Merchants can take Advantage of Falling Dollar though Affiliate Marketing

Every week the dollar seems to be falling further down against all of the other world currencies, including the Yen, Euro and Pound. The bad news this reflects: the rest of the world doesn't quite have the same faith in the U.S. Economy anymore, and also things will be getting a bit more expensive within the USA, and the power of the dollar decreases.  However, for merchants, the good news is that American products are now less expensive and are more attractive to consumers in other countries. Promoting visits to the U.S.A. is getting to be quite popular to Europeans with the thoughts of coming over for cheap holidays and shopping.

Our world is shrinking everyday from a business perspective.  I love this ad from the Financial Times that illustrates various landmark skyscrapers all existing on a "global island".

Business in America have a great opportunity now to start marketing their products overseas. If a merchant has never attempted to market products overseas, using an affiliate program is a good way to "dip the foot in the water." In the U.K. affiliate marketing is growing by leaps and bounds and more publishers are getting turned onto the advantages as opposed to Adsense. There are now 2 major annual affiliate events in the UK with the A4U Expo and the new Affiliate Summit UK.

Affiliate marketing (while lagging the UK) is also gaining more mainstream popularity with webmasters in Australia and New Zealand. There are certainly plenty of webmasters promoting sites in the US that are already familiar with affiliate marketing principles. These are the easiest to enter markets for Americans due to the language similarities. Other European and Asian markets however do offer potentially attractive affiliate markets. Affiliate marketing (through mobile commerce) is a HUGE industry in Japan. There is also potential in countries like Ireland, Germany, France,  Singapore and Korea.

They key: get assistance from a knowledgeable agent and/or network with experience in the region. AMWSO has enormous advantages since we are based in Asia with many staff members originally from Europe. Getting connected through a network can alleviate any international affiliate payment and tracking issues, leaving the merchant to contend with payment processing and shipping. Major credit card processing and Paypal eliminate 90% of international payment issues, and now with the various logistic and fulfillment services from companies such as UPS or even Amazon, storage and shipment of products can be localized as well.

The barriers for selling internationally are being lowered everyday. Consider dipping your foot into the water through performance marketing before your competitions locks down the market.

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LinkShare China is go.

Well while everyone is raving about the new LinkShare Publisher Dashboard I decided to take a look around the rest of the site to see what had changed. Heading straight to the international section and then over to jobs, and low and behold what do we see jobs for LinkShare China in Shanghai. So it would appear the rumours were true and LinkShare is finally heading into China!

Not much else available that I can find on the China launch, the last time it seems to have been mentioned was back in early 2006 in an article in Revenue. Well it will be interested to see whether they launch with a focus on eCommerce or lead generation and what they have learnt from the the success and failures of the early network entries into the China market

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