Affiliate Blog » 2007 » January : 2007 : January

January 31, 2007

How to get an opt-in list on your website?

Autoresponders & Memberships


 

You can use an autoresponder service such as aweber.com, where your users opt-in and you email them a welcome with a free report attached or give the users the url for the report's download. 

Or you can go a notch higher and create a membership site like Viral Sales Generator, where the users opt-in to download the free report and any other downloads you'd like to offer over time.

Of the two, the autoresponder system is cheaper and it's hosted so you don't need your own server/hosting solution. The membership one definately allows you to build more of a community with your opt-ins and allows them to spread the word for you about what you're doing.

Of the two, I use Viral Sales Generator and I recommend the use of aweber … a lot of affiliates use it.
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Affiliate Program for Cell Phones

Wirefly has asked us to take a look at their InPhonic affiliate details for their affiliate program. The link we’ve provided for will take you to their brief affiliate information page and then, to their sign-up page on LinkShare.

InPhonic, along with other companies like Apple, Walmart, American Express, are using the LinkShare affiliate tracking solution. So, if you know how LinkShare works, you’ve got a good handle on how the InPhonic affiliate program operates.

InPhonic is all about cell phones, so affiliates with niche related sites should take a look at their program. Wirefly/InPhonic has won awards as Best in Overall Customer Experience for their wireless services (Awarded by Keynote Systems). If you’ve dealt with cell phone companies, you know that’s a coveted award, and probably the reason Wirefly is the number one seller of cell phones and wireless plans.

To find out the rest of their affiliate program’s terms, you have to join or be a member of the LinkShare Network. So, I’d say if cell phones are your niche this is worth taking a look and seeing how you can partner with InPhonic.

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January 29, 2007

LinkWorth Blog Plugin

LinkWorth is looking for a few good programmers to help them inexpensively develop a plugin for some of the more popular content driven applications. As you might know, LinkWorth is moving into the contextual world while still offering their PR links for rent system. If you're interested, here's the letter ...
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Jazz vacalist Ella Fitzgerald was remembered today through a most unusual medium … WordPress version 2.1.

WordPress announced their newest version of their popular blogging software today, and nick named the version Ella, after the legendary jazz vocalist. That must mean this new version of WordPress is smooth … real smooth. Grab a copy and plug it in, then let us know what you think. Is it up to Ella's standards?

You can read more about Ella at Webmaster Blog.

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January 27, 2007

Affilistore Datafeed Software

affilistore Okay guys, here's my findings for you on this Affilistore software … it's freaking brilliant … as in the English word for quite nice.

You have to have some knowledge of how a datafeed works. You need to be able to hook up a database and some php/html/chmod abilities. The install was pretty simple if you know these things.

Once the data is pulled in there are certain parameters that there's no way to update, and others that easily can be. It's very important to do the install correctly, otherwise you'll end up re-doing it.

The templates are easy to work with for the most part. It comes with one already there for you. You do have to select it after the install process is over. So, don't panic when you notice there doesn't seem to be styles. The pages it creates are very clean and easy to navigate.

It is SEO friendly (could be more so) and it's a bummer is that it doesn't update your feeds automatically. I'm guessing that's what's coming in their paid version … I hope so.

All-in-all I'd give this a BIG thumbs up from Affiliate Blogger, the Affiliate Guild and Best Affiliate Network. Thanks to 5 Star Affiliate Marketing for bringing it to my attention.

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January 25, 2007

Affiliate Fundraising

Imagine taking affiliate programs and using them for charity, that’s what some people are doing on the net these days.

I came across fundraising.com and the site’s got a lot of excitement about it with a huge variety of fundraising opportunities. Seems like a very innovative website utilizing some very solid web marketing strategies while helping others with their fundraisers.

With a strong focus on church fundraising, this website is very much worth taking a peek at for budding affiliates wanting to know what to do with their coupon or daily deals website.

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Search Engine Strategies London 2007

Here's the information for all of the Search Engine Strategies events. In my book, these are the best events for affiliates to attend! You'll learn a lot about how to build your websites to perfection here.

 SES London  | 13-15 February, 2007 :: Click here to learn more and view the full program.
Search Engine Strategies London 2007: Early Bird expires tomorrow, Friday, 26 January!  There's still time left to save. Register by tomorrow, Friday, 26 January, and save £100. We're bringing back your favorite sessions, with fresh content, in addition to many new and exciting ones. See the full conference schedule. Search Marketing in Regulated Industries If you're involved in the financial services industries, chances are you have to deal with regulations from the government, from search engines or from your own company about what you can and cannot say on your site and in your ads. How can you stay within the rules yet not compromise your search marketing campaign? Protecting Your Brand with Search Marketing Can you use a competitor's trademark in your own search advertising? Or what if a competitor has an ad running on your trademarked brand name? Should you engage professional legal help or are there other options? What if bloggers are posting negative or false claims about your brands and these are spreading with viral speed through other blogs? Multi-Country Campaign Management Planning a search engine marketing campaign that covers Europe or countries throughout the world requires different strategies than doing SEM for a single-country. Get tips and advice on how to proceed in an efficient, effective manner. Local Search Marketing Tactics This session looks at ways search marketers are tapping into an audience using local search engines, online yellow pages and other local search methods. Search Head or Search Tail? Getting the Mix Right The "head" of the search query stream are those terms that get tons and tons of traffic. Many people go after them for the traffic, only to later discover that with popularity can be a lack of focus and conversion issues. The "tail" of the stream queries are those queries that may involve only a few visitors per month, but highly focused visitors that convert well. The downside to the tail is that while the traffic overall can be substantial, you've still got to cover a huge number terms, requiring a different strategy than going after a few head terms. Blog & Feed Search SEO This session explores how specialized blog and feed (RSS/Atom) search engines gather content and provides tips on tapping into these growing forms of traffic. Video & Podcast SEO New products make it easier to locate video content from across the web or to find "podcast" programs, on-demand radio-like shows people can listen to on MP3 players or their computers. This session will provide a look at various services and how to get your content visible and audible within them. Social Search Overview Humans are hot again, when it comes to search. But this time, it's not the old school method of using a small group of human editors to categorize the web. Still not convinced? Click here to sign up for an Expo Hall-only pass at no cost (please note that this pass does not provide access to the sessions).
Register now!     Forward to a friend
 *New to London* - Search Training Classses
This in-depth workshop training in a small class setting means that your instructors are readily accessible for informal one-on-one or small group discussions. Whether you are a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you cannot afford to miss this opportunity to experience firsthand the latest developments in search engine strategy. No matter where you are in the SEO & SEM process, you will leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level. Each of our workshop providers is a leader in their respective field and has achieved top ranking results for their sites and those of their national and international clients. Join us on Monday, 12 February 2007, and take advantage of their seasoned expertise by going behind-the-scenes in a high impact learning environment that demonstrates how SEM really works.  Search Engine Gurus Shari Thurow | Andrew Goodman | Mona Elesseily | Greg Jarboe | Christine Churchill Classes can be taken in addition to the conference or independently, and include:
7:30-8a Continental Breakfast
Tracks Organic Track Pay-Per-Click Track
8a-12p Search Engine Optimization Workshop Shari Thurow, Grantastic Designs Paid Search Fundamentals Andrew Goodman, Page-Zero Media & Mona Elesseily, Page-Zero Media
12-1p Lunch Break
1-5p Press Release SEO: Focusing on Search as a Public Relations Tool Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR Keyword Research Training Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance
Register now!
Registration is now open for the following events:
Germany   March 26-27, 2007 :: Click here to learn more.      New York   April 10-13, 2007 :: Click here to learn more. 

SES World Tour Watch a video from one of our recent shows  SES London: Feb. 13-15  *Early Bird Special Ends Friday* SES Germany (Munich): March 26-27  *Register now!* SES New York: April 10-13  *Register now!* SES China (Xiamen): May 25-26 SES Italy (Milan): May 29-30 SES Toronto: June 12-13 SES Latino (Miami): June 18-19 SES San Jose: Aug. 20-23 SES Chicago: Dec. 3-6
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January 19, 2007

Google Changes AdSense Policy On Contextual Ads

Jennifer Slegg, author of JenSense blog, announced today that you can now officially run other types of contextual ads on the same page as your AdSense ads.

Yet, as I posted yesterday, its removal from the policy pages did not mean much in itself, as the AdSense terms still included a clause (If You have elected to receive content or Site-based Ads, You further agree not to display on any Serviced Page any non-Google content-targeted advertisement(s).) that would prevent other contextual ads on the same page.

I followed up with Google on the situation, to find out of the removal of the clause would mean that competitor's ads would be allowed on the same page as AdSense, provided they didn't resemble or mimic AdSense ads, and that the AdSense terms would eventually be updated to reflect this policy change. And the answer is yes!

Don't' get too excited though, because Yahoo is still saying no to other ads on the same page as theirs.

Using Yahoo Publisher Network is still a no go, because the YPN terms still contain a clause (For any webpage or RSS feed that includes the Ad Code, you agree not to display or link to any other advertising (including but not limited to any listing) that is mapped to or responds to the content of the Ad Page) preventing publishers from using another contextual ad network on the same page as YPN ads.

Update: I spoke with Yahoo Publisher Network on this issue, and they say that as of today, page level exclusivity still exists. This means you still cannot run YPN on the same page as another contextual ad network. However, they will listen to publisher feedback on this issue and take it into consideration for future YPN terms updates.

My first thought after hearing this news was what's the catch?! Google always has a catch!

And any other contextual ads are now fine to run, provided their own terms do allow other contextual ads on the same page, and they do not mimic the AdSense ad units on the page you currently run.

There's the catch I thought. They're going to say that some networks are mimicking their look, but upon further reading Jenn explained more.

If you are using the border-less technique, the simplest solution is to add a border or change the background color of the competitor's ad unit. It is still unclear just how much of the text within a blended ad unit (an ad unit that matches the border and background to the background of the webpage) would have to be changed, but I would guess all three elements would need changing, the colors of the title, description text and the URL.

I advise reading her whole post at JenSense: It's official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs

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January 15, 2007

Affiliate Bootcamp Reviewed

Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp is taught by James Martell, and let me say that it is a good class for the very new to Affiliate Marketing. If you don't know how to make web pages, if you don't know how to do web hosting, if you're not a good writer or good at making graphics … then, this is the class for you.

James shows his students how to do all of these things and how to find the people who do it, if you don't. He shows his students some tools that make it possible for a complete newbie to step into the publishing world on the Internet.

For me it was the distinction that James made clear, that he is teaching "publishing" and not "web design" that really drove home the difference between James and myself. James is a web publisher, who has learned some skills about web design through the years. I am a webmaster and a web publisher, so for me some of what James had to say would not equate to my world-view on Affiliate Marketing … but makes perfect sense in his world.

Affiliate Bootcamp had a heavy emphasis on Google ads with some affiliate programs tossed in. I had hoped there would have been more on the affiliate program side of things, but maybe that's left for an advanced class someday. Datafeeds were explained only in so much as to what one does on your website, not how to actually do it. I definitely see this as advanced information that would have been too much for this group of students.

One of the best things James did was to help these newbies understand how to make quality websites that would also convert fairly well. For most of those people, that information was worth the price of admission.

Although I was good in class and kept my mouth shut, I deeply disagreed with James on the topic of SEO. James teaches his students not to have anything to do with SEO, and that means that if they need a writer, they are to find someone who writes without SEO in mind. I don't think there are enough words for me to use to express how much I disagree with that, but considering that I was in a class with mostly newbies … I'll just express my difference of opinion on that one here.

James, if you read this … please chime in and explain why. If I understand your logic, it's basically that a well written article will do the trick without the SEO considerations; what to speak of a room filled with newbies that would only be confused by the whole SEO game.

James gave these newbies a lot of resources to go get tools and content, again that alone was worth the price of admission because he saved them years of finding out this stuff the hard way.

The classroom environment James uses is state-of-the-art and very user friendly. I do wish James had allowed us to chat more before and after classes. I also wish we could have sent each other private messages. He had all those features turned off. It could have been a great opportunity for networking of services and cross-links, but it didn't happen. Shame.

Did James reveal all his tricks? Did he reveal all the good stuff? No, I'm sure he didn't. The advanced Affiliate Marketing knowledge is still something that's yet to peek out from the safe hold. Not too many super affiliates are going to reveal how they do their thing.

James knows far more than what he shared, but his Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp is a solid series of classes for the base beginner. I will recommend it and I'm glad I went through it myself. It was a good review and good for me to see how green the new guys really are.

James Martell's Affiliate Marketers Handbook

James Martell's Affiliate Buzz

I enjoyed James Martell a lot. He's a down to earth family man with a dream, a goal and a purpose. He shares his knowledge in ways that allow you to have glimpses into his world. So, he's not afraid for you to get a sense of him. I found his teaching style to be caring and sincere. James is definately not afraid to give you his opinion on things. So, for the newbie students who seek his knowledge, James is a real find for them.
You know another thing I liked about James is that he doesn't spam my email box like some marketers do. His messages are clear and to-the-point. He only sends emails periodically when he has something new to share. I appreciate that a lot and so do most affiliates.
The level of student support I received was exceptional. As a student, me emails were answered in a very timely manner … for which I thank Arlene Martell, his wife. Students were guided every step of the journey through emails and timely autoresponders.
In closing, I'd like to thank the Martell's (and LinkConnector who sponsored me) for allowing me into the Affiliate Marketer's Bootcamp classes. It confirmed for me some of what I do as an affiliate, and I think I will walk away from the experience with some very nice friends and new-found business relationships. Now, let's look to the future!

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