Internet Marketing Blog by Noon-an-Night

Today, ShoppingAds announced that it has merged with AuctionAds to create a single ShoppingAds product.

Here’s the official release in its entirety:

We are excited to announce that we have merged our AuctionAds and ShoppingAds products into one product that will be located at http://ShoppingAds.com. Please note your current AuctionAds login will work at ShoppingAds and you do not have to change ANY existing code or links. ShoppingAds is a hybrid product that serves both CPA (cost per action) ads provided by eBay and CPC (cost per click) ads provided by our shopping comparison engine partners. For existing AuctionAds users the only change you will see is the “Ads By AuctionAds” displayed on your ads will change to “Ads By ShoppingAds”. The other significant change is the ability for you to become a Premium Publisher.

By becoming a premium publisher you will have the opportunity to be paid on a CPC (cost per click) basis for all your US and Canadian traffic while you can monetize your international traffic on a CPA (cost per action) basis. Standard publisher’s traffic will be monetized 100% on a CPA basis. Here is a graphic of how this works. Your account will be reviewed for Premium Status in the coming days and you will be notified if you qualify. By having one central system it will allow us to focus on building one great product. If you have ideas on how we can improve please let me know below and please subscribe to our blog for news on ShoppingAds and our other MediaWhiz publisher solutions to make your website more money!

Earlier today, LinkShare announced the debut of Flex Links.

According to the announcement, “flex Links is an embedded link technology that allows merchants and affiliates to add a new level of tracking in their affiliate marketing efforts.”

The “Flex Links enable tracking to be embedded in a merchant’s content and automatically converted to a tracking link by affiliates who post that content.”

Here’s the full text of the announcement:

“ShopNBC, with its national reach and interactive multimedia platform, was instrumental in validating Flex Links,” said Steve Denton, President of LinkShare. “By distributing their brand message and product merchandising with video, widgets and other content embedded with Flex Links, ShopNBC will be able to reach consumers in entirely new ways.”

“ShopNBC is excited to partner with LinkShare in pioneering the use of Flex Links to enable us to syndicate our product merchandising through new and unique interactive means with our Affiliate partners,” said Geoff Smith, Vice President of ShopNBC.com. “Flex Links will enable us to syndicate our breadth of live and archived video sales presentations in a simple and easy to implement means, providing our Affiliates with an outstanding new sales tool.”

If you haven’t ever tried LinkShare before, now would be a great time to give the program and their new features a test drive.

If you have a blog related to internet marketing, you will be pleased to know that Microsoft has officially announced an affiliate program for their adCenter.

Here are the highlights of the announcement:

.:. $50 adCenter credit sign-up promotion helps you close sales
.:. Tracking and real-time reports powered by Kowabunga MYAP
.:. Pro-active affiliate managers dedicated to your success

There is one key element of the announcement to keep in mind if you decide to join this program:

This offer is designed for sites that are focused on Internet marketing, search marketing, web development or business and pays a per sale referral commission on new US based advertisers.

Keeping in line with this week’s posts about capitalizing on the huge amount of online holiday spending that will continue throughout the holiday season, let’s take a look at a recent post by Shoemoney….

If you are looking to get into the world of affiliate marketing but feel like you don’t have the technical skills to setup your own website (and don’t want to deal with paying someone to do it for you), Build a Niche Store may be the solution for you. Although it costs $97, Shoemoney (and the majority of the comments on the post) agree that it is well worth its price tag.

To sum up the product, Build a Niche Store allows you to create a affiliate based niche store in less than thirty minutes (Shoemoney stated that it only took him ten minutes). The software only uses the eBay affiliate program, but it allows you to choose whatever niche you want (once you have purchased the software, you can use it to build as many websites as you want).

Here’s a quick breakdown of how easy it is to build your own storefront with this software:

-Purchase the software
-Register a domain name
-Upload the BANS software
-Enter store name
-Choose keywords
-Enter eBay affiliate ID
-Choose template
-Enter additional ad information
-Customize any elements you choose (such as the header)

Once you’ve completed those simple steps, you will have your own attractive, affiliate based website!