Cardservice International Affiliate Program

5 Ways to successfully promote our Affiliate Program
#1: Refer directly
#2: Create a brand new site on based on Merchant Account content
#3: Link to our site
#4: Use Ezine Ads
#5: Special message to your customers and subscribers

Our most successful affiliates are companies that sell services to other businesses, such as web hosting, design, or development firms. If our product can augment your product (and vice-versa), isn't it a no-brainer to integrate our services to your customer's – and your – benefit? When you "partner" with one of our highly-trained sales reps to refer business directly to him or her via email or telephone call, you can rest assured that you will be working with a sales professional who will take care of your clients as well as you might yourself.

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If you have the time to do so, and have some experience in the field of Merchant accounts, one of the most effective ways you can promote our services is to create a brand new site about issues related to the Merchant Account industry. Fill the site up with useful content for business owners who want to know more about accepting credit cards. Write your own articles or contact us to use some of our articles in the site. If you can get good articles on Merchant Account issues written by other people, re-publish these articles as well (assuming they allow you to do so). Be sure to start a newsletter on Merchant Accounts and accepting credit cards in which you publish useful information for anyone interested in this topic.

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The best way to link to our site is to work with us to use co-branded pages that we will help you create. We will provide you a customized, co-branded Web site to use as a marketing tool. Choose from a text link on your site or a banner we will provide to link customers seamlessly from your site (check out this referral partner's co-branded pages to see an example of a site currently in use).

Don't want to use co-branded pages? Simply use the following URL in any other link to us:

http://www.expandyourbusiness.com/home.htm?kbid=(your_name)

[where (your_name) is something that both you and we can use to identify your customers]. Our system will pick up on the referring site to ensure you receive credit.

The home page of your site is generally the page that most visitors visit, so an excellent strategy for promoting our services is to add a direct link to our site from the navigation bar of your home page. Name this link something like "Apply for Merchant Account". Since this link is present in your navigation bar, many people will click on this link to come to our site.

Another strategy that you can use is to add the text to the bottom of your home page and each of the other pages in your site similar to

"This site recommends First Data Independent Sales as the Merchant Account Provider of choice."

Link "First Data Independent Sales" to the URL outlined above.

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If you have your own ezine that is targeted at people who own their own business, you can promote our service by placing an ad for our services in your ezine. For best results, place the ad in the top slot of some of the issues of your ezine instead of placing it along with other classified ads. You can also promote our services by placing paid ads in other ezines and email discussion lists which are targeted towards people who own their own business.

If a particular ezine allows a solo mailing (i.e. a special issue of the ezine in which your ad is the only thing that is present), consider running a solo mailing in that ezine. While solo mailings are more expensive than normal sponsor ads placed in ezines, they can also be more effective.

You can even use an ad swap to promote our services: locate an ezine or discussion list that is targeted at business owners and has a subscriber base similar to yours. Then contact the publisher of the ezine or discussion list and offer to carry their ad in your newsletter if they will carry your ad in theirs.

To find a list of such ezines and email discussion lists with which you can swap ads and in which you can place paid ads, try the following sites: http://www.new-list.com, http://www.e-zinez.com, or http://www.emailuniverse.com.

Don't place ads in just any ezine or discussion list that you find in these directories. Instead, subscribe to some of them, and see which ones YOU like reading. If an ezine is full of ads and nothing else, or if it does not have any original content, don't bother with that ezine. If you don't like reading a particular ezine, it is quite likely that the other subscribers don't read the ezine regularly either, which means that your ad will not get too much exposure. Choose to advertise in only those ezines and discussion lists which YOU like reading.

However, there is an important point to note when it comes to both banner ads and ezine ads. In fact, this is applicable to advertisements in any form. When people see banner or ezine ads, they know that when they click on the ad or the URL associated with the ad, they are going to be asked to buy something. Most people dislike being given a sales pitch. Hence, when they come to our site through a banner or ezine ad, they are not coming in with a ready-to-buy attitude – instead, they are coming in with a suspicious mind. This makes closing the sale that much more difficult for us. Instead, if the person had come to our web site with a ready-to-buy attitude, it becomes that much easier for us to close the sale. In order to earn larger commission and residual checks, you need to do everything you can to send the customer to us in a ready-to-buy attitude. What does this mean for you?

It means that while you can use banner and ezine ads to promote our services, don't let them become the primary ways by which you promote our services. Instead, you need to concentrate on those strategies that bring the visitor to our site with an open, ready-to-buy attitude. The strategies that I have revealed earlier are the ones designed to do just that. They concentrate on selling through content – which is by far the best method of selling on the Internet. Use banner and ezine ads to supplement rather than substitute these strategies.

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If you have been doing business online for a while now, you may already have a list of customers who have bought your products and services. If they liked your products or services, they can be a gold mine of opportunity for you. The fact that they have done business with you earlier and have been satisfied with your product or service means that they have come to trust and respect you. When you send them a personal recommendation regarding our site, they will LISTEN.

All you need to do is to send each of your earlier customers an email thanking them for buying your product or service. Then, tell them how important it is to choose the right Merchant Account Provider to help them be able to accept credit cards for their business.

Tell them that you strongly recommend they visit our site to learn more about accepting credit cards with low rates and fees in addition to learning how to protect themselves from credit card processing fraud. Don't mention anything about joining our services – simply ask them to visit our site to learn more. Because they have come to trust and respect you, a large percentage of the people who receive this email will come to visit our site and since you personally recommended that they check out our site, quite a few of them will end up submitting a lead form and becoming our Merchant Account client.

If you don't have a list of customers who have bought from you in the past but have an ezine, then you can use a similar strategy. Just send a special mailing to your subscriber base. At the outset, tell them that you simply had to send them this email because you wanted them to know about something really special. Then follow the outline mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

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