$even $teps of Affiliate Marketing3 August 2010
How much did you want to make this year?
Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative. You absolutely CAN make money while you sleep! However, some people take that to mean that you don’t have to work for it. Au Contraire! Affiliate Marketing is very competitive these days.
The 7 basic tasks to ensure you are making money with affiiliate marketing include:
- Creating buzz-worthy Content on a regular basis – it keeps you ranked in the search engines and shows you are knowledgeable about what you are selling!
- SEO – optimizing [ONpage and OFFpage] for search engines keeps you at the “top of the heap” in to order garner attention for what you are selling – top 10 is gold, top 20 silver and top 30 bronze – if you are not in the top 2 to 3 pages, you have lost to the competition – start again!
- PPC – Pay Per Click gets you even more attention since your ”ad” will be featured in the “hot zone” where eyeballs track! This is the “top of the heap” at it’s finest. Can’t afford it? Return to 1 and 2 above. At the end of the day, Content is ALWAYS King!
- eMail Marketing – sharing your content and affiliate link with your contact list on a regular basis will result in sales. First, you are becoming the expert on the subject in their eyes by creating content they want to read; second you are providing it directly to people who know you, and third you are giving them a conversion opportunity with the content. Remember, it generally takes 7 contacts to garner their interest for a buying proposition! Write to inform, to solve a problem, to fill a need, and write to sell!
- Display Ads: by sharing a display ad (that has a unique identifying link for its source) with other websites and blogs, or even in social media, you can convey features and benefits of the product/service you are recommending and create conversion. Best practices: link to “more information” AND the selling page, whenever possible.
- Review your analytics regularly to see which pages are getting “action” and which aren’t – which are selling and which do not. Test and modify regularly!
- Don’t forget your WOM! Word of Mouth Marketing is someting you can do ONline and OFFline. Spread the Word in Social Media and when you are out Networking. If you believe in the product enough to sell it, and you tell them how it helped you, and you now sell it – you will make more sales! People buy from PEOPLE (even online).
Don’t forget the Mobile Market place either! Make sure you are developing your mobile marketing strategy in the near term so you can include your affiliate opportunities with that distinct audience.
Need help? Let us know!!
Facebook poised to “take over” the Internet?22 April 2010
Big Brother? Terminator??
Business Insider had a great article today on Facebook’s new Open Graph Initiative. According to Facebook’s Founder, Mark Zuckerberg stated that “the power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken.”
To it’s opponents that means that Facebook now has the ability to “connect the dots” where developers lay the groundwork for it to do so. Thus, if you are on one of the “early adopter” sites like Orkut or FriendConnect, what you do there will be ‘added’ to your Facebook activity. The more and more sites that sign on for this graph initiative, the more you are tracked for what Facebook calls “actionable intelligence”. That is a marketing term for “hey we know what you are doing, when and where, and now we can deliver ads and information that reflect your interests even better!”
This is behavioral targeting at it’s finest, IF it works according to Facebook’s plan. This article claims that Facebook may have just found a way to surpass Google. I would put the brakes on that thought. Think a little harder and you will recall that Google is poised to bring FTTH (fiber to the home) in the U.S.. In the U.S., I would say that Google definitely holds the trump card. Facebook may be able to get ‘actionable intelligence” from it’s users from all over the Internet via this new initiative; but Google can “own them” at their home. Touche!
Second, as Facebook begins this effort, they have International Privacy Laws to contend with that will have a direct effect on any global ability. Just because you have it in your EULA or Terms of Service doesn’t mean that it will be upheld around the world as approved. It also doesn’t mean that countries like China will permit you to do this, or won’t want the information for their own use. Trust me, there is more to come on this subject! Just ask Google.
The closing thought in this article was the most funny one: ”Bonus conspiracy theory: former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer (and genuine, great guy) Chris Kelly is running for California Attorney General.
California’s Governor is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ahnold was The Terminator.
Circle. Complete.”