loxly on September 9, 2008

Shoppers LOVE free shipping, so be sure to highlight that these merchants offer free shipping for their purchases. These are also listed in the Shareasale Deals Database, so you can grab the codes there to promote them. Or just make a text link with your tracking code that lands on any page on the sites, with your own anchor text that includes the wording “free shipping” (hint: use the Shareasale Make a Custom Link feature).

Free Shipping at TechEngraver
Free shipping on all orders placed at TechEngraver . Laser engraved personalized iPods and USB drives, great gifts!

Free Shipping at JournalEngraver for orders over $50
Free shipping on all orders over $50 placed at JournalEngraver . Laser engraved moleskin journals, great gifts!

Join the Tech Engraver and Journal Engraver Affiliate Program

Free Shipping at Loxly Gallery for orders over $200
Loxly Gallery – Free Shipping on orders over $200 Art and Photography prints on fine art papers by select artists and photographers. Decorate your life with prints from Loxly Gallery!

Join the Loxly Gallery Affiliate Program

A/B Testing. NYFalcon and Loxly Explain it.

by loxly on September 9, 2008

The first 15 Minute Lesson from NYFalcon and Loxly was pretty off the cuff and we started talking about A/B testing which peaked some people’s interest. So here is a 15 Minute lesson where we talk about it. Have a listen, then post any followup questions here or over in the threads at either ABestWeb or the NYFalcon Forum

The First NYFalcon and Loxly Podcast

by loxly on July 3, 2008

NyFalcon and Loxly sit down and try their hand at podcasting. Here is the first episode of the show “15 Minute Lessons by NYFalcon”. Let us know what you think!

We are taking questions for future episodes, post your questions as comments here or in this thread over at the NYFalcon forum.