Pepperjam Network - “The Next Generation of Affiliate Marketing” Releases PepperjamAds. PepperjamAds is a way to display affiliate ads from multiple companies in one ad block, kinda like you see in your adsense block. So now you can rotate multiple affiliate ads in the same space instead of just one.

The ads are not contextual as I was told because they don’t rely on your website content to select which ads to display, you preselect the ads yourself. So you can run them along with adsense.

You simply sign up for multiple companies programs if you haven’t already and click on PepperjamAds in the top menu. Well I don’t have to type out how to do it when they’ve already created a helpful video…

You can see my PepperjamAds to the right. Super simple to set up and they rotate between 3 different companies ads I chose; text-link-ads.com, pepperjam and seomoz.

You can define how the ads look just like you do with adsense i.e. pick background, border, font colors to match your site.

I’m new to their network and just signed up because I was asked to review their service. After signing up though it only took about 5 minutes to be approved which is something I appreciate.. speed.

Their user interface once you log in is impressive. Everything is laid out very clearly.

The one thing I have a problem with is that the interface is set in reverse type, meaning white type on a black background. That’s a nono in design because it’s a lot harder to read. I’m sure they are going for an “edgy” look but readability is a lot more important.

Oh and they seem to have only 85 partners in their network which isn’t a lot. I didn’t find a whole lot to promote with this blog but I’m sure things will change. They look like they are only going to get better with time.

If you haven’t already done so go check them out.

The following was a paid review.

As a designer I judge a lot of things solely on their looks but I want to give Auction Ads a fair review… and give it a bit of testing before I toss it totally.

Here’s how I’m  testing it further.  I’m selling a site via eBay.  I have some newsletter subscribers on the directory I’m selling and I get visitors to the site.  So instead of linking directly to eBay, or the auctions I’m running I link to it via Auction Ads convert URL method which allows you to link to any page on eBay.  I send out an email letting everyone know the site is for sale on eBay via the cloaked Auction Ads link.  Ok,, so I’ve gotten some clicks so far but what I want to happen is someone to find my site or link, sign up for eBay, win the site for millions and I’ll get a nice fat commission check from Auction Ads…

Still in testing of course but this lead to a lot of other ideas about sellers on eBay who have websites or newsletters that they can promote their auctions on.

With the eBay URL Converter feature of Auction Ads you can literally link to any page on eBay and turn it into an affiliate link.  Run a fan site on Corvettes? or how about fancy China, or high-end electronics site?  Do you have a newsletter?  Why not link to eBay auctions with affiliate links?  If you do or want to start promoting stuff for sale on eBay why not do it through Auction Ads?  It can’t hurt to try.  You can even hide Auction Ads links like you do any other affiliate links.

What about PPC marketing.  You could definetely advertise auctions via adwords, adcenter or YPN also in hopes of big commission checks.  I haven’t tested that out yet.

I’ll get back to you after the auction is over to see if my idea paid off.  Even though someone might not sign up to win a semi expensive site via the affiliate links, I need to test this method out before totally shunning Auction Ads.  I think Jeremy would appreciate that.  Who knows…

Want to run some of your own tests with your newsletter subscribers?  Make sure you promoting something you know about on eBay and go sign up at Auction Ads.

This new version has been built with an emphasis on unique destination content and will include the following updates:

Use of the new multiple product search box

Its own cascading style sheets. On our current page the look and feel is controlled by the hotel CSS which is added to the hotel (default) header. With this new page, we will no longer be supporting CSS in the header.

Hotel destinations are randomly selected based on a combination of popularity, availability and price and are dynamically updated every four hours. This provides for unique destinations and hotels to allow your customer choice when shopping on your site.
The destinations and hotels on the Travel Portal will have a 4-hour lifespan. When the time expires, the system repeats the steps above updating the destinations and hotels
This process provides for unique destinations and hotels (within the set of rules above).

Hotel listings will include star rating

Hotel destinations will include a link to the hotel merchandising page

And here is a screenshot if you are familiar with how the old one looked.

Redirect /shorturl/ http://superlong-affiliate-link.com?=go.php+affiliateID-etc-etc-etc

or

Redirect /url/ url to redirect to

I couldn’t get this to work when using wordpress on the root of another site and I searched all over google to find a fix but I couldn’t find anything till I found this cool script that gives you a way to do this without having to edit your htaccess file. So if you are using wordpress or you don’t like or know how to edit your htaccess file (some hosting companies don’t give access to the htaccess) you can use Get Shorty. You will need one free mysql database and installation is a snap. Just upload the entire folder to a new folder on your site. Log in and start creating your short urls. I would suggest using it if you promote affiliate programs as it hides your affiliate ID and also makes your affiliate links not look like affiliate links. So instead of a long amazon.com affiliate url you can have something like www.yourdomain.com/go/amazon/

Get Shorty gives you a complete admin section to log into to create your urls and works very nicely. You can create as many urls as you want and even counts the number of times a link was clicked, something that you don’t get when using your htaccess file. If you ever use tinyurl then I would suggest switching to using links on your own domain as you will now be seemingly deep linking into your own site instead of linking to tinyurl’s domain. Also if tinyurl ever goes down, so does your link. Anyway, check it out if it sounds like something you might be interested in. I think it’s a great script. Oh and it’s free.

I posted about CJ’s LMI awhile back and finally read this. They finally make it clear what their motive is behind making everyone change their links to javascript. I probably won’t stick with using CJ because there is just too many things wrong with using javascript for affiliate links. You can read some good points about why using javascript is a bad idea. Anyway, I’m hoping Google’s upcoming CPA program offers something better to encourage people to switch. Below is quoted from the original article.

“JavaScript links are the linchpin to making a move like this by ValueClick work. JavaScript text links can set a cookie when the script is called from the server to display the link while with HTML the user must click though the link to the advertiser’s site for a cookie to be set. This is a key difference. In other words, with JavaScript every user on a site with a CJ affiliate link can be cookied and NO click is needed. (And yes, I know that a 1×1 pixel can set a cookie, but a 1×1 pixel takes time to load on a bad server or overwhelmed server. Also, affiliates remove 1×1 pixels all the time because they feel, and rightfully so, that their traffic data is their business alone. Finally, an HTML image ad can set a cookie, but moving forward advertisers want the flexibility of video and other fancy ads.)

Now think about the reach of CJ’s affiliate network combined with the ValueClick Media network (13,500 publisher/partner sites reaching reaching over 68 percent of U.S. Internet users each month, according to comScore Media Metrix), WebClients, and ValueClick’s smaller brands. Together these ValueClick properties create an intergraded ad network with a giant reach drilling deep into the Internet’s tail due to CJ’s network. Moreover, off the top of my head, the only other Internet powerhouses with this much reach on the head and the tail are search engines combined with their contextual networks such as Google and its AdSense network - not even the Advertising.com’s many headed hydra reaches down into the tail like CJ.

With the cookie being set on impressions alone throughout all of ValueClick’s properties, the company can build a giant database to target users’ behavior that is worth billions of dollars to advertisers. That database is worth all the pain and upheaval this issue has caused in the affiliate marketing community and I would suspect, it’s even worth loosing some affiliates over which might happen.”

Read the entire story

Sign it! I did.

Hopefully Google’s new Content Referall program will be easy to use and eliminate some of the problems that affiliate marketers face.  Read more about Google’s Content Referall program.  Also check out this post Google Launches ValueClick Killer on the same subject.