Archive for January, 2006
Announcing the Stop Badware Coalition
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Best Business Practices Thursday, 26 January 2006 10:14 No Comments
Here’s some good news for affiliates everywhere. With funding from Google, Lenovo Group, and Sun Microsystems, Harvard and Oxford Universities have teamed up to fight “badware” – spyware, adware, and parasiteware.
The purpose of StopBadware.org is to expose companies that create or use spyware, adware, and parasiteware to the cold, critical light of day. So far the “brain trust” at the Stop badware Coalition has been praised by affiliate management consultant Shawn Collins, as well as Wayne Porter, Senior Director of Greynet Research at FaceTime Security Labs and long-time affiliate advocate and crusader against evil spyware.
Click here to check out the StopBadware.org website. And if you’ve had your computer – or commissions – trashed, stolen, hosed, or hijacked by evil software, make sure you tell your story at the Stop Badware site.
You can also get involved by joining the Stop Badware community and helping with the investigative process. If nothing else, simply sign up for the Stop Badware newsletter to get new badware reports.
“Linkbaiting” Case Study From Search Engine Watch
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Link Building Thursday, 26 January 2006 07:18 6 Comments
Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker has written up a case study on “linkbaiting.” According to Baker’s interesting post:
“Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is the emerging art of building a useful tool, writing an interesting article, or running a newsworthy �event� on a web site which naturally attracts links.”
The case study cites examples of linkbaiting:
“…running a contest which includes multiple sites (such as blog contests or niche site award contests), testing a new advertising format… and throwing a wrench into a breaking or popular news story via attacks, a new spin, or a dash of humor. If anything, the social web and blogosphere have made linkbaiting a reality which only existed for a select few who already enjoyed broad reach and incredible viral marketing skills years ago.”
In other words, linkbaiting is simply viral marketing that attracts backlinks quickly – something that’s an integral part of the business model we use for our step-by-step virtual training in Affiliate Classroom.
The case study goes on to explain how Search Engine Journal organized a “Best Search Engine Blogs” contest that generated tons of traffic – and got backlinks from all over the web, including the blog of Matt Cutts, Senior Google Engineer.
What can affiliates learn from this case study? How about a clever way to generate plenty of incoming links and targeted traffic – without investing anything more than time? It’s also a great strategy for bloggers who need to generate buzz – and gets links – from sites outside the blogsphere.
Matt Cutts even came up with some terrific examples and creative ideas for linkbaiting.
And if you’ve developed a mailing list or an upsell, you can combine these simple ideas with the more detailed strategies outlined in our November Case Study on “Do Affiliate Marketing Contests Pay Off? YES!” available in our members only training center. In it we explain how our recent Thanksgiving Competition generated a 15% sustained sales increase – and 6 new joint venture strategic partnerships – for very low cost.
Some Questions From The Magazine…
Posted by Anik Singal in Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:40 9 Comments
Today I fielded some great questions a student had about the magazine – mostly some terms they wanted defined. I realized later on that the beginner affiliates may not be familiar with some of these terms. So here they are!
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Backlinks = Websites linking to your website. This can be checked by going to Google and typing in, link:www.yourdomain.com or going
to yahoo and typing in linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com
Ping = An Internet utility used to check the connection with another site.
Permalinks = Permalink is short for “permanent link”. It is a link that readers can use to bookmark the current blog post.
Data feeds = A file that a merchant provides you that has all their product, pricing, reviews, etc… all in one file. You can then integrate that file
into a program/template and it builds you an entire website with all their products in it.
Upsells and Cross sells = When you sell someone something, an upsell is to sell them something more expensive later. A cross sell is similar, it usually has you selling them something else in conjunction with what they are buying.
Podcasts = Basically a web radio show. You record a file, mp3 and then make it available for others to download and listen.
Organic = When talking about search engines, you will find either organic or “paid” – organic are the results that show up in the middle.
Those are search engine rankings and are not PAID placements.
Hope this helps!
Anik Singal
Do You Buy Adwords PPC?
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing Tuesday, 24 January 2006 11:35 3 Comments
Then you may be interested in a new Adwords desktop editing tool that allows you to do much of your ad writing – including bulk changes – offline. According to Search Engine Watch:
“…Google is testing (via a private beta, you’ll need a login and password) a desktop AdWords editor that allows you to work offline, make bulk changes, export snapshots, and more.”
Read the full story here.
Is Targeting Unique Keyphrases Worth It?
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Keyword Generation Tuesday, 24 January 2006 09:34 No Comments
According to a fascinating article by Patricia Hursh of Search Engine Watch, half of all search queries are completely unique. In fact, Google estimates that almost 50 percent of its searches – 100 million unique queries per day – “are one-of-a-kind.”
If you’re wondering whether targeting these unusual keyphrases is worth all the trouble, this was the topic of a session at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, Illinois. Hursh reports on what the experts said here.
