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Below are the Top Ten Affiliate Programs for March 2006 as tracked by the AffiliateTip.com Affiliate Program Directory.

The Top Ten affiliate programs are calculated by the number of clickthroughs each program received on AffiliateTip.com.

Disclaimer: While we attempt to include only legitimate programs in this directory, no warranties are made. Please research each company carefully to arrive at your own conclusions. If you experience difficulties with any of the programs listed, contact…

The other day we reported that video on cell phones is gaining popularity. (Hardly news, we admit.) eMarketer has released additional data that supports our view that this channel is going to be increasingly important to affiliate marketers.

Once dismissed as “too small” for anything but text, the small screen is growing as a source of premium video service revenue… and the ads that often accompany them. eMarketer found that six of 44.5 million users pay for premium video services and watch them on their mobile.

A large percentage of technology and Internet users are away from the computer for much of the day. Traveling sales personnel, conference attendees, executives on business trips, and others. They use their cell phones for email, (local or regular) search, and (more and more) for making purchases.

As you adapt to the changes in technology and consumer habits, don’t overlook an opportunity to follow them with your message. Others are.

Audio and video podcasts both will make their way into this medium before long, along with text. New tools allow advertisers to easily make voice and video recordings, and make them available to subscribers.

Increase your income by expanding your focus to include the consumer on the go, not just the one sitting in front of a monitor.

buy.at, the UK’s largest privately owned affiliate marketing network has secured its future growth following a £7.3 million investment from Cazenove Private Equity (CPE). The company will be chaired by Bruce McLaren who led Advertising.com as International CEO to a successful sale to AOL Time Warner.

In 2002, Perfiliate Technologies Limited launched the buy.at affiliate network. Over the last three years the network has rapidly expanded to provide affiliate marketing solutions for many of…

A former affiliate network executive has written a memoir of his life and times at an affiliate network called The Affiliate Code.

The Affiliate Code is “a fictionalized story of a California technology company that will do anything to bring in the big publishers and advertisers to their affiliate network.”

It seems the stories in this book, being released 4-1-06, are so explosive that the author is remaining anonymous.

If this author is somebody that knows all of the secrets and their…

eComXpo, the biggest virtual conference for online marketers, will be hosting their third show April 4-6th, 2006.

This installment of eComXpo is going to feature 17 panels and three keynote addresses. The panel will include speakers and moderators such as Andy Beal, Paul Colligan, Declan Dunn, Catherine Seda, Tim Tuttle, and yours truly.

They are expecting over 7,000 attendees who will be able to access all the first-run education sessions, exhibit hall, and networking opportunities at no…

Internet Ad Sales reports that just acquired JupiterResearch “has found that 41% of mobile phone users are interested in some form of Local Search continues to expand in various ways. (2) Ad spending in the UK increased 66% in 2005. (3) Google’s market share in the UK is 75% and their lead in the US continues to grow. (4) Luxury items continue to dominate Internet spending (in certain respects).

Picture this. Busy stock broker Jane in The City in London stops on the street because she just has to buy an anniversary present for her mate on her lunch hour.

Local Search on her cell phone shows her your ad and she watches a short video from your merchant. Your merchant has just what she needs: a stunning new watch. A few presses on the keypad and the item is delivered to her door just as she arrives home with flowers. Happy ending for all.

I know where I’m putting my bet for future affiliate marketing income growth. Eh, wot?

(To get info and advice about doing business in the UK market, see our February, 2006 issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine. You’ll find reviews of UK networks, advice about payments, etc.)

There is much ballyhoo about the occasional affiliate who violates the pay per click edicts in affiliate agreements. But there also merchants that have a devil may care attitude when it comes to rules and regulations.

One prime example is Citrix GoToMyPC on Commission Junction. I was looking through their linking options yesterday, and I came across Link ID 10360563 / Competitive Keywords for All Audiences.

I reread the name a couple of times, as I couldn’t imagine they were encouraging…

I managed to get an account when they opened up the MSN adCenter Beta for a small group of advertisers about a month ago, and now they are providing me with ten invites to share.

The MSN adCenter is MSN’s pay per click search engine.

If you would like to apply to be a part of the MSN adCenter pilot, contact me and I’ll send you an invite (if you are one of the first ten to request it).

As an affiliate marketer, you code, your content, your copy, etc. is your business. So what are you going to do if your hard drive or machine dies on you?

The solution is to get yourself an external hard drive. Think of it as cheap business insurance.

You’ll also need a backup software program to automate the process. Otherwise, you can copy all of the files manually to your external hard drive.

Not only does this provide you with protection in the event of some technical failure, but it…

Behavioral ad targeting is as old as Homer. (The 9th century BC Greek storyteller, not the TV cartoon. Though, the latter is getting up there too.) But it’s online form is getting more and more popular, according to Forrester.

In essence, the idea takes contextual ads to the next level. Find out something about your potential customer by ‘observing’ their behavior and feed them ads based on that. Simple.

And effective.

Clickthrough rates increase 166%, according to one study by 24/7 Real Media. (For the non-mathematically inclined that’s less than double, more than one and a half times. Not 166 times. Still a very healthy increase.) As high as 200% according to another cited by Yahoo! Chief Data Officer, Usama Fayyad.

And, of course, there are as many ways to ‘observe’ and find out about behavior as there are men named Homer. Search queries is only the most primitive, but there are others. Clickstream analysis is another. Observing comparison shopping, trip planning, news reading… the list is endless.

And the more data the better since marketing is sometimes like talking to your dog. They don’t tell you directly what they want, so you have to gather all the clues you can to figure it out. (Now if we could only get dogs to click on PPC ads. Er, maybe we shouldn’t give the click fraudsters any ideas.)

But having lots of data isn’t the goal. There’s usually more data than you know what to do with in studying online behavior. The key is to be able to separate what’s meaningful and useful from what’s unimportant.

Fortunately, the technology and services available for doing that are getting increasingly prevalent and more sophisticated. Like the original Homer, not the cartoon one.