[ncurl]

Hello, my name is Nicole Curl/Assistant Affiliate Manager of Strapworks.Com. I’m looking for hardworking and dedicated affiliates to promote our products, Is that YOU? The following is information on our affiliate program.

We are currently using ShareASale, where we give you as an affiliate a flat commission of 10% on ALL sales!! Here at Strapworks.Com we have no minimums or maximums on what a customer can purchase. Webbing & hardware sales are typically processed and shipped the same day. Finished products (custom orders placed by customers) are typically completed and shipped within 3-5 business days. With this kind of turn around you’ll see a quick & easy return for your money!

For convenience on your sites, our Graphic Design Department offers all sizes of banners you need. Also when we have any specials going, we will give you the appropriate URL to that part of our site. Whenever you need something or have any questions, I’m here for you!

To find out more about our product & us, please visit us at http://www.strapworks.com.
The following are some stats;

• Average order size: $55.00
• Average conversion rate: 4.8%
• Unique visitors per month: 19,000
• Returning customers per month: 6,000
• Average page views per person: 9.3
• Average time spent on site per person: 8 min.

I hope that you decide to join this #1 business, and look forward to working with you. For any questions, please contact us at affiliates@strapworks.com . To join our program simply go to http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale...erchantID=3813 to sign up.

[ncurl]

I noticed alot of people have taken a look at this thread. Have you clicked and checked it out? If so, what kind of feedback or questions do you have? Please let me know.
-Nicole

[Sue]

You mean apart from the fact that I just received a decline to my applicatin to join? A decline with absolutely nothing in the email so I've no idea of why I was declined.

That sort of question?

But as you are not auto-deposit and don't have a datafeed, there isn't that much I would be willing to do for you, unfortunately for both of us.


Sue <--- who's a bit miffed to get that decline email

[Mack]

I took a look. I would suggest you make contact with an OPM, and spend a little time browsing this forum.

[ncurl]

I spoke with our Affiliate Manager, and took a look at your site. Unfortunately we don't use Link Farms. I do appologize for no reasoning in your email, I also spoke to him about that and highly suggested that he do that in the future.

[elbowcreek]

Ouch, them's fightin' words, there, calling someone a link farm.

Your affiliate manager might want to understand that most affiliates have a few dozen sites. If you based your opinion of me on the site that is listed in linkshare, or shareasale, for example, you would completely miss over the point that I send 400K-500K click throughs a year to my merchants, from a variety of links.

You would also miss out on the fact, judging from my first affiliate site, that my family owns a tarpaulin manufacturing facility, and that we go through several tons of webbing a year.

[Sue]

Link farms???

I'm now very, very, very glad that I was declined. I certainly wouldn't want to work with you at all if you think my site is a link farm. Have you any idea what one of those is? Did you even visit my site?

All I can do is laugh ... and agree with Mack's suggestion that you urgently get in contact with an OPM who can explain to you what web sites are and what affiliate marketing is.


Sue.

[Billy Kay]

Sue - always polite. Always professional.

Should have let ME pen your response

[Sue]

I'll take you up on that next time Billy


Sue.

[SeymourButts]

I like to grow corn on my link farm.

[Sue]

[loxly]

OMG, declining Staril AND calling her wonderful sites linkfarms....

You are not off to a good start and you lost some heavy hitter affiliates with your comments and attitude.

Good luck with your program! And no, I didn't go look.

[markwelch]

> "You would also miss out on the fact, judging from my first affiliate site, that my family owns a tarpaulin manufacturing facility, and that we go through several tons of webbing a year." <

Well, there we go -- a perfect example of why it is ridiculous to reject ANY affiliate application, other than for specific negative reasons.

Since none of my web sites "make sense" for all merchants, I've changed my own SAS affiliate profile so that merchants first see my "affiliate role" page, which explains what I do as an affiliate, including both PPC and niche sites. (I see that I need to update it again.) One key problem, for me, is that I tend to keep my niche sites "secret" -- I don't want other affiliates to know what niches I am experimenting in. Since we are all in such a friendly community where folks sometimes go fishing or drinking together, I'm not willing to send "all" merchants a list of "all" of my niche sites.

If an SAS merchant rejects me, I just pop that information into my project spreadsheet, which means I won't even consider that merchant again when I'm working on new niche sites or PPC test campaigns.

I am able to browse through ABW right now because I'm waiting for a large AdWords campaign to upload from the AdWords editor -- 3,850 ad groups promoting sales of 3,850 separate products that the merchant offers on its web site. Note that this merchant does not offer a datafeed; I had to scrape the merchant's site (with permission, of course) to extract the product info (a process that took about 20 hours total to get data into a useable Excel spreadsheet), then proceed with a "mostly-automated" process to create ad texts and keyword lists for each product, which took another 20-25 hours total. In the past few months, I've driven more than $3,000 in sales per month to this merchant; I expect the new campaign to increase that substantially (hopefully pushing sales of at least $10,000 in September). If the merchant had rejected me because he didn't see how my site matched their product line, the merchant would have lost most of these sales.

[Bill]

Oooo. Ouch, for sure! No Auto Deposit, no datafeed, AND you basically insulted (link farm, my a**) a very effective, well respected affiliate; and a really cool person, I might add. So I imagine there will be lots of lookers but few signers from this thread.

My only "suggestion" at this point is that you and your affiliate manager go back and re-read Mack's suggestion.
----------

Originally Posted by TonyCafaro

...just wondering the importance of data-feed and auto deposit in your own opinion...

Same as what Trust said.

[Sue]

Hi Tony,

Auto deposit is important as it shows a level of commitment from the merchant. If several large sales put you offline at SAS then it will replenish your account and ensure clicked links go to your site (and commisions to my account) instead of to an error page.

Datafeed ... well, without that there are really only banners and text links to your main page. That doesn't give me much to work with. Banners never seem to do much actual business and I much prefer to link directly to a product rather than home page. I also use datefeeds to create pages for my sites ... and I use popshops to manage datafeed products.

Without auto deposit I'm rather wary of putting in a lot of time to promote a merchant. Without a datafeed I'm very restricted as to what I can do to sell for you.

Does that help at all?


Sue.

[popdawg]

As this is a program announcement thread, back to the original topic.

Foot meet gun.

You haven't quite shot yourself in the foot, but you have everything lined up there ncurl.
Might want to slow your roll and do what the others suggested. Read a little and get some pro advice.

Good luck to you.

Edited - geez, not one but two posts in the time it took me to type.
I must be getting old.

[Billy Kay]

Perhaps the merchant's definition of a "link farm" would be a good place to start.

And if, as it appears, this merchant has a pre-convieved notion of exactly what type of affiliate they want, they should state that in the SAS interface: No PPC bidders, no rebate sites, no link farms allowed (etc)

And YES Sue, next time I see you at Summit, I WILL be bringing you a straw farmer's hat and corn cob pipe!!!!!

[Mack]

Originally Posted by ncurl

I spoke with our Affiliate Manager

....

[ncurl]

You know, appologies all over the place. I came to this forum to get great information, and I DID! I absolutely love everybody here, I have been learning some great things from you guys, and hate that I myself was pushed too fast and far by my employer. I will confess right up front, that I am NEW to this, they know this as well. I do what I am told to do, even everything I type up right now is read over by our affiliate manager to be approved. I'm sincere when I say to you Saril, SO SORRY, I honestly I had no idea. I'm going to take all of these comments to the heart, because I strongly believe in this company that I've worked my way up through, from crap work in the warehouse to AM assistant.

Saril, before I even knew it was your website, I looked in our pending affiliates and saw you were denied. I called over the AM and asked why you were denied because your sites were perfect for us, and that's when he informed me of this "link farm" thing. I'll be reading up on this.

SORRY once again. Don't hate the newbie

[BurgerBoy]

Originally Posted by ncurl

I spoke with our Affiliate Manager, and took a look at your site. Unfortunately we don't use Link Farms. I do appologize for no reasoning in your email, I also spoke to him about that and highly suggested that he do that in the future.

If her site is a link farm - then every affiliate site here is a link farm.

Guess you might as well go somewhere else to look for affiliates because all we run here is link farms.

You so DO NOT know what you are doing. No clue at all.

[BurgerBoy]

Originally Posted by Staril

Link farms???

I'm now very, very, very glad that I was declined. I certainly wouldn't want to work with you at all if you think my site is a link farm. Have you any idea what one of those is? Did you even visit my site?

All I can do is laugh ... and agree with Mack's suggestion that you urgently get in contact with an OPM who can explain to you what web sites are and what affiliate marketing is.


Sue.

They probably don't know what a OPM is. You may have to explain it better to them.

[ncurl]

Originally Posted by BurgerBoy

You so DO NOT know what you are doing. No clue at all.

As I said in my last post, I'm sorry if anybody was insulted, I did say I was NEW!! I've been pushed too quick by my employers, and I have just informed them about 5 minutes ago, that we NEED to have a meeting.

My goal is to become a great AM Assistant, one that works with affiliates, and provides them with what they need.

[Billy Kay]

NCurl... I'm not the most politically correct and socially sensitive person...

I Truly feel your sincerety

But it's clear someone is pulling your strings

You're just the MIDDLE MAN.

SERIOUS affiliates (the kind you're specifically asking for) don't work with middle men

If TWO people have to read and approve something as simple as a forum post... then you're NOT the person we want to deal with.

As unsubtely as possible, we're all the CEO's of our companies - and we're being asked to deal with an office temp, per you, a BRAND NEW office temp - rather then someone in a postion of authority.

Either come back when you get a promotion, or have the person who is hiding behind you come here and tell us why we should consider your company as a partner

AFTER your meeting...

AFTER you decide exactlly what it is you want...

AFTER you decide to treat prospective partners with respect (sorry, link farm will linger a long time)...

and AFTER you decide who at your company will deal with the partners (you or the mystery man)...

THEN start over with a new post (and leave out the We're #1 spin - every casino in Vegas also claims to have the loosest slots)

Just be upfront. What do you offer? Is it better then the competition? Other then link farms, are there any other business models that shouldn't apply? Can you make custom banners? How often do you update coupons. THAT kind of stuff.

NOT meant to be mean... it's my writing style

[BurgerBoy]

If you would like to know what a link farm really is a good place to start would be here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=link+farm

What is a link Farm ????

A link farm is a web page (or even an entire website) that is set up for the sole purpose of allowing webmasters to exchange links with each other for search engine ranking purposes only.

Here's a good example of a link farm http://www.jimprice.com/jim-lnk.shtml#people

[ncurl]

Billy Kay- thank you so much for your honesty. That's all I'm looking for right now is that. I did have a brief meeting with the owner of Strapworks, and told him this needs to be taken seriously if he wants to have good strong affiliates working with him. See, I've been reading these forums, asking questions, gotten great advice from all of you in the past couple months. I'M THE ONE TAKING IT SERIOUSLY!!! A bigger meeting will be held with the "AM" as well.
Thanks again for your feedback, and yes I will find out what an OPM, datafeed, auto deposit........really is. I take constructive criticism well, more is helpful!!