[binkley2010]

Hello;
My name is Rob and my product is Temporary Tattoos.
The product is 100% safe, guaranteed and Made in the USA.

The website is http://www-temporarytattoos.com
http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=22003

I have only been on Share A Sale for about 7 business days and have received orders from 2.5% of all visitors. (not bad - Thank You)

I currently offer a flat rate of 9% commission on sales.
Your visitor will have 180 days to make a sale.
14% of your visitors will opt-in to me email list which will push them to place an order.

I also have coupons available to provide some deals for your customers.

Do you have a HUGE list? If you have 10,000 - 100,000 qualified buyers on your list then send me an email. (affiliate@www-temporarytattoos.com)

Send a small percentage of your list (1,000 visitors) and let's see how they do. If you are happy with the results, email me and I will gladly provide you with a higher payout.

http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=22003

I can ONLY make money if you make money.
Let's make some money together.

Please review my offer and rip it apart. Tell me what I can be doing better. Tell me how I can attract powerful affiliates like you. (please remember I am shipping a physical product so it is difficult to have huge commissions like a digital download can)

Thanks for your time.

Rob
affiliate@www-temporarytattoos.com
http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=22003
1-800-304-6642

[BurgerBoy]

14% of your visitors will opt-in to me email list which will push them to place an order.

How will you know which affiliate the commission goes to if the customer buys from your email list.

A lot of merchants use us to send traffic to them to get the customer to sign up for the merchant's email list.

Then the merchant sends emails to the list and steal the commission from the affiliates because you don't know who the affiliate was that sent you the customer to start with and we don't get paid regardless of how many days your cookie is.

The way we get paid is if the customers clicks a link on our site and buys something - not a click from a link to the merchant in an email the merchant sent to their email list.

[binkley2010]

Hello Burger Boy;

Okay - when I said "Aggressive Merchant" I didn't mean you would be aggressive towards me but you would be aggressive for sales. (just kidding)

I think that is a question for Share A Sale.
I can tell you that when I was setting up this program I did test several orders.
About a week later I was thinking my site was being a little wonky (not functioning well) so I placed a new order.
The Share A Sale system registered a new sale.

I am guessing from that test that you are wrong. A sale from one of my emails would register just the same

I am sure that the program will register sales in your name if it comes from the same computer. I assume it is a cookie used.

Beyond that, I am sorry I do not know how the Share A Sale technology works. If you find ways that I can help you capture sales that you generate that complies with the TOS of Share A Sale please let me know.

Thanks.
Rob
http://www-temporarytattoos.com/
http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=22003
1-800-304-6642

[binkley2010]

Burger Boy;

I read up on some tech stuff with Share A Sale and it looks like you would still be credited with the sale even if I emailed them.

Also, my new stats are 5 orders in 175 visitors which is 2.9%. I have only had a couple of weeks under my belt here so I think that will improve as my email campaigns bring more of those visitors back.

Anyway, I hope I answered your questions.

Thanks.
Rob
www-TemporaryTattoos.com

[markwelch]

Rob, you are either not clearly explaining your concept, or else you do not understand how affiliate tracking works.

In order for an affiliate to receive credit for a sale, the consumer must click on one of the affiliate's links. In your last post, you seem to imply that YOU would be sending the email, which doesn't really make any sense at all -- if it's the affiliate's list, then only the affiliate should be emailing (and only within the scope of the opt-in).

If an "affiliate" gives you an email list to send to, then they are not acting ethically and using that list will almost certainly generate spam complaints (validly). Do NOT email to that list, and dump that affiliate.

No matter what, the affiliate's id must be embedded in the link that the consumer actually clicks. From your comments, it sounds as if you might not quite understand this. Maybe you just got confused and wrote it wrong.

You have a 180-day cookie, which means that if someone clicked from an affiliate site, then signed up for your newsletter, and then clicked from your newsletter 6 months later to make a purchase, the affiliate would not be credited by ShareASale. (The affiliate would only get credit if the consumer made a purchase within 180 days, assuming that the consumer did not click on another affiliate's ShareASale link to return to your site in the interim.)

If a web publisher sends an email to their opt-in list, and that email contains an affiliate link to your site, and the consumer clicks on that affiliate link, and then signs up for YOUR email list, then you should NOT simply rely on the ShareASale cookie system -- you would need to embed the referring affiliate's cookie into all future links in your future emails (a mail-merge nightmare), or else store the referring affiliate's ID in your records (which would raise some issues if the consumer first clicked from Affiliate A, then subscribed to your email list, then clicked to your site from Affiliate B, then received an email and clicked on a link in that email to visit your site and place an order -- which affiliate should get credit for the transaction)?


Another comment: You've identified your business as "Temporary Tattoos" but the business name reflected on ShareASale is Binkley Toys, which most affiliates would assume means that you sell toys (when I think of "toys" I don't think of temporary tattoos). I believe you can edit the merchant-name in your merchant interface, but if not, I suggest that you ask ShareASale to change this. Note that some third-party services (like PopShops, if you add a datafeed) will pick up the merchant-name and thus confuse consumers.

I see that you don't currently have a datafeed online; many affiliates rely exclusively on datafeeds; some other affiliates rely exclusively on "deals and coupons" which should be included in the ShareASale "deals database."

Finally, you reported that you placed several test orders which you confirmed were tracked by ShareASale. Since there are no reversals indicated in the ShareASale system, it appears that you have included those "test purchases" in your claim that you have a 2.9% conversion rate (and in ShareASale's published EPC data). What is the rate after you exclude those test transactions? (Let me guess: zero conversions on nearly zero clicks? I see nothing wrong with that, for a program that's just 7 days old.)

[binkley2010]

Mark;

I understand what you are saying.

Let me know if anything below makes sense.
The emails I was referring to were emails after the visitor clicks on an affiliate link (setting the cookie), comes to my website and gets a quote. They have to enter their name and email address to get a quote which a high percentage do. I then have a very friendly, precisely timed (not spammy/abusive - but frequent) autoresponder series drawing that visitor back to order. My point was to say that I do get a high percentage of conversions.

Are you suggesting that I extend the time from 180 to infinite? If so I think I will do that. I truly want to encourage affiliates to drive sales for me. I simply looked at other programs to gauge what would be viewed as generous.

I like your suggestion about changing the display name. Thank you for that.
My company is Binkley Toys Inc. but I have expanded over the years. Thank You for that feedback.

I will have to look at how datafeeds work. I have 2 full time php programmers so I am sure if it is suitable to my product they will work it out. Every order I make is custom made. It is not stock items so I'll have to check to see if that idea applies to me. Thanks for the idea though.

About the sales. They are definetly 3rd party sales. I am fanatical about statistics and would under-estimate if it were an estimation. On the Merchant side I have the ability to "Void" a test sale which I have done.

I don't know if I am breaking any rules by identifying the affiliates that drew those sales ( I would have to get their permission first anyway) but I can guarantee that any sales I am counting are true affiliate sales.

The test orders I placed show "shareasale" as the affiliate and I am sure they would void and not count those sales as well.

I have another sale that just came through an affiliate just now as well. (the ShareaSale numbers will reflect that within a day or so).

So the statistic of 2.9% conversion is accurate if not low.

Thanks again for the feedback.

If you'd like to test your audiences reaction to my offers please feel free to sign up.

Rob
www-TemporaryTattoos.com

[loxly]

I see that you don't currently have a datafeed online; many affiliates rely exclusively on datafeeds; some other affiliates rely exclusively on "deals and coupons" which should be included in the ShareASale "deals database."

Finally, you reported that you placed several test orders which you confirmed were tracked by ShareASale. Since there are no reversals indicated in the ShareASale system, it appears that you have included those "test purchases" in your claim that you have a 2.9% conversion rate (and in ShareASale's published EPC data).
I think his product wouldn't have a datafeed. As he stated, it's a custom ordered item.

Mark, you should know that there is a tracking id that merchants can use for test orders so that those orders don't have to be reversed, and they also don't show up in the regular affiliate statistics.

[markwelch]

loxly wrote: > "Mark, you should know that there is a tracking id that merchants can use for test orders so that those orders don't have to be reversed, and they also don't show up in the regular affiliate statistics." <

Thanks for the clarification. I think I knew that once, but had forgotten. If Rob used this feature, then I assume his stats are valid. (Rob?)

I do know that there is no corresponding capability for affiliates to identify "test clicks." (If I use a script to test whether a merchant's links are valid, my script is viewed by ShareASale as just another visitor clicking on links -- which means I cannot actually test all the links in a datafeed, since this would result in a huge number of clicks, which would artificially depress the merchant's EPC. Instead, I must rely on random sampling of links from each datafeed.)

[loxly]

Since you were an affiliate manager for a Shareasale program I assumed you did know. :)

[PDXreader]

Since you were an affiliate manager for a Shareasale program I assumed you did know. :)
ouch :crap:

[loxly]

That wasn't meant as a digg, not sure why you "ouched" it. I said it with a smile and just want to be sure people reading the thread don't fault the merchant for perceived false reporting.

[NdemandAffiliates]

man you guys are cruel to anyone trying to make money, sounds like alot of people have screwed you over so you try and take it out on the less expierenced to sound like a hot shot. looks like little mans disease to me

[binkley2010]

Thanks to everyone replying. I have learned quite a bit here.

I'll implement some of these suggestions.
I didn't take any of the comments as negative.

Hey Mark, if the affiliates did place my links and test if they were working which is counted by ShareASale, that means my stats are even better since true unique visitors would be lowered by 59.
(like by 0.4 or something :yellowsmi )

Let me know if there are any other improvements I can make and let the sales keep coming.

If an affiliate uses banners are there more popular sizes?

[BurgerBoy]

120x60 - 125x125 - 88x31 - 150x150

I mainly use 120x60 and 150x150

Some affiliates us a 120x600 also.

[2busy]

Although custom temporary tattoos are offered, there are hundreds of stock designs and there should be a datafeed for affiliates to use. Auto deposit is recommended - I see it was listed as Low Funds today. You don't want to pull links as soon as they're up.

I'm encouraged by the OP's responses that he wants to make this program successful. :)

[binkley2010]

I'm encouraged by the OP's responses that he wants to make this program successful. :)

I appreciate all of the feedback, seems like it can be a friendly and productive place here.

I have signed up for auto deposit as you suggested.

Also please know that my website is Not www.TemporaryTattoos.com

My website is www.www-TemporaryTattoos.com
The first one ( not mine) does have stock tattoos. I do not.
I am going to look at how to make datafeeds work though.

Again, thank you for all of the suggestions.

Rob
www-TemporaryTattoos.com

[binkley2010]

Hey!

We had talked about my stats in this thread so I thought I would update you. (I was excited seeing the numbers)

As of May 21st I have 8 sales on 223 visitors. (a couple more came in today which I don't think are included in these numbers on the same day)

So that is a 3.58% conversion rate on a program only open for a few weeks now.

Just wanted to updated stats and say Thanks to all.

Rob

[binkley2010]

Hello;

Just a final update for the start of my Affiliate Program.
My statistics pulled from ShareASale.com for the last 30 days.

109 Visitors
15 Total Sales (13.7%)
$1,384.74 total sales ($92.32 per sale)

How can I get more traffic from Affiliates? Higher commission?

Thanks.
Rob

[jenniferruth04]

I would be interested to know your further sales. Do update your thread regularly.