If you are working with Amazon Web Services, you will often need to find the “browsenode” of a particular section of Amazon so you can pull out targetting products using the API. This often means studying the URL in Amazon and trying to work it out. Luckily you don’t need to thanks to this great resource called AANodes which lets you quickly and simply retrieve the correct browsenode for the category and all sub categories you’re working with.
45n5.com is a really entertaining blog from a blogger called Mark who gave up his day job to make money online instead. He uses his blog to share all his thinking and ideas on how to best make money online. Reading Mark’s blog, you really feel like you’re on the journey with him. As a reader, you can’t help but respect Mark’s honesty and his willingness to challenge lazy or conventional thinking.
His blog has really advanced in terms of slickness, content and readership by the looks of his feed count. Mark’s also a keen video blogger, and advocate of video blogging in general, and has pledged to create 365 videos in 2008!
Subscribe to the blog at 45n5.com for a consistently entertaining and thought provoking read.
OneNetwork is an affiliate network which specialises in software sales. Software is a great area to promote because it works without boundaries. No physical product or delivery means users can buy and download wherever they are. They have a range of well known software publishers on their books, such as Nuance, Symantec, Parallels, Roxio, Unblue and Acronis.
I’m not a fan of the DirectTrack platform that it runs on, but it’s worth using despite that. I used to get an email when a sale came through, which was a useful feature and meant having to log in less, but that doesn’t seem to have worked for quite a while.
The fact thate OneNetworkDirect can monetise your traffic wherever it comes from makes it great if your traffic isn’t from just one country.
Visit OneNetworkDirect. They also maintain a regularly updated blog which is always nice to see from a network.
Affiliates4u.com is the heart beat of the UK affiliate scene. What was once just a forum is now a forum with added “2.0″ style functionality. Users can create communities, to bring affiliates together on common interests. There’s a great blog aggregator which pulls in feeds from top UK affiliates and gives the users the chance to “back” or “slap” blog posts.
The forum is frequented by the most respected names in UK affiliate marketing, as well as representatives from the major networks which makes it an ideal place to keep up to date with the latest promotions, incentives and very often groans about the actions of networks or their merchants.
Affiliates4u has also been responsible for putting together well attended get togethers, including the recent very successful A4uExpo.
Find out more by visiting Affiliates4u
Bumpzee started life as an blog aggregator set up by affiliate legend, Scott Jangro. His useful list of affiliate blogs also had the ability to “bump” cool posts, so that better posts got a wider audience. This was a great idea and he rebranded it as Bumpzee. It started with just an Affiliate Marketing community and has now grown to include communities on all kinds of subjects. It’s very well populated with affiliate marketing blogs from across the globe, and cleverly tracks comments on blogs too so as not to draw discussions away from the original blogs.
It does seem perhaps not as well used as it once was, with many posts doing unbumped, but Bumpzee is still a resource well worth checking out to keep up to date with the best affiliate blogs.
What do you think of Bumpzee? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Buy.at are one of the top affiliate networks in the UK, and have come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years with the signing of some really top brands.
Merchants you will find on Buy.at include: 3 Mobile, Carphone Warehouse, GAME, Butlins, John Lewis, Expedia, HMV, Nokia, Laterooms, T-Mobile, Waterstones, Marks & Spencer, Match.com and National Lottery.
At the time of writing, Buy.at is straddling two affiliate interfaces. An older, less impressive one, and a slightly more snazzy “V3″ . Neither seem perfect but both do the job. Buy.at’s control panel does quite helpfully tell you the referring URL for your clicks, but unfortunately not for your sales. Like most networks though, you can insert unique identifiers into the affiliate link to track where your sales have come from.
Cool extras include a downloadable widget which runs on Yahoo’s Widget service to keep you to up to date with your earnings. You can also access your earnings data with web services, making it easy to develop your own interface for getting stats however you like. I have a nice text only stats page which I can get to from my phone.
I definitely regard this Newcastle and London based network as a must have in my affiliate arsenal. You can find out more by visiting Buy.at
What do you think of the Buy.at network? Please use the comments section to leave your thoughts…
Shawn Collins is an affiliate marketing legend. He managed a successful program for Club Mom, wrote a best selling book advising merchants on how to run a successful program, and is the co-founder of Affiliate Summit.
Shawn’s affiliate marketing blog is filled with useful insights into affiliate marketing from this industry veteran. He also often does video posts and sneeks in the occasional song which makes it extra entertaining. Shawn will often put up blog posts and videos in response to questions he has received from newbies etc.
Shawn Collins’ affiliate blog is a great resource, and also check out his YouTube channel.
Affiliate Future is a London based affiliate network. They are particularly well suited to the travel affiliates, with lots of travel merchants available. Compared to some other networks, they are short on recognisable brands but do have lots of merchants available in all the usual sectors.
I don’t enjoy using the interface at all. It’s clunkly, not intuitive and makes basic tasks difficult. Even finding a merchant to join can be an arduous process. On the plus side, they do some useful stuff like video interviews with merchants to help you understand their proposition.
Our verdict is: if you’re a travel affiliate, sign up. If not, have a look at their merchant list before deciding if it’s worth bothering. Visit Affiliate Future for more information.
Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog is a really useful series of blog postings and podcasts from a well respected figure on the UK affiliate scene. Fraser’s podcasts have seen him interview lots of influential affiliates like John Lamerton and Kieron Donoghue, merchants like Prezzybox, and representatives from networks such as Todd Crawford (OneNetwork) and David Hall (Affiliate Window).
Both informative and entertaining, the podcasts are well worth a listen. Visit Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
This useful aggregator of UK marketing blogs creates a master feed which contains entries from loads of great affiliates. Put together by respected affiliate Keith Bond, it provides a simple way to keep track of great content either through the site or the feed.
InternetMarketingBlogs.co.uk is a useful affiliate resource!