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Well Nick is in the army still doing his year long stint as a potato scraper extraordinare! While I have been engaged on a top secret project that only, myself and half the world have known about, but what is this top secret project well I can tell you this have you ever wanted a Wordpress Membership Site plugin that actually works?

Of course you do which is why you will run out and purchase Your Members in about 10 minutes time!

In the mean time I have managed to log back into PaymentBlogger so normal if somewhat erratic service will resume soon!

Cheers for the support and the emails asking about us, I can tell you as far as I know Nick is fine if a little bored thankfully the Greek Army is about as active as a sloth.

Before I forget Join the Cambridge New Media Affiliates scheme let me know you done so and I will let you in on some cool new ideas that will blow your minds.

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A few months ago I wrote an article looking at Affiliate management called Affiliate marketing from the other side. At the time I discussed how Affiliate management had helped Aaron Wall to have one of the most linked to sites in the SEO (search engine optimisation) community. Since then a few things have changed but I think Affiliate management is still a crucial part of any serious online business. So I have gone and reviewed 3 of the best products on the market ok two of the best and a .net script which just works.

Affiliate Management Software Comparison

So what are you waiting for if you haven’t already taken the plunge and are self managing then hopefully this will help you make up your mind which software to use.

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We so need to kick start the blog again, and how better then by helping you guys get a Mac Book Pro Each!

Why do you need a laptop?

When asked what is the single most important change in my life on the Internet I always answer my first laptop purchase with a wireless connection. Suddenly the world changes, now you can remain online in your own cocoon environment where ever you are in the world. I do not leave the house without a laptop, my laptop has gone with me to festivals, conferences, Hackdays, clients locations and even the shops!

If you don’t have a laptop then now is the chance to grab one, if you do have a laptop is it a Mac Book Pro? It is? ok well then you can just play for the cash!

The Challenge

So here is the challenge find 25 people and get them to join a site where they to can win a laptop each person to sign up needs to complete a single offer. When all 24 have completed 1 offer you receive a free Laptop or Cash!
Simple huh

Don’t panic it’s coming!

I bet most of you are chomping at the bit for the website address but I want you to hold on just 2 seconds more.
Before you sign up we want you to know we are here for you! over the next few weeks we are going to discuss not only the various offers, but ways to get people to sign up. In other words we are going to hold your hands through the whole thing!

One final thing before the address

One last thing before you sign up, it won’t cost you a penny! please, please make sure you read the small prints of offers but for everyone their is a free option so you do not have to part with money to take part* don’t be pressured into parting with cash on an offer unless you want to!

Let’s get started

Remember to successfully complete the challenge you will need to sign up 24 people, for Notebooks4free and have each person complete an offer.

Legal bits

We are not responsible for your earning potential, and while we will help as much as we can we can’t do the work for you. This is not a pyramid scheme it is a single tier affiliate program, we are using an affiliate link but any affiliates you recruit do not count towards our total. Please please please read the small print on the Notebook4free website. Only one entry per household etc. Finally not all countries can receive laptops in such cases the cash alternative is offered via Paypal.
Remember with free trials and offers always cancel them if you do not want them to continue!

*If in doubt sign up for Notebooks4free and stay tuned for ways to complete free offers even if you don’t have a credit card.

So who is ready to take on the challenge and join us on this simple but effective challenge? It doesn’t matter if your an affiliate marketing newbie or guru this is a great way to get a laptop or cash and what could be simpler then getting 24 friends together?

Taking the challenge to the next level!

• Goal driven challenges
• Creating your sales person

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Why is Aaron Wall one of the top SEO???s?

Aaron Wall SEO Book, is one of the highest ranking SEO sites but why, on the face of it his site is nothing special a glorified blog it???s not even hugely optimised for the term SEO so why is it there?

Answer: Affiliate marketing
Aaron runs an affiliate program yep that???s his book we are promoting on the right, this scheme provides thousands of back links all from highly targeted relevant sites. For him it???s a win win situation his book gets promoted and he gets back links, lots of back links.

If you provide a service or product you to could be harnessing the power of an affiliate network.

Before you start
Now before you go getting all excited there are some cons to this win win situation and the con is the win your affiliates.

You soon realise that their good affiliates and then the spam junkies managing your affiliates can become a nightmare its one of the reasons people look to affiliate management companies to act as middlemen.

The second problem is the affiliate cut, you see they may be driving sales to you but they are also taking a cut from that sale if you have only a tiny profit margin on your goods you will see that shrink even further.

Doing it alone or Affiliate marketing company
Still with us, great now comes the big question do you run the affiliate scheme yourself or ask an affiliate management company to do it for you.

A Management Company takes care of finding, advertising and running your affiliates for either a percentage of the sales (cutting profit margins even more) a variable fee or both.

Doing it yourself means you need to find, manage and run your affiliates, organise payments etc

Ultimately this is going to come down to the way you want to handle your expansion, either way is going to cost at least a little, though the DIY is probably cheaper in the long run, you will not have the ability to fall back on the experience of your affiliate management company when it goes wrong. For this post I???m going to presume you went the DIY route (we will do a round up of some of the best affiliate management companies in a later post)

Self managing affiliates

You will need software to manage and track your affiliates, their sales etc
Both myself and Aaron use iDevAffiliate software its very reasonably priced with the basic version being just $99

However unless you are reasonable coder you will want to get the SEO friendly links module which is another $99.99. Personally I use the Gold version, which includes all the addon modules. There are plenty of others out there but iDevAffiliate does a pretty good job at a good price and I would recommend it.

Setting it up is a breeze and you will be managing your affiliates in no time, remember to use the SEO addon to create nice 301 redirects for your affiliates this way your affiliates will not only be bringing in traffic but also helping with your rankings.

A good affiliate scheme will provide banners and various link etc to assist its affiliates the more you can provide them the better, I offer banners, button???s, targeted anchor text links, and even example landing pages with additional graphics for their use be creative.

Recruiting Affiliates should be the easy part a good way to start is the ???closed membership??� advertise on forums etc for a 100 or so affiliates places like DP, Webdigity and Wickedfire are packed full of people eager to be your affiliate sadly for you they are probably not the ones you are after. However a mixture of forum activity and contacting well known and respected affiliate marketers might well pay off, after a few months expand the group a hundred at a time. I find this works really well particularly if you provide a waiting email list.

Paying your affiliates is the next problem the quickest and easiest way is through PayPal, make sure you have a PayPal business account that is verified, other options could include Google checkout or good old fashion cheques (though these come with their own added issues).

Final thought

This was a brief intro to the world of affiliate marketing from the other side and its suitable for everyone from a drop ship merchant, Directory owner even an SEO consultant!
One very final thought Aarons??? book is actually very good so maybe the reason he is considered one of the best isn???t just down to affiliates but you will have to read his book to find out!