Affiliate Classroom Blog

What Color Is Your (SEO) Hat?

Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 1:12 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Get ready to pull off the saddle and take a break from your busy schedule. When you head out to the lake you’re going to want to take the August issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine with you.

Whether you favor Black Hat or White Hat, or something in between, find out how to keep your site safe and ranking high. We’ve got a full review of the latest techniques and show you how to keep your website from getting penalized and keeping it up on the SERPs.

We tell you the difference between White Hat and Black Hat, weighing the pros and cons of each.

Evelyn Grazini explains what Black Hat SEO is all about, and shows you how to keep from getting banned.

Brad Callen, a master of the subject, gives 5 Tips for SEO success. (And five from Brad is worth fifty from just about anyone else!)

And, as a special treat, read the highlights of the Affiliate Summit East, 2006. If you didn’t go, you’ll want to next time after finding out who was there and what they said. (Lots of links to video of the conference!)

So, hang up your spurs. You’ve got some readin’ ahead.

Permalink  1 Comment »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Should We Stop The Long Sales Letter Madness?

Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 2:05 am by Anik Singal

Over the last weeks I have been getting more and more tired of long sales copies. As a matter of fact, all the products that Affiliate Classroom sells are planned for a complete site re-do that involve no long sales copy.

Since I started online, I have seen nothing but long sales copies and so that is just what I started doing as well. Then, a few months back I sat down and thought about the things I buy and when I really read the sales letters…

I realized that I almost NEVER read the sales letter, as a matter of fact - it’s gotten so bad that when I want to find the price of what I’m buying I have to do a “CTRL + F” on my keyboard and SEARCH for the $ symbol.

But then that doesn’t work that great either! Why? Cuz of all those crazy “bonus value ‘oober goober’ stuff…”

I was so happy to see this posting by James D. Brausch titled “Long Copy Sucks And Other Heresies”

James makes mentions of various tests he did to prove that he is right - he even used the top selling products on Clickbank (the god of having products with long sales letters) - guess what he found?

The top selling products, a huge majority of them had SHORT sales letters!

I immediately went to check it out. I used the Money & Employment category first since it is also the most profitable category in the Clickbank marketplace. I went to each of the first 10 sites and did a “Print Preview” and shoved the page count into a spreadsheet. At the end, I graphed those 10 data points and then superimposed a linear line on the graph.

The original study data was confirmed. As we went down the list in order of receding profitability, we also increased in number of pages of sales copy on average.

I’m sorry big timer copywriters - I’m officially starting to move to the other side slowly

Permalink  5 Comments »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing

Use Your List To Increase Traffic

Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 3:03 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Even if you’ve only been in Internet Marketing for a short time, you’ve heard that it’s important to build an email list. It’s so important, that the Affiliate Classroom Step Program teaches you all about list building in Step 9.

However, with ISPs/ESPs now doing more spam blocking, some people have given up on list building. They are fearful or frustrated that their message is not going out, and that they are wasting their valuable time.

If you’re one of these people, stop being afraid and keep building! Email technology is getting better, and this problem is gradually being addressed. If you are building a list the reputable way, using a double opt-in system, you have a lot less to worry about.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do to up the odds of getting your messages delivered. At the same time, you can increase the traffic to your site.

Make sure to send your list a message at least once every two weeks so they remember who you are. They’ll be more likely to open your email. And, make it a short message. People tend to scan emails for material they are interested in, so give them very little to scan.

Write a short line of teaser copy or give a sentence or two of your content, and then make the reader click to your site to read the rest. At your site you will provide the full Monty: contextual advertising, affiliate links, etc.

When I go through my email, I quickly scan the messages. If it is a sales pitch, and I’m not in the buying mood, I will go on to the next message and look for something more interesting.

However, if there is a small bit of copy that intrigues me, I will click on the link and read the article. Also, if I’m just quickly scanning my emails for cleanup, I am more likely to flag these emails and go back to them when I have more time.

I’m not sure why, but I feel more comfortable and less hurried when I get to a web site. Maybe because it’s easier to read, or more colorful, or whatever.

Whatever the reason, I’m more likely to stay there longer, which means the person who sent the email has been successful in his or her mission.

I went to their web site – which means their traffic count just went up. I visited with the intention of reading the content, which means their “stickiness” rate went up.

If all goes well, I’ll buy something while I’m there, or click on an AdSense ad on my way out.

Either way, the list owner will get what they want, by giving me what I want. That’s called a win-win situation.

Permalink  1 Comment »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Banned By Google?

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 3:06 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Google “slap” at affiliates. I receive several Internet Marketing newsletters and all they can talk about are the new Google rules.

It’s all very scary to me because, even though I’ve been doing Internet Marketing for over five years, I still feel like a newbie when it comes to the search engines and how they rank pages.

I search for my URL and my name every now and then to see how many times I’m listed in the results. I mostly do this to see where my articles are ending up, and to make sure no one is stealing my web pages. (And, yes, I still get a kick out of seeing my name in print!)

I recently discovered a few easy ways to tell if a site has been penalized or banned by Google that I want to share with you.

(Note: YouTypedThis.com refers to the URL you typed in to do your search)

1. Do a search for your exact URL on Google. If you get the following response: “Sorry, no information is available for the URL YouTypedThis.com.”, then you’ve been penalized. This is Google’s kiss of death – it means you’ve been banned!
2. Another message you might see is “Find web pages that contain the term YouTypedThis.com.” This is a little better, you haven’t been dropped from the index, but your rank has probably been lowered.
3. This one: “If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking the following link: YouTypedThis.com” means that your site is not in the index, but it hasn’t been dropped or banned.

There is also a way to find out if you have suffered a duplicate content penalty. You will get an “omitted results” message when you search. To find out if this happened do the following:

Copy an exact and unique phrase from your page, without punctuation. Place quotes around it, and then insert it into a Google search box.

After you do the search, if your page doesn’t show in the results, check the bottom for a phrase similar to this “Repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

If your page shows up somewhere in the “omitted results,” then you’ve received a duplicate content penalty (which is still better than getting banned).

Hopefully you will not see any of the above, but at least now you are armed with the knowledge to fight back if you do.

Permalink  4 Comments »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Blogging for Fun and Profit

Saturday, August 19th, 2006 at 8:09 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Many people (including me) believe that blogging is one of the best ways to make money these days. And it may be true.

Blogging is often much more personal than other kinds of information on a website. You write a blog post like you are actually talking to a person; giving people real advice and information. These people become your “friends” and return to your blog over and over.

However, you can’t just stop at blogging. If you want to make money at it, you still need to treat it like a business. Here are a few things you might want to consider adding to your arsenal of blogging tools.

You should already know the basics, even if you’re just blogging for fun. Put Google AdSense ads on your sidebar. Also, include affiliate links inside your content, and randomly include an affiliate banner or two at the end of your posts.

The most important thing, and the one that is most overlooked, is to find other blogs that are similar to yours and leave comments. Most bloggers love it when people comment on their blog. It shows them that somebody is reading what they write and is interested in the subject.

When you make an informative comment, the blog owner, as well as the readers, may click through to your site and begin reading your blog. Don’t just post a sentence and then add your link. No one will click on it, and if the blog is moderated, it might just be deleted. By adding comments, your post also gets you an incoming link to your blog that helps you get search engine traffic.

This method may take some time to become profitable. People will continue reading your blog, they will send their friends, and you will get more people linking to you. Ultimately, that helps lead to good rankings.

The best case scenario is that the other blog owner will write articles that trackback to your blog, or reference you in one of his or her blog posts. That will help make a GREAT day of traffic for you, and — sooner or later — a profitable one too!

Permalink  3 Comments »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Creative Ideas for Niche Marketing

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 9:30 am by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

There seems to be an increase in the number of people selling “niche” information: How to find niches, how to profit from them, etc. They would have you believe that a niche is a secret thing that only they know about, but they will let you in on their little secret… for a small fee.

So, what really is a niche? In biology, it’s the separate ecological position of an organism within a community. Distinguishing itself and occupying the niche helps it survive better. In marketing, it’s pretty much the same thing.

Simply stated, a niche is a high-demand, low competition market. Once you’ve found one, you try to occupy it more or less alone. Otherwise “low competition” would quickly become “much competition.

But did you know that you could create a niche for just about any product or service? Here are a couple of tips on how to do that:

Offer a product or service with mass appeal to a micro market – The idea here is to dig for keywords and concepts that match a large potential population with a product they will badly want. Then, build your website like it was created just for them. Make it personal and intimate.

For example, you might offer a product for balding golfers. By doing this you narrow down the niche to a selected group, and your customer feels like he or she is getting the personal attention they deserve. Customers will think they have run across a site that was created especially for them, by someone who understands their exact problems.

Another way to attract a niche market is to create a buzz for your product using some sort of viral marketing report or a free giveaway. You may have seen the free giveaway type of marketing in jewelry promotions. All you have to do is give up your name, email and address and they will send you a beautiful diamond ring (worth at least $150!).

Along this same line, you could offer consumers a chance to enter a drawing for a $50 gift certificate, if they buy a certain amount of your product.

All you need for this type of promotion are some great headlines and a few catchy PPC ads. In your ad, make sure to tell people that they can pass this offer onto their friends and family.

You’ll soon have a buzz going that will spread itself around, and in a very short time, you will have a large subscriber list of people interested in a specific niche. Then you can sell other related items to the list.

It just doesn’t get any better than that!

Permalink  1 Comment »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Article Writing - How To Pick Your Topic

Saturday, August 12th, 2006 at 4:18 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

You put a lot of thought into deciding what niche to cover. Which you choose will help you pick an article topic. Choose a subject that has a lot of interest, and a targeted niche audience. It helps if it’s a subject you have some knowledge of and are passionate about.

Take a look at what you know and what you do for hobbies. Do you fix pinball machines or garden? Pinpoint at least three areas that you know something about and just start writing. Don’t worry too much at first if the articles aren’t great. You’ll improve.

Check out article distribution sites, such as ezine @rticles and see what others are writing about. You’ll find dozens of topics with hundreds of examples to follow.

Blog sites are also an excellent way to get new ideas.

Search Technorati or use Google’s blogsearch site for some interesting blogs. You’ll find an endless stream of ideas for things that you can elaborate on in your own articles.

Once you have decided on a niche, do a little more research to make sure there is competition in that market. If there is no one else marketing or writing about the same thing, chances are it is a proven loser. (But, hey maybe you have the next big thing!)

Search Google, Yahoo!, and MSN to find web sites that could be your competition before settling on your niche. Make a note of these sites for future reference. You may want to ask the owners if they would like to use your article in their ezine site.

Here’s a helpful free keyword tool from Good Keywords to find out how many searches are being performed on your keywords. WordTracker is also a good tool for researching. It costs a little bit, but if you’re doing research on a lot of keywords, it might be worth the price to get extra keyword ideas.

As you can see, it’s not that hard to find a subject to write about. Bookmark all the sites you find where you can get good ideas, and start writing!

Permalink  1 Comment »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Is the Squeeze Page Dying?

Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 9:53 pm by Ryan Hall, AC Forum Moderator

This is the first of several “Q & A” posts that I will be making. In each one, I take a question asked on the Affiliate Classroom’s Private Members Forum, and answer it here.

In my opinion people are getting tired of squeeze pages. I don’t give my email address anymore unless the site is owned by some big name, or it has shown me a glimpse of something so exciting that I would like to see or have, or there is a huge buzz on the net about a product.

Otherwise, I hit the back button. Again, a personal opinion, but if you want to sell something to me, you need to make it easier for me to get into your site. Remember, there is another marketer a URL away who would sell me the same thing without any hassle… A member.

I think this Affiliate Classroom member is right, to an extent.

The majority of people interested in the “Make Money Online” market do seem to be getting tired of squeeze pages. For those who may not know the term, a squeeze page is one placed only to get the name and email address of a visitor.

I, for one, avoid most such pages, (unless they are owned by someone I trust). I just read the HTML code and find out where I’d land after I gave my info. Then I go directly to the page.

However…

The “Make Money Online” market is really the only market that is aware of how squeeze pages are used, or even what a squeeze page is.

In fact, my average opt-in rate in a Non-”Make Money Online”?related market is about 70%. Compare that to the overall average for the “MMO” market, (3-4%) and you see the vast difference.

There are a few things still to be said however.

First, however tired of the squeeze page the market may be, you can still use it to achieve good results. As an example, whenever I promote one “MMO” related service in a certain way, I regularly get a 20%+ opt-in rate for the squeeze page.

Second, the reason that squeeze pages are becoming less popular, is that many new (and some not-so-new) marketers are using them improperly. They take your email because you are interested in a certain topic. But then they take that and promote EVERYTHING to you.

That turns people off.

And when they’ve had it happen to them three or four times, do you think they are likely to give out their information?

Third, there are other markets out there that are not saturated with squeeze pages, and that unscrupulous people have not begun to take advantage of. There are several other markets I am interested in online, and I still readily give my name and email to those markets. I know I won’t be spammed and taken advantage of there.

Yet.

Permalink  5 Comments »  Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Questions