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Archive for July, 2009

a4uexpo London - Roadshows

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Meet UK Shopzilla Publisher program @ a4uexpo London 2009

Meet UK Shopzilla Publisher Team @ a4uexpo London

Getting the UK Affiliate Marketing community prepared for the a4uexpo London, the a4uexpo street team will meet affiliates and verticals at the a4uexpo roadshows during the coming weeks. Four dates have been announced on the a4uexpo website. The roadshows kicked off in Bristol  (read feedback about the Bristol event) and Brighton earlier this month and will continue in August, visiting Manchester and Edinburgh. They are free to attend and are definitely the best sort of warm up before the main event in London later this year and a good way to  already start meeting interesting people within the affiliate space. (Read more about the a4uexpo roadshows.)

Next stops of the a4uexpo roadshows are:

  • Manchester: 4th August 2009
  • Edinburgh: 5th August 2009

The events also give you the chance to win free passes to the a4uexpo London on 13-14 October 2009. Take part in the  “MOST-FUNNY-OR-ORIGINAL-STICKER-PLACEMENT-COMPETITION” organised by the organiser. All you need to do is pick up your a4uexpo London sticker during the Manchester or Edinburgh roadshow - choose your spot - take a pic - upload the image to your site - blog, social network etc.  and send the link to ingrid(at)existem(dot)com by 17th August. The lucky winner will be announced on 19th August!

The a4uexpo represents one of the most important Affiliate Marketing events in Europe. After a very successful event earlier  this year in Amsterdam all eyes are now on London . This year’s a4uexpo London will take place on 13th/14th October 2009 at ExCeL London. Besides the exhibition (Shopzilla with the UK Shopzilla Publisher team will be one of the exhibitors), you have the chance for intense learning and networking. With more than 30 sessions from top industry experts from across the UK and international online marketing sector and  3 networking parties this is the event to attend for eveyone serious about affiliate marketing.

The UK Shopzilla Publisher team is looking forward to meeting all of you at the a4uexpo London in October at the latest. See you soon!

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Posted in Conferences & Upcoming events | No Comments »

Affiliate Marketing Networking Event

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Affilate Summer BBQ: the get-together for all affiliates, merchants and affiliate managers this season

If there’s one thing Publishers and Affiliate marketers really like, it is networking events. Even better when they are free and include free drinks and food. The Event organized by affiliatewindow gives you an excellent opportunity to chew the cud, meet old friends or put a face to a name in a relaxed and informal environment.

Affiliate Networking Party - Summer BBQ 2009

Affiliate Networking Party - Summer BBQ 2009

The affiliate networking event is all about a Summer BBQ, taking place at IMBIBE BAR in London Southwark tomorrow (29th July) from 5pm. Beside affiliatewindow, affiliate marketers can meet eleven other affiliate networks.

Diana of the UK Shopzilla Publisher team will also be joining the party and is looking forward to meeting  old faces,  new publishers and affiliate verticals.

So spread the word and get ready to meet new and interesting people.  To join this great event is free, however due to the space restriction the number of attendees is limited.  More info on the event can be found on the affiliatewindow blog, where you can also register for the event.

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Posted in Conferences & Upcoming events | No Comments »

How to use Top Search Results?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The easiest way to create a Shopzilla unit is to use the Top Search Results. It’s the first item on Shopzilla’s dynamic assets list — and it’s the one that requires least work.

How does it work? Type the keyword into a search box, choose a department and a category…and voilà! You have a page-load of ads to choose from!

top-search-results-dynamic-banners

One unit can contain up to 5 different ads; you don’t have an influence over what products will be displayed, as these are (as the name suggests) Top Search Results - it’s up to you though what type of product the unit contains and what format the banner is in.

Serving an ad with several products can help you target the visitors who haven’t yet made up their minds on “what to buy” and are still researching.  That means that these sorts of units are likely to see the best results on a page with general information about the topic, like buying guides. What about single product pages? For these we suggest using Product Pods - ad units with a single product. However, as always we encourage our Publishers to test what works best for them! Whichever ad format you go for remember the golden rule: be relevant.

As always: if you have any questions, leave a comment or contact us using contact form!

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Posted in Assets tutorials, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

Video tutorial - how to get dynamic assets

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Shopzilla’s affiliate program for the UK has recently launched its new dynamic assets. Using dynamic content means that you can adjust the look of banners and product pods to the layout of your website or blog. The displayed products within the dynamic assets automatically change every time a user visits your site. Please have a look at our video tutorial to find out how to get dynamic assets in the Publisher portal.

As always we value your feedback and comments on these assets, whether it be to tell us how much you like them or suggestions for improvement! Please contact us to let us know what you think.

UK Shopzilla Publisher Team

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Posted in Assets tutorials, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

How to use Shopzilla’s Product Pods?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Shopzilla dynamic banner featuring MacBook Pro

Bizrate dynamic banner featuring MacBook Pro

One of the biggest new trends in online advertising is behavioural targeting - a technique using information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behaviour, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them (Wikipedia). At  Shopzilla’s affiliate program we don’t use this technology ( yet ;-) ), but we give you Product Pods.

A Product Pod is a graphic ad for a product of your choice.  How does it work? Product Pods enable you to “target” your visitors, without their browsing history! It’s quite simple, really - if you write a review on the Apple MacBookPro, you could make an educated guess that your readers will be interested in seeing an Apple MacBookPro advertisement.This type of advertising not only gives you the opportunity to monetize your content, it also makes it more appealing!

Shopzilla dynamic product banner - 234x60

Shopzilla dynamic product banner - 234x60

Currently, we have 5 different formats of Product Pods. To explore this feature log in to your account and go to Get Content > Dynamic Assets > Product Pods.

Any questions? Give us a shout! We are happy to answer any of your queries.

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Posted in Assets tutorials, Tips & Tricks | 2 Comments »

Understanding Effectivness and Evaluating Success

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
How to measure the success of your affiliate programs

How to measure the success of your affiliate programs

Your statistics table provides you with very important information: how many impressions your ad received and how many clicks those ads generated. It divides clicks into impressions to tell you your clickthrough rate — the percentage of people who see the ad and click on it. The number of impressions your ads receive depends on the marketing of your site. The number of clicks the ads receive will depend on a whole load of other factors, including:

  • How closely does the subject of the ad match your content?
  • Where is the ad unit placed on the page?
  • How well is it optimized?
  • And even the type of users who visit your site (targeting)

Much of your job will always be to get all of these factors right to push your clickthrough rate up as high as possible.

After the clickthrough rate comes your most important piece of information: the amount you’ve actually earned.

The eCPC and eCPM can be a bit confusing. The eCPC is the amount of money you are “effectively” earning per click, and the eCPM is the amount that you are earning on average for every thousand impressions.

Since  Shopzilla’s affiliate program does not necessarily give you money every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you might think it’s difficult to compare it against other advertising programs, but actually it isn’t: AdSense reports, for example, will tell you also exactly how much you’re earning for each click on an ad unit. That’s when eCPC and your eCPM stats come to play:  those two values will enable you to weigh Shopzilla Publisher against other affiliate programs (regardless of whether it is CPC, CPA, CPM, etc), in this example compare it to AdSense.

It’s only when you’re able to compare like for like that you’ll know what to do. Shopzilla’s provision of the equivalent earnings in CPC and CPM rates make those comparisons much easier!

Read more about earning reports in our affiliate program.

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Posted in Affiliate Hot Topics, Payments & Reporting | 2 Comments »

Adding shopping content to your site

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Devising advertising strategy is one of the most difficult tasks that our Publishers face when joining our affiliate program.

Monetize your website - try adding shopping content

Monetize your website - try adding shopping content

Whether you already have a website or you are building one, the key is to plan the content you want to include. Think ahead of the topics you want to write about (adding category structure to your website/blog will not only  help you with your writing but will make it easier to navigate through your site!) and make sure that at least one of them is commercially oriented.

Example: you are a music buff and you own a website dedicated to classical music. Every day you write about your favourite concerts, arias…But how can you monetize this content? How about adding a category dedicated to albums/books reviews? or instruments? - topics that like-minded visitors of your website might be interested in reading and, most importantly, you can cash in on!

The key to creating good shopping content is relevancy: your ads have to be relevant to your content in order to spark interest in your visitors. Linking to LCD TVs on a cycling website is unlikely to bring you revenue, but the same ad placed on a DVD review site - it’s  a different story!

If you have any questions on how to implement our ads or you need advice on making your website/blog profitable, give us a shout!

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Posted in Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Dynamic banners - colouring your ads

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Many of you wrote to us in the past asking about the possibility of changing the design of the banner ads to better match your sites. Here, at  Publisher, Shopzilla’s affiliate program, we understand the importance of ad optimization and how crucial it is for your earnings. That’s why, when creating the dynamic banners product, we made sure our affiliates would have full control over the appearance of the ads they created!

Now you can colour your ads!

Shopzilla's dynamic asstes - Now you can colour your ads!

Now you can customise your ad unit by changing:

  • ad border colour
  • image border colour
  • background colour
  • link colour (that includes before it’s clicked, after it’s clicked, when it’s clicked and when you hover over it…)
  • text colour
  • link target (you decide whether the link opens in a new window, leaving your site open).

How can you customise your ads in order to maximize your earnings? Try to make the ad fit your website’s design. At the same time don’t try to blend it in too much - your visitors should always be able to tell the difference between your own and sponsored content!

If you have any questions regarding this feature contact us and we’ll try to help!

Good luck!

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Posted in Assets tutorials, Tips & Tricks | 2 Comments »

Dynamic assets: Build your very own banner!

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Shopzilla Europe are pleased to announce the launch of dynamic assets. Now you can build your own, individual ads.

Within the portal of our affiliate program you are now able to build dynamic assets based on top keyword or category search results, as well as build comparison shopping assets for specific products.  These dynamic assets refresh their content each time your website page is loaded, offering your users a fresh shopping experience each time they visit your website.

dynamic-banners-create-your-own

Build your very own banner with Shopzilla's dynamic assets

Here a few highlights of what this feature include:

1) Publishers are now able to create dynamic assets based solely on category.  This will allow the creation of more generic dynamic assets.  An example of a good use of this sort of dynamic asset would be a placement on a fashion website.  Rather than displaying products defined by a keyword, you will now be able to create a dynamic asset displaying results according to product popularity in a chosen category. This means you will always have the hottest items in your banner.

2) Why not be more specific and create a ‘Product Pod‘ with the dynamic asset within certain categories? This feature allows you to add a comparison shopping experience to your site. However please note that the function of a ‘Product Pod’ asset is to allow for a comparison shopping experience, so you may find instances of a category not retrieving any results if we can’t offer any price comparison for the particular product you have chosen.  This is because there aren’t any available products with multiple offers aligned to them that would support a comparison shopping experience.  (For instance, we don’t have any products in the category “Candles & Home Scent” that have multiple offers aligned to them …I know, seems crazy…so, sadly, you won’t be able to build a ‘Product Pods’ asset for your favourite  vanilla scented candles, as the same candle isn’t necessarily sold by more than one merchant, although we have a great choice of vanilla scented candles.  But you will be able to build one for your favourite mp3 player or laptop.) Best thing to do is to check on BizRate first, whether the product you want to promote has a  “Go compare” site.

3) Another nice element of the dynamic content is that you are in control over the appearance of the ad you want to place on your website. This means you are pretty much the designer of you own banner. Choose the colours that best match your site.
To create a dynamic asset, log into the UK Shopzilla Publisher Portal and choose the ‘Get Content’ tab. From here you will find a “Dynamic Assets” link. If you need any help creating these assets, please Contact us.

Enjoy!

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Posted in Info on Publisher Program, Publisher Program Updates, shopping banners | No Comments »

XML-based FTP Data Feeds now available

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

We are pleased to announce that we are now offering our shopping content in the form of our XML-based FTP Data Feeds, too. This allows Publishers to add their own price comparison section onto their site or add more choice to their existing inventory.

Shopzilla now offering XML product feed

XML data feeds - Get your own price comparison started on your site

With Shopzilla’s affiliate program FTP Data Feeds, Publishers are able to easily download BizRate’s entire inventory of merchant product offers from one FTP location.  As a Publisher we give you the flexibility to download only the product offers found in categories that are of use to you.

If you are an experienced affiliate marketer and e-commerce is your bread and butter, then think about utilizing our XML FTP Data Feed product!  If you are interested in our feed product, you will find more information what is necessary by  applying for the feed product on our blog or contact Shopzilla Publisher Team for any further questions!

Enjoy!

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Posted in Publisher Program Updates | No Comments »

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