Gift Ideas and Deals for December 2010

To help prepare you for this holiday season, we have set up some new deals, a holiday gift idea page, and also improved our checkout page.

Shipping Update

To help encourage more small item orders we have a new shipping deal on orders that are under 5lbs. I received this email from my manager the other day:
  • As of now, we have a new flat-rate shipping rule on ToolKing.com for orders that weigh less than 5lbs.
  • If an order is under 5lbs, the order ships for just $5. If it is over 5lbs, it's subject to the normal $9.99 rate.
  • Customers will see a message on their shopping cart if they are eligible for this promotion. If they are not eligible, they will not see the message.
However, this is just an experiment, so it is subject to change at any time.

One Step Checkout

We recently launched an improved "One Step" checkout system on ToolKing.com. We believe this new checkout should help simplify our frontend checkout process by keeping all of the checkout data fields on one page while minimizing page jumps and loading time. This improvement will have a significant positive benefit to customer experience and our site's success.


If you haven't checked out on ToolKing.com yet, here's a screen shot of the one step checkout:



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Affiliate Network Payment Method and Threshold

If you're still undecided about which affiliate network to use for Tool King's affiliate program, a factor to consider could be what are the payment methods and threshold. Our tracking cookie is set at 30 days across all 4 networks and they all pay once a month (*if you reach the minimum threshold). However, here are the small differences between the payment method and theshold:


Avantlink:
Payment Method: Check, Paypal, Direct Deposit (U.S. Banks only)
Payment Threshold: Your choice of $25, $50, $100, $200 or $500

Commission Junction:
Payment Method: Check or Direct Deposit
Payment Threshold: Your choice of $100 (check) and $50 (direct deposit)

ShareASale:
Payment Method: Check or ACH Direct Deposit
Payment Threshold: Your choice of $50, $75, $100, $150, $200, $250, $300, $400, $500, $750, $1,000

Google Affiliate Network:
Payment Method: Check, ETF (Electric Funds Transfer), Western Union Quick Check, Rapida,
Payment Threshold: Google Affiliate Network will post your monthly earnings to your Google AdSense account. If your AdSense account balance is less than US$100 at the end of the month, your earnings will continue to roll over to the following month until the payment threshold is reached.

Top 500 Merchant

Congratulations ToolKing.com and thanks to all affiliate partners who helped contributed by promoting ToolKing.com. Below was an email we received from Shopping.com:




Congratulations to Tool King.com for being named an Internet Retailer Top 500 Merchant !



We recognize that this is a prestigious honor achieved through hard work and dedication.

If I can be of any assistance in helping you reach your campaign goals, or if you have any questions please feel free to reach me at merchantsupport@shopping.com or via phone Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm PST.


Thanks and Best Regards ! Shopping.com Merchant Services




Keep up to date with the latest merchant news and information.
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Affiliate Link Encoder Webinar

Attention blog and forum owners! Just received an email from Gary Marcoccia at AvantLink stating they're going to do a webinar on their Affiliate Link Encoder. It's an awesome tool that will turn all your direct www.toolking.com links into your affiliate links. For example, if you were to own a forum and someone post a link to ToolKing.com, that link will automatically turn into your affiliate link without you having to do any additional work.


If you want to know more about their affiliate link encoder, be sure to sign up for their webinar.

Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE) Webinar, August 9th

Vong,

Learn how to auto encode direct merchant links (or keywords) to Affiliate tracking links by installing one line of JavaScript on your web site or blog. The ALE is the ideal solution for monetizing existing blog or forum archives!

Join us on Monday, August 9th from 11am-11:30am for an overview of this unique tool. We will cover the quick and easy configuration of an ALE subscription, installation of the script and best practices.

Please RSVP by sending an email to gmarcoccia@avantlink.com. Webinar invitation and details will be emailed on Friday, August 6th.

More information on the Affiliate Link Encoder:

http://www.avantlink.com/tools/affiliate_link_encoder.php
http://www.avantshare.com/blog/2008/11/10/affiliate-link-encoder-v20/

Gary Marcoccia
AvantLink.com



Factor For Daily Deal Sites

I wrote this to one of our affiliate partners today, but I think it deserves repeating and being shared with everyone again. Although pricing isn't one of the factors for affiliates choosing merchants to promote according to the latest Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, I believe pricing is the main factor for customers when buying on a daily deal site.


Hi Affiliate Partner's Name,

Not sure if you have seen our Tooliday.com site yet, but it is our daily deal site and we offer some great deals on there. For example, if you look at our http://accessory.tooliday.com deal for today:

Porter-Cable 43499PC Router Bit
Our price: $6.99
Avg price: $55
Highest price: $84.78


Let me know if maybe this is something of interest to you. We have an affiliate with a daily deal site that promotes our Tooliday products and they are converting pretty nicely.

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks,

Vong Xiong
Affiliate Manager
vong@toolking.com
1.800.696.TOOL
ToolKing.com
11111 West Sixth Ave Unit D
Lakewood, CO 80215
303.963.4500x201
720.545.2079

Check out our Tool Deals of the Day @ www.Tooliday.com

Check out our tool blog, www.Toologics.com

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE - This e-mail transmission, and any document, files or previous e-mail messages attached to it, may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you must not read or play this transmission and that any disclosure, copying, printing, distribution or use of any the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by telephone or return e-mail and delete the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you.

HOTDOG

Free shipping any order $149 when you use coupon code: HOTDOG. Have a safe Memorial weekend!



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Accessory Tooliday

If you have been keeping up with our Tooliday sites, you'll see that we now have a daily deal for each tool category:


1. Tooliday
2. Auto Tooliday
3. Wood Tooliday
4. Recon Tooliday
5. Air Tooliday
6. Accessory Tooliday
7. Fastening Tooliday
8. Closeout Tooliday

Accessory Tooliday is the site I want to emphasize on today. The Porter-Cable 43600PC 5/32 inc Roman Ogee Router Bit is being sold for only $5.99 on our Accessory Tooliday site. The next lowest price is found at our own site, ToolKing.com for $10.69, but the average price for this router bit is being sold for around $25.

Our ShareASale affiliate tracking code is placed on all the Tooliday sites above, so you will get credit if your customer was to place an order on any of the Tooliday sites. For example: if your customer was to land on Auto.Tooliday.com, but they purchase something on Accessory Tooliday, you will get commission for the sale.

Festool TS Saw Promo Extended

We just received some good news from Festool. The Festool TS Saw Promo will be extended for another month, until July 31st because of the success they are seeing from it. Festool is stating that the promotion is doing so well that demand currently exceeds their factory's production capacity.

We do have many of the TS-55s in stock right now, but we are expecting more demand for them. These Festool deals don't come by frequently, so let your customers know before time runs out.


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Recon Tooliday

I was looking through our Tooliday sites earlier and found an awesome deal. On our Recon Tooliday site, the DeWalt DC988KAR Cordless Hammerdrill/Drill Kit is selling for only $139.99. That price is lower than any other site by as much as $79.96.


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When comparing to new, you are saving even more. Take a look at the screenshot to compare the prices between new vs. reconditioned:


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Deal expires in about 7 hours and 30 mins, so don't miss out. At this time you can only promote our Tooliday sites through the ShareASale affiliate program. You can join or login to your account on ShareASale and find the Tooliday links under our Tool King affiliate program. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any question or concern.

Router Bits Sale

ToolKing.com has sold a lot of router bits within the past few weeks! We have optimized our router bit pages, lowered our prices, and lowered our prices even more when customer buys three or more router bits. Take an additional 10% off when customer buys three or more, 20% off when customer buys five or more, and 25% off when customer buys ten or more router bits.



Here's an example of how low our prices are for the router bits. I went to our router bits page: http://www.toolking.com/power-tools/routers/router-bits and randomly selected Porter-Cable 43126PC. Here were some of the results in Google Base Products:


What's New at ToolKing.com

It's been a while since I last wrote on here (around Christmas time) and a few things have changed since then. We have new deals, rebates, and a brand new look. No better time to start promoting ToolKing.com.

Current Deals
Free Shipping on orders over $99
10% Off 3 or more Router Bits
20% Off 5 or more Router Bits
Take $5 off $99-$199 Orders
Take $10 off $200-$399 Orders
Take $25 off $399+ Orders

Current Rebates
Buy a select Makita LXT tool and get free bonus tools, batteries, or accessories by mail! Click Here for more details.

New Site
We are proud to announce that we have launched a new e-commerce platform site design for ToolKing.com. Here are some of the features and benefits for the new site:

  1. Spanish version of the site coming soon.
  2. More suited for mobile commerce.
  3. Search on the site is greatly improved.
  4. Easier checkout.
  5. Capability to up-sell and cross-sell.

If you haven't been on to the new site, you'll be surprised at how much it has changed.