Tag Archives: affiliate marketing

Contrary Email Marketing: Use Video Less During Holiday Buying Season

Posted on November 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

echinacea spiderMost email service providers now give marketers the option to embed videos. What a blessing! If you regularly include videos in marketing emails, what I’m about to say may sound dangerous and heretical.

Use fewer videos during the high holiday buying season between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Stop spluttering. Here’s my logic.

Beginning on Thanksgiving Day, ramping up on Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving, and continuing relentlessly through midnight on December 25th, email marketers will be inundating opt in subscribers with thousands of super-fabulous discounts, sales, coupons, and offers.

It’s hard enough to get subscribers to open emails at this time of year without boring them with a three minute video embedded in the marketing message.

They want the facts, and they want them fast. “What’s in it for me?” is the primary question being asked by email newsletter subscribers, because they’re too busy to pay attention.

So give ‘em the facts: Item, item description, regular price, sale price, expiration of sale, click here to buy now. Thanks and have a fabulous day.

If you really, really need to have videos, include a hyperlink back to your website so customers can choose to watch or simply choose to buy and skip the video.

The high holiday buying season helps us email marketers hone our copywriting skills to the finest edge. Respect your readers’ time and energy: make them a great offer, use fewer words, and don’t embed a video in every email.

Good luck to you on Black Friday!

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How to Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Posted on October 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

gaillarda spiderJust got done using the Google AdWords keyword tool to help me update my blog’s category descriptions and I thought, “Duh, not everyone knows how to use this SEO lifesaver!”

So, here’s how to use the Google AdWords keyword tool.

If you’ve NEVER used Google AdWords or any other Google tool, stop poking around in the dark alleys of the Internet and sign up with Google. Go to the AdWords page. Click the large Start Now >> button in the upper right corner. Follow the process, check your email for verification, etc. (You don’t need a tutorial on that.) Once that’s done, move along to the next step.

NOTE: You don’t have to register with Google to use the basic functions of the keyword tool. However, the rest of this tutorial is kinda pointless for you because you’re missing out on a lot of functionality if you don’t log in.

  1. Go to the Keyword Tool page.
  2. Enter the CAPTCHA code to let Google know you’re a real human.
  3. Click the little tiny Sign In hyperlink in the way upper right corner and sign in with your AdWords email address and password (if you’re not logged on already). NOTE: If you mistakenly logged into your AdWords account, you’re in the wrong spot. Go to the URL above.
  4. Enter a keyword or phrase in the search box, or enter a website in the next box. Hit the little Search button underneath.
  5. Alternatively, click the little plus sign next to a category (on the left underneath the search functions). I don’t find this keyword sort very useful, but you might.
  6. The AdWords Keyword tool returns related keywords as well as the one you typed in (if you’re logged in). This, my friends, is what you’re looking for to improve the SEO of your article, website, blog, affiliate listing, ad, or grocery list.
  7. Click on the various column headings to change your priority sort. For instance, clicking on Global Monthly Searches sorts from highest to lowest, telling you which keywords are more searched. (Those are the ones you want to concentrate on in your writing and SEO efforts.)
  8. You’re seeing the first 50 keyword suggestions. If you want to see more on one page, scroll down and hit Show Rows: 100.

Have fun and check lots of keywords. You’ll discover some surprising associations!

The keyword tool is as intelligent as anything Google–in other words, it’s based on mystery algorithms and not human priorities. Work your SEO intelligently. But that’s a tutorial for another day.

P.S. Heck if I know how to get to the AdWords keyword tool from my AdWords Home or Campaigns tab. If you know how, please leave a comment and share the knowledge!

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Quadruple Link Juice By Responding to Comments on Your Blog

Posted on October 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

echinacea spiderHere’s another astoundingly neat feature of using CommentLuv: Leave a little trail of CommentLuv breadcrumbs around your own site as you respond to blog comments on your posts.

When people leave comments on your posts and those comments make it through moderation, it’s highly worthwhile to respond. Most of the time bloggers respond through the admin dashboard. It’s quick and easy, right?

If you’ve registered your blog with CommentLuv, stop doing that!

Open a new page to the post. Go to the comment and leave a reply in the comments section. This enables you to use CommentLuv to link back to another post from your website, right underneath your response to the original comment.

Genius, really. What a great feature.

Haven’t registered your blog and blog feed with CommentLuv yet? What are you waiting for! Click here right this instant. Registration is completely free, and you don’t have to download the plugin for your own blog if you don’t want to. So many nice features… Click that link and get started.

Warning: This feature doesn’t work with all WordPress themes, but it does with most of them. Don’t know first-hand about Blogger, Typepad, etc., because I don’t use those blogging platforms.

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Why not shoot me an email or leave a comment if you have experience with CommentLuv on your own blog? Thanks—we all appreciate your input.

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Posted in Marketing Yourself

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Why High-Ticket Information Products Are Good for Small Affiliates

Posted on October 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

echinacea spiderWhen you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing, you haven’t had time to build a responsive email list or get high traffic to your blog yet. You feel like a championship Golden Retriever puppy: eager to get going but still a little shaky on your paws.

You come across a really great high-ticket information product. The one that earns you $150 per sale plus lifetime residuals and backend sales. One that you’d like to buy now if you only had $597 in affiliate earnings.

You have six people subscribed to your RSS feed and 12 people signed up for your email newsletter. Conversion ratios on high ticket information products are usually around two percent. The math doesn’t work—although you could get lucky, chances are none of those 18 people will buy the expensive product.

You’re not doomed to disappointment, whining quietly in your kennel while other puppies get to earn big incomes as online marketers.

Use the high ticket information product as leverage, even if you don’t happen to sell it.

Go for it, puppy. You’ll never get to be a big dog in affiliate marketing if you don’t promote expensive products from well known affiliate programs.

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17 Tips to Promote Information Products in Affiliate Marketplaces

Posted on September 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here’s the excitinechinacea spiderg conclusion to my latest series of posts on using affiliate marketplaces to promote information products to JV partners. Avoid mistakes and attract affiliates like a magnet by knowing what successful marketers do. Read Top Affiliate Programs on PayDotCom, The E-Junkie Affiliate Marketplace, and Top Affiliate Programs on Clickbank.com to get caught up. Keep your RSS feed turned on so you don’t miss any of my informative blog posts.

How do top affiliate programs “sell” information products to affiliates? An analysis of PayDotCom.com, e-Junkie.com, and Clickbank.com product marketplaces reveals 17 best practices for affiliate program managers. Think about information product promotion to JV partners differently—you’re not trying to get them to buy the products; you want them to sell the products. Sell the selling!

  1. Take the time to create a good pitch and landing page for potential affiliates. You spend all that effort on pitching customers—yet you need affiliates to bring customers to you. Don’t just expect the product sell itself. Tell potential affiliates all about their potential when they promote your information product.
  2. Never tell potential JV partners how profitable the product is “going” to be or that it is “high converting.” Tell them how it performs now. Affiliates aren’t willing to take a leap of faith with you—they want performance.
  3. Never use the words amazing, astonishing, great, big commissions, incredible, love, or just launched. These words are pure hype and a waste of precious character count in a very short pitch space.
  4. Also, don’t waste your time telling JVs that a product is easy to sell—make it easy to sell by providing backend support through an affiliate program. In the marketplace pitch, tell affiliates about your backend support.
  5. If you’re a new seller to pay.com, e-junkie.com, or clickbank.com, don’t tell affiliates that. Tell them how the information product performed in your testing or on other marketplaces. (You did test the product, didn’t you?)
  6. Let the title and automatic information speak for themselves and spend your 255 characters pitching to potential affiliates, not potential customers. The landing page contains the customer pitch, and affiliates aren’t buying your product—they’re promoting it to their own audience.
  7. Use every single character available. Don’t just put in a one-liner and expect affiliates to click through to the landing page. Use sensible abbreviations whenever possible (aff for affiliate, comms for commissions, numbers instead of spelling out, etc.) to save space.
  8. Use tagwords and keywords extensively. Many potential JV partners search marketplaces rather than just picking the top 10 in a particular category. Bring on the SEO to increase your chances of being spotted by niche affiliate marketers.
  9. Sell the stability of the producer—how long you’ve been in business, your conversion ratio or refund ratio, how many products have been sold. These quick statistics let affiliates know you’re not a PLR seller or a one-off product producer.
  10. Offer fair payouts on more expensive products, not high payouts on low-priced info products. Affiliates want to make money online, and good affiliates can sell high-priced products.
  11. Promote your affiliate landing page URL address in your marketplace listing. Adding this URL gives potential JV partners a place to investigate you and your information products.
  12. Promote your affiliate newsletter, if you have one, so JV partners know your affiliate program is strong and stable. Affiliates are grateful to have this backend support.
  13. Try to avoid dating your affiliate marketplace listing unless you make changes every six months. Saying something is revolutionary in 2009 doesn’t speak very highly of 2011.
  14. A high commission percentage is important, but not primary. Dollar amount per sale is more convincing. Good affiliates go for realistic conversion ratios that bring them more money every month.
  15. ClickBank has added a Facebook Like button to every marketplace listing. Send your affiliates an email immediately (if you can) and tell them to click it. If you can’t email them, tell them on your affiliate landing page to click Like. Social media marketing has finally reached the affiliate marketplace!
  16. Make sure your product is categorized correctly. Please don’t put your information product into every category trying to get more attention. This is a waste of your time and won’t attract niche affiliate marketers.
  17. Please, for heaven’s sake, proofread your affiliate marketplace pitch. Please!

Of course it’s nice to be in the top of the affiliate marketplace sort but until you get there, use your marketplace space to promote the program to affiliates. You’ll get to the top eventually as your information product starts to show results.

Thanks for reading! Leave a comment below. Please keep in mind that content theft is both illegal and immoral. If you’d like to purchase reprint rights for 17 Tips to Promote Information Products in Affiliate Marketplaces, visit Evelyn Fielding on Constant Content: http://www.constant-content.com/docDetails.php?DocID=135780.

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