AC Certified

Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Baby Boomer Social Network: eons.com

Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 6:44 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

There’s a new social networking site — eons.com — oriented toward the 50+ crowd. Despite the poor choice of name, the site has a good look and could do very well.

One sometimes gets the impression reading marketing surveys that only the under 30 market is important. That’s just nonsense.

Certainly, individuals under 30 are an important market. Techno-savvy, energetic, and eager to socialize, they represent an opportunity for marketers. That market has money to burn and they are ready to spend. Their interests are broad, as is the demographic itself.

But far from being the only important market, they are still only one out of many.

So, along come the wise folks at eons.com who recognize that there is a lot more money being left on the table. According to Enid Burns in a ClickZ article discussing the new site, the three major areas of focus are finance, wellness, and love. There are several others shown prominently on the home page, but perhaps Mr. Burns knows something we don’t.

But no matter what eons.com foci may be, the site — as with social networks in general — will certainly evolve in directions its founders haven’t dreamed of. Nothing is so creative as an individual with a keyboard, thinking of something he or she wants to say to another.

Advertisers will do well to look into this early and often. The possibilities for marketing to the online audience just doubled and then some. People are living longer, staying healthy later in life, and have more disposable income than at anytime in history.

But they’re also looking for new ways to invest and save for retirement, new places to see, and things to experience. They’re reconnecting with long lost friends at ever increasing rates and have at their fingertips a wider array of choices.

They’re also coming online in ever larger numbers. The portion of the population over 50 not online is decreasing every year.

All that means dozens of areas for affiliate marketers to increase visits and sales. Don’t wait until you’re older to pick up a part of that market. You’re not getting any younger, either.

Social Network Marketing: Buzz = Income

Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 2:47 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Rupert Murdoch is not sorry his News Corp bought Intermix, the owner of MySpace, a year ago. Forget for a moment the phenomenal growth in the user base. According to Wendy Davis’ article on Online Media Daily, referencing eMarketer data,

MySpace “last month garnered 17 percent of online display impressions — up more than two points from May’s 14.6 percent, according to new data by Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance.”

That’s half Yahoo! Mail, but double MSN Hotmail.

In a more recent article, again using eMarketer data, she reported that MySpace is set to pull in $180 million in revenue this year, on it’s way to getting a piece of the $1.86 billion pie predicted to exist by 2010.

Ad dollars represent a cost to affiliate marketers, not revenue, it’s true. But those dollars are being spent there for good reason: to generate buzz. Buzz gets you noticed. Buzz gets you visitors. Visitors bring money. And that, my friends, is the name of the game.

Is it a fad? Is it just another among a number of bubbles that grew and popped? No one can say for sure. But somehow, teens and others gathering together to express themselves, share experiences and photos, arrange dates, recommend movies, etc… somehow, that doesn’t sound like something that is going away anytime soon.

And MySpace is clearly experiencing the kind of positive spiral that led Amazon not too many years ago to become what it is today.

Yeah, I would think Rupert Murdoch is not unhappy about that particular investment. And, neither should affiliate marketers be.

Google Hits Affiliates Hard

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 11:34 am by Anik Singal

Google has sent Internet marketers - especially affiliates - into a uproar with their latest AdWords “summer cleaning.”

Over the past week, advertisers have literally been getting booted out of Google Adwords. That includes advertisers who spend more than 5 figures a month on AdWords. I’ve spoken with multiple super affiliates, and they are all in an uproar over what appears to be yet another “affiliate-unfriendly” move by Google.

I can’t say Google never warned us. They announced new algorithm changes in December of last year. But when advertisers started getting kicked out starting a week or so ago, it hit hard - like it came out of nowhere

An anonymous Affiliate Classroom contributor and PPC affiliates complains…

“I had an ad doing 6.7% CTR and have spent well over $150,000 on Google Adwords in the last 2 years – now they’re telling me that I need to increase my minimum bid for 300%! No way!”

So what is Google really up to? Have they gone the way of pure evil? Or is is this part of a larger and more complex agenda?

Well, “I” firmly believe that they are up to something. Very recently our own, Eder Callejas posted that Google is testing the CPA revenue model. Given their latest changes and the sites that have been impacted the most, it seems that Google may be getting ready to do more than just “test” a CPA model.

The first of the landing pages that got the boot were lead generation pages – the sites that are just a small box with an opt-in box on them. Interesting…could it be that Google themselves wants to collect those leads and then sell the leads to us rather than let us just pay per click?

So the 4 main kinds of sites that seem impacted the most are:

1) Squeeze pages (landing pages whose sole purpose is to gather an email address in exchange for a free report)
2) One page sales letter websites
3) Adsense sites (particularly Adsense arbitrage sites)
4) Affiliate sites

More information on their landing page guidelines - https://adwords.google.com/select/siteguidelines.html

Bottom line is, since Google constantly says it’s trying to make the search experience better for their users, it must believe that landing pages provide a bad user experience. But is that true?

Maybe, maybe not. I think it all depends on the user’s intention. A shopper has a different search intention than a researcher. It all depends on the intent of the query. Why punish advertisers for not being able to read people’s minds?

Since affiliates bear much of the cost of lead acquisition, Google’s not just punishing affiliates with this latest update - it’s punishing some of the biggest web-driven businesses in the world.

Of course, as marketers, we’ll find how to get around this. And when we do, I’ll be sure to post it!

Social Network Marketing: Old Idea, New Form

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 8:34 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

In college I had a friend who, as a high school teen, attended rock concerts. He didn’t go for the music. He sold T-shirts, though ’sold’ is something of a misnomer. All he had to do was show up and they were practically ripped out of his hands. (Come to think of it that happened literally, sometimes.) He made a serious chunk of change, ten bucks at a pop.

He understood social network marketing.

He didn’t have to do a lot of advertising. He didn’t spend a lot of money on marketing. But he knew where to find customers… where they congregate.

That’s the not-so-secret lesson of social network marketing. Many sites try to get customers to come where they live. Not a bad thing, as it works pretty well much of the time.

But social network marketing is going where the customers already are. While there you hope to sell them something you have good reason to believe they already want.

The team in charge of marketing the recent X-Men 3 movie did just that. They developed a portion of the MySpace site devoted to talking about the movie. They attracted a lot of people they already had good reason to believe would be interested. Those people told others. X-Men 3 garnered $122 million on opening weekend. ($400 million worldwide from May 26th to June 21st. Don’t you wish.)

No doubt that money wasn’t solely, or even primarily, the result of exposure and buzz on MySpace. But, as we all know, in marketing every little bit helps. And with the growth of MySpace and social networks in general, that little bit is getting a lot bigger very fast.

Something to think about while laundering that old Pat Benatar T-shirt.

Negative Word of Mouth, Geometric Disaster or Double Benefit

Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 at 9:21 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Word of mouth spreads more or less geometrically. Someone likes what you say or sell and they tell two people, who tell four, three of whom tell six, etc.

Notice, I didn’t say “four tell sixteen, etc” That’s because as the web of popularity spreads, not everyone is going to take the effort to spread the word. Worse, not everyone will be pleased with what you say or do.

Circumstances, misunderstanding, or a variety of other causes may have given some of those a reason to think you could use a little improvement. That can lead to negative word of mouth.

Just as positive buzz helps you by that amplification effect, negative word of mouth hurts you. And, unfortunately, people are often more vocal about what they don’t like, than enthusiastic about what they do.

There are several ways to deal with that inescapable fact, but one stands above the rest.

First and foremost, maintain open and honest communication. Try to avoid letting a customer complaint go by unanswered, especially if they’re being anywhere near reasonable. You won’t have time to address every possible expression of sour grapes, but any genuine beef should be jumped on at the earliest opportunity.

Those who already like you are valuable sources of future business. But, anyone who is annoyed for a legitimate reason counts double. First, you have an opportunity to squash the growth of negative word of mouth at the very beginning. Second, you have a chance to turn a loss into an asset.

Nothing creates allies like converting former detractors. Some of those will become your biggest boosters. That person will recognize that you cared enough about him or her as an individual to address his or her specific problem.

What’s one of your biggest beefs about the bank, the phone company or some other large business you contacted to resolve an issue? You wanted to be treated like a person. Instead, on that occasion, you got a customer service rep that was just following a rule book and treating you like an account number.

But another company you called dealt with you and your problem as if they genuinely cared about your specific, legitimate issue. Did you enthuse to your friends and get the company new business?

You don’t have to be Pollyanna to believe it’s a good idea to make that extra effort to resolve legitimate complaints. You just have to want that practical, positive double-whammy that comes from turning lemons into lemonade.

July Magazine Available Now

Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 7:37 am by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine

The July 2006 Affiliate Classroom Magazine is on article marketing, a skill you must develop if you want to get an edge in these days of rising PPC costs and constant search engine updates. Download now to get advice from expert writers and working marketers on:

Article marketing best practices: what works and what doesn’t.
How to develop hot article titles and content, even if you’re new to the game.
How to make PLR articles unique, with before and after examples.

Plus there’s an entire article that explains white hat “tag and ping” social bookmarking tactics in a nutshell. Click here to download the July 2006 Affiliate Classroom Magazine now!

Word of Mouth Mathematics

Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 5:43 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Don’t panic! There are no equations in this series of posts — only common sense ideas you can apply to boost your business.

First, a pop quiz. What’s the most effective form of marketing?

Time’s up. Wrong, close, and sort of. Well, some of you were right, I’m sure, because some must have thought “word of mouth”. (The title is a pretty big hint.)

People buy stuff they want in large part because someone they know and trust recommended it. You may not listen very much when your best friend touts a movie — tastes vary and you’ve been disappointed before. But lots of products or services are much less subjective than that.

And, in some cases, it isn’t even a question of quality. It may be simply information about a source for a good price, or availability, or rapid delivery. There are all sorts of reasons one product or merchant is preferred over another.

But before it can be preferred it has to be known. And knowledge comes — more so on the Internet than anywhere else in the modern world — from the high tech equivalent of low-tech: word of mouth.

Word of mouth can spread the literal, old-fashioned way — by words out of someone’s mouth. (Hence, the expression…) More often these days, it happens in the form of a viral email. Or, growing every day, it may be in the form of a blog post and the comments on it.

In short order, the most common form will be social or business networking, ala MySpace and others. (If it isn’t already. Current studies contradict one another.)

But whatever form it takes, it all comes down to the same simple idea: referrals in a good word of mouth campaign grow exponentially.

Remember the old fable about King Shiram of India. Pleased with his counselor’s advice, he granted a wish to double the amount of wheat on each square of a chessboard. One grain on the first, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, etc. This very quickly becomes an impossibly large number.

(For those who enjoy math, this set grows as 2^N where N is the number of squares. For an eight by eight chess board this is 2^64, more than 18 quintillion — 18 followed by 18 zeros, a number larger than the number of grains of sand in the universe.)

You may have heard that geometric progressions get very large, very fast. As the number of referrers in your network grow, the word spreads very fast. Even though there will be dead ends where the word doesn’t go any further, if there are enough ‘tentacles’ reaching out, the word still gets to a very healthy-sized crowd.

But, and it’s a big but, keep in mind that negative word of mouth can grow just as quickly. Often quicker, in fact, since people sometimes seem more inclined to express a complaint than to enthuse when they’re pleased.

Boosting Email Deliverability

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 7:55 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Popov and McDonald have done it again. Well, in this case Popov and Pollard. In their recent ClickZ column, the pair offer 10 excellent suggestions for increasing your email deliverablity probability. That’s a mouthful, but the ideas are simple. Here’s a sampling, with my comments:

1.Two-thirds of senders don’t ask to be added to the Safe Sender’s list or address book.

There’s an old rule in sales: you don’t ask, you don’t get. If you do ask, you may also not get, but if you don’t for sure you won’t.

2.Nearly two-thirds neglect to provide a link to the website version of the email content, or related content.

Emails, as list marketers know only too painfully well, often don’t arrive intact. Images can be blocked, special characters can be garbled, etc. Give yourself a second chance by providing the full, unblemished and smartly tailored message in a special area on the site. And on that same page, be sure to provide links to important content — like the product or service you want to sell.

3.Half don’t provide a feedback email address.

Email marketing is about selling, certainly. But it’s selling by establishing and then building a relationship. Give your readers an easy-to-use channel to tell you what they think. After all, you’re emailing them. You surely want them to be able to email you, as well.

4.Nearly one-fifth fail to use a compelling subject line.

A good subject line is often the difference between your email being a spam message and being a successful sale email. Use a line that encourages opens not deletes.

For more tips, see the full text of Popov and Pollard’s excellent column, here.

And, oh, by the way:
a) Please add this email address to your Safe Sender’s list: info@affiliateclassroom.com
b) Use that email address for any feedback, but better still leave comments on the blog at http://blog.affiliateclassroom.com/
c) Thanks for being a reader of Affiliate Classroom and the blog. We welcome your comments.

Affiliate Classroom at The Affiliate Summit…

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 1:15 pm by Anik Singal

Just got a note from Shawn Collins letting me know that a video of me had been put up on YouTube.com!

Basically Brook Schaaf from Shaff Consulting was coming around interviewing all the exhibitors and I got to be one of the lucky ones!

For your viewing pleasure:


Email Copy, The Short and The Long of It

Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 7:32 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

How long should a marketing email be? What style should it take? Should you say everything in the body or tease the reader with a few tantalizing tidbits, hoping they’ll click for more?

The answer to all these is: Don’t confuse the medium with the message. (Marshall McLuhan be damned.)

Length. There’s a similar long-standing debate in the motion picture business about how long a movie should be. The generally accepted answer is: as long as it’s good.

Email copy could profitably follow a similar principle. Keep the reader engaged, by offering them valuable information well conveyed, and you can write as much as you need. Or, to paraphrase a quote from Einstein: An email should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Just get the message across and get out. But make sure you do convey the message.

Style. Asked and answered. If you keep them interested you have the right style. If you don’t, you don’t. Think of article writers or novelists you like. Then ask: “How do they keep me reading?”

Tease or Full Monty? A very good question, and one to which the answer is probably: “Either or Both”, depending on your purpose.

Some emails are primarily to inform about a sale, an event, or a product. Others are intended more to establish, retain, or build a relationship. Tailor your message accordingly.

Writing email content is similar in many ways to writing good, albeit short, articles. Pick up some tips in our upcoming issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine. In the meantime, consider the old joke: New York Tourist: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”. Isaac Stern: “Practice.”

Left Arrow Previous Entries
Affiliate Program | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Earnings Disclaimer | Link To Us