Shoreline Music • Affiliate FAQ

Guitarists
Muriel Anderson
Pierre Bensusan
Howard Emerson
Jaquie Gipson
Dougie MacLean
Franco Morone
The Waybacks

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Shoreline Music - Handcrafted Acoustic Guitars

Shoreline Affiliate Program FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

• What are affiliate programs?
• How much will I earn?
• How will I be paid?
• How can I generate affiliate income effectively?
• Do I need to have a website to join?
• How do I create links to Shoreline?
• What should I do if I already link to Shoreline?

What are affiliate programs?

Affiliate programs are an advertising staple for most big e-commerce enterprises, including everything from Amazon to eBay, from The Apple Store to REI. They award commissions to anyone who brings in customers via simple banner and text links.

How much will I earn?

Our standard commission is 5% of the order total (not including shipping fees). We also offer bonus incentives as follows--all bonuses are paid in addition to any commissions earned:

Our cookie duration is two years, which means that if someone you refer to our site comes back to buy more gear, you get commissions on repeat purchases up to two years later. Most affiliate programs pay commissions only on the initial site visit. This means that our commission program lasts about 730 times longer than any other music store affiliate programs.

How will I be paid?

Our affiliate program is managed by a third party, ClixGalore. They track all clicks, sales, bonuses, etc., and they disburse all payments electronically via PayPal (if you don't have a PayPal account, you'll need to open one before you get started). Their schedule is such that you are paid monthly whenever your commissions total at least $50 US, $100 Aus, £35 or €60. Before offering our affiliate program to our broader customer base, we did a 6-month test run with ClixGalore, and we found them to be very efficient and effective, with robust tracking and reporting tools and an excellent history of prompt payment.

How can I generate affiliate income effectively?

The most effective Shoreline Music affiliates are those whose links are placed in the context of guitar-related website content. Are you a professional musician with a website? Do you have a site devoted to your favorite band? A music blog? A guitar-related newsletter? Do you post in guitar or bass or worship music forums? These are the sorts of places our customers spend their time on the internet, and they're the places your links will be most effective. Of course, there are undoubtedly countless other link placement ideas we haven't thought of yet--and that's where your unique resources and ideas come into play.

One popular technique to generate links to our site--and therefore sales--is to embed them in paid search result listings in Google's Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture). For instance, if someone is looking for a "Fishman Loudbox", and you create a paid listing for that keyword that sends someone to our site who ends up buying a Loudbox, you earn a commission on that sale. But please note that we have a few restrictions on how you may do this. The most important is that you may not place ads for keywords that include our store name. This is absolutely verboten. Also, we have thousands of paid keyword ads in search engines large and small, all over the internet. Most of the current advertising rules allow only one paid listing per destination URL. If several advertisers are sending clicks to the same URL, the one with the highest bid is the one that is displayed. So, if you want to have your keyword ad displayed for keywords we're already bidding for, you will have to bid higher than we do (which should be pretty easy, as we tend to bid pretty low for most keywords). If you discover keywords that we're not bidding for, then by all means grab them.

Do I need to have a website to join?

No. You just need to have a way to link to our store. This happens most effectively with a website, but it can also be done in HTML emails, or any other variety of places links are displayed on the web. Please note, though, that you will be asked for a website URL and description when signing up for the affiliate program. If you have no website, feel free to enter "[yournamehere].com" in the URL field, and "no website" in any other website-related fields.

How do I create links to Shoreline?

When you sign up for our affiliate program, you'll be given a list of links and banners that have tracking information embedded in them. You just stick this code on your website (or wherever you choose to link to us). That's it. We pack and ship the orders, and ClixGalore pays you. You don't have to do anything else. If you know a bit of HTML, you can modify the links to include your own text, but it's by no means necessary.

What should I do if I already link to Shoreline?

If you already have links to Shoreline, you're not alone. Last I checked, there were nearly 20,000 links around the web that point to our site. All you have to do is replace your existing links with a tracking link provided when you sign up, and turn those referrals into cash.