Hola,

Just wanted to let everybody knows that I got back from Spanish vacation yesterday ... I'm still a bit jet lagged though ... and I miss that great Spanish food ...

Anyway, if you e-mailed me while I was gone, you should have received a reply from me by now as I finally went through all my e-mails. Talking about e-mails, I apologize if you guys got some non-related affiliate e-mail from us while I was gone. Our e-mail broadcast provider has been updating its system and there are still some bugs that they need to fix (so, don't worry we were not trying to spam you, it was just some technical issue).

I was looking at the affiliate sales reports and was pleased to see that lots of you were able to earn more than $1/click this month (conversion rate). Since this month is already coming to an end, I will have some detailed reports for you in a couple of days ... but I can already tell you that most of you guys will get bigger checks this month 

That's it for now!

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I am leaving on vacation and will be back on September 29th. I will be in Barcelona so I won't be able to answer any e-mail. If you have any question while I'm gone, you can still send them and I will get back to you when I get back.

Also, make sure you keep promoting our resume writing service. I was looking at our conversion rates and they doubled compared to August. If you watch the news, you know the unemployment rate is at an all-time high, which means that people are flocking to our site to get their resume prepared. So now is the time to make affiliate sales and get bigger commission checks 

That's it for now - see you at the end of the month ... 

There are several programs out there allowing people to get paid to click links or sign up for offers and I just wanted to emphasize that using these types of programs to send us free resume posting leads isn't allowed. You shall not use incentives as well as false claims such as "Sign up and they will give you a job" to get us leads.

Not only are the people enrolled in these programs mostly located in foreign countries, which is worthless to us, but they usually enter false information just to get paid. We therefore do not allow affiliates to advertise our services through these programs and will cancel the accounts of those who do not follow our guidelines. 

In case you're new to this, these programs have been around for a while: not only can we recognize them easily but we can also quickly spot any unusual traffic pattern coming to our site ...

As a reminder, the affiliate game ended a couple days ago. I've been compiling affiliate sales reports and I can already tell you that 15 affiliates won and will be getting a 20% bonus at the end of the month. Congratulations to all the winners who will receive an e-mail pretty soon.

Of course, you might argue that 15 winners out of thousands of affiliates is not a lot. Well, you are right, especially as conversion rates have been pretty high lately, partly thanks to the extra bonuses we are giving away to customers. While some affiliates missed the mark by just a few bucks, which is too bad, the bottomline is that:

• the affiliates that won the game are "active affiliates". By active, I mean that they have affiliate links in the right places and are actively promoting their websites (through SEO, PPC or any other mean) to get targeted traffic, which converts into sales.
• as for the affiliates who didn't win, this is in lots of cases mostly because they were too lazy and didn't make any changes to their site to either promote more prominently our services or simply bring qualified traffic to our offers.

Remember that if you enroll with affiliate programs, it's to earn money online ... but this requires work ... and you won't achieve this by just placing a random banner on a site and wait for the cash to roll in. You won't earn money online if you don't bring qualified buyers to your website.  If you need some tips on how to successfully promote an affiliate program -- including ours -- check out the tip section of this blog or visit other blogs and forums that are specialized in affiliate marketing. 

Just wanted to remind you guys that the affiliate game is ending on September 12th ... You only have 3 days left to increase your sales and earn a 20% bonus!

As I was mentionning before, for most of you guys it means making one simple additional sale over your weekly average to get a 20% bonus ... 'Nuff said!

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know about what happened over Labor Day weekend. If you read some of my previous posts or the newsletter I sent on Thursday, you might have noticed that I was emphasizing the fact that, following a logical slowdown in summer, sales would pick up in September, marking the beginning of job hunting season.

Well, guess what? Not only sales suddenly started to increase as early as Friday but we had one of our strongest weekend ever and are on the way to get one of our biggest week in years. Of course, you guys are bringing a big chunk of these sales and those of you who followed my advice and started promoting prominently our resume writing service a couple of weeks ago will get big commission checks at the end of the month.

Here are some numbers to give you an idea of how much money some of you guys are currently making:

• In only 4 days, some affiliates already doubled what they earned the entire month of August
• Some affiliates are currently making around $3.50 per click (conversion rate ratio) this month
• One affiliate is currently earning as high as $16.44 per click 

The good news for those of you who are playing our affiliate game, is that you are pretty much guaranteed to win that 20% bonus as with such high conversion rates, you will have no problem making one simple additional sale over a 3-week period

And if you haven't increased the promotion of resume writing yet, it's of course not too late as these strong sales will be around for several weeks!!

I just wanted to remind you guys that we have the Labor day affiliate game running. Here is how it works: increase your affiliate sales by 10% (over your weekly average) between August 22nd and September 12th and get a 20% bonus. To help you increase your sales, we're even offering a new freebie to our customers, which I can tell you has already sharply increased our sales since we put it on our landing pages. If you don't know what's your weekly average, feel free to contact me but, to give you an idea, for most of you guys it only means having one additional sale over the 3-week period. I recommend to all affiliates interested in getting a 20% bonus to promote prominently our resume service over the next 2 weeks (of course, if you're not interested in earning more money and getting this bonus, don't change anything to your site). 

For those who read this blog and are not affiliated with us yet, it's not too late to join and participate to this game

If you promote various affiliate programs, including ours, you might have noticed that sales dropped after the 4th of July, which is the time when most people left for vacation. When people go on vacation, they not only focus mostly on the good times they have ahead but they also save their money for fun stuff, which means they put their job search on pause for a few weeks.

The good news is that we are right in the middle of the summer holiday and that sales are going to be back up soon. Like every year, there is going to be a peak in job search activity which will start in September, right after Labor day weekend and will last until Thanksgiving. I would suggest to all affiliates wanting to make good sales in September to start preparing their sites now, whether it's putting resume writing links up, writing resume articles for future newsletters or blog posts. 

July being one of the slowest months of the year in terms of job search activity, sales should start to pick up at the beginning of August so you'll probably earn some extra sales, if you start promoting our resume services soon. To increase sales and give you an incentive, we will be running a special offer the first week of August, which will provide our customers with additional bonuses when they order our services. So make sure to take advantage of this offer, which should increase your sales conversion rates starting tomorrow and get your ready for big sales -- and big commissions -- in September!

I wanted to clarify something: I've had a couple affiliates complaining that their check didn't feature the right payee information and I wanted to make sure you guys know that we use whatever you put in the "company name" field as your payee information. So if you want your checks to get made to your company, put your company name in the "company name" field. However, if you want your checks to get made to your name, put your name in the "company field".

And since we're on this subject, as a reminder, we need both your social security number and W9 if you're an US affiliate to be able to release your payments. However if you're not a US based affiliate, you don't need to fill out the social security field or send us a W9.

In case, you need to update your account information, log onto your affiliate account and click "update account".
 

I just wanted to mention that, after a few days of slowdown, affiliate sales for Federal resumes and KSA's are back up. Sales picked up yesterday and are going strong. In case you're wondering, Federal resume sales depend on government hiring patterns. Not only government resume sales are increasing when Federal agencies open new jobs but they get even stronger, the closest you get to the date when these announcements close.

So if your site attracts Federal job seekers, now is the time to increase the promotion of our Federal resume and KSA writing services (we also offer SES and ECQ writing for Federal executives) as affiliate commissions for these services are high, from $27.49 to $324.75 depending on your commission level and the type of document sold.

So I've started working on preparing your payments for the month of June and I noticed a few interesting things I wanted to share with you:

Most affiliates increased their commissions sharply in June -- and by sharply I mean that lots of you doubled their commissions -- with some affiliates earning as high as $2.55 per click (ratio) 

The other good news is that, despite only being mid-year, most -- productive -- affiliates have already earned almost as much as what they did throughout the entire year of 2007, with some of you being already up by 2200%!!

So keep up the good work and remember that we have our 4th of July special running, which means more sales for you -- all you need to do is promote our resume writing services prominently and you should see some sales roll in!  

That's it for now. Have a great 4th of July weekend! 

Some affiliates had some questions about our success rate and guarantee so I wanted to clarify a couple points;

- our resume writing service has a 93% success rate at getting our customers more interviews

- our guarantee works in two steps:

  . if after 6 weeks, our resume doesn't get more interviews, we will rewrite it for free.  

  . if after 120 days, our customers aren't satisfied our resume is helping them, we will refund 100% of their money - that's how confident we are in our service!
    (with a 93% success rate, this hardly ever happens and in that case affiliates keep their commissions anyway)

I still get a lot of questions about affiliate payments, so I'm going to answer the most common questions here:

- I made a sale last month, why didn't I get paid? 

We pay every month for a minimum payout of $25; if you earned less that $25, you will get paid once the total of your cumulated months reaches $25

- When am I getting my check? 

We send checks around the middle of the following month; so, for example, if you earned more than $25 in June, your June check will be sent around mid-July. 

- I'm a new affiliate and I haven't received my check yet.

Tax laws require us to have your W9 on file before being able to release your payment, if you're a US affiliate. So as soon as you make your 1st sale, make sure to send us your W9 right away (by email or contact me if you need a fax #), which will assure your check will be sent right away instead of waiting until we get your W9. Please note that if you're a foreign affiliate, you don't need to send us a W9 - however it might take a few more days to get your check since we need to send it abroad.

- Can you pay me by paypal? 

We are only paying by check at this time.

- Why wasn't the check under my name?

The name on the check is the one you typed in the "Company name" field when you signed up. So if you need to change it, log onto your affiliate account and click "update account" to modify your information. Also whenever you change your payment information and contact info, feel free to drop me a line to let me know so that I can make sure the accounting department has your latest info.

- I have a question about my affiliate commissions. Who shall I contact?

You need to contact your affiliate manager - well that would be me! - since I'm the one preparing your affiliate payments.