Best Practices

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A slimmed down excerpt of the Best Practices section of the Mastering the iTunes Affiliate book.

This is the chapter of the book you will need to have flipped open while actively working. I have taken the best morsels out of each chapter and compiled them here so that you can kick ass while you are integrating the iTunes Affiliate Program into your project.

Some of this information is common sense, some will take a little work to fully understand. But it’s a combination of all these things that will add up and help your bottom line.

Who Will Benefit
If you create content that already goes into the iTunes Store to be sold you should also be using your site to sell it as well. Add the extra 5% commission onto your royalty! This includes musicians and application developers especially.

If you are writing an iPhone/iPod Touch application and want to generate revenue via advertising inside the program using the iTunes Affiliate Program could also work very well for you.

If you run a site that mentions specific artists, songs, movies or TV shows integrating the iTunes Affiliate Program can also work well for you.

Any radio station should use the iTunes Affiliate Program to make commissions off selling the same music they play.

Understand the General Principals
Make sure you understand the basic interactions between publishers, advertisers and the affiliate network. This is going to help you build a foundation that you can grow off as you include more affiliate networks and advertisers. More information the roles each play can be found in Chapter 1.

Understanding the different methods of banner advertising and how affiliate marketing fits into this will help you choose the right combination of CPM, CPC or CPA partners. Check out Appendix 5 for more information.

Learn to recognize the difference between an affiliate link and a non-tracking, non-affiliate link. This will allow you to better understand your competition and other websites (see Affiliate Links vs. Links box in Chapter 1).

Put Together a Plan

With any web venture make sure you start with a goal and work backwards. Even though you don’t have to write a business plan it’s important to ask yourself some key questions and have some sort of plan to achieve your goal(s). See Chapter 2 – Plan of Attack for more info and some of these questions.

You need to be aware of what other digital music affiliate programs offer publishers (see Chapter 1 – iTunes Affiliate Programs vs. Other Digital Music Affiliate Programs for more info) in order to decide on your sites strategy for generating revenue. You may want to explore using multiple digital music affiliate programs.

After you have decided that you want to use the iTunes Affiliate Program you need to decide how you are going to implement it (See Chapter 1 – Ways to use the iTunes Affiliate Program). Remember the more you integrate the program into your site the more likely it will bring you better conversions and higher payouts.

Getting In
It is important to have a website before you apply to the iTunes Affiliate Program. A critical mass of content is very important but site traffic is not as important (see Chapter 2 – Critical Mass).

It is also essential to know which affiliate networks are responsible for which countries. Read more about this in Chapter 1 and 2 or check out appendices 1 and 2.

Getting Denied
A lot of people quit trying after their first rejection letter from iTunes. Don’t! Read more about this in Chapter 2 – Getting Denied.

Knowing Your Demographics
Although it is not essential to really know your demographics, having a good idea can help with a lot of things, including getting accepted into an affiliate network. There are a couple tools that can help you out (See Chapter 2 – Site Demographics).

Getting Started Before Being Approved
Depending on what affiliate network you are using you can sometimes get rocking before you have been officially approved. If you are working with LinkShare see the Getting Going from the Get Go box in Chapter 2. If you are working with TradeDoubler then see the Building Links Before Being Approved box near the end of Chapter 2.

Gateway Principal
It is important to remember that between the cookies and iTunes ability to up sell your main focus should just be getting people into the iTunes Store. Knowing this you can still have a profitable site if you use links for non-commissionable items as bait into the store. Think “Single of the Week” (see chapter 3) or Podcasts. More about this in chapters 1 and 3.

Apple Store Affiliate Program
The Apple Store Affiliate Program makes a good companion to the iTunes Store Affiliate Program. Check out the box about it in Chapter 2 and decide if you want in.

Links & Banners
It is important to know what sorts of Links and Banners are offered by iTunes and in what countries and affiliate networks have what. It is also important to know where to implement these (Chapter 3).

It is important to know what tools are available from whom and where to find them (Chapter 3 – Introduction).

The “Single of the Week” banners are excellent tools, get to know them with Chapter 3 – Single of the Week.

Understanding the difference in static and dynamic integration will help you in the design phase of building your website (Chapter 3 – Integration).

If you are going to use a banner rotating tool it is most likely worth your time to implement a third party one, like the Open X ad server. Read more about this in Chapter 3 — Ad server rotating banners and Appendix 6 - OpenX.

Knowing how to implement banners for maximum effectiveness is another subject worth knowing. Read more about it in Chapter 3 – Best Practices for Using Banners.

Knowing what you can and can’t do with the LinkBuilder Tool is important (Chapter 3 – LinkBuilder). Also knowing how the LinkBuilder works and what sort of pages can be used to link to is good practice (Chapter 3 – Pushing the LinkBuilder into Grey Area).

Understanding an Affiliate Link
Besides being able to identify them it is imperative you understand how they work. This allows you to understand your competition (Chapter 7). It also allows you to understand why something may not be working. Finally, it allows you to modify them to fit your needs. See Chapter 3 – Breaking Down the Banner Link box as well as the Further Breaking Down the Banner Link box.

The iMix Tool
iMixes are great for a couple reasons. They can drastically increase how many songs you sell per click as well as allow you to advertise your site inside the iTunes Store. See Chapter 3 – iMix Tool for more info.

The iMix Tool doesn’t always work and waiting an hour before you can test it is a pain. Recognizing quickly if the link will work based off the offerid value can save you a lot of time and frustration. See Chapter 3 – It Just Won’t Work!! for more information.

Using the iMix art is good way to fashion a recognizable affiliate link into a specific iMix. Creating the art can sometimes be a pain. Check out the box Using the iMix Art in Chapter 3 for more info about doing this.

Understanding how the iMix Tool works may also help you. Especially if you are using it as the LinkBuilder Tool and attempting to link to things besides iMixes inside and out of the iTunes Store. Check out Chapter 3 – Understanding How the iMix Tool Works for more information.

iRSS Feed Generator
Mastering this tool is your best bet at creating a maintenance free, commission-generating iTunes Affiliate based site. Read more about it in Chapter 3 – iRSS Feed Generator.

Understanding what variables go into specifying your feed will help you tweak your link to generate exactly what you want. Chapter 3 – Input Variables and the Breaking Down a RSS Feed Link box will help you do just that.

Knowing how the iRSS Feed Generator works with your affiliate code will allow you to tweak the My iTunes Feeds (recent iTunes Store purchases, your iTunes Favorites and your iTunes Reviews) into revenue producers. Check out Chapter 3 – My iTunes Feeds and the Breaking Down a RSS Feed Link box for more info.

iTunes Link Maker Tool
Depending on what you decided earlier about the level of integration you want with the iTunes Affiliate Program you will either fall in love with this tool or never use it. I am of the prior category. It is the deep link answer for most publishers. Check out Chapter 3 – iTunes Link Maker Tool if you have any interest at all about linking up to specific items inside the iTunes Store (deep linking).

Make sure you are linking to items inside the right country. Generating links for items in New Zealand does you no good if you are using LinkShare as your affiliate Network. It is also important to not confuse code generated from the iTunes Link Maker if you use multiple Affiliate Networks. Check out the box labeled Be Careful! found in Chapter 3.

Because this tool doesn’t time out you can leave it open indefinitely. I have a tab on Firefox always left open for the iTunes Link Maker Tool. You never know when you will want to send an affiliate link (see the General Practices section of this chapter for why you might need an affiliate link at anytime).

Because things break sometimes it is important to know when your Link Maker Tool is spitting out bad code. Being able to recognize properly built affiliate links is essential to Mastering the iTunes Affiliate Program.

It is also important to understand how the link is built if you want to further integrate the iTunes Affiliate Program into your site. There are two core pieces of these links, the affiliate network’s tracking code and the iTunes Store URL. See Chapter 3 – Breaking the Link Apart for more info.

Understanding how the iTunes Store URLs are built is also important when you want to push your knowledge and your site’s integration another notch. Knowing what variables do what and how the links are formatted is discussed in Chapter 3 - Breaking Down A Song Link and Notes.

Adding a different graphical component or changing the text link can spice up your Link Maker links significantly (Chapter 3 – Best Practices).

Noting the exact spelling included in your Link Maker links and duplicating it throughout your site will help you standardize your names against the largest music store in the world. This is a good practice especially because the Internet is full of song/album/artist misspellings (Chapter 3 – Best Practices).

Data Feed
Knowing that there is a data feed and how to sign up is a big step forward when your site needs a programmatic way to deep link into the iTunes Store (Chapter 4 – Data Feeds).

Knowing that the LinkShare Merchandiser Data Feed only includes music (songs and albums) will also help in your decision about implementing the data feed into your site (Chapter 4 – Data Feeds).

Knowing the approximate size of the files and which is which helps you decide on which you need, how to get it and how long it will take to get it (Chapter 4 – Getting the Files and the Manual Transfer with FileZilla and Slow Transfers boxes).

Mapping the data to its respective fields will allow you to parse the data feed for only what you want and will speed up your implementation of the service (Chapter 4 – Understanding the Files).

API
Finding out that the iTunes Store had an API really made my day. Figuring out how to use it made my month. Check out Chapter 4 – iTunes Store Web Service Search API for much more information.

Knowing that the Attribute parameter doesn’t work will save you some headaches (Chapter 4 – Attribute Issues). Know which attributes do work and how they work helps avoid headaches too (Chapter 4 – Term Based Searches and appendix 8).

Knowing how to break the API to get an error message with the proper syntax and current parameters included is always a dirty but great secret to know, Check out the box in Chapter 4 - Getting Current Attributes.

Realizing that you can get specific URLS for album artwork in multiple sizes as well as a URL for the preview was a cool find too (Chapter 4 – JSON Formatted Result).

Understanding that you can easily add a 30 second preview to each song deep link into the iTunes store will help with your conversion rate and give your site something you don’t see on many sites (Chapter 4 – JSON Formatted Result).

Using the JSON formatter tool can help you more easily read the query results. Check out Chapter 4 –Now What for a link to the tool.

Reports
Reporting is essential to improving your site’s ability to generate revenue. Get to know your reports and you will start to see good things happen. Chapter 5 is all about reporting.

Check your Revenue report frequently; check your Individual Items reports often. Both give you a broad understanding of what is going on and allow you to find issues relatively quickly (Chapter 5 – The Reports).

Knowing what a $0 sale is will save you a lot of head scratching (Chapter 5 - $0.00 Sales box).

Since the Quick Reports and Advanced Reports are generated off of the SynergyAnalytics reports just cut to the chase and get the good data (Chapter 5 - SynergyAnalytics).

Understanding the acronyms that make up the column headings for reports is going to really help you understand those reports. These are all defined in Chapter 5 – Fields.

Knowing about some of the problems that come up with reporting will keep you from getting surprised when they happen to you. These include finding returned items, gapping in sales and the long lags between reporting impressions/clicks and sales/commissions. Check out Chapter 5 – Problems for more info.

Understanding your weekly and daily trends can help you time when you should do site updates or add new content. Use the Consumer Transactional Behavior Analysis report to figure out these trends (Chapter 5 - Additional Reports).

Understanding Impression Tracking
Knowing where and how impression tracking is done will help you interpret your reports as well as how your affiliate code is built. Read more about this in Chapter 3 - Impression Tracking Code box.

Tracking
Standard reports help you answer questions about your site but tracking really helps you answer questions about your site’s users.

Using either the tracking tools that the affiliate networks provide or an internal solution will allow you a whole new level of data to help you make decisions and answer questions.

Understanding how tracking works and what you can do with it will be essential to fully utilizing it. Knowing what internal data is track able will also help you develop a strategy. Chapter 6 – Introduction should get you acquainted and the section What You Can Track will give you even more insight.

Knowing how to apply the data you gather is essential for using tracking as a way to increase your site’s revenue (Chapter 6 – What Good Is It).

Understanding each affiliate network’s specific system for tracking will allow you to use it more effectively. This is LinkShare’s Signature (Chapter 6 – LinkShare’s Signature Program), TradeDoubler’s EDI (Chapter 6 – TradeDoubler’s Enhanced Publisher Integration Interface) and DGM’s Network Tracking ID (Chapter 6 – DGM’s Network Tracking ID).

You can use a web proxy to create a custom internal tracking system. You can use it to track all the same data as you would use an affiliate networks system but you can’t integrate sales/commissions numbers. More about this in Chapter 6 - Internal Tracking.

You can also use data you generate through your tracking system to produce new content. You can brand the item with the most clicks on your site as the most popular item, and a top 10 list should be available on your site. For more information about this, check out the box in Chapter 6 entitled Using Proxy Data to Create Relevant Content.

Global
First, you need to know that your links are geographically segmented. They will only work for generating commissions in one country (see more about this in Chapter 1) and you also need to know what kind of traffic your site is getting geographically (more info in Chapter 7).

Once you have identified the level of your site’s global presence, you need to decide if you’re going to capitalize. If so, you first need to sign up for accounts with the affiliate network that services the countries you want to go after. See Chapter 2 for how to do this and which companies to do it with.

Use geo-targeting with your ad server to serve up geographically correct banners. See appendix 6 for more info.

Use Google Adsense banners when you don’t have a banner that will work for a certain country (Chapter 7 - Best Practices).

If you want an internal system to give the country specific link to a user then use a link proxy system combined with a geo IP database. More info about this in Chapter 7 – The Eloquent Way.

If you have a global audience and want an easy way to serve up country specific deep links then check out GeoRiot’s service (Chapter 7 – GeoRiot).

MarCom
Don’t upset MarCom! This is Apple’s internal marketing and communications group that is responsible for the Apple and iTunes brand. They are good at what they do, and you don’t want to make them mad. Ways to make them mad would be by using Apple or iTunes logos without its blessing (like making your own iTunes banners) and by doing anything that might impersonate Apple/iTunes (like using the Myriad font when writing about them).

Throw in some tracking code into the link if you want to keep these sales separate from your site sales. See Chapter 6 for more info about tracking.

Use iTunes gift certificates as gifts for friends and family. Of course use your affiliate link to get into the store to initially buy the gift cards.

Of course you should always buy your own personal music through your iTunes affiliate links.

Resources
Questions unanswered by this book should be brought up on dsounds.com, a community for those interested in digital music affiliate programs. Hopefully collectively we can find an answer or solution.

Contact your affiliate network support people for specific issues and questions. You can find a lot of this contact info in Chapter 9 – Resources.

What Now
Take what you just learned and go integrate it. Use it! Don’t procrastinate and let yourself forget the idea you just had.  Buy the book and get started!

If you are just diving into this book and decided to check out this chapter first then go back and read the sections where you are not very comfortable yet with the material.

If you have a best practice please don’t hesitate sharing it with us at dSounds.com.