Listening to your customers and partners is a hallmark of successful businesses. It’s also one of our core values here at AWeber. When we surveyed our affiliate partners recently, one consistent response was the desire for more support and training tools. We heard you loud and clear. Among the new initiatives we’re rolling out, we’ve [...]

As email marketers, you work all kinds of hours.

Some of you market as your 9-5 gig, some of you spend your weekends writing messages and for some of you, email marketing is something you’re constantly managing.

Which means you need our Customer Solutions Team to be available as much as possible. After all, their help has delighted thousands of customers and is a strong point of AWeber pride.

And we wish we could support you every day. We really do. But wishing does no good, with our fairy godmother on vacation and all.

So we’re just going to make it happen without her.

Because You Need Our Love, 7 Days a Week

And currently, you only get it for six days of those days.

Starting next weekend, June 4 & 5, 2011 you’ll be able to get answers and advice from us on Sundays, too. You can get in touch with us during these hours (Eastern Standard Time):

After that, you’ll never have to go a day without talking to us again! (Lucky you. )

Here’s How To Get In Touch

LiveChat

Available every day during the hours listed above. You’ll instant message back and forth with an email specialist, who will be able to send you links to helpful articles or instructions. Just click the green LiveChat button on the AWeber site.

Phone

Monday through Friday, call in and we’ll talk you through whatever problem needs solving. We’re available toll-free in the US at +1 877-293-2371. Outside the US, you can reach us at +1 215-825-2196.

Email

Email us at any time; we’ll just respond during business hours. For email support, just fill out this contact form.

We’re Happy to Hear From You!

As an email service provider, we succeed when we help our customers succeed.

So if there’s anything we can do to help, just ask! We’ll be happy to help.

And if you know any email marketers who could use a service with weekend support, you know who to suggest!

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New email marketers need direction. And maybe a friendly voice to guide them.

That’s why you can download the Getting Started Guide (pdf), and why Jay will talk you through campaign basics in the How To Get Started webinar.

But so far, you’ve been on your own for the next step: figuring out how to adjust those directions for your specific business.

We want to help. So we wrote up some guides to email marketing for a few different industries. And yes, they’re free.

And Here They Are!

Photographers, ever wonder how you can get subscribers?

Real estate agents, are you curious about what you could send in an email newsletter?

Fitness trainers, want to know how autoresponders can earn you a loyal following?

These guides explain all that and more. If you’re ready to get started, you can download your guide right here:

Download Email Marketing For Photographers

Download Email Marketing For Fitness Centers

Download Email Marketing For Real Estate Agents

Not Just For AWeber Users

We <3 our customers, and we’re really hoping this helps new ones get their campaigns rolling. But we know there are others out there who market with email. And they can use these guides, too.

There are links throughout each guide to articles that show how to carry out specific tasks in an AWeber account. But you can use every strategy and suggestion within the guides themselves no matter where you send email from.

Maybe you’ll like it so much, you’ll join AWeber. Or maybe you’ll just find some good ways to get the word out about your services. Either way, we’ll be happy.

Need a Different Kind of Guide?

We’re working on a few more guides right now, and we plan to keep writing them. If you’d like to see a guide for your industry, let us know in the comments section! We’ll do our best to provide as many as possible.

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Our affiliates responded to the recent survey about the affiliate program with a lot of helpful feedback.

Your input was very helpful, and will allow us to better serve your needs. Thank you very much for responding!

Based on your feedback, we are happy to announce the following changes to the AWeber affiliate program:

1. All commissions will be raised to 30%. This includes existing 1st tier commissions of 20%.
2. Second tier commissions will no longer be available. Existing 2nd tier commissions will be deleted.
3. Your affiliate cookie will be a 1 year, first visit cookie.
4. In the future, you will have the option of being paid via PayPal or postal check.
5. All affiliates will be paid once a month, on the first of every month.
6. The minimum check payout will be $30.00 for US affiliates and $50.00 for affiliates not based in the US (This applies to both PayPal Payments and postal payments)

All of these changes will be effective on April 8th, 2009. The only exception will be the PayPal payment option, which will be available in the future. If you do not have a PayPal account, now would be a great time to sign up for one here.

How Your Input Helped Our Decisions

We feel that your input is always very important. So the information you provided us in our last survey was instrumental in our decisions.

For example, let’s take a look at your responses to our question about how long we should make our affiliate cookie length:

As we can see, 36.1% of you voted for the 1 year cookie. Second was the 10 year “lifetime” cookie at 23.6%. However, since the remaining 40.4% of you voted for a cookie duration less than 1 year, we thought a happy medium would be the 1 year cookie.

Now let’s take a look at your feedback on our commission proposal of 30% :

A commission hike of 30%, plus the removal of the second tier affiliate commissions was met with very strong approval. It was apparent that this change would be welcome, so we certainly are going to implement it.

With the rest of the changes to our affiliate program, we followed the same guidelines. We took your feedback and came up with the best possible changes based on that feedback.

Moving Forward…

As the months go by, look forward to many other exciting changes that will benefit your AWeber affiliate campaign.

We hope you enjoy the new changes to our program thus far. As always, if you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us.

This should be an exciting year for all of us!

I have been able to correspond with a lot of our affiliates lately about my introduction as affiliate manger, the upgrades to the affiliate control panel, as well as feedback in general. The information I have received from you has been very helpful.

The one thing that is alarming, however, is the fact that 8 out of about 10 affiliates did not have a signature ad in their email. The signature ad is “prime real estate” for your AWeber affiliate campaign and should never be overlooked by an affiliate.

Let’s take a closer look at the many benefits of inserting a simple signature ad into all of your personal and business emailings.

What Are The Benefits of a Signature Ad?

A signature ad is several sentences inserted underneath your name with every email you send out. It’s like an email business card that’s placed in all of your email messages. Using the signature can boost your affiliate productivity and earnings considerably.

The many benefits of using this often neglected tool are:

• Free Advertising – It costs nothing to put an automatic signature
  in your email
• Efficiency – Its quick and simple to insert a signature file in most
  email programs
• Automation – Your ad is inserted automatically in every email you send
• Recurrence – You signature ad is viewed many times over the
  course of your campaign

There are almost limitless uses of the signature file and it should be included in every email you send.

What Should My Signature Say?

Your signature file should contain a short description of what you are promoting along with your affiliate link. It should be short and to the point (about 2 or 3 lines) and give the reader a reason to click on your affiliate URL.

Your signature should be catchy as well. A great example would be the following:

Unlimited Autoresponders & Newsletters

99.34% email delivered. Free support.

http://www.aweber.com/?YOUR-ID

We provide many more examples in our Affiliate Tip for Signature Ads. You can explore that resource for many more examples of effective signature ads. You can also use your imagination and come up with an ad that will appeal directly to your particular customer or client niche.

Other Uses For a Signature

Your AWeber signature ad does not have to be limited to just email messages. It can be used anywhere you can reach and individual or group of people with text or HTML. You can get very creative with its uses, but some great places to start are:

• At the end of messages in forums
• Facebook, myspace and other social media messages
• Blog comments
• Product or service reviews

You can post your signature ad to any group or message board that will allow you to.

Please verify with the site rules or administrator before you place your AWeber signature ad in any discussion room or service. This will insure you are not spamming and that your affiliate signature ad is not in violation of any rules of conduct.

For more on spam, check our Spam FAQ.

How Do I Create a Signature Ad?

If you do not know how to insert a signature into your email client program, here are some easy to follow instructions for most email services.

If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us. Our customer solutions team would be more than happy to assist you.

The other day I saw an interesting YouTube video, created by AWeber affiliate John Chow. It was a quick demonstration of our recent Twitter integration.

The 2 minute video explained what our Twitter integration does, plus it gave simple instructions on how to use it. At the end, John included his affiliate link (and yes, I did click on it ).

With the growing popularity of online video, I think screencasting should be in the arsenal of all serious affiliate marketers.

Let’s take a look at how posting videos on YouTube can drive traffic to your affiliate website, and boost your sales.

What Do I Need To Get Started?

Getting a video up and running on YouTube can be done quickly and easily.

All you will need is screencasting software, your imagination, and you will be ready to become the next George Lucas.

Some screencasting programs I recommend are:

• Camtasia – Created by TechSmith. Costs around $70 to $146
• Imovie – Normally bundled with all new Macs and can be used right away.
• The Jing Project – The Jing Project is free, and is also created by TechSmith.

After finding a screencasting program that works for you, you’ll then be ready to work on the content of your video.

What Should My Video Be About?

Remember, the aim of your video should be to show how AWeber can potentially increase someone’s business productivity.

Make sure your content is brief, easy to understand and gives the viewer a good reason to visit Aweber via your affiliate link.

If you are an AWeber customer, a great idea could be a video about a feature that has really helped your business grow in the past.

Some other useful subjects for your videos could be:

• AWeber’s RSS to email feature, and how it can convert blog subscribers to newsletter subscribers.
• One of our new analytics features and how it can add value to an email campaign.
• Adding web form features such as a light box, a subscriber count chicklet, or sending downloads.

With the many features of AWeber, you should have no problem finding one suitable to publish as your next screencast.

How Do I Publish My Video On YouTube?

Founded in February 2005, YouTube is now the most popular video sharing site on the internet. Anyone can sign up for a free account and get started right away.

Once signed up for an account, you can very easily upload your file using ( YES! ) a video tutorial on how to load videos into YouTube.

After your video is loaded, it can then be easily seen alongside the over 150,000 daily uploaded videos.

This is a great way to give your affiliate campaign more exposure and increase your affiliate click-throughs dramatically.

Good luck and happy screencasting!

Not an AWeber Affiliate? There’s no better time to start than right now.

Sign up for free today!

Your feedback regarding AWeber’s new features has been very positive over the past several months. Thank you for your enthusiasm!

In addition to the new features we’ve released for customers, we’re very happy to announce that we’ve revamped the affiliate control panel! The brand-new interface allows you to manage your affiliate campaigns even more effectively.

With these exciting new features within the control panel, you will be able to:

• Enhance the look of your affiliate web site with new AWeber banners and ads.
• Better track your campaigns with easily readable, downloadable affiliate statistics and reports.
• Navigate more easily through your affiliate account with a user-friendly layout.

Let’s look at a few highlights of the new affiliate control panel:

Stylish New Banner Ads

Well, you’ve been asking for them, and they are finally here!

Choose from 21 different banner ads that will add color and excitement to your affiliate website.

To see all of the new banners, go to the “Banners” page of your affiliate control panel.

You will then see HTML code for the banner. This contains the clickable banner image with your affiliate URL embedded. Simply copy that code and paste it into your website.

User Friendly Control Panel

In the new streamlined control panel, you can now move around within your affiliate account much more efficiently.

After logging in to your account, your affiliate ID and URL are both easily found at the top of your control panel. This allows quick access to your affiliate information.

Plus, navigating through your control panel is now a snap! The easy to find tabs help you quickly find your resources and account information.

Also, the new color scheme and layout will certainly help you locate the many tools and resources AWeber has to offer affiliates.

New Look for Affiliate Stats and Reports

As an AWeber affiliate, it’s important for you to have good records about the visitors to your affiliate URL as well as your sales and sub affiliates.

This information will be a lot easier for you to understand and track using the new chart styles we have provided for you. To see them, go to the “Tracking” page.

This simple new design will display your AWeber affiliate stats at a glance.

More to Come?

Even though this is our initial roll out for the updated affiliate control panel, there will certainly be more additions to come.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact us and we will certainly respond to any feedback or questions.

If you are not an AWeber affiliate, what better time to get a new campaign underway! Sign up today!

Ron Givens is the new affiliate manager for AWeber Communications. Look for more affiliate marketing material from Ron and the rest of the AWeber team in the upcoming months. You can also follow Ron on Twitter.

OK, so I love AWeber, but of course I’m biased. On top of a fun work environment with cool people, I owe this company some love for my paycheck and the fortune of still being able to put gas in my tank — even at 4 bucks a gallon. *sigh*

That wasn’t the reason we got Bob, one of our designers, to come up with these “I Heart AWeber” buttons. I don’t need more AWeber branding for my lifestyle. I already have a couple of AWeber shirts and several pairs of AWeber socks. No lie — AWeber socks.

Nope. These buttons are for the people using email marketing for websites and businesses who are getting a boost of sales and traffic from it and want to show off their service of choice.

See all of the buttons and copy them to your site from the
“I Heart AWeber” page.

Add your choice of these images to places like your own homepage, your blog’s sidebar, your email newsletter’s footer, and anywhere on your social networking profile.

Neat. But Why Should I?

If pride or the sheer cuteness of these little things doesn’t motivate you to add them, maybe this will: higher affiliate commissions.

I know the banner ads we provide for affiliates probably need some revamping, and Bob knows it too, but for the meantime if you log into your affiliate control panel, you’ll find a page with HTML for these jazzy graphics that have HTML ready to link to our website with your affiliate ID.

You’ll earn commissions on anyone who clicks through a button and eventually places an order (immediately or later).

Earn From Your Referral’s Referrals

Huh? No, that’s not a typo. Not only could you earn for referring more customers directly, but you could indirectly too.

Each button contains a “Do You Love AWeber, Too?” link that directs to the page the images along with an offer to sign up as an affiliate.

Why does this matter? Well, you’ll also get a commission on anyone these people refer after they register for free as an affiliate.

Sound promising?

If you don’t already have a free affiliate account, just sign up and login to your new account ready to simply copy and paste some HTML to your website.

Big thanks to the idea’s originator: do you heart Zappos too?