Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

How Can Bloggers Find Merchants?

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As an affiliate who has been in the business over 10 years, I have had relationships with thousands of merchants. Some of them were super easy because they came to me and pitched their program to me. Others I had to chase around for months or even years to find and join their programs.

One of the complaints I hear most from bloggers is that they don’t know how and where to find merchants that best fit their sites.

Note: This is a pet peeve of mine. Blogger, make sure you are using the right terminology here. You don’t work with “affiliates,” you work with “merchants” or “advertisers.” YOU are the affiliate. [Read more…]

Good Affiliate Managers Doing Bad Things

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You all know that I love my affiliate manager friends (and family). They are some of my favorite people in the world. I know the stresses they are undergoing between their merchants and their affiliates. They have to make decisions based on the bottom line of the merchants that sometimes really hurt the affiliates, and they have no choice. I know affiliates are a pain in the rear. We can be needy and rude and demanding.

However….

There are some things that I have seen in the last few weeks that I really need to address. In part I want to give some perspective to the affiliate managers that they might not otherwise understand. In part, I want to yell from the rooftops that these things are not good and should be avoided at all cost. They are all 98% true with just a smidge of exaggeration. [Read more…]

Are You Part of the Affiliate Market Industry Problems?

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I’ve spent the last month helping kids practice junior high speech team, and one of my jobs each week is to find quotes for them. I came across one this week that made me think about our industry.

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.” –Eldridge Cleaver***

Like any industry, ours has a lot of problems but not anything that can’t be helped. We face governmental issues like the FTC and their disclosure guidelines or states passing nexus laws. We deal universally with challenges like ad blocking and the reputation of affiliate marketing. The one string that connects the problems is that none of them can be dealt with successfully by individuals. They all take group effort.

I’m not saying that every one of us needs to become a lobbyist and spend our time fighting in Washington for the betterment of the industry. What I am saying is that if you are not doing at least SOMETHING to make the industry better and you are making your living in this industry, you are doing so on the backs of all of the other people who ARE working to keep us all in business.

If you think you don’t have a lot of time to help, here are some ways that you can be a part of the solution with your pocketbook or just a few minutes a week: [Read more…]

Revealing My Affiliate Marketing Secrets

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Last year when I was trying to figure out what to present on at Affiliate Summit, I wanted to do something completely different. Instead of focusing on one topic, I decided on “20 Questions and Answers from Behind the Scenes.” I spent a solid hour sharing what I consider to be some of the best-kept secrets in affiliate marketing that have gotten me to where I am. The sessions was described as “I’m the person who spills the beans about everything from tracking to increased commissions to FTC disclosure. Learn from 10 years of my mistakes and successes in blogging, networking and marketing.”

This week Affiliate Summit released the video for the session. I’ve embedded both the video and the slides below. The slides are only slightly helpful without the video that goes along with it so definitely check out both! Although a few things have changed in the last year, on the whole about 95% of it is still relevant.

Here are some of the topics I cover in the video: [Read more…]

5 Reasons Bloggers Need This Toolkit

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For the last 9 months, I have been actively using the FMTC Publisher Toolkit. I’ve dabbled with some of their free services before (including the Merchant Hub, which I LOVE) but this was the first time that I spent awhile experimenting and understanding how powerful their technology is and how it can be used on my sites. I always assumed that because I am already pulling datafeeds myself and use other tools that there wasn’t anything I needed from FMTC. I will readily admit that I was wrong!

After trying out the Toolkit, I am now using it both on Sunshine Rewards and on my niche sites. Below are some of the ways I use it on an almost daily basis.

Who is this good for? Anyone who posts affiliate links to products or deals…no matter your level of affiliate marketing or technical experience.

And I have some GREAT news for my readers!! The Publisher Toolkit comes in different levels from Free to Premium. If you just want to try it out with Skimlinks (more on that later), go with the Free version. If you want to use your own network IDs or get alerts for a lot of merchants, go with Lite or Standard (which start at $9.99). Mega-users like me will want Premium. [Read more…]