Archive for February, 2009
10 Tips for Being a Good E-Mail Affiliate
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, E-mail Marketing Wednesday, 18 February 2009 09:57 5 Comments
One of the mainstays of affiliate marketing is the e-mail marketer. A person or company who owns an e-mail list and knows how to use it can make a great living as an affiliate. In the world of affiliate advertising, an e-mailer is very close to the top of the food chain.
E-mailers have their pick of offers, and most merchants and networks have plenty of e-mail offers available. The popularity of e-mail marketing stems from one main fact – when e-mailers work they make money not only for themselves, but for the advertiser they are representing because they can reach consumers quickly and efficiently through their e-mail lists!
Must-Have Qualifications
The criteria merchants use when evaluating potential publishers is quite rigorous. Many are selected because they have met certain standards for success. Often e-mail affiliates need to show a track record that shows they’ve worked on several other offers successfully, are CAN-SPAM compliant and will scrub their lists against suppression files religiously. These things are non-negotiable.
Here are several valuable tips for e-mail marketers starting out or seeking success in the affiliate marketing world:
#1 - Know your list! Lists segmented by demographic data are worth more money to merchants!
#2 – Develop good relationships with major email service providers. Listen to their advice.
#3 – Get white listed. Yes it’s hard to do, but it can improve deliverability by 25%.
#4 - Quality control is your biggest job. Typos, errors and under performing creatives just increase your un-sub rate, so proofread before your offers go out.
#5 – Don’t over-mail your list and be selective about the offers you choose to send into the homes of your customers. This extends the life of your list.
#6 – Abide by CAN-SPAM. Download suppression lists regularly, keep an in-house “do not mail” list and check that un-subscribe links work before sending offers.
#7 - Test offers. Experiment with new creative and subject lines, measure every response so that you’ll know a winner when you see one.
#8 – To develop your list, remember that opt-in is good, but double opt-in is better.
#9 - Continuously upgrade, add to and grow your email list. Think of your list as a living thing. Your list grows better when you tend it, and dies when ignored.
#10 - You can never have too much new creative material. Deliverability and consumer response metrics are positively correlated to an ongoing stream of fresh creatives.
Finally, remember that successful e-mail affiliates are not sitting back, playing video games and eating bon-bons; they are working hard every day. Merchants and network operators acknowledge that affiliates are the independent sales force they rely on to drive sales.
So our last advice to email marketers is this: go where you are wanted and well treated.
Work with merchants who view you and your list as partners in profitability. This is something that you should never forget.
Five Ways to Harness The Power of PPC
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Events and Products, Affiliate Marketing, PPC Monday, 16 February 2009 11:27 3 Comments
NOTE: PPC Classroom will be re-opening February 24! Get on the waiting list at PPCClassroom.com.
Around 1995, business on the Internet became a hope and interest for many. That was just 14 short years ago, and today, Internet businesses are booming.
The concept behind pay-per-click marketing is pretty straightforward. You select keywords, write your ad, bid on the keywords, and pay for the number of clicks that you receive, with the amount owed based on what you bid and the number of clicks that were received.
The more you bid, the higher your ad is placed on the web page. There are many ways you can use PPC to your advantage.
Here is a look at the top five:
#1 – Using PPC for Direct Sales of Products
Selling a product with PPC is really quite easy. As always, the first objective is to ensure that you bid enough on your selected keywords to ensure that your ad is placed high enough to be seen – preferably on the first page of the search results for your keywords. You select keywords directly related to how people search for your product.#2 – Using PPC to Build an Opt-In List
Since you will be paying for the clicks, you definitely want to build an opt-in list, regardless of what the bigger purpose of running the ad is. Otherwise you will be wasting a great deal money paying for one-time traffic.If you can persuade a certain portion of that traffic to give you their email address, in effect you get more mileage for your PPC dollar. In fact, some people run PPC ad campaigns for the sole purpose of building an opt-in list.
#3 – Using PPC as a Lead Generator
Many people confuse lead generation with building an opt-in list. They are not quite the same thing, although they are similar. When you collect opt-ins, it’s inevitable that you will end up with some freebie seekers on your list — and these are not necessarily leads.To generate true leads, you will need to select different variations of your keywords and write your ad in a way that pre-qualifies searchers as true leads. You aren’t just looking for people who are interested. You are looking for people who fall somewhere between “interested” and “ready to buy.”
#4 – Using PPC as a Viral Generator
Viral marketing is a big deal on the Internet. What you must remember is that the Internet has no borders – no limits. It reaches far and wide, and it is impossible to reach your entire market all by yourself. You need help, and this is where viral marketing comes in.PPC ads can send searchers to your branded viral marketing collateral, which can take many forms. The simplest viral tool can be a free PDF report that includes affiliate links or links to your money site. But you can also give searchers access to an online report populated with affiliate links, a free branded software download, or even a quiz or poll that inculdes a “tell-a-friend” script.
#5 – Using PPC with Landing Pages
Landing pages are great for really targeting your audience. You can have various landing pages for different products, but with the use of PPC, you can also create dynamic landing pages, with different sales copy, based on the ad that was clicked on.
The above are just five ways marketers can harness the power of PPC. PPC continues to grow and so do the possibilities for PPC and affiliate marketers.
If you understand the PPC concepts that level the playing field, even the “little guy” can compete with big corporations who have the deep pockets to pay for placement on the most trafficked keywords.
You just need to be sure that you have a firm grasp on what the purpose of your PPC campaign is. That allows you to write effective ads that target the people who will bring in the revenue, as well as determine a workable budget.
Most failure with PPC does not come from not choosing the right keywords. The fastest way to fail with PPC is to not know and convey your purpose in the ad, regardless of whether or not you are in the top position on the page. It’s not just in what you say and where you say it – it’s in how you say it and in how it is understood that counts.
The Week’s Top Affiliate Marketing News Stories (February 13, 2009)
Posted by Tennyson_Rog in Affiliate Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing, Weekly eNewsletter Friday, 13 February 2009 11:47 5 Comments
Privacy Advocates: FTC’s BT Guidelines Not Sufficient
The FTC’s new guidelines for behavioral advertising, or serving ads to people based on tracking their Web activities over time, state that companies should provide “clear, concise, consumer-friendly, and prominent” notice of the practice and allow consumers to opt out.
In-Text Ads Growing Nicely
Online advertising growth may be slowing overall, but in-text ads, those double underlined keywords found inside texts that are often mistaken for normal hyperlinks, are picking up in popularity, Fortune reports.
Baby Boomers are More Likely to Consume Than Create Online Social Content
The largest generational segment tracked by Forrester Research Inc., the 100 million-strong Baby Boomer group, is more inclined to consume than create online social content. Marketers looking to reach Boomer customers should deploy social technologies accordingly, says a new report from Forrester.
FTC Targets Weight-Loss Marketers’ Allegedly Bogus ‘Free’ Sample Offers
With the increase in Internet marketing, the FTC staff has issued a report providing guidance for marketers to help them avoid deception in making online “negative option” offers. (With negative option marketing, a company takes a consumer’s silence or failure to cancel as acceptance of the offer and permission to bill them.)
Twitter to Begin Charging Brands for Commercial Use
Twitter’s co-founder said it could create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.
Bad Economy is Great for Online Dating Affiliates
Online dating sites boom in recent months and experts suspect they have the economy to thank.
Traffic Spikes for Ad-Supported Games
This uptake could be a result of the poor economy or due to the shift from high-cost, console-based gaming toward free, browser-based alternatives.
Why Incentives Work
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices, Web 2.0 Marketing Wednesday, 11 February 2009 13:22 No Comments
As an affiliate marketer, we are always thinking of creative ways to attract customers to our sites, and ideally, keep them coming back.
However, the latter often proves to be the most difficult of the two challenges and can leave even the most experienced affiliate marketer banging his or her head up against the wall in frustration.
So, what is an affiliate to do?
In a nutshell, offer an incentive – or an irresistible free product or service.
Explain to your visitors that they can only get this free bonus at your site.
The incentive can be a special report or manual in PDF form. It could be a downloadable video or audio. You could also offer some nice software, such as a screensaver or desktop theme.
Incentives work wonders because…
1. They boost your CONVERSION rate.
More people will buy from YOU, or opt into your mailing list, because hey, they want that freebie (who doesn’t?)!2. Customers VOLUNTARILY give you their contact information.
You don’t have to beg them for their e-mail address. They gladly give it because once again, they want that freebie!
3. The incentive is VIRAL.
People will inevitably share it with others… who also want that freebie! (Do you sense a theme here?) And that’s okay, because your freebie should include affiliate links, or at the very least links that lead back to YOUR affiliate site.4. The incentive generates REPEAT TRAFFIC.
People remember that your site was the one with the great freebie – so they come back to buy from you again.5. The incentive can generate interest in your upsell.
In it, you can even mention your upsell (which of course should have its own great freebie incentive that people will want!).
The pattern here is simple, isn’t it?
Your free incentive is not just a happy little bonus to make people buy from you. If you do a good job on it, it can be a follow up sales machine. It’s also about offering your visitors some extra VALUE at your website.
That means you need to put effort and thought into your incentive. It should not be some low-value, junk giveaway. And you shouldn’t stuff it with 57 affiliate links.
Your incentive should offer some real and unique value – a little something extra special that people will appreciate so much they’ll say “Hey, what site did I get this from, anyway? I need to go back there and also tell my mom, grandpa, and nephew all about it!”
Think of it as the smartest viral marketing of all – the kind that acts as a purchase incentive and keeps on selling long after the sale is made. This works even if your incentive is a service.
In the process of giving service, you will have many natural opportunities to mention your upsell, and in the same move, encourage your visitors to keep coming back!
Five PPC Campaign Testing Tips
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Events and Products, Affiliate Marketing, PPC Monday, 9 February 2009 09:59 No Comments
NOTE: PPC Classroom will be re-opening soon! Get on the waiting list at PPCClassroom.com.
After you’ve spent the time developing your PPC campaign and set your bids, the next thing to do is to sit back and see what happens. Just don’t get too comfortable, or you might lose a lot of money. Here are some PPC testing tips that you can try:
1. Watch your budget. The first stages of a new campaign can be intensive. Expect to watch your campaigns carefully during the first two-three weeks. And be sure you set your daily budget to a level you can afford.
2. Build a complete site with keyword specific pages. If you’refairly certian the niche is a winner, create a 20-30 page site with content, plus specific landing pages that revolve around your most important, high traffic keywords.
3. Split test landing pages. By split testing two landing pages, you can make huge increases in your conversions and thus in your income. Be sure to split test just one thing on the page at a time, and make sure your results are statistically valid. (You can use http://splittester.com, a great free tool.)
4. Experiment with a page that work in organic search. If you already have a page, such as an opt-in page, that converts well with organic search, try this experiment, Test how well your opt-in page works for paid traffic versus organic traffic. Do this by creating a duplicate landing page that is exactly like the one that gets organic traffic. Drive a little pay-per-click traffic to it, and see what happens.
Theoretically the SEO page should not convert as well with paid traffic, but you never know. Of course if it doesn’t, you’ve now got the ad and campaign all set up, and just need to tweak the landing page accordingly.
5. Optimize! After you give you campaign a little time to produce data, be sure to kill the keywords are that aren’t converting and put your money into the keywords that are. This is called optimization, and it’s extremely important.
Keeping your bid price high enough so your ads appear in the “sweet spot” for rankings is essential. In fact, avoiding the first position is actually a good idea. Some advertisers have found that the first position generates a lot of interest clicks that don’t result in good conversion ratios.
Pay-per-click is a terrific way to great targeted, affordable traffic, though it does take a watchful eye to get it right. But if you don’t overspend and keep a steady eye on what creates sales and what doesn’t, you will have found an excellent way to grow your business without being at the mercy of the search engine algorithms.
PPC Classroom will be reopening soon. You can get updates at PPCClassroom.com.
