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March 2007 Affiliate Classroom Magazine

Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 3:33 pm by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine

Optimized copy is the theme of the March 2007 issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine.
Cover Story
SEO With Real People in Mind: Writing for both potential buyers and search engine spiders.

Keyword Rich Copy, the Key to Riches: A step-by-step lesson on how to write keyworded copy.

Affiliate Pre-Sales Checklist: Writing how-tos covering PPC ads to product reviews.

Use the Copywriting Methods of the Pros: How to incorporate the secrets of million dollar copywriters.

Remember, you can also brand the magazine with your affiliate links and give it away on your site. AC pays monthly commission on two tiers, so it’s easy to generate recurring income with our program! Click here to sign up as an affiliate and get the branding kit:

Download the March 2007 Issue of AC Magazine now.

Smoother Sailing Through Better Navigation

Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 1:20 pm by Matt Van Atta

To continue with (and hopefully build on) the theme of my last post, regarding the importance of website navigation, here are some additional tips on how to build a website that allows visitors to sail through your site, and right into your cash register…

An affiliate marketing website ideally should have the following pages:

  • The home page;

  • Content pages, full of SEO keywords and pertaining to the products being promoted;

  • An opt-in form for collecting email addresses;

  • A site map page (more on that in a minute); and

  • Policies and disclaimers pages.


Allowing visitors to access these pages on the web is crucial. (Otherwise, why build them?) Ensuring that access is easy is what good navigation is all about. So how do you create good navigation?

First, consider what is “above the fold.” Above the fold is the part of a web page that a visitor can view in a browser without having to scroll down or to the right. It’s the “high-rent district” of your site, because that’s what the visitor will see first. Above the fold is the place for your most important links, whether the links go to viral content, or the opt-in form, or possibly the all-important merchant’s site.

In addition, most well-designed websites maintain navigational links neatly in a horizontal bar across the page; a sidebar, or column running along the side of the page’s main body of content (preferably the left-hand side in this case); or a combination. (The sidebar also contains other links to content that may not warrant a more prominent place on the site, but that are still important to visitors.) In all cases, the links are separated enough from the main body of text to be seen clearly.

Finally, the site map can be the item behind the glass you break in case of emergency. This page contains links to all the pages on your website, presented either in a single list or a more complex category breakdown. In lieu of a search function on your site, the site map is your last line of defense against the departure of a visitor from your site.

Obvious advantages exist to embedding links within specific content. But links to the most important pages on your site should always be in plain sight. A good navigation system on your site will guarantee that your visitor knows where he or she is going once they arrive.

And, who knows, it may help persuade them to purchase.

Getting Traffic From Blogs - Advanced Techniques

Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 12:13 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

It looks like the basic blog page has replaced the basic web page. This seems logical because a blog is much easier to set up than an entire web-site, and if you use WordPress almost everything is done for you - except the writing.

The reason I say “almost” is that you can’t just choose a template, start writing, and magically start increasing traffic. The good news is, that with just a few additional add-ons (called Plugins and Widgets) it can start to happen a lot faster.

Here are a few things to consider adding to your blog to increase your chances of success.

A MyBlogLog widget will help you keep track of who is visiting your blog, so you can go back to their blog and leave comments.

Always give excellent value in blog posts, and try to link to a resource (or two). People are more likely to bookmark your page when they need to know where to find a particular resource. Many people now bookmark on del.icio.us, which is a GREAT back link to acquire.

Speaking of del.icio.us, there is a plugin called del.icio.us-Bookmark this! This one allows you to add a “Bookmark this page on del.icio.us” link on your sidebar/ posts/ or wherever.

Another great plugin is “Sociable.” This allows you automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. There are a lot of sites to choose from (digg, furl, reddit, etc). You can add all of them, or just the ones you want displayed.

Always “ping” after you post to your blog, and be sure to ping Technorati (http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping).

You can add a ping address to Wordpress by going to “Options,” then “Writing Options.”

You can also ping a lot of sites without having to enter them into your WordPress template by going to www.pingoat.com. The reason you want to do this is because pinging a lot of sites from within WordPress can make saving your posts take a long time.

All of these things will help, but you must also do your part. Remain active in the blogging community by posting comments on other blogs, newsgroups, forums, etc. Write articles and submit them to Article Directories (like Ezine Articles and blog carnivals).

Find Widgets Here - The site for plugins is Codex.

Posting at least two times a week, with these additions will help you get your posts out to the world! It’s always nice to know that other people are reading what you’re taking the time to write.

Smooth Sailing Through Navigation

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 12:46 pm by Matt Van Atta

Your website is the epicenter of your affiliate marketing efforts. The navigation of your website can be critical to those efforts.

Navigation is usually associated with transportation. Sailing a ship or flying an airplane would be more difficult without understanding where you are, which way you are going, and how far you have traveled. And while road maps are still around, GPS systems in automobiles become more of a “necessity” every day.

Navigation is essential when traveling, but it is also important in web design. Navigation enables web travelers to move easily from page to page within a site.

Visitors can access any web page through typing in the URL, clicking on another site’s link, clicking on search results links, and many other means. They won’t necessarily come in through the front door – i.e. the home page – of your site.

Therefore, enabling visitors to access the entire website, no matter where they enter the site, can enhance their overall experience and make you look good.

Website navigation generally consists of a collection of links to various sections of the site. The links can appear horizontally across, or vertically in list format, or both. But in all cases, the links are easily located and accessible.

I’ve touched on search engine optimization and other strategies to drive traffic to your website. But driving traffic, in many ways, is easy. Convincing traffic to remain on the site, or to come back another day, is the hard part. If visitors can’t easily – possibly immediately – navigate around your site, they’ll be gone in a New York minute. And they likely won’t return.

To be fair, some web experts question the importance of navigation. They reason that web visitors prefer a hard-target search for specific content over just browsing a website. Such visitors, they argue, likely won’t click on an “About Us” or “Contact” page link from that content.

Admittedly, the argument makes sense. And if you know for certain that your target audience regularly exhibits that behavior, then you have nothing to worry about.

But if you’re still learning about your target audience, or if you want to ensure a pleasant experience for your visitors in getting around your website, you should pay attention to the site’s navigation. The lack of compelling content can make a visitor lose interest and leave a site, but so can the lack of navigation.

How a Secure Server Protects Your Profits

Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 2:34 pm by Matt Van Atta

I’ll bet that before the thought of doing affiliate marketing ever entered your mind, you were two things: a customer, and an online customer. (Yeah, I’m really going out on a limb here!)

And, whenever you purchased online, you probably confirmed that the website through which you were making the purchase used a secure server. You may have done so by making sure the website’s URL began with https://. Or, perhaps you looked for a lock icon at the bottom of the web browser. (With the new version of IE, Microsoft moved the icon to the top. That threw me for a loop!)

A secure server is a web server that incorporates special encryption. Applied through Secure Socket Layer technology (commonly known as SSL), such encryption protects the transmission of credit card and other sensitive information during the purchase process from the clutches of Internet thieves.

I won’t go into detail on how it works. But I will answer a fundamental question: Why should you care?

After all, you’re promoting somebody else’s product on your website. You’re directing web visitors to the merchant’s site to buy the product. The only information you request from the potential customer is an email address for your opt-in list. Why worry about a secure server?

First, while you may not need security for your website, you want the merchant’s site to have it. If the merchant cannot provide that level of web security for your customers, you suffer, too.

Second, as you continue to hone your affiliate marketing instincts, you’ll discover new ways to make money from your site. That’s what the power-affiliates do. One sure-fire way to do this is to offer your own product or service. Doing so allows you to collect 100% of the profit from sales, which is sweet.

Ah, but how do you conduct the transactions from those sales? That’s when a secure server comes in handy – along with an SSL digital certificate, a credit card processing service, and a few other things. But a secure server does more than facilitate secure transactions. It instills in your customers greater confidence in your ability to provide expert content and services. And building that trust should never grow old.

Selling one’s own products may not be for everyone. But regardless of the kind of affiliate marketing you do, a secure server is essential to the process, and to your profits.

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