Mr Beach Bum.com

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. The holiday season is always a busy one, even for a beach bum. I was recently talking to some fellow bloggers and it amazed me that a lot of them have no idea what Cyber Monday is. Many of them are familiar with Black Friday but not the other.

For those of you who are not familiar with either one, let me tell you. In the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. Now most Americans get tomorrow off as a paid holiday. Some of the lucky ones get both Thursday and Friday off (paid)  but many still will take a day off Friday regardless. I don’t know how long this tradition has been around but for as long as I can remember the day after Thanksgiving (always falling on a Friday) has been known as Black Friday.

The reason it’s called Black Friday is because it is a day that retailers consider their busiest - thus they are typically “in the black” as opposed to being in the red to use accounting slang. Basically the retailers see their biggest profits that day. This has resulted in fierce competition between retailers and what amounts to an even bigger tradition for the day which involves offering up huge discounts on items (loss leaders, if you will) to get people to come to your store instead of others.

One more big tradition for Black Friday is to get up extremely early and wait in line for the stores to open. The stores typically open early on Black Friday. Most as early as 6 AM but I have seen ads for some claiming to open at 4 AM. Sheesh! You can expect huge crowds of people and fights over the last of the big sale items before they run out, etc.

Given all that, if you’re like me, you try to stay away from that scene. I like to shop online anyway. Which is where Cyber Monday comes in… In recent years it has become a tradition for online retailers to offer up some big savings and incentives to get people to shop online on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is November 26. Still plenty of time to get your packages shipped in time for Christmas and a great way to get online shoppers to place mega orders on one huge online shopping day. So where do you come in?

Well, if you’re an affiliate marketer than you are already ready for Cyber Monday. Right?… RIGHT?!!?!??

If not, you’d better get crackin’ and get some of those Cyber Monday deals posted on your websites ASAP!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and thanks for being a loyal reader!

Note: This is the first installment in a new series of Affiliate Network reviews that we will feature here from now on. If you have a specific affiliate network that you’d like us to review, please feel free to comment below and we’ll consider adding it to our list of future reviews if it is not already planned. Keep checking back for this series and look for the Affiliate Network Review Series tags to make it easy to find. 

I am a member of quite a few affiliate networks. Since joining up with an affiliate network is typically free, it is in my best interest to diversify. I urge you to do the same. Seriously, why limit your possibilities for income to just one network when you can choose the ads that work best for your website from a plethora of suppliers?

The fact of the matter is, you are not necessarily going to find every advertiser you may want for your website in just one affiliate network. As a matter of fact, the only way you may have access to every advertiser that might work best for you is by joining multiple affiliate networks.

What I’ve found is that each network tends to have a niche market all their own in terms of the programs they offer. For example, I’ve found LinkShare.com to be my go-to for many of the big name brand advertisers such as Dell, Apple, etc. In the same token, I know I can count on Clickbank.com to keep a large pool of “work from home“, “Free iPOD / iPhone /PS3 / Wii / younameit” type of ads as well.

So where does Shareasale fit in?

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