It’s go time again for the Affiliate Department here at Avangate – we’re packing our bags and heading west to New York on August 21-23, 2011 to attend the Affiliate Summit East conference.

Software presents big opportunities for all online affiliates, so as an established software specific affiliate network, we will be on hand to offer insight on the benefits of promoting software online. We will do that both through networking during the event, and Avangate’s very own Michael Ni will be speaking on “5 Software Niche Affiliate Success Stories” (thank you for that!).

Be sure to drop by on the first day of conference (August 21^st), 11 AM, to visit us at the Murray Hill Suite. After 12 PM, you can find us in the Meet Market at booth #49, where we’ll be ready to exchange ideas and see how we can work together with some of the affiliate marketing industry’s best and brightest. We even have a few surprises in store.

Drop us an email to schedule a meeting or contact us directly to meet us in the Big Apple: Adriana, Corina, Mike (our speaker) and Cristian are looking forward to meeting you.

We’re heading off to Germany at the beginning of June 2011 to attend A4U Expo Europe – one of the largest European affiliate conferences.

I’m particularly excited because this year we’re going to have our own meeting room during the first conference day and already set up a couple of important get togethers.

So if you’re into the software business, as a merchant or as a publisher, drop by the Avangate hosted meeting room “Miro” on June 7th. Me and my colleagues Adriana and Sorin will be looking forward to meeting new partners. We also have lots of surprises for you there ;)

And speaking of surprises – if you haven’t yet booked your ticket for the event, do it today and use this special Avangate coupon for 10% off the registration price: AVAN_MUNICH_10.

Don’t be shy – ping us at affiliates@avangate.com or leave a comment here so we can schedule a meeting.

Outside the event, I’m looking forward to seeing Munich again and, of course, delighting myself with some unfiltered Bavarian beer :D

5 years of successful online sales through affiliates worldwide. It’s rather vague, but I’ll let the figures on the right speak for us. We’re in the celebration mood here at Avangate, remembering how it all started and looking at where we are today. And it looks pretty nice :)

Why is the Avangate Affiliate Network so special?

We believe that we have an extensive knowledge of the online software vertical and its sales channels. We started doing this in 1992, so you might say we’re more than 5 years old if talking about our experience.
The most important thing is we bring together strong software specialized affiliates (download portals, niche sites, coupon websites, personal sites) and award-winning software titles from top merchants worldwide. It’s like mixing all the good things – nothing can go wrong :)

Celebrate with us

We prepared some exciting contests for the Avangate affiliates in order to share the joy of being 5 years old. Creativity and sales skills will be rewarded in this series of contest, which can bring you up to $450 in cash, gift cards plus the opportunity of receiving a special commission from 5 of our best converting advertisers: BitDefender, VSO Software, DVDFab, IObit and Movavi.

We’ve come a long way to where we are today with our affiliate network: many of platform developments, support, feedback and of course, millions of affiliate referred customers. And there will be more to come, since we aim to grow at least in the same pace in which we did so far.

Avangate Affiliate Network – 5 benefits Bringing strong affiliates and top software titles together Dedicated 1 to 1 support for vendors & affiliates to grow revenue Dynamic & innovative marketing campaigns Smart and scalable platform with lots of capabilities Fast time to market

Not using the Avangate Affiliate Network already?

Become an affiliate today and start monetizing a great online sales channel.

Drop us a line at info@avangate.com to see how you can increase your online sales using our software affiliate network – we’ve got some great opportunities for you. ;)

Here we are, in the end of 2009, patiently waiting for the New Year party and thinking about 2009, about the good and the bad and the next year :). We are all proud to have been able to enrich our software selling platforms with plenty of features, basically meant to help more vendors reach more clients.

And we were very happy to be rated as top eCommerce provider by our clients, in the survey made by Andy Brice.

We are particularly happy with the progress made with the Avangate shopping cart’s conversion rates. Using advanced analytics applications such as Omniture and extensive A/B testing, we obtained control over every tiny detail of the shopping cart – and this flexibility translated into higher conversion rates.

I’m sure you all know that Black Friday traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the US. Well, nowadays big retailers are starting to promote Black Friday sales more than a week in advance. But that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that Black Friday (Nov. 27th) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 30th) are definitely useful dates to keep in mind.

Why?

Simple – in 2008, the Black Friday weekend brought along an 18% increase on the total spending in the US compared to the year before, which, given the context of the economic downturn, was a more than good figure. Other reports show a 15% increase in Cyber Monday online sales, with only 1% increase in Black Friday sales compared to the previous year. Either way, sales went up.

I finally got some time to study in detail the new AffStat Report 2009. It offers a comprehensive overview of the affiliate business and, from my point of view, it’s something every affiliate manager should read.

Starting from the affiliate responses, I put together a list of tips for the vendors that want to use the affiliate sales channel at its upper capacity. Having also put my experience so far in this list, it’s especially aimed at software affiliate managers; however, the principles can be used for other verticals too.