Archive for June, 2007
List Building Requires Solid Relationships
Posted by Gracie Browning in Affiliate Marketing, E-mail Marketing Thursday, 28 June 2007 13:54 3 Comments
Henry Winkler once said, “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
That saying is not only true in our real-world relationships, it’s true in our online relationships….especially our online relationships with members of our opt-in lists.
Of course, first you have to HAVE an opt-in list before you can begin to build a solid, termite-free relationship.
The ways to build an opt-in list are many and varied but the most tried and true methods are:
- Offering an opt-in incentive that has real value (example: an eBook, report or software)..
- Being an active poster of online blogs and forum communities that relate to the products and/or services in your niche.
- Writing thoughtful and informational articles and ebooks about your niche topic and submitting them to article banks and eBook repositories.
Even after you have done these things, it is still not time to start trying to sell products or services to your opt-in list….not yet.
BEFORE you sell, you must build a trusting relationship with each and every opt-in list member. And trust building takes time as well as patience.
You should send between ten and fifteen INFORMATIVE emails to each opt-in list member before you try to sell anything. Think of it as termite prevention.
You will build a solid relationship and the members of your list will trust you. That way when you do begin recommending products and services to them, they will be much more likely to buy them.
In order to maintain this solid relationship that you spent so much time building, you must be very, very careful to always recommend only high quality products and services that are beneficial to the members of your opt-in list.
To sum it all up, there are three main steps you need to do to build your solid, termite-free opt-in list:
- Start building the list
- Establish a relationship before you sell.
- Maintain the relationship by only recommending high-quality products.
Affiliate Classroom Opens New Doors
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Events and Products, Affiliate Marketing Monday, 25 June 2007 11:59 2 Comments
It’s been over 2 years!
I’m not sure if you were around in this industry back then (2 years in internet talk is like decades!). But, I still remember back in January 2005 when Affiliate Classroom, led by Anik Singal launched their first training center!
It swept the industry by storm, the biggest break-through was their “Step By Step” training program that is a web-based software that actually gives you small step by step instructions AND tracks your progress (on as many websits as you want).
Affiliate Classroom celebrated it’s two year anniversary a few months ago, and is now industry-wide recognized as a premium affiliate training center.
AVERAGE STUDENT SAW 11-40% INCREASE…
Talk about results, actually over 50% of the students reported seeing an increase in their business of over 23% after going through the information in the classroom!
From newbie to expert marketers…
As if it was not enough, Affiliate Classroom just announced a completely new training center! They took the last 2 years of experience and have revamped their entire training.
- - Made the step by step EVEN simpler
- - Added free tools - a Keyword research tool is one of them!
- - New interviews, case studies & more!
The best part is the SUPPORT that Affiliate Classroom has come to provide it’s students. It’s absolutely un-heard of.
They now have a team of over 10 people dedicated JUST to helping their AC students build their business.
DON’T DRINK COFFEE TODAY…
As if all this was not enough, Affiliate Classroom doesn’t charge you a crazy fee to use their training and participate in their 24/7 community – all Affiliate Classroom asks for you to get started is $1.
So, today, skip your coffee or soda and invest in the training that over the last 2 years has helped their students increase their business by 11-40%!
If nothing else, just go read the types of results they’ve produced (this really proves that ANYONE CAN make money online – just with the right training)!
Clickbank Launches Recurring Billing!
Posted by Anik Singal in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs Wednesday, 20 June 2007 10:40 3 Comments
Last night I was just randomly logging in to check my affiliate stats (ok, I confess, I do it about every 1 hour, giggle and then log-off). But, yesterday, my giggle was stopped DEAD IN IT’S TRACKS!
Actually, I almost damn near fell out of my chair when I read that my old dinosaur friend, ClickBank was FINALLY listening to their customers and releasing a feature I think they should have released AGES ago (at least 3 years ago when I wanted it).
See, the biggest appeal behind ClickBank has always been that you can easily (instantly) start promoting products as an affiliate and get paid ON THE DOT every 2 weeks. Also, as an advertiser, you can launch a product fairly quickly and have access to a huge pool of affiliates. In today’s age, it’s hard to find a serious affiliate who does not already have a Clickbank ID.
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Their used to be a couple of main problems.
#1 – They didn’t accept Paypal (they were forced to correct this with the launch of PayDotCom.com – thanks to Mike Filsaime).
#2 – As an advertiser, you could only sell a “onzie” product – that meant I couldn’t generate a recurring income!
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Well as of yesterday, Clickbank released their recurring billing so now both the advertiser and publisher can each make a recurring income. Here’s a few things ClickBank is priding themselves on regarding the recurring billing system:
1. No Monthly Fees (Just the transaction Fees)
2. No Integration Needed – No Software/Scripts To Install
3. Reduced Authorization Declines – If you do any recurring billing, you know what a pain “failed payments” can be – well, ClickBank says they have a system to help decrease that (read more about it here…)
4. Full Subscriptions Reporting
You can grab the full details here…
My hats off to you ClickBank, I think this is going to be a huge hit in 2007 – but you really should have done this earlier!
For More Information:
Making PLR Material Your Own
Posted by Gracie Browning in Affiliate Marketing, Content Creation Tuesday, 19 June 2007 13:52 7 Comments
The three most important things in the real estate market (according to the real estate gurus) are location, location and location.
According to internet marketing gurus, the three most important things for a profitable website are content, content and content. But new content doesn’t grow on trees.
If you have more than one web site, finding the time to write your own content is nearly impossible - even for a full time internet marketer. Still, we know we need content, lots of it, and on a very regular basis.
So, the question is, how do we come up with content that is new, original and doesn’t cost us an arm and leg or take hours of our valuable time? The answer is PLR material.
The biggest problem is that not all PLR material is created equal. You should always choose the PLR content you will use carefully.
Good PLR content will include a lot of facts, as well as be grammatically correct (written in good English). If it doesn’t meet those two criteria, you need to keep looking. Once you find good PLR content, though, the rest is really a piece of cake.
Customize PLR to Avoid Duplication
The first, and most important thing to do is to change the title. This isn’t really optional because it’s the first thing your visitors will see, as well as the Search Engines. No one will read something they have seen a million times before, and you could get a duplicate content penalty from Google!
It has been said that the Search Engines look more thoroughly at the first three paragraphs, so make sure those are completely different. Also make sure the last paragraph is substantially revised.
Many people just write, and forget all about their Keywords. After you’ve finished re-writing the content, make sure your main keyword is in the title, as well as in the first sentence, and at least twice in the first paragraph.
This may all sound a little complicated, but this kind of rewriting takes only a fraction of the time that writing new material takes and it is far less expensive than hiring a ghost writer to write for you.
Find good PLR materials and then rewrite them sufficiently to make them your own and you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to keep up with adding content to your web sites.
Spam: Out to Lunch
Posted by Matt Van Atta in Affiliate Marketing Thursday, 14 June 2007 11:59 2 Comments
Perhaps you’ve just cleaned out spam from your email (again). Messages promising a certain type of enlargement, or requesting help with stashing cash from a foreign prince, or other such things can drive us crazy.
Given that, it’s hard to believe that “spam” meant something else to people before computers came along. It’s also unimaginable – at least to me – that some people like the taste of spam.
A few generations ago, spam referred simply to canned luncheon meat. It’s been produced since the 1930s by Hormel Foods. SPAM the food (Hormel insists on making “SPAM” all caps) consists of chopped, spiced pork shoulder and ham. It is perhaps the quintessential “mystery meat.”
Today, in our computer-driven world, most of us think of spam as the devil’s work. (I’m not talking about deviled ham, either.) SPAM refers to any commercial communications sent to recipients in mass quantities that are unsolicited and usually unwanted.
How did spam evolve – or perhaps, mutate – into its contemporary meaning? The most common explanation involves a famous Monty Python skit. The skit takes place in a café in which spam is served quite generously with every entrée. A group of Vikings in the skit drive the point home even more by singing ad nauseam about spam. Twice they are asked to stop because their singing drowns out the dialogue nearby….the same way electronic spam can “drown out” our daily activity.
Other explanations also exist. Some of them contend that spam is merely an acronym with a particular meaning. Those meanings range from “Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages” to (my favorite) “S— Posing as Mail.” But the Monty Python explanation is closest to the truth. Not the luncheon meat itself, but the word’s overuse and ability to interrupt normal discourse, solidified “spam” as a nasty word in the electronic lexicon.
Spam is most popularly associated with email, of course. But it also applies to postings in forums, blogs, chat rooms, and other electronic venues. It also applies to search engines. “Spamdexing” is the intentional altering of web pages through underhanded SEO techniques to boost the pages’ rankings in the search engines, artificially and unfairly.
The tip to affiliate marketers is obvious; don’t spam. However, it’s not easy to avoid the accusation of spamming, particularly given that individual definitions of spam vary greatly. My next post will cover this topic and the best practices you can implement to send email without ruining the recipient’s appetite.
