Replay of Small Biz WordPress Theme Demonstration and Affiliate Program Webinar

by loxly on October 8, 2011

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!

Our Newest Merchants – Summer 2011

by loxly on August 13, 2011

Have you checked out our newest merchants? Some really great merchants that have a variety of products that are great for family oriented sites, plus some great B2B options!

Slice, Inc, features a collection of design-oriented, award-winning, cutting tools for your home, office, and school.

Good design is the foundation of our company. we want to build superior products that people love to use. fortunately, our world renown designers feel the same way.

Yves Behar
Michael Graves
Scot Herbst
Alfredo Muccino
Karim Rashid

* 12% Commissions * Cookie Duration: 60 days
http://teamloxly.com/slicejoin

Party Beans offers completely customized candy gifts for any occasion for purchase. Whether one has a birthday party for a son or simply wants to send a small “Get Well” gift to an ailing aunt, we provide convenient and easy online solution.

One can pick from numbers of candy containers, add icons, upload own photos, add text, pick candy types as well as candy flavors. All our products ship next business day if ordered by 4pm PT. All products shipped with Jelly Belly are Kosher (OU) certified by Orthodox Union.

Our candy is always fresh, we print photo quality vibrant colors and stand behind our service 100%. We bring over 12 years of promotional gifting experience and our mission is to offer coolest customized candy gifts for the very best price on the web.

* 20% commission * Cookie Duration: 90 days
http://teamloxly.com/partybeansjoin

Whether you are a business of one or fortune 500 company, Promotopia was created with one main objective — to take away the hassle and delays when ordering promotional products. In fact, we made creating your next promo so simple that you won’t believe YOU can CUSTOM-CREATE such an amazing logo’ed products in LESS THAN 5 MINUTES. With hundreds of products to choose from, small to no minimums and next day* shipment, you now have a solution to promote your business. Whether you are in a bind and need last minute giveaway for a conference that starts in three days or you want to give a token of appreciation to 5-man team that just finished a project, at promotopia we have you covered. 

Since we work directly with the product vendors, your orders have no processing delays, product prices have no middle men and we relentlessly strive to get you the most aggressive deal from the product vendors there is. 

* 15% Commission * Cookie Duration: 90 days
http://teamloxly.com/promotopiajoin

As you may know there is not many products when it comes to ugly ceilings that are affordable, beautiful and easy to use. That is why we focus on this issue, keeping consumer in mind and bringing value with our line of our decorative products for ceilings. Our products are new to the market and are gaining popularity with each and every easy installation.

* 10% commission   * Cookie Duration: Unlimited
http://teamloxly.com/dctjoin

Are You Going To Affiliate Summit East in NYC August 21-23, 2011?

by loxly on August 5, 2011

Deborah will be presenting a session that will appeal mostly to new merchants. We welcome comments and questions in advance if you want to leave a note on this blog post.

Monday August 22, 2011
Merchant Basics – Launching a New Affiliate Program
Session 5d
Location: Sutton (South & Regent)
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

This session will combine the fresh perspective of a new merchant with the seasoned perspective of a pro that has advised many companies on how to get started.

Experience level: Beginner
Target audience: Merchants/Advertisers
Niche/vertical: Merchants

Deborah Carney, CEO, Merchant ABCs (Twitter @loxly)
Jeff Grill, VP, Marketing, Mimeo.com (Twitter @JeffGrill)

We also have a Meet Market table fror Party Beans with some fun stuff, so be sure to come over and say hi! We hope to see you there!

If you aren’t going to ASE, but are thinking about attending Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in January, you can score a Gold Pass and support a great cause by purchasing the book It’s All About the Cookies, a great cookbook compiled by Missy Ward with all the proceeds going to Affiliate Marketers Give Back, which supports Breast Cancer research, awareness and treatments. Go to this website to find out more and order your book. Coupon for Gold Pass needs to be claimed by August 31, 2011.

Nexus Status of Team Loxly Managed Merchants

by loxly on July 3, 2011

I thought it would be a good idea to post our merchants that are not subject to Sales Tax so that affiliates know they are safe to join these program:

Viator- their tours are not taxed
Raven Tools – They are a service, not subject to sales tax
WyzAnt- they are a tutor matching service and the affiliate program is leads based so there is no sales tax involved.
Knowem – User Name registration plus other services that are not required to collect sales tax
Expand2Web Small Business WordPress Theme – Not subject to sales tax
PartyBeans – based in CA, also most products considered food so not taxable in other states.
Decorative Ceiling Tiles – will charge sales tax if thresholds are met
Loxly Gallery – will charge sales tax if thresholds are met

Here is also a link to a podcast on our forum at the Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Forum where you can discuss the tax issues and pretty much anything related to affiliate marketing.

Let us know if you have any questions on any of our clients!

Be Our Guest! AffiliateABCs, BloggingABCs, and MerchantABCs

by loxly on June 17, 2011

As we have announced before, Team Loxly is focusing on educating affiliates, bloggers and merchants. We would like to invite you to come and be our guest at the following sites, you can submit more than one topic, or more than one site. We have guests that have discussed topics that cover all three audiences.

We have three ABCs series of podcasts where we give advice and pointers on how to achieve success as an affiliate, monetize your blog or run the perfect merchant program. Part of the success of our podcasts are listening to the people that listen to the podcasts and hear what they want to learn about or when they propose a topic that they want to share their expertise on. We encourage people to introduce us to guests we should have on our shows, and also offer to be guests and speak on a topic or ask us questions about a topic. Our podcasts are all discussion style and not necessarily interview style. We often will have a panel of up to 4 people that will discuss a topic.

We also like to keep the podcasts short and one specific topic so that our listeners have one main takeaway from our shows and are not bombarded with information that they can’t absorb. We also like our guests because we feel that the affiliate industry is in constant growth and there is no one “voice” that can keep up with all the changes. We may create some ebooks from our podcast topics and create some formal training (we are developing that on Merchant ABCs first) but we are not interested at this time in producing print books that are almost out of date by the time they are published.

Here are the links:
Be our guest on Merchant ABCs podcast: Tell merchants what you want them to know to make their programs stellar
Be our guest on Affiliate ABCs podcast: Ask us questions, tell affiliates about your timesaving tips, what things work for you
Be our guest on Blogging ABCs podcast: Ask us how to monetize your blogs, offer your style and writing tips, software and plugins you use

And on Merchant ABCs we have a very special page where you can share the things that Merchants, Affiliates, and Networks do that annoys you or makes you happy. Come share your pet peeves and your props about all aspects of the affiliate industry. Here are some of the responses we have gotten so far. There are some very similar peeves/props that have us already thinking about future podcasts and looking for guests to cover those topics.

Finally, other places to find many affiliate voices discussing industry issues Affiliate Summit Affiliate Forum and FeedFront Affiliate Industry Magazine.

What do Super Affiliates Look For in Your Website Before They Will Join Your Affiliate Program

by loxly on June 9, 2011

Affiliate Summit is presenting a series of webinars leading up to Affiliate Summit East in NYC, which we were invited to participate in. Since a lot of new merchants and merchants without programs yet are always looking at why affiliates aren’t signing up or want to know how to recruit affiliates, this webinar shows the elements that super affiliates look for in a merchant’s website before they will look at joining your program or posting your links.

We have a related podcast with affiliate Eric Nagel, a super affiliate that explains what he looks for in a merchant site and why.

Merchant Terms: Protecting or Hurting Affiliate Programs?

by loxly on May 29, 2011

Affiliate program terms and conditions (or lack thereof) are often misunderstood. Some merchants set up in-house affiliate programs on networks without giving thought to how affiliates might promote their products.

Suddenly an affiliate is successfully promoting a merchant via a pay-per-click campaign that includes the merchant’s brand name. The merchant is shocked, quickly turns off that affiliate and then reverses commissions with the attitude that those sales would have occurred anyway from the natural search results.

But wait, the merchant didn’t specify in their terms that affiliates aren’t allowed to bid on their brand name. They quickly add that in. Problem solved? Maybe.

At the same time, the merchant is noticing that affiliates are ranking higher than the merchant themselves, in the natural search results. The merchant changes their terms to not allow affiliates to have the company’s brand name in their meta tags, titles or file names.

These are two examples of merchants actually hurting themselves.

They need to protect their brand name, but in many instances the merchants do not have an in-house PPC campaign and are not bidding on their own brand. Their competitors could very well be.

In the case of the natural search results, this is what affiliates do. They create pages to get indexed for brands. If an affiliate is ranking higher in natural results for a brand name, then the affiliate is doing their job, and the merchant isn’t doing a good job of SEO on their own.

Merchant terms need to be constructed in a way that is fair to both the affiliate and the merchant. If a merchant has internal staff that overlaps with their affiliates, the terms can be a little more strict.

But, in the case of SEO, even the affiliates that are very good at it can’t control everything the search engines include in natural results. Having terms that exclude paying affiliates that rank high in search results for company names or products will result in fewer affiliates working an affiliate program. Top affiliates won’t give these programs a second look.

Terms and conditions that acknowledge the various types of affiliates that are out there, like coupon, loyalty, and incentive sites are very helpful. Merchants need to think about how to harness the advantages of those types of sites, and encourage affiliates to promote the merchant by creating terms that allow for ethical affiliates to do so.

Balance is the key, along with understanding what you want to gain from your affiliate program.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 14 here

FeedFront issue 14 articles can be found here as well

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →