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Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Big News – YouTube Now Offers Analytics

Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 12:30 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

I say this is big news because if you’re an affiliate marketer putting time into making YouTube videos, in the past you haven’t been able to tell if anyone was watching the videos, and/or how they found your video.  But now you can!

According to the YouTube blog, here’s what the new analytics tool is all about:

“Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.”

 

So now you’ll know if your affiliate marketing videos are being watched!  Be sure to check out, and use this new tool.  It’s always nice to know – who’s listening. . .

 

Affiliate Marketing: The Winners and the Losers

Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 12:55 am by Kathy Jackson

It is a proven and uncontested fact that 5% of all affiliate marketers make 90% of the sales. Nobody disputes that so the questions are: (1) What does that 5% know that you don’t know and (2) What can you do to level the playing field?

The answer to the first question is: What that golden 5% of affiliate marketers know that you don’t know are the tips, tricks and tactics that give them the edge over the competition. They know them and they apply them liberally.

  1. Successful affiliate marketers build their credibility by writing articles, submitting them to article banks and having them picked up and used by other website owners and ezine publishers. They get their name ‘out there’ so that they are recognized as an authority on a subject.
  2. Successful affiliate marketers know to focus their energy on one small segment of a niche market at a time. They aren’t ‘all over the map’ promoting products and services in dozens of niches simultaneously.
  3. The top affiliate marketers build a site to promote a product. The site is loaded with reviews, testimonials and articles that are all geared to pre-sell the product.
  4. That super successful 5% of affiliate marketers promote on every available front. They do not limit their advertising to any one outlet. They may use PPC but they also advertise in related ezines, they post to forums and blogs and they write and market articles that are related to the product.
  5. These golden boys (and girls) are very, very proficient at SEO. They do their homework and they use the very best keywords to their best advantage every single time.

The answer to the second question is that you can level the playing field by learning and then applying the same tips, tricks and tactics that the winning affiliate marketers use.

Yes, there are the winners and the losers in the affiliate marketing arena. You can be one of the big winners!

Affiliate Marketing and Rock ‘n Roll

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm by Kathy Jackson

“Nothing stays the same” and “There’s nothing new under the sun” sound like contradictory statements, don’t they? They are contradictory statements but both are true….and they are true about everything including affiliate marketing.

Look at that first statement, “Nothing stays the same”. It’s certainly a true statement about something as fundamental as music. How did we get from ‘parlor music’ to ‘rock ‘n roll’?

We got there because people’s expectations for the music that they listened to changed.

 

The bland parlor music of one generation just simply wasn’t going to cut it with the next generation…..so music changed because ‘nothing stays the same’.

And yet music didn’t really change because ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.

Rock ‘n roll is made up of exactly the same notes and the same musical scales as the parlor music of old. The same notes are flats and sharps in rock ‘n roll as the ones in parlor music. Rock ‘n roll uses progressions just like parlor music. Both kinds of music are written on identical staffs. So what really changed were the expectations about music.

The same thing is true of affiliate marketing.

Nothing stays the same in affiliate marketing.

Back in the old days (last generation) of Web-1, before the big technology crash, affiliate marketing was a one-way street.

Affiliate marketers put up advertisements and sold products without much regard for the customers that they were selling to. Mass marketing emails were sent out by affiliate marketers every day of the week to every email address that could be harvested. Affiliate marketing has changed because ‘nothing stays the same’.

There’s nothing new under the sun about affiliate marketing either. The basic principle is still to sell products and services to customers and receive a commission for doing it. Today affiliate marketing is much more interactive, and relationship building has taken on new importance, but affiliate marketing is still affiliate marketing.

As affiliate marketers in today’s world we have to remember that:

The expectations for affiliate marketing have changed but that the same basic principles of affiliate marketing still apply!

 

Affiliate Marketing: The Money is in the List!

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 1:36 pm by Kathy Jackson

Back in the dim and distant past, when Web 1 still roamed the earth, affiliate marketers didn’t need to build an opt-in mailing list. Really! It’s true! Affiliate marketers could buy mailing lists and they could just ‘harvest’ email addresses from anywhere they wanted.

They could send unlimited and unsolicited marketing emails to anybody and everybody without the recipient’s consent.

The problem was that these affiliate marketers of old filled up the inboxes of the ‘powers-that-be’ and those powers didn’t like it.

SPAM was a big problem for just us ordinary, everyday internet users but when it became a problem to the big guys, CAN SPAM was enacted by the Congress of the United States. Yes! Congress did act!

 

In the beginning there was much moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth but as it turned out CAN SPAM is actually a very good thing for legitimate affiliate marketers.

The emails that we send to the members of our opt-in lists aren’t buried in hundreds of unsolicited marketing and pornographic emails and the recipients of our marketing emails actually read them…and act on them!

Today, in the brave new world of Web 2.0, list building has become one of the primary concerns of affiliate marketers everywhere and in every niche. We’ve found out that when potential customers agree to receive marketing emails from us that they turn into paying customers much more often.

We’ve also learned that it is easier and certainly much more cost-effective to sell a second and third time to the same customer than it is to sell to a first time customer. CAN SPAM turned out to be a very good thing and legitimate affiliate marketers conscientiously build opt-in lists because they know that:

The Money is in the List!

March AC Magazine - It’s All About Writing Money Making Articles

Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

March08AC_Magazine

The Affiliate Classroom March issue gives you all the tips and tricks you’ll need to make money with Article Writing.   Here’s a breakdown of what’s inside:

Clever Ways to Find Topics and Write Perfect Money-Making Articles – to start it all out, Evelyn Grazini shows you how to get ideas for Articles, and most importantly, where the links in your resource box should lead.  Make sure you get this one right if you want to make money on your article well into the future!

In “The Basics Of Article Writing” Mark Thompson shows you how to properly structure your article and gives examples of the importance of your first paragraph(s).  He will also help you decide if it’s better to keep your article on your site, or give it away to article directories.

Finding The Right Domain Names For Your Affiliate Business - written by our guest keyword research expert, explains what you should consider before you make that final decision on your domain name.  She also introduces a cool new tool for finding your perfect domain name.

How To Submit To Article Directories Successfully – When you’re ready to submit your articles to the directories, Kathy Jackson will tell you what the major article directories are, why they are top-ranked, and why you should definitely include them in your article distribution cycle.

It’s all here and free for the taking at: www.affiliateclassroom.com/magazine.php

 

Affiliate Marketer Prince Charming Meets the 4 Dwarfs

Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 12:35 pm by Kathy Jackson

Once upon a time our hero, Affiliate Prince Charming, decided to open his very own affiliate marketing website on the internet. As Affiliate Prince Charming ventured into the land of internet marketing he met the 4 dwarfs all of whom worked in the diamond mine….er….affiliate marketing field. Each of the 4 dwarfs had a piece of advice for our hero. Some of this advice was good and some of it was a little questionable. Affiliate Prince Charming, however, is not only very good looking, he is also very intelligent so he will be able to tell which advice is good and which advice is bad. See if you can tell the good advice from the bad advice:

The first dwarf that Afiliate Prince Charming met was Dopey. Now Dopey was a cute little fellow and very young. He said to Prince Charming,

“Making money in affiliate marketing is so easy a ‘cave man can do it’. You can just work whenever you feel like it and you don’t need any kind of a plan.”

 

Affiliate Prince Charming didn’t believe Dopey, do you?

The second dwarf that Affiliate Prince Charming met was Grumpy. Grumpy was an older fellow that had been involved in the affiliate marketing field for a long time. He told Prince Charming,

“Build your list first and success will follow!”

 

Our hero decided that Grumpy knew what he was talking about. What do you think?

The third dwarf that Affiliate Prince Charming spoke to was Doc. Doc was very cerebral. He was a deep thinker and he was well educated, too. Doc told Prince Charming,

“Do your homework. Learn everything you can about a product and a merchant before you sign the affiliate marketing agreement.”

 

Prince Charming thought, “Doc knows what he is talking about.” Do you agree?

Finally, Affiliate Prince Charming met the fourth dwarf, Happy. Happy had a big smile on his face and he just oozed confidence and success. Happy told Prince Charming,

“If you love what you do, it isn’t work! You must be passionate and involved with the topic of your website to be really successful and really happy!”

 

Our hero heard these words and believed them. Do you believe that Happy was right?

You have probably met your own version of the four dwarfs. Learn to separate the good advice from the bad advice so that you can succeed as an affiliate marketer.  Be happy doing it and you will become an Affiliate Prince or Princess….charming or not.

Clever Trick For Scraped Content

Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Every now and then I go out to the web and search on one of the article titles that I have posted in my blogs, or some keywords from the content. 

Sometimes, what I find is very interesting, and not at all acceptable - It’s scraped content!

There are a few software programs (and individuals) out there that go out and scrape (copy entirely) a complete page of content from your site to theirs.  This is the biggest form of spam of them all – worse even than mass posting to blog or forum comment areas.

Currently, the most popular way to scrape content is by using other people’s RSS feeds.  The spammers just get ahold of a feed and copy away.

Unfortunately, this is the way of the Internet today.  And tracking down these spammers and trying to get them to stop may or may not lead to success - mostly it will probably be a waste of time.

 

So, what can you do?

Heres one simple and ingenious way to use this practice to your advantage (I learned it at the Affiliate Summit from one of the top marketers):

Put your Affiliate Links and Ads into your RSS Feed! 

Make sure to put links back to your site and maybe an ad or two in the first paragraph of your posts.  That way, if someone scrapes your content, at least their visitors will lead back to you.

And, they will likely stop using your content as soon as they discover what you’re doing.  The really don’t want to help anyone else! 

So, you’ve basically killed two birds with one stone.  You have a few more linkbacks to your site, and hopefully you’ve gotten rid of the scraper. 

I think it’s definitely worth a try.

The Secret of Affiliate Marketing Success

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 6:22 pm by Kathy Jackson

Ruth Stafford Peale is quoted as having said, “Find a need and fill it.” Of course, Mrs. Peale wasn’t talking about affiliate marketing when she made that statement. The internet wasn’t even a glimmer in Bill Gates’ eye at the time and the term ‘affiliate marketing’ hadn’t even been coined but “Find and need and fill it” should be the motto…the mantra… of every affiliate marketer because it is the secret of all affiliate marketing success.

There are some affiliate marketers out there who have just jumped, feet first, into affiliate marketing because they wanted to make money on the internet. They wanted to quit their day job and earn a living from the comfort of their own homes. You may not find a successful affiliate marketer in this group because they started at the wrong end of the equation.

Find a need + fill a need = Making money on the internet.

 

Making money in affiliate marketing is the result of finding a need and filling it.

People must actually buy the affiliate products and services that you are selling or you won’t be making any money on the internet. People buy products and services that fill a need.

Their need might be to feel better, look better, become more successful in their businesses, mend a broken relationship, learn to catch more fish, throw a better party, or any one of a million other things, and the products and services that you sell as an affiliate marketer must meet those needs.

The bottom line here is that in order to become a successful affiliate marketer and make money on the internet, you must first do your homework. You must FIRST find a need and THEN find products and services that can fill that need rather than finding a product and hoping to find a need that it might fill.

Successful affiliate marketing is not about you making money on the internet. Successful affiliate marketing is and always has been all about the customer.

Find a need and Fill it!

 

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