Author: Alex Becker

Alex Becker is an Internet Marketer, Author and Blogger who specializes in SEO and converting traffic. His current focus is expanding his Internet Marketing Blog The Link Back and growing his marketing company (Surge Wofl) He also has a dog named Boots!
Posted on

Is Article Spinning a Waste of Time?

“Is Article Spinning a bad idea,” asks a reader.

By article spinning (sometimes known as article cloning) I assume that you’re referring to the practice of reformatting others’ articles in order to create content on your site and avoid penalties for duplicate content by the search engines.

Or perhaps you’re spinning your own article in a dozen ways to disguise the duplicate content.

Though you mention that you plan to do this manually, many use software programs that automatically replace words or phrases in an article with synonyms from some kind of database thesaurus. They also move blocks of content from their original position in an article to another position to make it appear that this is a different article.

Article spinning from others’ article is akin to scraping techniques in which websites pull content off of other websites and put it on their own to attract traffic. Because of massive scraping and repurposing of content, there is a huge amount of useless clutter that shows up in searches. You have, no doubt, gone to webpages that match your keywords, but all you find are a lot of Google AdSense ads and a few random paragraphs that are unhelpful. Yes, they sometimes achieve search results, but they are neither helpful nor relevant.

I don’t know if Google has an official position on article spinning. I do know that they are actively working to disallow scraping sites the ability to earn money using AdSense Ads and that they are trying to help their search clients find relevant material. Article spinning takes what is bad about search and makes it worse.

I oppose article spinning on several grounds.

  • Morally, it is wrong to use someone else’s work for your own benefit without permission or payment. It is stealing, even if it is thinly disguised.
  • Legally, much article spinning is in violation of copyright laws, which protect authors from “derivative” works that are based on their original work.
  • Educationally, writing clear, easy-to-understand articles is difficult enough. But when people replace words for close synonyms, they often distort the precise meaning intended by the author. The ignorant can’t tell the difference, perhaps, but the ignorant are not well-served by articles that are misleading. Switching the order of paragraphs or blocks of material to disguise the source obliterates the logical flow of an article. Computers can’t produce good articles. Neither can amateur re-writers and re-spinners who haven’t studied subjects carefully and precisely. Who is hurt? The reader who is desperately trying to learn.
  • Socially, the common good is impaired as people fill the Internet with scrapings, spinnings, and regurgitations. Knowledge isn’t increased, but hindered, and finding useful material becomes harder and harder.

It is important to note, however, that the line between rewriting an article and mindless article spinning is a fuzzy one. All writers learn from other writers, especially from the work of experts. Writing an article is often a reformulation of others’ ideas in your own unique way for your own unique audience. But honest writers usually indicate their reliance upon others’ insights in various ways.

Yes! By all means study a subject and, once you understand it, write an article about it. That’s article marketing at its best. But don’t take others’ work and just change a few words and paragraph positions. That’s not rewriting, but plagiarism. It makes hash out of what was once a perfectly good meal.

I know that teachers and professors are seeing more and more article spinning submitted to them as original papers. Sleazy students do it to manipulate their grades. After all, the end justifies the means. Sleazy Internet article spinners do it to artificially manipulate search rankings. After all, the end justifies the means.

William, I hope that as you investigate article spinning, you’ll conclude, as I do, that article spinners deserve an “F” on moral, legal, educational, and social grounds.

Dr. Ralph Wilson is an Internet marketing pioneer and author of a dozen books on Internet marketing, including Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy, Report on Article Marketing, Guide to Search Engine Optimization, the Shopping Cart Report, How to Develop a Landing Page, and others.

Posted on

4 Keys to Negotiating with an Affiliate Manager

Some affiliates like to fly “solo” and others prefer to utilize their Affiliate Manager’s knowledge and resources to maximize their opportunities and payouts. Over the years, I have had numerous negotiations with affiliates on offers and payouts. Before negotiating or discussing payouts, it is important for affiliates understand a networks business model and take full advantage of maximizing their relationship with the affiliate manager. Here are 4 keys to negotiating that I believe will create a “win-win” for both the network and the affiliate.

1. Understanding Margins
A network’s business model is similar to a manufacturer/distributor/retail sales chain. The Manufacturer (Advertiser) creates the product and utilizes the distributors (Network) resources and capital to generate sales through retail stores (Affiliate/Publisher). The network makes a margin for assuming the risk of acting as the middleman between the advertiser and publisher. Some affiliates receive payments daily or weekly which leaves the network assuming risk as most advertisers have longer net terms.

2.  Integrity
Just be open and honest! If you are interested in an offer and need a certain payout, then just ask. There have been times when I have told an affiliate that I couldn’t payout what they were requesting. Conversely, there have been instances when I approached management about giving a particular affiliate a certain payout with very slim margins. Bottom line, you have to be able to trust the affiliate manager and vice versa.

3. Capabilities/Results
Before entering any negotiation it’s imperative to know what’s important to you and what you’re willing to ‘give up’ for the sake of getting what you want. What’s the least you’re willing to accept in order to pick up the offer? Do your research and know what the going rates are. Let the affiliate manager know what type of results you anticipate and discuss any previous success or failures. There will always be “hot” offers, but you shouldn’t place all your focus on what’s hot. You know your business, what you’re good at and what you’re not.  Focus on what you know, and specialize in it.

4.  Communication
As I stated earlier, some affiliates prefer no or minimal communication with an affiliate manager which is perfectly fine. However, if you decide to actively work with an affiliate manager it is important to talk with the affiliate manager about your intentions. Communicate your goals, strategies and what you expect of the network and your affiliate manager. When it comes down to it we all have the same goal – to make money while not compromising our ethics. Be candid with your AM about your experience level. Everyone starts somewhere so don’t be shy; the affiliate managers job is to help you grow your business.

Keeping these four points in mind when talking and negotiating with your network affiliate manager helps foster a good working relationship and ultimately will create a long term relationship.

Colleen Darwent
is an affiliate manager
at RevenueStreet,
a division of TheMediaCrew
She loves affiliates big time.

Posted on

Five Effective Copywriting Tactics for Affiliate Marketing

There’s a well-known “guru” of marketing (ie, wants to take your money and give you BS) out there who gives a course costing over $5,000. In that course he has “expert” copywriters come and speak about copywriting. One person shared with me their notes and it was identical to this article by one of the most famous copywriters out there. Save yourself $5,000 and read this great article. – Pace

What’s the secret to effective affiliate marketing? It all boils down to engagement.

If you have a page with an affiliate offer that ranks well for searchers in buying mode, that’s pretty high engagement. You need a trusted, authoritative site to pull that off, which means strong content and plenty of links.

But don’t forget that the very same content creates engagement with regular readers first. If you’re building authority sites that attract subscribers, you get more than one shot at affiliate revenue. You profit first with your direct readers who trust you, and then continue to generate revenue over time thanks to strategically-placed cross-links and search traffic.

The lowest form of affiliate marketing engagement comes from simply sticking affiliate banner ads on your site. I’m not saying you won’t make any money from those ads, but it’s certainly not the most effective way to capitalize on the relationship with your audience. And banner ads don’t rank in search engines, right?

So let’s take a look a five copy tactics that can bring you immediate and long-term revenue from affiliate programs:

1. Endorsements

A personal endorsement is the strongest way to pre-sell an affiliate offer, assuming your audience values your opinion. Effective endorsements are sincere and enthusiastic based on real experience with the product or service. That’s not to say that people don’t pitch things just for the money, but that can be a dangerous game that erodes your trust and authority if the product or service is poor.

As with any effective copy, endorsements focus on benefits more than features. You might find that picking out the most compelling benefits is easier in a personal endorsement, because you’ve experienced those benefits first hand. Share how a recommended product or service has changed your life for the better, and you’re naturally talking benefits.

2. Reviews

A review differs from an endorsement in tone and structure, but by the end of the piece, you end up with an endorsement nonetheless. Let’s face it… writing up a negative review might be a great way to vent, but it’s not the smartest revenue strategy when it comes to affiliate marketing.

So, as with endorsements, it’s smart to review products and services you actually use and benefit from. From a copy perspective, you add credibility by pointing out how the product or service isn’t perfect (let’s face it, there are very few perfect offerings), and then go on to explain why the imperfection doesn’t negatively impact your perception and enjoyment of the product or service.

3. Tutorials

Years ago, the easiest way to do really well with content-based affiliate marketing was to release a free ebook loaded up with affiliate links and watch it go viral. That strategy can still work, but generally the content must be much stronger, and the affiliate pitches more subtle. Another long-time strategy is the email mini-course, in which you deliver tutorial-style content by autoresponder that ultimately promotes one or more relevant offers.

These days, producing video tutorials that show how to use a product or service are extremely effective at pre-selling affiliate offers. Remember, teaching and selling are closely related, so “how to” content that naturally gets a prospect more comfortable with a purchase is smart. Plus, you can use broader tutorial content as an “ethical bribe” to get people to subscribe to your blog or a targeted sub-list, which allows for multiple relevant offers to be made over time.

4. Bonuses

Using a bonus or special deal approach is a great way to uniquely sweeten an affiliate offer. You essentially promise to add in an additional item if people buy through your link, or you work out a promotional deal with the merchant that only you can deliver. You then work the extra value into your endorsement, review, or announcement with a great headline and benefit-oriented copy.

You’ll see this strategy used quite a bit in competitive pay-per-click situations, and also during big product launches where lots of people are promoting at once. But it’s a really strong strategy anytime, because it demonstrates that you’re focusing on adding value and delivering great deals to your audience.

5. Articles

Can you promote affiliate offers with your regular content? In other words, can you create content that has independent value and also makes you money, no matter where it’s syndicated or scraped?

You can, but it’s tricky. Let me give you an example with an article I wrote last year called How to Create Ebooks That Sell.

In this article I managed to:

  • Create a compelling keyword-rich title
  • Deliver independent value
  • Attract links
  • Generate positive comments
  • Endorse a product while disclosing the affiliate link
  • Make a healthy 4-figure profit immediately
  • Rank for my targeted keyword phrases
  • Collect continued monthly commissions
  • Receive reader emails thanking me for the recommendation

When I spoke at PubCon late last year, I dissected this post and explained everything I did and why. But I think if you simply take a look at it in light of what we’re exploring in this series, you’ll figure it out.

What about Disclosure?

Disclosure of affiliate links has been a hot topic lately. From a pragmatic standpoint, being transparent with your audience can solidify your relationship with them, and that’s really what this is all about. But there are also ethical and legal issues to consider, none of which are cut and dry.

Sponsored by WebTrafficMachines
Learn how to generate SEO based traffic using this proven technique

—

About the Author:
Brian Clark is the co-founder of Teaching Sells.

Posted on

How to Create Magnetic Copy to Maximize Your Content Appeal

Getting people to take actions from your content requires a deep connection with your audience.

We all know the need to implement the right tactics to capture the emotion that leads to those desirable actions. Provide valuable content, use ethical SEO (search engine optimization) tactics, give away free eBooks, free webinars, whitepapers, special reports, you name it.

But if you really want to elevate your conversion rate, you need to understand the art and science of content marketing.

You need to figure out what motivates your audience to click here and sign up there.

Why people give their emails away to complete strangers, follow every call-to-action and come back for more.


Let’s look at the 3 keys of creating powerful content to help you increase your product appeal.

Grab and Keep Attention

How do you read newspaper? How about magazines? Do you every sentence of every word from start to finish cover to cover?

If you do, that’s great, but for rest of us we scan.

In today’s drive-by attention grabbing culture, people do judge a book by its cover.

That’s why magnetic copy must have magnetic headlines that get people curious. It should always be organize around benefits, the “what’s in it for me” must jump out at your prospective customers.

This is why content marketing mimics the format of news with powerful headlines, sub-headlines and bullets. Simply put, human beings are wired to tune out advertising because that’s the natural of our brain to detect deceptions.

People have less resistance with news style formatted content than advertising that looks like, well, advertising!

So start getting into the mindset that you need to write effective copy in order to grab and keep attention.

Focus your coy on the results that your customer will get instead of what your product does or the fancy technology behind it. Research your customer’s behaviors, attitudes and demographics.

People only really care about themselves so keep your copy simple to the point and write in a way as if it’s you and one other person that are in conversation.

Your content can break through the noise if it’s interesting and exciting.

Demonstrate Social Proof

Ever since we’re little we associate ourselves with certain type of identifiers. Whether it’s the cloths we wear, the car we drive, the food we eat, the music we listen to, we’re obsessed with being part of a group.

This is human nature and the foundation of our society.

When people first land on your website or visits your social media profile they are looking for validation. The idea of social proof is all about perceived value of your influence and authority.

Who you are, what you do and why should people trust you?

You simply can NOT ignore the fact that people will form opinions in their own mind that reflects the perceived status of your stuff. You literally have less than 10 seconds to make an impression and that’s your instant reputation.

If you want your visitors to stay you must show them you’ve got the goods.

You can do this by leveraging testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) such as reviews or questions and answers (Q&A). Then follow up with some high value stuff that resonates with them right away.

Another method is to show the number of subscribers, comments, retweets or followers you have. The bottom line is that social proof is all about positioning.

Get Them To Take Action

So now you’ve demonstrated your expertise across multiple communities. The next step is to get your audience to take action.

Getting people to take action on the internet is all direct response marketing strategy with effective copywriting techniques. This means integrating measurable call-to-action that gets your visitors to do what it is that you want them to do.

It can be as direct as asking people to buy your product, contact you, input their personal information, share your content or leave a comment.

The trick here is that you must provide enough real value to earn the trust of your prospective customer so you can start building a relationship with them.

People are more likely to do what you ask if you’re open, honest and transparent.

Speak like a friend and stay relevant is the key to motivate people to take action.

The take away: Magnetic copy is about appeal and getting attention not about you or what you know. It’s about becoming your customer and getting people genuinely interested so they will want to know more, see more and take actions that you anticipated by design.

Your customers don’t want your product, service or sign up for anything. What they want is the solution to their problems.

Sure you can create content that appears to do that but ultimately magnetic content helps connecting the dots in all your information to drive out miscommunication.

Real effective content actually does help people and get them the result they want.

How about you? Are you creating content that sticks? Share your top tip for creating effective content in the comments.

Sponsored by Revenue Street.

—

My ideas are for motivated individuals to do extraordinary things. I write through personal experience, including lessons learned from failures and successes. I believe the road to success is paved with incremental actions from knowledge. And knowledge without actions is just potential power.

Posted on

11 Marketing Predictions for 2011

Welcome to 2011! Well, not yet, but we’re just about there. With the New Year being just around the corner, it’s about time we lay out our predictions for next year’s major marketing trends.

Here’s what I think will both happen and be important for businesses owners and brand marketers.

  • Offline Mobile Marketing will Grow
  • Social Media will Mature
  • Increased Importance of SEO
  • More Small Businesses will Invest Online
  • Metrics and Measurements will Increase
  • Tracking will Become More Difficult
  • Publishers will Increase Focus Online, and Struggle
  • Brands will Minimize Social Platforms and Invest in Websites
  • E-commerce will Become More Intelligent
  • Offline and Online Advertising will Merge
  • Convergence will be One Step Closer

It’s pretty clear that mobile marketing will be extremely important. Foursquare has been a great indicator of mobile marketing’s power.

Mobile marketing growing is not the trend I’m excited about though. I’m more excited about how it will continue to be integrated with offline marketing.

As much as I dislike it, Facebook Places is in an opportune position with the release of Facebook Points. It won’t be long before we see fully integrated loyalty programs for check-ins that become Facebook Points which consumers can use to buy product or get discounts.

The integration of the mobile world and the offline world (think Coca-Cola in Israel) will be huge. The ability to integrate consumer credits cards, cheap RFID chips, and more dependence on mobile phones will drive this trend.

We say this almost every year, but it’s finally reached a tipping point. Major brands have embraced the value of social media and the online world. Businesses across the board have realized its importance and have pledged significant resources to the new media medium.

Watch for an increased adoption of corporate blogs and dependence on riskier online marketing plans (I say risky in the sense that brands will begin to slowly move away from the tight lipped corporate culture, to a more consumer friendly culture). Social media will drive businesses to re-think their culture and create a shift in how we do business and how we present ourselves.

Maturity does not increase use of social media, simply more effective and intelligent usage. We’ll see less wastage and more businesses asking the question “Why”.

It’s easy to look at major brand websites and see that most have little to no interest in optimizing their sites for search. Many are created in Flash, ignore coding best practices, and are confusing even for humans.

Businesses are beginning to realize the important of optimizing their websites for search engines. There are too many consumers searching for specific products for businesses to ignore them.

Small businesses, especially, gain an advantage by having an optimized website. Online, small businesses and major brands, are on equal footing – a well optimized small business website has the opportunity to perform better than some major brand websites.

I alluded to it before – small businesses have realized the advantage the Internet gives them and are investing in it. The ability to connect with consumers directly without high prices (think cable television ads) is an appealing proposition for many business owners.

Online marketing is no longer a risk; instead it’s becoming a necessity. The ROI can be measured and when done correctly can be phenomenal. Also, year-by-year, business owners have grown to be more and more tech savvy, recognizing the power of the Internet and investing in it.

The trend has continued and 2011 will be no different. We’ll see a continued increase in online investments with small businesses paying closer attention to their website realizing their sites are their online storefronts.

As more people begin giving online marketing their full focus (no longer experimenting), there will be a renewed focus on metrics. The idea that certain things are not measurable will no longer be accepted; instead people will demand metrics and measurable achievements.

Already, in 2010, we noticed a growth in online marketing metrics theory and strategies; in 2011 this trend will continue. We’ve become more sophisticated in our marketing models and are looking at new indicators to track success.

As more monitoring tools appear and more data becomes available, we’ll be able to more clearly track and define what’s working and what isn’t.

Even though I say tracking and measurements will increase, there is a potential obstacle to the trend. Government has shown an interest in reducing the ability for publishers to track and measure consumers online.

Consumers fear a lack of privacy online, an idea that already doesn’t exist, and never will, and government may over-react.  Curbing publishers’ ability to track and understand consumers could hurt online marketing as a whole. When it comes to measuring results, we may be pushed away from strict metrics and be forced to use the same guestimates we already do for traditional media.

Not to be left behind we’ll see more traditional publishers begin focusing online, realizing that traditional media is too expensive to be sustainable. Print publications have already moved online, but in 2011 we’ll see a true focus given to the web property – they won’t be portals for subscribing to the print publication.

I say they’ll still struggle because most print publishers fail to realize that moving online is not as simple as re-investing into your website. It’s a culture shift from print to real-time writing.

Publishing on the web is extremely different than publishing in print – two different strategies that take time to learn. 2011 will be the year publishers truly realize this difference and will either evolve or become extinct.

As brands become more mature in the way they interact with consumers online, they’ll also mature where they interact with consumers. Instead of focusing on creating the optimal social media profiles, businesses will begin to strengthen their website’s integrations with social media features.

Businesses will realize that by integrating the features of a social media site, they’re able to connect with consumers without giving up the analytics and control of branding.

Watch for increase integrations with Facebook connect and Twitter @anywhere. These social media API’s help business websites merge seamlessly with social media.

How we buy products online continue to grow more sophisticated. E-commerce site have collected data by letting consumers like and dislike products, leave comments, and even rate the shipping. Using the data, sites are able to create algorithms to recommend products, based on what we looked at previously.

In the next year, expect ecommerce sites to become even more intelligent. Social media sites allow us to compile large amounts of data to find and present products that solve problems for consumers.

Instead of having to search for a wrench on Amazon – the site may be intelligent enough to recognize that I just Googled how to fix my sink and recommend wrenches that would help with my product. Ecommerce that is predictive and targeted is something we’ll see in 2011.

I spoke previously about mobile marketing and offline merging, bridging the gap for marketers. The same holds true for advertisers.

Google has already shown that advertisers will be able to buy billboards through Google’s Adword system. Similarly, we’re seeing the same system for TV ads and soon enough radio ads as well.

The basic trend here is that we’ll be able to easily bid and manage our offline advertising through online systems – introducing new people to advertising they were previously exempt from.

The second trend here is much more subtle. It relates to the actual ad itself. In 2011, we’ll begin to see more and more websites begin to be added to advertisements.

I propose that in 2011, brands will begin integrating their TV ads with customized landing pages. No more will we see a brand homepage, but instead a relevant information page.

The integration of online and offline is something that already happens, to a lesser degree, in 2011 it’ll be done intelligently and effectively – instead of as an after-thought.

Technological convergence states that one-day technology, our multiple devices, will come together. The theory states that in the future we’ll only have one device, to do everything. It’s already prominent, as we see the adoption of tablets increase and processing power becoming more mobile.

The next age of convergence will come from the web converging with our TVs. We already see this phenomenon with Google TV and Apple TV, a trend that will only continue to grow.

It won’t be long before our tablets are our computers, our TV’s, our phones and anything else we may need.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think 2011 will be a truly exciting time. There’s a lot happening and so many changes in technology. We’re on the brink of major adoption of social technology, businesses giving renewed attention to technology, and the potential for major break through in tracking and measuring marketing actions.

If you’re an online marketer, brand manager, or even small business owner, 2011 will not be an era where you continue doing what has worked. 2011 will be a year of risks and trying new things. It will force people to rethink how they reach consumers and what they think is important or effective.

That’s what I think, what about you? What are you anticipating in 2011? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment and share!

—

Samir Balwani is a digital marketing strategist, helping businesses create holistic marketing solutions. His areas of expertise include digital communications, online marketing, and new media pr.

Posted on

9 Essential SEO Tips For Small Business In 2011

The end of a decade is upon us and as we ring in and welcome the new year, we do so by building upon what we have accomplished and hopes of achieving our new goals we have set forth. Social media has broken down the communication barriers and helped to pave the way for small businesses to emerge and thrive. While we continue to see growth amongst users within social media, we cannot overlook the power of search engine optimization and getting found.

Getting found online for small businesses is essential to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. The way consumers search has changed, the way they receive and consume the information has changed through sharing on the various social media platforms and also through the way that the search engines present the results for the search queries. In early 2010 the buzz was optimizing for local search, then, were re-introduced to Bing as they went full speed ahead to attract users and making optimizing for Bing worthwhile though creating more of a niche search. Google was hard at work creating instant search and Google Places and most recently confirming that yes, indeed, they are starting to pay attention to our online activity through the social signals. 2011 promises to be as action packed so enacting the essential SEO tips only keeps you ahead of your competitiors. Google was hard at work creating instant search and Google Places and most recently confirming that yes, indeed, they are starting to pay attention to our online activity through the social signals. 2011 promises to be as action packed so enacting the essential SEO tips only keeps you ahead of your competitiors.

9 Essential SEO Tips for Small Business in 2011

1. Keyword Phrases. One word phrases are a thing of the past. Yes, it is important to have specific keywords targeted as they relate to your brand and overall industry however we have to keep an eye on what phrases people are querying to find us. Delving into your analytics and analyzing how people are finding you and comparing that to what you wish to be found for will help to secure your ranking.

2. Content. The content that you are creating is not only built around keywords, it is built from what people are going to find useful, has a high propensity to be shared and also to be created from what people would want to link to. The content when we think in the different ways it will be viewed enhances how it is created.

3. Mobile Friendly. A site that is not mobile friendly is losing visitors. We have become a mobile dependent society and adapting your site to mobile devices is not only increasing your chances of searchers having the ability to view your site, it is also securing the trust with them as ultimately when we are searching, we want results. The results via a mobile device need to be more immediate and valuable.

4. Local Search. Local search is still a hot topic. Google Places becoming the default for many industry specific searches has changed the way that people are accepting the search results. This is where the biggest change has taken place. Users have had to embrace this search result change. They want results that they feel that they trust. Appearing in the results, starts the trust.

5. Link Building. A link building strategy that encompasses internal and external linking through directories, reciprocal links as well as engaging in social media through commenting on blogs, creating content that is linked to as well as web pages that are a resource to be linked to is going to point to your site through the search engines as a point of reference and increase your rankings.

6. Canonical Pathway. Creating a clear and precise canonical pathway domain sets to avoid multiple page variations (ie http://www.yourwebsitepage vs http://yourwebsitepage and duplications. The search engine spiders crawl and are unable to determine which is the preferred pathway for your site. Establish one pathway.

7. Crawl Frequency. How often are your pages being crawled? Blogs are crawled and ranked very quickly. Internal web pages that are not linked to or updated and have high visit volume are not crawled as frequently. Monitor through your cache how often your pages are being crawled to determine which pages need to be crawled more frequently and this also can give some insight as to when a new page or blog (for those that are not blogging every day) should be posted to ensure that the page is being crawled and indexed when the crawlers are crawling.

8. Photo Alt Tags. Alt tagging photos seems sometimes to be forgotten. The spiders cannot see the photo, but they can see the text that is associated with the photo. Creating alt tags that contain keywords are not only preventing the stop gap for the spiders, it is allowing an extra source for keyword density.

9. Site Speed. The speed in which your site downloads matters. Visitors will click off a site is taking too long to load.The faster the site loads the more time is spent on the site. This not only is attractive to the user, but the speed of a site matters to the search engines. Of course, the content will outweigh the speed but if you have great content that is slow and people will not wait for it, the search engines will not rank it.

These tips are essential to be ready for 2011. Search is only increasing as we see users engaging online for longer periods and having an ability to do so on the run. Mobile usage, desktop/laptop usage while at work and at home will continue to increase. People are online and trust the search engines to give them results. Can the search engines trust you to give them what they need to rank you?

Are you optimized and ready for 2011?

Posted on

Avoid These 5 Useless Website Promotion Techniques

SitePronews.com- Every owner of a website on planet Earth knows that getting a constant flow of targeted traffic is the key to making money online. The world wide web attracts such a massive number of buyers that regardless of what you sell, you will make some really good money when you have lots of traffic.

Internet marketers are constantly coming up with newer ways to expand their reach across the Internet because no website can survive without enough targeted traffic. In their quest to obtain more of the elusive traffic, the website marketers have come up with some rather creative ways to bring in greater amounts of traffic in a short period of time and with little effort.

My email inbox has been flooded with sales letters promoting some automated software or seldom used secret that promises an explosion of website visitors within 30 days. The disturbing part of all this is that it goes against the teaching of our early years; that nothing good comes easy and there is no quick path to building a successful business. As a result of these promises of abundant website traffic and exploding sales figures, many have abandoned those time tested methods of attracting real targeted website visitors that are prepared to take some kind of action. Keep in mind that website traffic isn’t something that you can just get, but visitors will come to your website when you have something to offer, enticing them to click on your link.

Too many people are cashing in on a person’s desire to get to the top without much effort by offering some really useless website marketing techniques that could actually kill their search engine rankings. The fact is that these are nothing more than ‘Marketing Fads’, that may produce some huge results in the beginning, but when the newness wears off their effectiveness will fade away forever just like the telephone booth.

Remember when pop-ups and pop-under advertising came out years ago? This was the hottest marketing tool since the time of placing fliers on cars in parking lots. However, when everyone in the world started using pop-ups to promote their websites there were windows popping up every time you visited and exited a website. Internet users worldwide got so sick of all those pop-up windows that someone invented pop-up killer software. The search engines even started penalizing websites that were using pop-up scripts and soon after that method of website promotion faded away.

I will attempt to identify and explain some of these useless website promotion techniques that should be avoided at all cost. Using some of these bad website marketing techniques could certainly kill your search engine rankings.

Automatic Search Engine Submission Services

These free search engine submission websites allow you to put in your URL, keywords and a description of your website. You then click Submit believing that your website is on its way to being indexed on thousands of search engines. Not so! First of all, the major search engines require manual submission by hand and even implement coding script to prevent auto submission. Secondly, when you click on that Submit button you have no idea where your website link will end up going. Your website link could be automatically posted to porn or international directory websites that are nothing but a colony of spam links. If Google crawls your website and finds out that you have links to your website coming from other websites with rotten content, then your website will pay the price in low rankings.

There is absolutely no substitute for manually submitting your websites to the search engines directly. You will have complete control over where your link is going, and the search engines will automatically crawl your website to get your title and description.

Auto Submission to Directories and FFA Sites

You may have seen those places that claim you can blast your website to over 2 million websites and directories. As a general rule, please stay away from anyone that uses the word ‘Blast’ because this is just another way of saying Spam. It sounds like you are literally placing your link on millions of other websites and getting tons of instant backlinks to your website. Those FFA or Free For All websites are nothing but a link farm containing links from sites with bad or irrelevant content. The search engines will never see your website as being respectable enough to rank high in the search results if it is affiliated with that type of environment.

Lead Generation Software

I once received an email that said, “Hello Webmaster, My name is John. I have been searching the Internet for some business opportunities and came across your website. I just wanted to know if you are still in business today. Please email me at this_email@emailaddress.com and let me know. Thank you.”

I replied to the person giving them more information about one of our websites. That particular email was forgotten until I received a few other emails with the same content from different names and email addresses. This matter sparked my curiosity and prompted me to do some further investigation to find out why these emails turned up so frequently.

I discovered that this was the work of lead generation software that extracts website links and email addresses from the Internet for any category. You just type the keyword in the search box and the software literally pulls in millions of email addresses. The software even allows you to mass email all those addresses. On the surface it appears to be the perfect way to put your website link in front of millions of people in the same industry as you.

This has the look and smell of spam, but because the one sending the email does not attempt to sell you anything, it’s not quite spam. This marketing technique is not very effective because the email is generic, impersonal and did not give the reader a reason to respond. Your emails should speak to a person’s needs and not just at them. Readers respond to emails if you find a way to reach their interests, giving them a reason to take action.

Backlink Generating Software

Google loves websites that have lots of quality backlinks, considering such links votes on the importance of those sites. Somebody got this crazy idea to automate the link building that Google loves, hoping to get huge numbers of valuable links and move to the top of the search engine results. Google has now gotten smart and has found to way to detect how you are getting your backlinks and even the speed at which you are getting them. So, if you are still buying links or using software to get instant backlinks, then chances are Google will find out and penalize your website. Nothing can substitute for writing valuable content that will automatically attract quality backlinks.

Automated Article Submission and Article Spinning

Writing high quality articles is a great way to attract targeted visitors to your website. Again, someone invented a way to automate this process as well. They came out with article submission software that they claim will automatically submit your written articles to hundreds or even thousands of article directories. There is even software that will take one written article, spin the title and words around, and submit them to more directories. This software sells like hotcakes because people don’t want to do the labor intensive work of writing their own articles and submitting them manually to article directories.

The real, authentic article directories that can syndicate your articles are getting smart and have installed a special code that disallows auto submission of articles. They have also installed a special script that can detect articles that have been spun off from the original. Most of them manually approve articles before they are published in their directory and can easily detect duplicate and spinned content.

Conclusion

Widespread use of these automated website marketing techniques has taken away the need to apply really genuine website promotion that gets real results and replaced it with push-button marketing. You may see some quick and positive results, but only for a short period of time. Treat your website like an infant; give it lots of attention, feed it some healthy content, protect it from dangerous spam activity and let it grow naturally over time.

Deek Ennis is the Founder and CEO of Buildstar Wholesale Resources. Since 2003 they have helped over 100,000 businesses fulfill their wholesale and drop ship product sourcing needs and save money with free worldwide shipping on over 5 million wholesale products. Deek is the author of numerous published articles on internet marketing and business such as, “7 Do It Yourself Techniques to higher Search Engine Rankings” and “How to Avoid Getting Scammed While Buying Wholesale”. Learn how Deek and Buildstar can help fulfill your wholesale product sourcing needs at www.buildstarwholesale.com.

Posted on

Never Too Young to Start

The affiliate marketing industry has a number of parent/child teams working together, such as Greg Rice and Greg Rice Jr.; Andy Rodriguez and Andy Rodriguez Jr.; and Deborah Carney and Liz Fogg-Ababon. In recent years I have become more involved in working with my father, Bill Swartwout, in what is now our company.

Bill started planting the seed for my love of working in the Internet industry when I was a young teen, when he first got on the Web. I’m currently working on instilling a passion for technology with my three-year-old daughter, who has known how to find the browser on my iPhone so that she could see the sports page icon, since she was just 18 months old.

Now, at just three, she manipulates her two pages of apps on my iPhone like a pro. It just goes to show, it’s never too young to start teaching your child how to use technology, or to get them interested in our industry, for that matter.

In addition to affiliate marketing, my other job has been an elementary school teacher. It has been my experience that not every student is fond of working on a computer. As I have surveyed my student’s families to find out what kind of technology they have available in their homes, the students with no interest in computers often do not have access to them at home.

Kids need to have a foundation in computers, as proficiency has become essential in education and the workplace. . Today’s children will not have much choice but to learn to use computers as we are engulfed in a computer-centric society. As a teacher, I do whatever I can to introduce the use of computers into my students lives through daily lessons, kick-starting their computer literacy skills – and they love it!

As a mother, I am sure to include my daughter in learning to work whatever piece of technology I happen to be using whenever she is nearby.

That said, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is never too early to encourage an interest in affiliate marketing. My three-year-old certainly doesn’t know how to do what I do as President and Affiliate Manager. But she does know that “Mommy works on the computer a lot,” Mommy works with these things called “checks that have cool pictures” on them, “Mommy types a lot,” and that Mommy has fun with her work. She even loves to wear Mommy’s company hats and ID badges from past Affiliate Summits saying that she’s going to work with Mommy one day.

Jill, affiliate manager of www.GirlyChecks.com, is president of the “parent” Beaches and Towns Network, Inc.

Posted on

Are Gurus Sabotaging New Affiliates?

Many Gurus have mastered the art of persuasion and have utilized it to their advantage. This in many instances ends up being to the detriment of many newbie affiliates. Though an effective technique used to tap into the desire of the new comer with promises to fulfill their greatest desires in the shortest possible time. This works for two reasons, a guru is perceived as an expert in his field and is therefore trusted. Hence whatever he or she says is taken as achievable. This gives a reassuring feeling to the new learner who desires understanding.

This then raises the question, is it solely the gurus fault or does the newbie have a part to play in the whole dynamics of the sabotage theory? This scenario mimics that of one attempting to perform a single handed clap (as in using one hand to clap). Both parties are required to participate in order to bring about  a response, whether good or not so good.  This applies in a broader context as well, not just for online affiliates. A day to day comparison could be drawn from an elderly person becoming the target of a break in. They become a target only after it has been ascertained that they have multiple weak spots that can be capitalized on.

So how can newbie affiliates combat this onslaught in their state of vulnerability? Let’s look at the illustration earlier I used with the elderly person. Even if the person lives alone but their home is burglar alarmed and has family stopping by on a regular basis. This individual is less likely to be targeted, as the likelihood of  getting caught is higher. Not to say all gurus are dishonest, but being able to differentiate between those who are truly qualified from those that are only seeking to make a quick buck at your expense is important.

It then becomes our responsibility to protect ourselves by making ourselves less vulnerable. In order to do this the newbie needs to be clear about what he or she is trying to achieve. Avoid the temptation to rush in and first sign up for free information to get a feel of the value they offer. This will help to determine if their product is worth the purchase. Look up reviews on the product and get a feel of what users have said about it. This technique has saved me what would have been regretful purchases and time wasted that would only have served as a distraction. The whole point of this is by becoming more responsible and taking control more it will force the gurus to raise their standard in the level of information that they share.

Starting off as a newbie affiliate is both exciting as well as nerve wracking. The truth is it’s like anything new that you try for the first time. A good indicator of how well you will end up doing is determined in the way it all begins. There are those who just rush in without first finding out what to do which usually ends up in tears. There are others who are a bit more cautious and first ask questions from the more experienced affiliates. This gives them a better starting point and a better chance of getting results.

Tip#1. Do Not Rush into it – Too many newbie affiliates end up rushing in without really knowing what to do, resulting in them running around in circles, like a dog chasing his own tail. Eventually it becomes too much and they give up.

Tip#2. Take the Time to Learn How to Successfully Promote Products – There is no single way to promote products and services. This is a personal decision that depends on your ability and your start up budget. Be sure to determine what these are before starting.

Tip#3. Select one method you feel you understand – There are various methods out there that can be used to as promotion vehicles. It is crucial to have an understanding of how they work and how users interact with them as a means of getting the very best out of it.

Tip#4. Stay Focused – To avoid detraction it is best to have a plan put together. This makes it less likely for you to end up working without seeing any results. It is then that you become demotivated and give up.

Tip#5. Put together a plan based on your finance and ability – decide your approach and jot it all down on a notepad as you go along. Keep referring to the notepad to know what your next step will be and to correct steps that went pear shaped.

Tip#6. Implement Through Trial and Error – Write down the process as you go along this will enable you to refer back to what you did and help you quickly identify what is working from what isn’t.

Tip#7. Evaluate and Improve – Tip#6 will make this part of the process much easier. Being able to quickly throw out what doesn’t work will help you to focus and improve what is working. Once you have a satisfactory conversion rate all you have to do is repeat the process with more accuracy.

Using these simple tips will provide a basis from which to launch off. Having clarity to the process and what it entails eliminates the illusion of a get rich quick mentality and enables you to focus on putting in the work necessary to achieve the results you desire.

Sponsored by Deadbeat Super Affiliate

Posted on

Trimming the Tree with Performance Marketing

ADOTAS – For companies that are accelerating marketing efforts to make the most of the upcoming holiday season, it’s still not too late to initiate a performance marketing strategy. With the ability to literally add thousands of additional marketing staff to support your online presence practically overnight, affiliate programs can prove to be cost effective and revenue generating for advertisers and publishers alike.

For David’s Cookies, affiliates are key to boosting our company’s sales. Like many consumer-oriented businesses, the holiday season can represent the lion’s share of the company’s annual profits and David’s Cookies is no exception. In fact, in recent years we’ve seen our sales increase almost 700 percent in the last six weeks of the year. To sustain continued growth and expand our buying audience of individual consumers as well as corporate gift sales, we invested in a performance marketing program.

Through our affiliate program, David’s Cookies is able to quickly scale our team of online marketers to support the holiday season without requiring the traditional training, management or overhead associated with seasonal employees. Through the added army of online marketers, we can more easily be front-and-center delivering targeted offers at the right time to buyers. With the flexibility to test out marketing campaigns and evaluate program success in near real-time, we can also make adjustments immediately, which is especially important when every minute counts during the holiday shopping season.

What’s amazing? Affiliate programs are based on a pay-per-performance model. As a result, the profits are more immediately realized by the publishers which further incentivizes them to drive more traffic to our website. An additional benefit of our performance marketing program is the ease of building partnerships that are mutually beneficial to all parties in the network.

While there are many benefits to a performance marketing program, it’s not as simple as joining a network and waiting for the profits to roll in.

One of the first and most important decisions is to determine which performance marketing program, or programs, to join. While there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of options, determining the best program that most closely aligns with your business goals can be challenging. Since advertisers and publishers typically join between two to three different performance marketing networks, here are three questions you should ask yourself to assess which performance marketing network and program options are best for your business needs.

  1. What evaluation criteria does the performance marketing network use to determine who can join the network — when it comes to both advertisers and publishers?
  2. What is the cost to join the network? It’s true that you get what you pay for yet don’t let cost be your sole determining factor. A recent blog post on Affiliate Tip further underscores this point and outlines the dangers of low cost of entry/low return programs.
  3. What’s the process for getting new publishers and retailers up and running with a performance marketing program? While many organizations wisely steer away from introducing new marketing approaches during the busy holiday season the team at LinkShare promises that advertisers and publishers can be fully up and running with their performance marketing program within two weeks.

Once the performance marketing network has been selected, the advertiser, publisher and performance marketing provider equally share the responsibilities to manage and ensure the success of the program. From retailers, here are some tips for proactively addressing and avoiding three of the most common challenges that face new entrants when they join a performance marketing network.

1. Motivating publishers. Many publishers participate in several affiliate networks so how do you make sure that you remain top of mind? One way to do this is to carefully assess the costs associated with your company hiring additional holiday marketing staff through a traditional model versus the cost of temporarily increasing the revenue structure for publishers in a performance marketing network. Depending on the percentage of cost savings gained through a performance marketing program, an advertiser can redirect a portion of those costs to their affiliate publishers.

For David’s Cookies, by increasing the revenue share for publishers by a few percentage points for six weeks, we have seen sales increase by as much as 300 percent. Along with boosting revenue share, an online merchant can also consider providing additional bonuses as well as free quality merchandise. We’ve also found that generating special offers for strategic partners helps to strengthen the relationship, increase traffic and boost sales.

2. Ensuring quality content. It’s no secret that many people read online content and blogs because they provide information and insight that is consistently current, accurate and engaging. When there are hundreds or thousands of publishers promoting your company’s offerings, you want to be able to maintain some control over how and where your company appears online. This is yet another reason why it’s worthwhile to join a higher quality performance marketing network because they carefully evaluate publishers before they are accepted into the program and consistently evaluate their progress and activities.

3. Successfully executing a performance marketing strategy. Since nobody knows your business better than you do, the most successful performance marketing programs can’t happen without commitment from the advertiser. While the infrastructure may be in place to succeed in terms of joining a quality performance marketing network and having a widespread team of publishers promoting your products, without dedication from the advertiser, the program will not yield the highest possible results.

To make the most of your investment in a performance marketing program, it’s important to build a relationship with the account manager at the performance marketing network. Since the account managers are equally dedicated to your company’s success, they’re an important ally and resource. Going beyond providing an in-depth analysis of the program status, they can also generate ideas, help with market testing, provide strategy and make recommendations for tactical execution of plans to further cultivate your online presence and avoid potential missteps.

While end-of-year activities can be all encompassing, prioritize the relationship with your performance marketing account manager to make the most of the holiday season.

For David’s Cookies, participating in a performance marketing network has proven to be a valuable investment that helps drive revenue and brand awareness for our company. Since we joined the LinkShare network eight years ago, we have been able to grow our direct to consumer sales by double-digit percent increases each year.

Harris Beber is vice president of e-commerce for David’s Cookies.

Posted on

iContact Vs. AWeber

I have been asked over and over again by those in the industry for almost a decade what the best email & newsletter programs are. I have used a few since 2000, but since 2005, I have been exclusively with iContact. Originally this was because for quite a while they provided the service for free for my publication ADOTAS.com, but currently stay and pay for the service. That being said, I have looked on occasion to move to AWeber, because it is highly recommended by many in the performance marketing industry.  I thought it might be time to take a real look at the features, pricing and functions of these two companies. Read my indepth analysis!

In comparing the two companies, it is important to look at what they traditionally have marketed themselves as.  iContact has marketed itself as a brand-centric company where brands and major websites can send out newsletter to their followers. On the other hand, AWeberhas become the favorite amongst “marketers” specifically because of its auto-responder function, which many marketers believe to be top notch. In truth, iContact does have a large amount of brand companies that use its services and about 8 times as many customers as AWeber. However, that doesn’t mean its better.

PRICING:
Aweber is $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers and $29 a month for a more realistic size of 501-2,500 subscribers.
iContact is  $14.00 a month for up to $500 subscribers, but has a cheaper $9.95 plan of $9.95 a month. Up to 2,500 subscribers is identical pricing of $29 a amonth.
The pricing for all their programs actually stays somewhat the same, plus or minus 5% between the two up to the highest levels.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
As mentioned, I have used iContact for years, but have had accounts with both companies. iContact customer service is seriously the best in the industry – from the sales team to the technical support team, they are great at what they do. One thing that I personally find important is that with all the projects that I have, I sometimes need a little “guidance” about things that are out of the box. iContact has always answered my questions on the phone and email. On the other hand, to be perfectly honest, aWeber tends to use canned, copy and paste response or send you to a webpage to “learn” the information. Even trying to get a PR and Marketing Contact over there as close to impossible, and in some cases their customer service person stopped responding to my requests for feature information. When I asked to speak to their PR & Marketing person about pricing discounts and importing, I got a form letter.

DELIVERABILITY
This is a very, very hard metric to talk about because there are no “proven” results out there. AWeber has a very strict double-optin system that they require all customers to use, and prevent almost anyone from importing emails from other lists, so that their system can “Stay clean.” However, with the huge amount of “get rich quick” and “MLM” offers that go through AWeber, there seems to be some issues. The built in Junk Mail Filter on Outlook, despite AWeber having SPAM Assassin integrated, seems to like catching AWeber emails more than iContact. iContact has a very similar system installed, but is not as easy to use. However, they review most emails themselves to “help”, just incase there is something they believe is spammy or will get you blocked, an added service I am not sure is in any other email service provider.

iContact is monitored by Pivotal Veracity which gives it a 99% deliverability rate, plus iContact has significant relations with the ISPs and knows exactly what is going on with any possible spammy emails. AWeber claims to have deliverability about the same, but at the same time, no third party verification nor do they have the same relationships from what I have been told with the ISPs because of the perception that they are used by many marketers. Still when I asked around, a lot of my friends said they had little issues with deliverabiltiy from AWeber.

FEATURES
When it comes to features, both of the companies are very similar. Both of them have a great deal of newsletter templates, great signup forms, unlimited email lists, open and click tracking, WYSIWYG editors and a great contact management system. That being said, there iContact’s tracking system is superior as it allows you to really “dig” into who is clicking on the newsletters and what they are specifically clicking on, plus examine it against other newsletters they have clicked on.  On top of that, iContact allows you to host images on its server, which for some people might be a must.  Additionally, iContact has a built in survey system, but aWeber recommends using Google Docs or SurveyMonkey for surveys.

Yet, AWeber has a built in optimization and tracking system, which allows you to track who is buying products from your newsletter. This is something that is essential for marketers, and I’m sincerely amazed that iContact has not added this into their system. I’m sincerely amazed that they haven’t since this is a blaring difference between the two that seems to be easily fixed.

On top of that, I’ll be honest – the add-ons and packages that have been built in the performance marketing industry for aWeber are significant. There are numerous great WordPress ad-ons that are attached mainly to aWeber and more than one affiliate expert has built specific  programs that work with aWeber. Still, aWeber does NOT have a developer API while iContact has a whole developer portal that should allow anyone to build those features and add-ons easily.  Some of the “outside” products that people have made for aWeber are actually built into iContact already, such as viral tell-a-friend and forwarding mechanisms.

CONCLUSION
Honestly, despite me promoting both the products, I know that the readers want me to look at one product and recommend it. Both products are on the top of their game. iContact has built a stellar reputation and has some serious clients behind it. AWeber has the hearts of the marketing community and has been able to grow significantly because of the (paid) promotions by several marketing experts.  I would easily come out with a very clear recommendation for iContact, except for the lack of a built in commerce optimization.  For many affiliates, this could be essential in knowing what list creations are doing the best and resulting in sales and purchases.

 

Something really bugs me about AWeber. One of the reasons is their requirement for all new subscribers to re-opt in their lists if they come from another provider.  This really bugs me because many, many stores and merchants have lists they have built from customers who have bought products and asking them to decrease their list by as much as 90% is ridiculous.  If you do import all your subscribers and they don’t confirm the first time, you can’t ever contact them again. Seriously guys?

The good news is that you can try both of them for close to free. Icontact has a free trial, and AWeber has a $1.00 trial. Note that, not unlike that subscription to MilfHunter, if you do not cancel AWeber they will charge your card (and in my case, even with the cancelation, they charged it, but eventually refunded the charge.).

Sign up for iContact for free

Sign up for AWeber for $1 for first month

Posted on

Are Affiliates in Danger Legally from Affiliate Networks?

Affiliates need to pay attention; your affiliate network’s actions could get you in some serious trouble. If you think that as an affiliate you can just put any advertisement up, regardless of what it’s advertising, regardless of the claims, you are seriously wrong.  Affiliate Networks already have a history of throwing their affiliates under the bus when it comes to lawsuits and blaming “rogue affiliates.” If you are making money from affiliate marketing, you need to examine whether your network is going to cause you financial harm or send you to jail.

I have written about this before: the legal standard is generally that publications are not liable for the bad behavior of their advertisers. The courts have been pretty clear about this and have ruled time and time again that the very act of publishing an advertisement does not make the publisher, for example a newspaper or website, a partner in the advertisements. The only service that the publisher is providing is the actual “space” for the advertisement to be shown.

However, for a publisher to assert this independence, the publisher must be completely separate from the advertiser regarding the claims and content of the advertising.  The publisher must be only selling “space” for the advertiser, not involved with any other decisions whatsoever. Bennet G. Kelley of the Internet Law Center explained to in a brief conversation about this topic, once a publisher gets more involved “there is a potential for greater liability. The greater role one takes the greater risk they take.”

In here comes the problem for many affiliates: since they are not supplying just space but work as “partners” with the affiliate networks and the advertiser, they could be held liable for the content of those advertisements. Depending on their involvement with the advertiser, this means that there is a very real possibility that if the advertiser and the network were named in a civil or criminal action, the affiliate could also be part of that action.

“It is the difference between being passive,” says Kelley “and being an active participant in the process. Once you get involved in the decision making of what the advertisement says you open yourself up to liability.”

If you are an affiliate, you need to examine the affiliate networks that you work with. If you have been concerned in the past with who pays, you need to look at the partnership you are creating. In  our industry there has been a lot of talk about compliance from the network side, networks examining their affiliates. However, as an industry, we need to make sure we are protecting our affiliates from “rogue networks.”

Here are some questions that you need to ask of the networks you work with, plus do your own research.

1)  Has the affiliate network ever been the subject of a government action? This is a sure way to know if the company has some issues legally. While government action doesn’t mean the company is necessarily a bad player, affiliates need to examine why the actions took place. If they are multiple allegations over time from different entities, be very wary of the company. What is going on inside that company that makes them the target over and over again?

2)  Have they been the subject of lawsuits alleging deceptive or other illegal practices?
Lawsuits against affiliate networks aren’t that common actually. Only a few affiliate networks in the last ten years have been involved with civil actions alleging illegal or deceptive practices, so if you are working with one of those companies you need to wonder what they are doing wrong. These actions usually are against companies that like to play on “both sides of the line” meaning that they want to push the boundries, depending on good attorneys to protect them. If you are named in their lawsuit along side of them, are they going to defend you, pay for your attorney? Most likley they will hang you out to dry.

3)  Is the owner a convicted felon or served time in jail for anything over parking tickets?
Examine the person behind the company, is this someone you’d let your kids (if you are that old, or have any) hang out with? If they are sleeze bags that you’d be scared to let in your neighborhood during Halloween, that’s probably a good sign. Yes, this industry has several convicted felons owning affiliate networks and worse, registered sex offenders. You need toe examine a person’s ethics in regards to other people. Do you want to really trust some guy who was caught robbing old ladies of their social security money with your business?

Whatever you decide, realize that your decisions of what affiliate network you work with could affect you in the future. If that affiliate networks gets in trouble, don’t be surprised, especially if run by a scumbag, that you will find yourself also in trouble.

Posted on

Marketing War: Affiliate World vs. Brand World, who will win? Affiliate Summit Co-Founder Missy Ward Knows!

If you’ve never heard of Missy Ward, then join the club. Most people in agencies have never heard of her, despite her being one of the most influential people in the world in one of the fastest growing segments of interactive advertising: Affiliate Marketing.  She’s also the owner of Affiliate Summit, which has become the largest conference in the world for affiliate marketing and is the must-attend place for anyone in the industry to go. It’s grown so large, so fast that one major player in the told me that probably within a year or two it would overtake ADTECH as the largest conference in the industry–  a claim which is hard to believe until you see the list of exhibitors which include everyone from EBAY to AMAZON, companies that don’t exhibit at ADTECH.

Yet, as mentioned, most of the interactive advertising industry hasn’t heard of Missy. They better shape up and start paying attention however to what she is saying. For some reason the interactive advertising industry has grown into two huge parts:  the brand world and the Affiliate Marketing world. While many people call the Affiliate Marketing world the Direct Response world, the industry itself thinks of itself more and more as “Affiliate” or “Performance” marketing. These two worlds exist side by side, but for some reason there are very few people who cross the line and work in both – or very few that admit it. While more and more agencies are adopting CPA and performance marketing models, and hiring employees from companies like COPEAC, Azoogle and Commission junction, they are trying to keep this push somewhat secret.

However if you look at the attendance at Affiliate Summit, you’d never guess the two worlds are at odds. Over 30% of the attendeeship is from agencies, including the major agencies that only push the brand play. They aren’t willing to admit it, but they are to some degree desperate to understand this part of the industry, which often seems like a weird mix of word of mouth marketing , search and display.  One agency head told me that it was not that they didn’t understand affiliate marketing, but that they didn’t know how to make it fit with their existing clients – which didn’t seem quite right. Amazon.com, one of the leading web properties in the world was one of the earlier adopters of Affiliate marketing, and still to this day has an active, vibrant affiliate marketing program that produces the majority of their new advertising traffic.  If you sign up to any major affiliate marketing company, you will see a list of major brand companies including Dell and Microsoft.

I sincerely believe that brands actually do want to learn about affiliate marketing, that they are interested in having a conversation, but there are agencies out there that are scared of doing anything that changes their current dynamic. They’ve argued so long that brand marketing is only about eyeballs, that they can’t see that the two worlds don’t actually clash – that there are programs that can pay on a performance but also drive eyeballs and reach the audiences they want. Then again, just ten years ago there were brick-and-mortar ad houses that were arguing that interactive advertising would never provide the brand opportunities that television had, and that television networks would always dominate the advertising space.

Affiliate marketers, as a group are innovators. They are often seen by the brand media as no more than “get rich quick” people, despite long term, successful businesses.  Yes, there are those segments in the affiliate marketing industry, just like the industry at a whole that is composed of adware scammers, get-rich DVD pushers, and the same – but even in this segment there are those who are engaged in innovative processes to gain attention to their clients. It’s too easy to group everyone together and ignore the real processes that occur in the affiliate marketing world, which includes the real ability of affiliate marketers to connect to consumers – to get them to listen and pay attention.

Another common excuse I hear is that brands are scared because they are worried about protecting their brand. This might have been an excuse during the start of the affiliate marketing world, but so much technology and fraud measures have been created in the last few years that any worry of rogue affiliates is less possible than ever. Affiliate companies live off of production and the reputable ones have compliance and monitoring teams working full time to discover even the slightest deviation from the norm in reporting. In fact, I would argue that the technology developed to detect fraud in the affiliate marketing industry far outweighs what most display ad networks and agencies have, and many display networks need to learn about policing from the affiliate industry.  Having been involved in both discovering and helping prosecute impression fraudsters, I can tell you that the affiliate marketing industry examines their relationships considerably more than any display network I’ve ever seen.

Agencies need to take a better look at the Missy and listen to what she is talking about.  I promise if they don’t they will slowly find more and more of their clients leaving and going to those companies that actually know who she is.

Posted on

Nick Foley and his Crew works the Revenue Street

I wanted to get the skinny on the industry from Nick Foley this week, partially because I’ve known him for a while, but also that despite being around for over a decade, his company isn’t always listed on the top  lists of networks. Well, this year that changed with the readers of Performance Marketing Naming him as one of the top 20 performance marketing networks in the world. It’s obvious that he’s quickly making a name for himself, and TheRevenueStreet is a network to examine as a possible major player in the industry.

How did you personally get into Affiliate & Performance based Marketing?
I started TheMediaCrew in 1999 and RevenueStreet in 2004.  I got involved with performance based marketing or affiliate marketing because I noticed the CPC/CPM model slowly changes towards the CPA/CPL model.  We wanted to be able to capitalize on this change hence; RevenueStreet.com was born.

What makes Revenue Street Unique and interesting?
Well, we have great offers but so do a lot of networks.  My true answer is our Experience, People & Technology.   I have been in the industry since 1999 and in my opinion we have the best team of industry professionals a company could put together.   We maintain a relatively small and tight ship which allows us to respond quickly to changes in our industry and the needs of our advertisers and affiliates.  In addition, we have always leveraged our experience and built our own software platforms, and most recently implemented  EFFECTUS (effectus-software.com).  This is our proprietary performance based marketing tracking software which was in development for close to two years.  It’s now powers RevenueStreet.com and we have started to license it.

What does Revenue Street look for in its affiliates?
We typically look for 4 key ingredients:  Experience, Integrity, Communication, and Results.  We take an in depth look into the affiliates industry experience and the individuals drive to succeed.  Next we lay out our expectations for the affiliate and discuss openly and honestly the process the affiliate plans on using to generate traffic.  Then we encourage a solid line of communication and transparency.  We want to help our affiliates earn as much money as possible so having a solid line of communication with our AM’s is the key to achieving this.  Finally, we want to understand the results they are expecting and come up with a game plan to achieve those results.

What is your perception of all the get rich blogs? Does this hurt or help the industry?
As with many of the “get rich schemes” this just inundates our industry with inexperienced people thinking affiliate marketing is a quick easy home based business.  I believe this mainly spawns fraud and a bad image for our industry.  This is becomes a burden when larger branded advertiser look to affiliate marketing as part of their marketing plans.

What changes have you seen in the industry since 2001, and what changes do you wish you’d see?
I have seen CPM rates going from $150 CPM down to $10 CPM.  I also was involved with the transition from CPM/CPC models moving to CPA/CPL models.  I would like to see a reduction in fraudulent activity.  As I previously stated, big name advertisers and fortune 500 companies need to be able to trust our industry to provide true performance based results without all of the hassle of fraud.  I understand this is a part of business, but also believe it can be controlled and reduced.

What is the most common fraud you’ve found in the industry, and what steps does RS take to combat that?
A majority of our campaigns are lead based and we see a lot of form filling.  One of the steps we take is to maximize the quality of the lead on the landing page.  For example, we implemented a simple not interested button on one of our landing pages which reduced non-interested leads.  In addition, we don’t allow any host & post, all traffic is driven directly to the advertisers landing page which we have seen to reduce fraudulent traffic.  Our platform, EFFECTUS has fraud features which alert us of fishy lead generation and sales.

If you could have any wish, what tool would you like seen made for affiliates?
Sometimes, I can’t understand the way some businesses in our industry operate and stay in business.  If I had a wish, I would probably wish for a way for affiliates to x-ray a company and really see how a company or network operates its business and takes care of its people.

What ideally would you like to teach brands about affiliate marketing?
Affiliate Marketing (aka Performance Marketing) is TRULY a win/win situation for a company and it’s marketer.  The main thing is to educate brands about the legitimate and illegitimate practices in our industry.  If we can create an open line of communication and transparency with big brands, they will ultimately join in the reduction of fraud and the growth of the industry

Whose is the sexiest girl in our industry?
My wife .. 🙂  (another wimp, what da hell?)