So you’ve been tearing your hair out over the last 6 weeks whilst the kids have been off for the summer holidays. And now it’s almost time they go back to school. Phew, you sigh. The classes begin once more and your children become studious once again.

However, you still have some last bits and pieces to get before the school term begins but want to avoid dragging the children around the shops, which is why Bizrate is a great place to start. A comparison search engine, Bizrate.co.uk lets you find and compare prices for millions of products including heaps of back to school stuff including stationary, school shoes, children’s rucksacks, lunchboxes and more.

We have thousands of merchants offering tons and tons of products so it’s a great way to browse and save money from the comfort of your own home. Looking back, school holidays used to stretch out for what seemed like an eternity (which may have been the sentiment for parents as well) but I always remember looking forward to the first few days back at school with a new bag, school clothes and pencil case, and even now the novelty of new stationary has still not worn off. Time to get shopping...

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As our offer inventory continues to grow, so do the unique identifiers we assign to each product and offer.

Users of our Catalogue API and FTP Data Feed should be sure that their processes will be able to handle a 64-bit signed integer datatype as we approach unique identifier 2147483648. This will apply to both our productID (”PID”) and offerID (”OID”) integers.

Why 2147483648?  The number 2,147,483,647 is the maximum value for a 32-bit signed integer. For more on the wonderful world of prime numbers, see what Wikipedia has to say!

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Anthony Hine of Saxophone Players has agreed to take a few mintues to chat to us about his site and experiences with the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program.

1.    Hi Anthony, thanks for sharing some information on your website, Saxophone Players, with us today. Can you start off by giving us a little introduction to it?
Hi. My site’s aim is to provide as much information as possible to anyone with an interest in saxophones. Whether you want to learn to play or just want to see what types there are, or learn a little sax history. It caters for beginner players or those with an interest who just want to learn more about the instrument.

2.    What inspired you to start up Saxophone Players - why this particular subject?
Why saxophones? I love saxophones. The sound, the shape and playing. I don’t claim to be a professional player or that i’m a playing genius but I do love them. I was looking around the web at sites currently available. Some were great, some were good and some not so good. However, none of them in my opinion, really catered for the basics. None gave a fool proof guide to playing from day one. So with that in mind I aimed the site solely at us out there who need a clear guide on how to get it out of the bag on day one and be able to make a sound. From there it expanded to cover as much as I can think of about saxophones.

3.    You’ve been with us for a while now – how are you finding it?
So far I haven’t experienced any real problems. The site can be a little slow sometimes but nothing I haven’t experienced on much larger more prominent company sites. It all appears to be quite straight forward. Contacting you is quick and efficient and any issues or questions are resolved promptly.

4.    You use Shopzilla’s dynamic assets on Saxophone Players…how did you find the integration process/portal navigation?
There were no isssues. I would like to see individual options available for products. This is purely because of the way my site is formatted. One specific type of sax to one page. Having individual options would mean I am advertising the specific sax to the correct page. Currently it does this but also gives other types of saxes as well on the same ad banner.

5.    What’s important to you in an affiliate partnership? Are you using any other programs?

Trust, trust and more trust. There’s little point in having an affiliate relationship if you don’t trust the person you’re affiliated with. I also run Adsense and Amazon.

6.    Do you get chance to check out our Publisher blog very often? Do you find it useful in keeping up to date with what’s going on in the affiliate industry? Not very often at the moment, I’m afraid. I only usually check out blogs if a) I’ve got time (too little time at the moment) and b) I need to know something.

7.    Would you consider recommending the program to other website owners?
I have no issues with it. For the time being, it does exactly what I set it up for. To pay site costs, and that’s what it does. So yes. It costs nothing to trial and if you are more committed than I am to making money online it’s definitely worth a go. And may I say a lot better than some other affiliate programs I have tried.

8.    And finally…do you have any feedback/ideas for improvement for us here at the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program?
Perhaps more options on the make of goods available and the option of individual items of course. I would rather have a banner with only 1 or 2 options rather than a banner that has 4 options but only 1 or 2 of them are an exact match to what was requested.

Thanks to Anthony for taking the time out and for giving us some valuable feedback on our program. Dynamic assets actually allow you to choose your ad banners by Keyword and Category, and even then, you can customise the colours of the ad with our colour picker tool. We’re constantly looking to improve our program for the best possible Publisher experience so watch this space for updates!

So if you have any questions on integration or registering, please let the team know.

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Mark Joseph is the Head of Affiliate Marketing at Digital Agency Steak, whose career began as an affiliate, and now finds himself sitting on the other side of the fence innovating and managing affiliate campaigns for an array of many key brands. Mark has a keen interest in web development and marketing, teaching himself to code and design his first content driven affiliate site which he later sold. Here he shares his thoughts on how publishers should approach their affiliate marketing activity in order to stand out from others and become noticed by their advertisers as vital assets with in their overall marketing strategy.

The affiliate marketing landscape is constantly evolving for retailers and publishers alike due to the rise of digital presenting new challenges, but also new opportunities as never before.

Consumers are continuously engaging with brands in many different ways online thanks to the rise of social media and affiliate network technology which have not yet been exploited by many affiliates. In order to keep up with consumer trends and best promotional methods, we as affiliate marketers must welcome the breadth of digital into our practice.  I have highlighted three areas of focus that I believe will help affiliate marketers add value to their advertiser’s campaigns.

1.    Get to know your advertisers and their products
The age old saying, “you get out what you put in” is of course very true within affiliate marketing. Spending time getting to know your advertiser brands and understanding the individual key products that convert for you is vital, in not only maximising consumer engagement and click-through via your website, but also increasing its natural search engine traffic.

As we know the basic principle of the internet is based upon words, and as consumers visit your website they are at a point where they are either ready to buy the product they found you for, or they are visiting your website during their research period. Either way your content must be engaging enough to ‘close the sale’, with an easy to follow click-through path to your advertisers site, in order to maximise your sale conversions.

2.    Familiarise yourself with other digital practices
What I love about Affiliate Marketing is that, it encompasses the majority of other online marketing disciplines. Affiliate marketers should aim to at least have a basic understanding of how PPC and SEO work along with some of the tools used within these channels.

PPC tools such as The Google keyword generator and Google Insight allow you to better understand the key terms that receive the most traffic from the search engines, therefore allowing you to better optimise content towards the key advertiser, products from your chosen advertisers that are being searched for the most on the internet.
Although the concept of creating an SEO friendly affiliate website with lots of dynamic content can seem daunting, there are many available free tools on the internet that take the pain out of all this. For example blogging software Wordpress requires little or no technical knowledge in order to get a site up and running within a few hours.

3.    Think beyond link and banner promotion
As the online space is becoming more and more saturated, affiliates have to do more and more to compete for their share of internet traffic; therefore it is imperative that affiliates are adding more value to advertisers then simply producing a website with a logo and a link.
Get thinking outside of the box, as consumers are becoming more familiar with new technology and social environments.

Affiliate marketing has become less about standard links on a web page as online consumers mature and become harder to please.  It is now more important then ever to engage with the consumer on your site through useful content, interactive media or other value adding mediums before they leave your site. Be sure that the advertiser is happy to sign off any promotional ideas you have before you invest too much time in your creativity.

Start adding value now so as not to be left behind

Shopzilla would like to thank Mark for some fantastic advice and for taking the time out to discuss adding value to an evolving affiliate market with us.

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Emma: Hi Diana, thanks for taking the time out to do this for us. It’s a great way for our readers to check out the program from an insider perspective. First of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience in the online industry?

Diana: Hi Emma, I’ve actually been with Shopzilla about four years now in my role as Online Marketing Manager. The UK affiliate program was launched just over a year ago with the French and German programs following shortly afterwards. Personally, I’m now completely immersed in the affiliate world, not only because I work in the industry but also because I run a couple of my own personal sites, so I know how the story goes on both sides of the fence; being an affiliate myself who uses various programs as well as running Shopzilla’s. Before that, I actually studied Aviation in Germany (my home country) and went on to work in an online marketing role for Lufthansa.

Emma: Wow, sounds like exciting stuff! Four years is quite long…so you must know the company pretty well now?

Diana: Absolutely. I’ve worked with a lot of people here on a lot of different projects so there’s never a dull moment. It’s a fantastic company to work for so I was happy to launch the Publisher program. I welcome the opportunity to work with new Publishers everyday and the program’s steady growth since its launch confirms just how great an affiliate program it is.

Emma: So what do you look for in new Publishers? And do you have any advice to website owners who would like to try their hand at affiliate marketing?

Diana: For the most part, we look for quality websites. That is to say, Publishers who have great content, an already existing user/visitor base and generally a well established site. The program is free to join and pays on a CPC based model so to those affiliate marketers who wish to get started, try us out! My advice would be to really focus on matching the content of your site to your advertising. There’s no point having a site about golf, for example, and including our cosmetics banners. It just wouldn’t work. We take traffic quality very seriously and monitor it very closely for all Publishers. The Shopzilla Publisher Programs will only work if you take traffic quality as seriously as we do.

Emma: Could you give us a brief overview of the banners/products Shopzilla’s program offers?

Diana: Sure. We have a multitude of options in our Publisher portal including dynamic banners, text links, search boxes, stock banners and product pods which are all easily accessible in the portal. For the more experienced affiliate marketers, we also offer FTP Data Feeds and a soon to be released Catalogue API solution (September 2010). These last two really give affiliates even wider access to Bizrate’s inventory for a great comparison shopping integration. My favourites are actually the dynamic banners as you can not only choose the products you want to promote but also change the look to match your site’s design.

Emma: You mentioned Bizrate - why not Shopzilla?

Diana: Ah, the company origianlly started out as Bizrate but changed it’s corporate name to Shopzilla a few years later. We still have both the Bizrate and Shopzilla sites which run parallel but it is Bizrate itself which powers the Publisher Program.

Emma: I see. And what kinds of products can I advertise through the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program?

Diana: Pretty much anything. We have a broad range of products from niche to large scale, from clothing to perfumes and TVs to iPods. To find a particular product in our portal, it’s a really good idea to browse Bizrate’s site to find the product you want to promote. You just need to know the category tree of that product to then be able to find it in the Publisher portal.

Emma: Great advice there. One last question - as a Publisher I would want to know how my revenues are accrued. Can you give us a brief lowdown on earnings and redirects?

Diana: So as a starting point, earnings are accrued on a CPC based model whereby redirects sent through to our merchants generate earnings. As already mentioned, we are a very quality-focused affiliate program so actually have a system in place called Smartpricing which is not unlike Ebay’s Quality Click Pricing Strategy or the Google quality scores (amongst other quality assurance initiatives). This enables us to monitor the quality of traffic Publishers send through to our merchants. For high quality traffic there is great potential for high revenues and similar to other affiliate programs, these revenues are then paid out on a monthly basis, when the Publisher hits a £50 benchmark.

That’s all for now, folks. Diana has provided us with some great insight into the Publisher Program. Follow her on Twitter.

If you have any further questions on our affiliate program or the affiliate products we offer, we’d love to hear from you - check out our FAQs or contact the Publisher Team.

To sign up, you can register for a Publisher account here.

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We still hear many stories of fake or untrustworthy websites, however, so how do you build trust online in consumers’ eyes? Tim Ash’s article The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online is a great source of advice.

There are several ways to help build on this trust, including, for example, payment security assurance and media coverage. For us here at Shopzilla, however, one of the most significant methods of increasing visitor confidence in websites and products is through the visibilty of  reviews left by other consumers.

Although long known in the online industry, it has more recently been highly emphasised that merchant/product ratings and reviews help increase conversions and decrease return rates for online retailers. These reviews play an important role in building consumer trust with our retailers.  The company has so far seen conversions of between 10-25% on its retailers’ sites thanks to the Shopzilla Product Reviews Solution, an innovative piece of technology which enables merchants to integrate consumer product reviews on their websites.

A few stats on how general consumer ratings are affecting shopping decisions today:

• 77% of online shoppers seek product ratings and reviews
• 92% believe reviews are extremely helpful
• 78% of consumers have more trust for brands with reviews
• 37% of retailers plan to add or replace customer reviews and ratings in 2010

(Sources: Jupiter Media, TechCrunch, Shop.org, Marketing Sherpa, eMarkter, buySAFE, Internet Retailer)

According to a survey carried out by Nielson, “…opinions posted online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally…and seven in every ten trust these consumer opinions..”

Building up consumer trust in your brand and website will take time as well as effort on your part. But if you have a good product or brand, then it usually comes naturally.

If you are interested in learning more about what Shopzilla’s Product Reviews can do for your conversions, please contact us.

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Here she gives us some advice on writing for the web:

The basics

Before you start writing, it’s good to understand how users read on the web. Because in short – they don’t! Most web users won’t read every word they come across on a page. Instead, they scan the page for the information they need.

For this reason, you need to make your copy easy to scan. Here’s a few ways to do this:

•    Headings and sub-headings
•    Bullet points
•    Simple, informal writing

Headings

It might sound obvious, but the headings you use on your pages are extremely important. They should be short, simple and give the users an overview of what they can expect to find. It can be tempting to get over-wordy with headings, so try to think of them as bait. Hook your reader in, tempt them to click the link and then give them the full details later. Headings and sub-headings are not only vital for attracting and retaining readers, but are also important for helping search engines determine how useful and relevant your content is.

Sub-headings

Once you have your users on the page, make it easy for them to take in your content quickly. Break your text into sections, as large blocks of copy are off-putting to readers. This is where sub-headings come in. When your text moves onto a new subject, give it a new sub-heading. Again, make these short, concise and explanatory. This way, your readers can quickly decide if they’ve found what they’re looking for.

Bullet points

Bullet points allow users to scan your content quickly, much like headings and sub-headings. When you can, break bigger chunks of information into bulleted lists. Readers are attracted to bullet points, so use them wisely. Keep the  text short and snappy, containing as much information as possible.

EXAMPLE: If you run a cookware site, you might want to advertise the advantages of the new SuperWhisk3000.

Before:

The brand new SuperWhisk3000 is the newest model on the market from Whisks ‘r’ us, taking us forward into a new era of Whisk technology. Spinning at over 3000 RPM’s, the SuperWhisk3000 is by far the fastest whisk on the market. It comes in a range of beautiful neon colours, including red, blue, green and pink. With this whisk, you can mix cakes in half the time of a normal whisk guaranteed: and if you don’t like it, you get your money back!

After:

SuperWhisk3000 by Whisks ‘r’ us
•    Fastest whisk on market spinning at over 3000RPM
•    Comes in 4 neon colours – red, blue, green & pink
•    Make cakes in half the time guaranteed – or your money back

Simple, informal writing

When writing for the web, bear in mind that you should aim your copy at an average reading age of 12 years old. It might sound surprising, but don’t worry, you won’t be patronising your customers! Even the most highly educated, well-read web users don’t want to be bogged down with long words and complex sentences when reading online. Make your sentences short and simple. Break your text into short paragraphs. Avoid jargon where you can, and if you must use it, explain what it means.

Finally, make sure the most important, salient parts of your content are at the top of the page in a ‘pyramid’ type structure. Pack all the most important details into the first paragraph, with the less important information in the next, and so on. The least important information should be given at the bottom. Users will often exit your page long before they reach the end, so ‘leaving the best till last’ won’t work here!

You’re ready to go

This post covers some key aspects of writing for the web. But bear in mind that each section I’ve covered here could warrant a blog post of its own! It’d be great to hear from you in the comments section if you have any questions, or if you’d like me to cover any of these topics in more detail.

Thanks to Jennifer for some great tips on writing for the web. Keep an eye out on the Shopzilla Publisher Blog for future posts related to this and other subject areas surrounding content writing.

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When a visitor comes to your site looking for information on a particular subject, offering them well placed shopping content is a great way to earn from your knowledge. If you’re writing a review on beauty products, for example, displaying product prices or links to relevant shopping content such as mascara or the latest cosmetics gives them a better user experience, as they can click onwards to check the product out further. And for those clicks…Shopzilla rewards you, since our affiliate program pays on a CPC based model.

One good example of well matched ad content is Saxophone Players. As you can see the site is based around the musical instrument, and the dynamic banner along the right hand sidebar contains saxophones and saxophone related products. You can also see how well the owner of this site has integrated Shopzilla’s ads, using our dynamic colour picker tool to customise his banners for the site. Providing the visitor with more information on what they originally came to the site looking for in the first place only is one of the most essential requirements for a successful website in the affiliate marketing industry. And yet it is just common sense!

Furthermore, not just adding shopping content but adding a price comparison element to your site is always a good idea as which visitor doesn’t want to see the cheapest price? The internet is where most people turn to first to compare prices of products - if you can offer them this option they don’t have to look too far! They’ll come back again and again…and again.

We pride ourselves on great shopping content at Shopzilla and to make life easier for our Publishers, the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program is free to join. We have millions of product offers on Shopzilla which is our very own comparison search engine. This means as a Publisher, you get access to great advertising banners to suit your site, whatever the theme. And there’s no joining fee!

Sign up as a Publisher and check out what the portal has to offer you and your website.

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Celebrate Bastille Day with Shopzilla's French Publisher Program © rosswebsdale

Here at Shopzilla we take pride in the internationality of our company and its presence in European markets.Shopzilla’s UK Publisher Program has been around more than a year now and was followed by the release of our French (and German) affiliate programs not long afterwards.

The EU programs are based on a CPC model and offer website owners the opportunity to add shopping content to their site. Integrating this type of content is great for SEO as well as user experience and enables affiliates to monetise their site at the same time.

All Publishers are welcome to apply - check out our post on Is my website suitable for some guidelines.

The French market is gradually expanding and there’s great opportunity to include French shopping content on your site with Shopzilla’s sister site PrixMoinsCher.com which powers the FR Publisher Program.

Please have a look here if you’d like to sign up for Shopzilla’s French affiliate program “le programme d’affiliation”.

And we musn’t forget…Happy Bastille Day!

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Use this opportunity to get golf and sports banners integrated into your website.

Try out our Dynamic 4 pods (300×250) advertising banner:

Or our Dynamic Quarter Page (450×450):

We have a range of ad sizes to suit all websites and our ads are even customisable which means you get to personnalise them for your site!

If you need any help in finding golfing banners, please contact the Publisher Team.

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