Archive for November, 2006
Once in a Lifetime (Commission, That Is)
Posted by Matt Van Atta in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs Monday, 27 November 2006 16:59 1 Comment
Whether you are just getting your affiliate marketing business off the ground or you are an experienced pro, you are always seeking new sources of commission income. One type of commission seems almost too good to be true: the “lifetime commission.”
The term “lifetime commission” sounds a little like hitting the lottery. And it is a pretty sweet deal – merchants who offer lifetime commissions to affiliates take the necessary steps to “attach” you permanently to the customers you bring in.
In short, this means that customers who are assigned your affiliate ID and who purchase products from the merchant’s Web site generate commissions for you. And if those customers buy regularly from the merchant, you receive the credit each and every time. The result is an ongoing revenue stream, even if it’s only a trickle, known commonly as residual earnings.
How do merchants enable these lifetime commissions? As opposed to merchants who write cookies for affiliates that last a specific, short period of time – 30 to 90 days, usually, merchants offering lifetime commissions write longer-term cookies that can last two years or even longer.
In the event that a customer’s cookie crumbles due to his or her purchase of a new computer, the merchant generally uses more sophisticated affiliate tracking tools to ensure you get the proper credit for all sales that your customers generate.
This arrangement is definitely good for you as an affiliate. The average customer will usually look at a product several times over a period of time before buying, and this arrangement ensures that you will get the credit when that customer eventually buys.
It’s also good for the merchant who relies heavily on affiliates to get the word out about his or her product. The sweeter the merchant makes the pot for affiliates, the harder those affiliates will work on the merchant’s behalf.
There aren’t that many opportunities for lifetime commissions in affiliate marketing. However, a Google search on “lifetime commissions” will give you several tremendous sources for information on lifetime commissions and the merchants who offer them.
If you’re looking for a particular niche, or a particular program within your selected niche, it’s worth a few minutes of your time to conduct such a search and see what’s possible for you in this area.
Bear two things in mind about lifetime commissions, however. One is practical – the more revenue streams you can generate through your affiliate marketing efforts, whether they are short-term or long-term revenue streams, the more successful you will be as an affiliate marketer.
The other thing to remember about lifetime commissions applies to lifetimes in general as well: The only way for something to last is to cultivate it, putting forth the time and effort required to attract customers, drive them to the merchant’s site, and generate sales for the merchant. If it isn’t successful, it won’t last – period.
Giving Thanks for Affiliate Marketing
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices Wednesday, 22 November 2006 15:46 9 Comments
A little longer blog post than usual today…
We’re in a funny sort of business. From the inside, affiliate marketing is in its boom phase. Our industry is growing tall and wide and strong. An estimated 30% of shoppers will buy holiday gifts online, and some percentage will click through affiliate links. We’re not just flexing our muscles in the retail sector. We’re power-lifting.
Yet from the outside, affiliate marketing is a misunderstood child still. Amidst our cherished holiday memories are images of distant relatives casting us a suspicious glance and asking “What exactly is it you do for a living?” It’s as vivid as a YouTube vid. You: Keen, animated, sparkling with enthusiasm. Aunt Jane: Polite, wary, skeptical, bored. (Final cut: Auntie’s desperate dive into the punch bowl.)
The disconnect between the way insiders and outsiders perceive affiliate marketing won’t destroy your self worth or your bank account. But funny, it’s hard not to feel rattled when your nearest and dearest assume that you’re in a “fringe” business because they can’t grasp the concept of “cookies.”
So at this most wonderful time of the year, when I become aggressively grumpy at relatives, acquaintances, and all those outsiders who just don’t get it, I reach for the antidote: gratitude.
Instead of trying to explain to the uncomprehending what I do for a living, I tell them why I thank my lucky stars, every single day, for affiliate marketing.
1. I’m thankful that affiliate marketing allows me to work not only from home, but from the road, a bed, or a hospital. People like me, who battle chronic disease, know how painful (literally) it is to hold down a conventional job. So every morning I bless the affiliate marketing industry – it has transformed my life. I earn more, with less physical stress, than I could in a “non-fringe” job.
2. I’m grateful for the freedom to market what I want, to whom I want. You get to choose your industry, your niche, your market. You get to choose which products you want to sell, and which merchants to promote. You even get to change your mind without the threat of getting fired.
3. I’m thankful for the online world, where affiliate marketing was born and lives and thrives. The Internet is still the freest marketplace in the world. The little guy can build an empire without having to beg – and pay off – a dozen different bureaucrats to obtain permission to change the color of the sign above his store.
4. I’m grateful for the people who make me proud to be in the affiliate industry. People like my publisher, Anik Singal, who has devoted most of his career to professionalizing affiliate marketing. Through Affiliate Classroom, Anik is making our industry accessible to ordinary web-loving people like me. I’m also grateful for people like Shawn Collins, Linda Buquet, Jim Kukral, Rosalind Gardner… too many to list, but you all know them. In a world plagued with corrupt CEOs and corporate thieves, these people should be held up as business heroes and role models.
5. I’m thankful that I get to work with so many successful people who are so young. For a mid-lifer like me, these kids are a joy. They’re smart. They’re fast. They don’t care about corporate politics (what’s that?). They don’t need 13 meetings to make decisions. They believe in action. Thank you, thank you.
6. I’m grateful that affiliate marketing is gender, age, color, and limitation-blind. My 73-year-old mother, who retired from retail management a few years ago, is now an affiliate marketer. Sure it’s competitive, and for someone her age, it takes a lot of time and effort to get started. But you can do this if you really want to.
7. I’m thankful for the forward-thinking affiliate networks and management firms. Companies like PepperJam, PartnerCentric, ShareASale, and many others… again, you all know who they are. The people who run these companies believe affiliates should be managed with tact, intelligence, care, and humanity. May their influence increase.
8. I’m grateful for people like Ben Edelman, who works so hard to keep our industry clean of badware. Honest affiliates and networks owe you a debt. Dishonest affiliates and networks should fear you.
9. I’m thankful for the growth in the affiliate industry – and the growing pains. When your rankings tank or your keyword costs bloat, yes, it’s a bad day. But most of us would rather be Seabiscuit’s beat up jockey than a passenger in a small, slow, safe little donkey cart.
Since nine is a nice lucky number, I’ll stop. But I could go on with nine – or nine times nine – more reasons to be thankful for affiliate marketing. Gratitude reminds me that even when those loveable outsiders don’t get it, the people who read this blog understand. You know that affiliate marketing is not just a living. It’s a blessing.
So if you’re the sort who says grace before your Thanksgiving feast, don’t forget to thank your God for affiliate marketing and the people who make it work. And even if you’re not the praying type, take a moment to look inside – deep inside – our industry, and be grateful for how it enriches your life and our online economy.
SEO – Just as Important For Your Blog
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Blog Marketing, SEO Wednesday, 22 November 2006 01:58 1 Comment
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a buzzword that most people associate with websites. However, it’s just as important to optimize your blog!
There are some similarities between the two. But there are some particular things to keep in mind when you decide make your blog search engine friendly.
RSS
Using RSS is key to getting links back to your site from other blogmasters. To encourage link exchange, write good content that they will feel is relevant to their site. A blogmaster will not just link to your site because he or she wants to do you a favor. You have to write something that will benefit their readers.
Because RSS is such an important way to encourage linking, be sure your content’s URL’s are archived and easy to link to. Remember, these will be long-term links. Do not decide to revamp your site someday and rename all of your articles. You’ll lose all of the backlinks you have built up.
Keywords
When you create the categories for your blog, you need to really think about what information people are looking for. Keyword research for blogs is no different than for websites. However, many people just randomly name their categories based on what they are writing about at the time. That is a big mistake. Take a little time and do your keyword research.
Name your categories with popular keywords. That way, when you link your blog to Social Networking sites (like Technorati or del.icio.us), you will be visited more often because you are linked up by popular keywords.
Categories
One more thing about categories. Your navigation structure should be based on keywords, not year/date relevance. If you have a Blogger blog, you can’t do anything about this because they set up categories by month. If you use WordPress, you are in full control of how you name your categories, so take advantage of it.
If you have been doing any of the above things incorrectly, you might decide to take a little time to fix them. However, make sure you do not have a lot of backlinks to a particular page before you rename it. That would be throwing a lot of hard work out the door.
A little blog restructuring now could save you time and frustration in the future. It will help you build up your backlinks and make your blog a place that people come to often for the best information the blog world has to offer!
SEM and SEO, What’s The Difference?
Posted by Matt Van Atta in Affiliate Marketing, PPC, SEO Monday, 20 November 2006 19:36 6 Comments
An affiliate marketer’s best friend is the website; it’s the primary means for selling products or services. And if you want to increase your customer base, you need new traffic to it.
So, enhancing your website’s search engine ranking is critical. This is where the acronyms SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — two terms that tend to be mixed together in a sort of alphabet soup — come in.
A search on both terms will result in lists of websites for companies promising to increase the number of hits to your site – for a small fee, of course. One such website offered its services within the content of its title tag: “Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.”
Now, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, SEM and SEO may be confusing. Isn’t the idea behind SEM to optimize your presence on the Internet? Well, yes, and SEO is basically one component of SEM. However, here’s the difference between the two:
- SEM is the general use of marketing methods designed to make a website more visible to Google and other search engines. These methods include paid search methods, such as pay-per-click advertising, as well as SEO.
- SEO, however, is an organic search marketing method used to make a website rank higher.
It’s easy to think of “organic” as costing more money, especially if your only exposure to “organic” is in a boutique grocery. But “organic search” is simply what comes up when you search for a term on a search engine. SEO is a way to make sure your website gets its share of the “free advertising” that the search results can provide, without necessarily having to pay for it.
Now, PPC (pay-per-click) can get your product or service prominently mentioned, if you want to spend the money. Or, you can pursue another SEM method: the link exchange – sort of a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” arrangement with another affiliate that requires finding just the right partner.
However, it’s been proven time and time again that if you want to maximize profits from your affiliate marketing, SEO is the way. And the best part is that it’s something you can achieve yourself – without having to dig deep in your wallet!
You need a website and some basic knowledge of HTML – something you should have anyway, right? You also need an understanding of what keywords your customers, real and potential, use when searching online for the kinds of products and information you can provide. Make certain your website revolves around those keywords, and make sure your site works with the search engines.
Sure, it takes some homework to see which specific keywords are used more than others. But it’s part of attempting to understand what your customers need and want, which every good affiliate marketer does already. Without that understanding of your customers, it won’t matter how much you pay for PPC – you’ll have bigger problems than just getting your website noticed!
So, to increase your business as an affiliate marketer, consider other SEM options if you wish to see if they might work for you. But trust me, it’s worth your time to work on SEO.
