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Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

The Simple First Website Goal

Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 12:14 pm by Kathy Jackson

Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting there!  And this is true even when planning a web site.

I know people who want a website, but have no idea of what their goal of having a website is. They buy every site building software that comes down the pike, they subscribe to this and that and after months they not only didn’t have a website, they still didn’t even have a clue what they would do with that website if they ever actually built one! 

So the first thing you should have before starting your first website is a goal. What do you want that website to do for you? The goal can and should be simple if it’s your first site. Here are some simple goals:

* My site will review products.

* My site will have content and Google AdSense advertisements.

* My site will give away viral marketing products and to build my list.

* My site will sell a product with a sales letter.

 

Can you state your website goal in one short sentence? If so, then you will know where you are going so you will have a pretty good chance of getting there.

Just remember that your goal, like the first website that you will build, needs to be simple and basic.

And, if this is your first website, make it a very simple affair. Don’t go for an elaborate thousand-page website right out of the starting gate. You don’t need to add complications like feedback forms, news feeds, floating pop-ups or any of the other multitude of options available. 

There is an old saying that says, ‘Success breeds success.’ Once you have successfully accomplished building your first website, then you can move on to the more complicated features with greater confidence. With a goal, both the site and your outcomes will stay focused.

 

PPC and Affiliate Marketing

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm by Gracie Browning

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is usually the starting point for any affiliate marketing online business. The search engines are where people all over the world turn to search for products and services, not to mention information that they want and need.

So, it just makes sense that affiliate marketers concentrate some of their advertising dollars to PPC in the beginning, and continue growing after getting established.

Pay Per Click advertising is actually very cost effective. The only time you pay for the advertisement is when a potential customer sees the advertisement, clicks on it and is taken to the website or to an affiliate product site. It doesn’t matter how many times your advertisements are SEEN… because ”impressions” do not incur a charge.

We are ONLY charged when our advertisement produces the RESULT of a visitor to our website, or to the merchant’s website.

 

As a matter of fact, after you get it right, PPC advertising can be the MOST cost efficient method of advertising ever devised.

Here’s why I say that.  If you advertise in a newspaper, you actually pay for the number of people who read the newspaper, and not for the people who actually SEE your advertisement (not to mention ACT on it!) The same thing is true of direct snail mail advertisements where you pay for the number of pieces mailed, even if nobody orders.

When you advertise on the radio or on television, you pay for people to SEE or HEAR your advertisement and, again, not to ACT on them.

Yes, it is true that the effectiveness of PPC advertisement can vary greatly.  Actually, that is true of all advertising services.  

At least with PPC, the potential customer DOES visit your place of business (website or merchant site) when he clicks on a PPC advertisement, and is actually exposed to the information you worked so hard to create.

 

Optimizing Opt-In

Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 12:51 pm by Kathy Jackson

Ask anybody who has been in the internet marketing game in any capacity for more than the last 15 minutes and they will tell you that the single most valuable asset that any internet business can possess is an opt-in list… and the bigger, the better.

You can’t list your opt-in list as an asset on your balance sheet - nobody can actually put a price tag on it, mostly because it is priceless.

Your opt-in list is the list of people who have willingly supplied you with their name and email address - and this is information that people do not part with lightly.

So you want your opt-in page to be as optimized as it can possibly be.

As affiliate marketers, we, maybe more than any other group of internet marketers, are well aware of the value of our opt-in lists. We know that making it easy and as enticing as possible to sign up is to our best advantage.

There is one very important thing that you want to do that will better optimize your opt-in process, and that is to insure that your customer needs to click only ONE TIME.

Instead of having your customer taken to your ‘thank-you-page’ and then having to click yet another link to go to your affiliate link, make your ‘thank-you-page’ your affiliate link. Just as soon as they opt-in, they are taken directly to your affiliate link page.

Of course, in order to accomplish this task, you must first ask the merchant for a link that bypasses the opt-in link. Most merchants will do this when they are asked to. It’s actually a very common practice now.

It’s a win-win for everyone. The customer gets one less click; the affiliate gets the information they need; and both the merchant and the affiliate get one more customer.

For more on optimizing your thank you page, grab the August issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine.

Attend Affiliate Summit East via Video

Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 4:32 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

If you missed out on the Affiliate Summit in Miami in July, it’s not too late to learn something from all the hard work that went into the event.

For the very first time, the videos from sessions are available to everyone (not just the people who attended).

There were a wide variety of topics covered - I was initially disappointed that I couldn’t attend all of the sessions, but at least now I still can get the information from the comfort of my computer (although, I wouldn’t give up attending the session for anything - the networking opportunities at the live event just can’t be beat!)

The videos may or may not be offered after future Summits, so take advantage of this opportunity and learn about blogging, Web 2.0, Analytics, Social Communities, Contextual ADs, PPC, SEO, and all those other subjects you hear top marketers frequently discuss.

 

Get the Affiliate Summit 2007 East videos today - In my opinion, it’s the best free information you’ll ever get!
 

August Affiliate Classroom Magazine - Forgotten Traffic Tactics

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 2:26 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Affiliate Marketing Traffic TacticsWe have just released the August issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine – and it’s all about getting Traffic  - in ways other than online advertising and SEO.

Fist, Mark Thompson’s “Offline Advertising – The Forgotten Goldmine” explores many different areas of offline advertising, including how to set up your offline campaign; and getting print, radio or television advertising for far less than others are paying.

Kathy Jackson’s next with “Does Ezine Advertising Still Work?” You’ll soon learn that it does and what it takes to make it in today’s “New-Style” ezine advertising arena.

There’s also a special note on which STYLE of ezine will not only get you more visitors, but more importantly, more sales!

 

You’ve heard about the Goodby Page, or have you? Well, Debra Rabin explains how to “Say Hello to the Goodbye Page,” and capitalize on impulse buying instincts as your visitors leave your site. You’ll find that this works excellently, and takes only a few moments to incorporate into your current process.

Then, Gracie Browning gives you one more idea in: “Forgotten Traffic Tactic: Classified Ads.” You can put your ad into one of the world’s most popular websites sites for free. The site gets over 5 billion page views per month and ranks #34 among the most-visited websites in the world. Why aren’t you there already?

Find the answers in the August Affiliate Classroom Magazine. It’s full of great information, and amazingly, is still free!  It’s a PDF publication, and you don’t need to enter an email address to download it. Get Yours Today!

 

Write a Marketable Article

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 12:57 pm by Gracie Browning

 
You can’t spend over five minutes on the internet without seeing an article about something on some website. And if you are looking for specific information about anything you can dream up, you will find a mind-boggling number dedicated to every subject imaginable.

Many of the articles that you see on the internet are articles that webmasters have downloaded from article directories. The same is true for the articles that are in those newsletters that so many people enjoy.

Marketers, including affiliate marketers, have found that by writing and submitting articles to article banks for others to download and reproduce, they have a lucrative and FREE avenue of advertisement for their websites and their products.

Now, not all articles are marketable. You can certainly submit them to article banks but they aren’t likely to be downloaded and reproduced (with your resource box which contains a link to your website or to your affiliate product) unless they meet certain criteria.

 

Truly marketable articles are:

    1. 300-500 words long. Seven hundred words is the absolute maximum and you are better off with fewer.
    2. Have a compelling headline that contains the main key word of the subject matter.
    3. Contain the main key word at least once in the first sentence and at least twice in the first paragraph.
    4. Contain true, accurate and timely information that is relevant to the subject.
    5. Have all words spelled correctly and have correct grammatical usage throughout.

    And, of course, you want the resource box at the end of the article to contain your name, contact information and a link to your website or your affiliate product.

    It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? It isn’t! It takes practice and experience to write articles that webmasters and ezine publishers will download and use so that you get the FREE advertising.

    The idea, however, is to keep working on writing marketable articles until you get the hang of it. Article writing and marketing is one of the keys to success in the world of Internet Marketing.  If you do it right the first time, you will enjoy profits for years to come.

     

First There Was SEO - Then Along Came a Spider

Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 11:54 pm by Kathy Jackson

“Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly” is a line from a nursery rhyme that we have all heard from the time we were knee high to a grasshopper.  And that was almost before anyone knew about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Those nursery rhymes and stories taught us to avoid trouble and “trouble” was often personified in the shape of a spider. (“Along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away.”) We all want to avoid those ugly creatures as often as possible but the search engine spiders are ones that we WANT to attract. They aren’t ugly. They get our websites INDEXED!

So, yes, we want to attract the search engine spiders to our websites. The question is how to do that. What does one use for spider bait?

Changing Content: Changing Content is terrific spider bait. Search engine spiders take note when content changes on a website and they are drawn to the site. So change your content and do it often.

META tags: The description tags that you put into your headers and graphics aren’t seen by your website visitors, but they are duly noted by the search engine spiders. Don’t overlook these tags. There are very good spider bait.

Site Popularity: The number of visitors to your website is noted by the search engine spiders. You want to do everything you possibly can to attract visitors to your website including writing and marketing articles and posting to blogs and forums.

Search engine spiders count visitors…not sales.

 

Keywords: Your use of keywords on your website is natural spider bait. Your main keyword needs to be in your heading once, in the first sentence of the first paragraph once and at least twice in the first paragraph.

Of course, there are some black hat SEO tactics, and we recommend that you don’t use those. They will attract the spiders and a lot of trouble as well.

Stick to white hat spider attracting tactics like those listed above and you won’t be killed by the Black Widow! 

 

PPC: Revolutionary Advertising

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm by Gracie Browning

Advertising has always been a kind of ‘hit or miss’ proposition when you think about it. Advertising has also been less than efficient.

PPC advertising (if you do your homework) is not ever ‘hit or miss’ and it can be as efficient as you want it to be (if you do your homework).

Before PPC advertising, came on the scene back in 1998, advertising was all done much like throwing a bucket of paint at a wall and hoping that something stuck. It was put out there for everybody to see or hear in the hope that people who read or heard the advertising would, in fact, buy the product or service that was being advertised. Most advertising is still done that way and you see it every day.

  1. The billboards that you see when you drive are there for all who pass them to see.
  2. The advertisements on television are broadcast to ALL viewers.
  3. The advertisements on radio are, too.
  4. The advertisements in newspapers are printed in all of the newspapers and not just in the ones that might be read by potential customers.
  5. Circulars are sent to every mailing address in a zip code.

The very worst thing about typical advertising is that that the advertiser pays for the advertising whether it is effective or not. For example: if you place an advertisement in a newspaper, you will PAY for that advertising even if you don’t get one single customer.

 

PPC advertising is nothing at all like your typical “throw-a-bucket-of-paint-at-a-wall-and-hope-something-sticks” advertising. With PPC advertising (if you do your homework), you get to choose WHO will see your advertisement and WHEN they will see your advertisement.

The most beautiful part of PPC advertising is that you ONLY pay when and if your advertisement actually sends a potential customer to your place of business (website).

 

Now THAT is bargain advertising when you only pay for results!

PPC Advertising vs. Markmanship?

Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm by Kathy Jackson

 I’m a big fan of marksmanship competitions. Now, I am not talking about people shooting guns at other people or at innocent animals. I’m talking about people shooting at targets and seeing who gets the closest to the bulls-eye the most often at both stationary and moving targets.

You’d be surprised how much fun these competitions are if you haven’t ever been to one. There are categories for both sexes and all ages……much like affiliate marketing. There are categories for all people and everybody can take their shot.   

I was at one of these marksmanship competitions not long ago and it occurred to me that marksmanship competitions and PPC advertising have at least a couple of things in common. There may be more but I can think of two commonalities right off the top of my head:

In both marksmanship competition and PPC advertising the idea is to hit as close to dead center as possible. Hitting the bulls-eye in competitive marksmanship competitions means that you are a good shot…..a marksman, and hitting the target market dead-center in PPC advertising means that you are reaching your customer base and probably making money without wasting advertising dollars.

 

And, they both rely on single shot rather than scatter shot ammunition. Exactly! In competitive marksmanship competitions single shot ammunition is always used. The idea is to hit the target with one shot and not spray the area with bird shot or scatter shot and hope that something hits the bulls-eye.    

There are, of course, a few significant differences between competitive marksmanship competitions and PPC advertising. For one thing in competitive marksmanship competitions there isn’t any doubt about where exactly the bulls-eye is but with PPC advertising, you usually have to do some serious research to determine dead-center.

Still the idea in both is to hit the target whether it is moving or stationary and to hit it as close to center as you possibly can with one shot.  

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