Admittedly, my last post on spam may have left you wondering, “Why should I care?”  Perhaps your only spam-related activity is regularly cleaning out your email’s spam folder.  And you may think of the CAN-SPAM Act, a 2003 law that made spamming illegal in the U.S., as your friend in that cleanup effort. Well, unless you plan never to utilize email in your promotional efforts, you should care.

Email is a powerful promotional tool that, if applied properly, will provide tremendous and ongoing benefit to your affiliate business.  All it takes is a little compliance and a little common sense.

Let’s talk first about opt-in lists.  A ready-made audience that wants to receive your messages…Sweet!  However, even with opt-in list mailings, you must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.  (The details of this law are available http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtml ) That means your email should identify you accurately in the “From�... Read More →

Every single method that is intended to help drive traffic to our affiliate marketing websites also seems to come with a built set of potential problems. And, of course, social bookmarking isn’t an exception. A few million words have been written on the advantages and the disadvantages of social bookmarking. However, social bookmarking has been around long enough now to readily see the more obvious advantages for our affiliate marketing websites. Here are four ways to use social bookmarking to give your website a boost. Content sources: All of the social bookmarking sites are well equipped with RSS, HTML or Flash. that you can easily grab and display on your web site -providing instant content. You can use these tools to have a continuously updated stream of links that relate to the products and services you sell. Implement tagging: You can get tagging plug-ins for all of the content management systems (CMS) or blogging systems. You tag your pages and your content, and then submit the pages to tag aggregators. Be sur... Read More →

 There is an old adage out there that says, “It takes money to make money”. The good news is that when you are an affiliate marketer, is that it doesn’t take near as MUCH money to make money. I’ve been thinking about the differences between starting a brick and mortar business and starting an online affiliate marketing business and financial differences as well as the time differences are just amazing!

Affiliate marketing WINS, hands down!

The first thing you need when you go into any kind of business is a place to conduct that business. Now out in the ‘real’ world that means a building….one that must be purchased, leased or rented. With an affiliate marketing online business all you need is a website and you don’t even HAVE to have that. Out in the big bad world, your building must have utilities like electricity and running water but the only utilities that are required with an affiliate marketing business (other than those that you already pay for at home) are a host and an autoresponder.

The difference in... Read More →

I'm a little confused. I just found out about the new course called Siite Stealer. With a name like that, I kind of expected to learn some secret black-hat stuff that I really would never use as a legitimate marketer. But since I'm the curious sort, I just had to have it! Well, there's really nothing shady or black hat in it at all. It's all stuff I can use.

I especially enjoyed the part where the book shows how some of the big marketing gurus copy each other's business models. I guess that makes sense - why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already done all the research and testing.

Some people think his Sopranos-style character (or should I say caricature) is a bit over the top, but his video will make you laugh (if you like politically incorrect humor). It's informational, entertaining, and 100% legitimate. Sal, the site stealer is going to teach you how to LEGALLY steal people's websites and make a smal... Read More →

Anik's little game seems to have backfired - I got tagged twice, first by Jay Berkowitz then by Rosalind Gardner. So, I guess one thing I learned at the Affilialte Summit is that when you meet people, they can make you work - LOL. I"m one step ahead though, because I already posted Affiliate Marketing Secrets Learned. However, in the spirit of the game, I'll give you some more information from a seminar I attended on Pay Per Click Marketing. Here are the most important things your web-site should include to make the most of your PPC marketing efforts:

1. 10-15 pages of unique content
2. Privacy Policy
3. About Us/Contact Page (Google actually looks for this now)
4. Site Map
5. Link to Resource Pages - Use web sites with "High Trust" (like .edu or .org.)
6. ... Read More →

Remember when we were little we loved playing "Tag, you're it!" - So that's exactly what I'm doing right now. I'm starting a tag game for affiliate bloggers officially today - July 18, 2007 (this is my sneaky attempt to become famous!). Here's how it works - I say 1 thing I learned at The Affiliate Summit then I tag 5 other lucky people and they have to reveal 1 thing they learned and tag 5 others! Here it goes: 1 Thing I Learned At Affiliate Summit Actually I learned a lot, but one of the moments that sticks out was a presentation by Chris Henger, VP of Affiliate Marketing at DoubleClick Performics during his presentation titled: Desirable Demographics In The Affiliate Channel... He revealed a very interesting study that they had a 3rd party company do when they took a good sized pool of their merchants and studied their traffic and the average order size it led to and the conversion rates. I don't remember the exact numbers (I lost my notes, but Shawn & Missy will release the videos soon anyways). But I do remember being blown away. --> The average order siz... Read More →

This month's AC magazine is all about using Pay-Per-Click advertising in your marketing efforts. In the first article, “PPC Essentials for Affiliate Marketers” Matt Van Atta explains the concept behind PPC, then gives you a brief overview of which areas to be careful of when spending your PPC dollars. He also adds the four essentials that should be included in every PPC Campaign - do you know what they are? “The Many Uses of PPC Marketing” by Kathy Jackson, will show you other areas where PPC can be used - it's not just for Advertising anymore. . In "How to Write Winning PPC Ads" Katalin Torok walks you through five-steps that will make sure you writie ads that get clicks, and that will lower your monthly advertising budget. You'll feel like a real copywriter after you discover these helpful pointers. Then, you'll be amazed to find out that AdWords has even more uses! You can use your AdWords campaign to do research in a variety of areas. It's all told in: “Google AdWords: The Ultimate Niche Resea... Read More →