Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Spam: Out to Lunch

Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am by Matt Van Atta

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.

Are You a Reseller, or Affiliate Marketer?

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 5:19 pm by Matt Van Atta

If affiliate marketing is based on a single thought, it could be this:

Lots of successful businesses didn’t succeed by relying solely on direct sales to customers. They outsourced at least some of the sales process to other parties. This enabled a wider product distribution in a cost-effective manner. Hence, we have affiliate marketers, and we have resellers.

Reseller programs, like affiliate programs, promote products made by somebody else. Both programs provide a great service to the product manufacturer by getting the word out about a product to an ever-growing target audience.

This leads some to think that the two are synonymous. But don’t be fooled. Resellers and affiliate marketers act on vastly different scales.

Marketing a merchant’s product is an affiliate marketer’s only job. An affiliate attracts the buying customer to his/her site, but then shepherds that customer to the merchant’s website. From there, the merchant handles everything related to completing the transaction. Resellers do more than that – they try to persuade that customer to purchase directly through them.

Resellers work with merchants under a business-to-business wholesaler relationship. Under this relationship, a reseller purchases the product from the merchant at a greatly reduced price. The reseller then sells the product to customers, usually at a discount from the retail price.

The reseller receives all the profit from the product sales. And the reseller handles all the transaction and customer service details, including credit card charges, product support, and product returns.

Many businesses use resellers – including, for instance, computer software manufacturers. (I oughta know; in a previous life, I worked for a software reseller.) And make no mistake – in terms of potential, reselling can be more lucrative than affiliate marketing.

But reselling is also riskier. Once a reseller buys the product from the merchant, that reseller is under pressure to sell it, or risk eating the cost. And once the product is sold, it could be returned by the customer. Or the customer could initiate a chargeback (a refund of the purchase price through the credit card provider), for which the reseller takes the hit. Affiliate marketers usually face none of these kinds of risks.

So, are you a reseller? Or are you an affiliate marketer? Whichever you are depends on what your goals are and what you’re willing to accept in terms of risk and reward. Given where you’re reading this post, I think I know your answer.

Follow the Bouncing Email…

Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 10:35 am by Matt Van Atta

Your content masterpiece is ready to send to your email opt-in list. Perhaps it’s that first newsletter issue, information about a new product, or a special limited-time offer. Whatever it is, you know in your heart that this content will lead to increased interest and, hopefully, sales.

You hit the “Send” button, and within minutes, replies start coming in. At that point, you might enjoy one more brief moment of euphoria. More likely, however, you think to yourself, “Oh, no, my email’s not being delivered.” (You might say something more emphatic, but I’ll leave that to you.) In other words, your email has bounced.

A bounce, or bounceback, occurs when an email is returned to the sender undelivered.

An email that bounces back because an existing Inbox is full is called a “soft bounce.” In this case, you can at least hope that your email will eventually reach that destination. No such luck with the hard bounce, in which the destination email address does not exist.

How can this happen, when the recipient opted into your mailing list?

Mailing lists can be somewhat fluid. People often change email providers, and thus email addresses. And some intentionally enter a bad email address in a registration form. That way, they obtain what they want without having to give any personal information in return. (We live in a world of increasing suspicion, after all.)

Spam filters can also lead to bouncebacks. Even if they opted into your mailing list, some max out their spam filter settings to avoid spam. If one proverbial hair is out of place in your email – the wrong word in a subject line, or the omission of an opt-out link – the spam alarms can go off. The consequences of that can go well beyond the bounceback.

The following suggestions will minimize bouncebacks and make them easier to manage:

  • Regularly clean your lists of email addresses that consistently bounce back your emails. It sounds mundane, but it’s necessary. And an autoresponder service (such as AWeber.com) can handle it for you.

  • Maintain high-quality content in your emails, and avoid items that could label your email as spam.

  • Limit email deliveries to those who opted in to your mailing list.

Bouncebacks are a bummer. But if you maintain an opt-in list, it’s a daily fact of life. And the financial rewards of an opt-in list will always outweigh the bounces.

Cloaking, Good and Evil Explained

Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 3:45 pm by Matt Van Atta

Intrigue and espionage play a role in Internet activity, including affiliate marketing.

It may not exactly be James Bond trying to get the goods on the the bad guy. (Although when I saw the movie “Casino Royale,” I couldn’t help but notice 007’s deftness with the laptop.) But, the world does have white-hatted good guys and black-hatted bad guys. Always has, always will. The Internet does nothing to change that. It merely provides another venue for the classic good-versus-evil struggle.

So what does that have to do with marketing?

Enter: cloaking. The dictionary definition is “to cover or hide with.” In the Internet context, cloaking prevents content or HTML code associated with a web page from being accessible to visitors. The term contains both bad and good connotations – sort of a double-edged sword.

Cloaking’s “evil” edge pertains to search engines. Those on “the dark side” can program their web server so that ordinary visitors see one kind of page content, but Google and other search engines receive entirely different content. These bad guys thus can distort search engine results to their advantage, lure unsuspecting web visitors into their traps, and take somebody else’s commission – possibly yours.

Cloaking techniques prevent Google from accurately providing legitimate search results. That’s why Google bans sites it catches using cloaking. If your marketing efforts involve Google, it’s best not to try this.

Now let’s focus on the “good” edge of the cloaking sword: link cloaking.

Take the affiliate links on your website. They contain your unique affiliate ID, given to you by the merchant and enabling you to be paid on sales emanating from them. But the resulting URL can be long and complicated.

Some customers will copy and paste only the first part of the URL into their browsers (leaving out your affiliate ID). Dishonorable affiliate marketers can substitute their ID for yours and receive credit for the product’s purchase. Either way, you lose commissions.

But cloaking script helps by disguising the affiliate link. It replaces the original URL with a redirected URL that is streamlined and protects your affiliate ID. Many merchants provide cloaked URLs as part of their affiliate arrangements. Some websites (including EHosting4U.com, recommended by Affiliate Classroom) offer free or low-cost link cloaking options.

Search engine cloaking is unmitigated deception. But link cloaking is simply an act of self-defense – protecting you and your hard-earned commissions from the clutches of the dark side.

Guerrilla Marketing, The Right Way

Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 4:54 pm by Matt Van Atta

Maybe you’ve heard about the bomb scare in Boston that resulted from the placement of electronic devices throughout the city as a promotion for Cartoon Network’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program.

Opinions can vary on whether the promotion was well or poorly thought out, or whether the Boston authorities may have overreacted. Regardless, the case serves as a perfect example of what guerrilla marketing is – and perhaps, what it isn’t.

Guerrilla marketing’s purpose is to achieve maximum return in terms of exposure, at minimum cost in terms of money and resources. It’s geared particularly toward small businesses with limited budgets, although major corporations such as Sony, General Electric, Citigroup – and Cartoon Network – have used the approach.

Some guerrilla marketing efforts have led people to question the ethics of its practitioners. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino even called for a citywide ban on guerrilla marketing campaigns, calling it a “nitwit technique.” It makes me wonder if Cartoon Network and other large corporations are giving guerrilla marketing a bad name, but that’s another story.

Guerrilla marketing does not follow traditional marketing guidelines, which emphasize white space, short and snappy copy, and “sizzle” over “steak.” Its often unconventional tactics cost little if any money and stress the importance of imagination and hard work – taking time and effort to understand one’s customer base and creatively marketing to that base.

Sound familiar?

It should, because that’s what affiliate marketing is about. Affiliate marketing ventures should never draw the attention of Homeland Security. But through effective, substantive content and targeted promotions, many of which cost little money to produce, such ventures fit the guerrilla marketing definition to the proverbial “T.” In fact, guerrilla marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson, in “The Myths of Affiliate Marketing” offers many pearls of wisdom about this. One in particular stands out:

“Affiliate marketing educates, informs, announces, enlightens and influences human behavior. Because it does this, affiliate marketing has an obligation to offend nobody, to present its material with taste and decency, to be honest and to benefit customers. If it does that and earns profits too, it is true guerrilla affiliate marketing.”

The more value you offer your target audience, the more effective your affiliate marketing efforts will be. Viral marketing reports, email newsletters, and other creative will do more for you than can traditional marketing methods – and more than distributing devices that might resemble explosives.

What’s Pogo-Sticking?

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 5:52 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Affiliate Classroom was one of the first companies to introduce readers to the “scent” of a web page. (See “What Odor is your SEO?”) And now here’s a new term you may run across. It’s called Pogo-Sticking! I always wanted a pogo stick when I was a kid, so this one had me curious.

How many times have you performed a search and didn’t find what you were looking for? Or visited the same page of a web-site several times to get back to the main page, or search results page? Well, when you do this you are pogo-sticking!

Anytime there is back and forth activity it’s called pogo-sticking. This can happen within a web page, when a person goes back and forth between individual product pages and/or home pages looking for their desired information, or between SERP results pages.

Basically, pogo-sticking occurs when a person jumps back and forth between different pages. This usually occurs when something is searched for and the search engine results page (SERP) displays. The searcher then selects the result that looks like it will give the best answer and solve the problem. If the answer isn’t on that page the person hits the “back” button, goes back to the SERP and trys again.

So, why is it important to recognize this new word?

Because it could skew your back-end statistics!

You see, each time the visitor goes back and forth to pages within a web site, the statistical software on your server counts it as a page view. Sometimes it’s good to get a lot of page views, and then again, sometimes it means that the visitor is not finding what they are looking for.

So, the next time you jump for joy when you view your statistics and see that your page is sticky, do a double check. If you have a lot of pages views from a small amount of visitors, you might want to take a look at your site’s design and see if it is as user-friendly as it should be.

When visitors don’t find what they’re looking for in a reasonable time, they just pogo-stick back to the SERP and go elsewhere. Unfortunately, you get the page views, but someone else gets the sale!

Autoresponding to Your Opt-In Needs – Part 1

Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 6:37 pm by Matt Van Atta

In my post on December 7, I explained how a squeeze page can help affiliate marketers build those all-important opt-in lists of email addresses. Once you begin collecting those email addresses, the autoresponder becomes an absolute must-have tool for your email marketing efforts.

In its basic form, an autoresponder is a software program that receives a message or inquiry from an email address and automatically, almost instantaneously, sends a reply to that address. No humans are used in the sending of such replies, so you can arrange to send them whenever you want.

Microsoft Outlook contains a classic example of this. Outlook’s “Out of Office Assistant” (available to Microsoft Exchange Server email account users) is an autoresponder that allows you to reply to anyone who sends you an email while you’re away. That way you can get away from it all and not have people think you’ve flown the coop.

But for affiliate marketers, autoresponders go way beyond just sending the “I’m not here” message; they serve as means through which to deliver marketing content to your opt-in list, keeping potential customers engaged in what you have to offer.

Say you’ve built out that squeeze page, offering a report or other piece of free content to the visitor if he or she provides an email address. When the visitor submits the email address, an autoresponder can reply right away, sending the content and thanking the recipient for his or her interest.

Through an autoresponder, regularly scheduled content delivery is easy – whether it’s a monthly or weekly newsletter, a series of report segments, or other content that helps to promote what you are selling. Simply prepare your emails for distribution, set up the autoresponder to send the emails on your schedule, and you’re good to go.

Autoresponder software enables you not only to communicate and maintain your message to your target audience, but also to maintain your overall opt-in list. However, your opt-in list will hopefully grow (and one would expect it will if your website is well thought out and well built). It may become difficult to write content, program the autoresponder, and keep track of unsubscribes.

Also, there are other matters related to your opt-in list to attend to, all while you’re working on other aspects of your business. That means you have more to do than time in which to do it.

That’s where an autoresponder service can come in… which I’ll cover in Part 2.

Can a “Mini” or “Micro” Site Loom Large for You? - Part II

Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm by Matt Van Atta

In Part I, we looked at the characteristics of a “micro-site.” For Part II, we examine the related concept of a mini-site.

Neither the term nor the fact “mini-site” went away when micro-sites became popular. Rather, it evolved into something more extensive. (Dare I say, “bigger and better”?)

A mini-site today generally contains the same characteristics as a micro-site, but with the following additional features that distinguish it from a micro-site:

  • A topic that is tightly focused, such as a single product within a product line or other subset of your main topic.
  • At least 10 pages (some mini-sites contain hundreds of pages, making them not quite so “mini”) of targeted content related to that topic.
  • A variety of targeted content – not only sales and transaction pages, but also information-rich content such as product reviews, specs, reports, articles, FAQs, and the like.

If a lower-cost approach and/or enhanced placement in Google search results appeals to you, building out a mini-site can serve your purposes.

Regardless of the differences, both the micro-site and the mini-site can be useful tools to find out more about your niche market. They may even serve to carve a niche within your niche, and the end result could be another topic, another site, and thus another revenue stream for you.

Which approach you take, however, depends on your needs and abilities. The question of whether you use a micro-site or a mini-site approach is similar to the question of fat affiliates versus thin affiliates (see my post on November 13 for more on this topic). Which you choose will depend on who your target audience is and what you can expertly do with the tools at hand.

Can a Mini- or Micro-Site Loom Large for You?

Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 5:32 pm by Matt Van Atta

It’s been said time and again that the best things can come in small packages. For many affiliate marketers, the website can be a “small package” that generates a big revenue stream.

But, say your original website topic has grown to include a number of products, services, and other options that you offer to your visitors. You may want to introduce a new product or service to your niche market, or you may want to regenerate interest in a current offering.

Or maybe you feel your site is not as fresh, or your knowledge of the market not as current, and you just need a new approach to see to what degree it reaches your target audience.

Building a micro-site or a mini-site can address these matters.

Reading up on these two concepts can be confusing. Some websites claim that the terms “micro-site” and “mini-site” are one and the same; and in many ways, they are. Just as the Internet evolves at a breakneck pace, so does the terminology associated with it; and this etymological evolution leads to the confusion.

In the beginning, when the Internet was created, a mini-site was known simply as a single sales-oriented page, intended exclusively to sell a product or otherwise entice the reader to take immediate action. Now, however, that same sales-oriented page (or collection of two or three pages) is known as a micro-site.

A micro-site contains the following features:

  • A user environment that is somehow unique and autonomous from the main website.
  • Either a single landing page or 1-3 pages containing the offer being marketed and perhaps a link back to the main website.
  • A look and feel that is similar to the main website, or one that is distinct from the main website.
  • Either a website URL it shares with the main website, or (more often) its own unique URL.

Such a site can be a launching point for a pay-per-click campaign to generate interest. Or, it could contain a great deal of SEO keywords, energy, and overall “wow factor” to draw attention.

Part II covers mini-sites…

What is a “Keyword?

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 6:45 pm by Matt Van Atta

Defining a keyword is quite simple; it’s a term that a web user enters into a search engine. Period.

But we all know a more important definition of the word: A key focal point of any affiliate marketing venture. After all, if you’re going to drive business to your website and the product(s) you offer, the keywords you use in describing your site are critical, whether you pursue SEO, PPC, or a combination of techniques.

A Keyword by Any Other Name…

Funny thing is, those who are new to affiliate marketing can be confused by a number of terms that basically mean the same thing as “keyword.”

For instance, what’s the difference between “keyword” and “keyphrase”? Well, perhaps that “keyword” consists of one word and “keyphrase” consists of more than one word, but that’s the only difference.

And while simpler is better, you shouldn’t try to whittle all your keywords down to one word - few things in life can be whittled down to one word, anyway. You need the right combination of terms, whether single words or multiple-word strings, which coincide with the web searches conducted by your target audience.

“Keyword” or “Search Term?”

And what’s the difference between “keyword” and terms such as “search term,” “search phrase,” or “search query string”? Nothing - they all mean the same thing, too. Yet someone new to affiliate marketing (and, possibly, the web in general) probably has done a double-take over this.

Different groups of people tend to use “keyword” as opposed to “search term.” While “keyword” occupies an important, well-honored place in the professional lingo of affiliate marketing, the average web user is probably more likely to use “search term” when describing the same concept.

Google reflects this to some degree. Google’s Web Search Help Center uses “search term” instead of “keyword” in offering guidance for new web surfers, while “keyword” is more prominent in their pages for web advertisers.

So what’s the “moral of the story”? It’s that a keyword by any other name is a keyword. Whatever name you use, your website must contain the right words or word combinations to bring potential web customers to your home page. It’s the first turn of the faucet for your revenue stream.

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