There's always something around the Internet in the world of affiliate marketing to make your life a little easier. Though we cannot provide services for each of the webmaster tools we talk about on this page, we will point you in the right direction. All of these tools are freely available in some capacity from the web.
Enhancements you can make to your site can increase it's relevance in the search engines, offer your visitors value, and increase the stickiness of your site. A sticky site is one which keeps its visitors around for a while, playing games or chatting with others. The main reason for wanting this is to increase the number of times an ad is shown to your visitors, as an increase in impressions per person is an increase in the likelihood of these visitors actually clicking through on an advertisement.
Here are links to a couple of useful webmaster tools that you can likely use right away:
Affiliate Link Hider
Visitors can be turned off by an obvious affiliate link, they feel like they're being sold something instead of choosing to buy it, and they'll go directly to the main URL, bypassing your tracking code. People are simply underinformed about affiliate programs and may believe they would be paying a higher rate if they bought through your link, as they know you get a cut. They don't realize it is the retailer taking that hit.. Regardless of the reason, the only way you can receive commission is if your visitors click on one of your affiliate links. This tool allows you to hide the affiliate link and replace it with a title of your choice in the status bar. You can make it look like it's pointing anywhere, but it's in your best interests to make it a plain link to the destination page, it will help your conversions.
Popup Code Generator
Pop-ups, as you'll learn being an affiliate marketer, still work. As much as people complain about them, aren't always annoying, when used right. You simply have to make sure that they are in the right place and popping at the right time, and that they are relevant to the topic your visitor is interested in. This tool will help you add a pop-up to your site. The form asks for three parameters: the URL of the page to pop, and the height and width of the window. Easy as 3.1415926… I mean, easy as pie!
Other affiliate tools offered by CasinoBlasters include progressive tickers (for their partner casinos), mailers, and sub-affiliate codes. These are only available to webmasters who have signed up for the CasinoBlasters affiliate program.
You may want to include the following webmaster tools in your site:
A chat room - this is a great way to get people to return to your site. They return to speak to friends they've made, giving you one more chance to show them topical advertisements.
Message Boards - just like a chat room, but less immediate gratification involved. It's good from the webmaster perspective in that it will keep people coming back time and time again. It's also a great way to build a community.
Guestbook - For those surfers who like a bit of interaction with the webmaster, but wouldn't be bothered enough to write an email, this is a great feedback tool.
Quiz/Poll - people love to give their opinion, and when you give them a set of defined options of what their opinions should be, they seem to like it even more. This is mainly good if you use interesting an interesting quiz or poll, so that people want to tell their friends about it. Along the lines of 'what should the minimum sentence in the prison of stupidity should Sigfried's Roy be incarcerated for?'. You might want to make your polls actually make sense.
NewsFeed - Three pluses to placing a newsfeed on your site, users like to see the news, it adds some intelligence to your site, if it was lacking any, and the search engines can sometimes view it as 'fresh' content, viewing your site as being more active, updating often, and so in the end, more important.
Newsletter - If you like to write, like I obviously do, you might want to produce a weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter for your users. If you have compelling content, it will promote itself. In the end what you get is a database of you users email addresses, which you can use in the future granted you've set up proper terms and conditions for your newsletter signup, and you also get a new platform to advertise on, right within your newsletters. Collect enough emails and other people will want to 'rent' your list from you, meaning you do a mailing on their behalf, or they simply buy ad space within your newsletter.
AFFILIATE TIP OF THE WEEK
Beware 'net' payout programs that deduct all sorts of expenses from the Gross profit before you get your cut. Demand to see the deductions itemized.
