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Internet Marketing Dwarfs Its Predecessors

Gone are the days of desperately probing through the yellow pages in the middle of the night, searching for a plumber in close proximity, to resolve an unexpected blockage of inconvenient proportions, only to find that their printed number is no longer in service.  Times have changed.

The digital Goliath now reigns supreme and brings with it up-to-date, instant information in the form of Internet marketing. Information is now accessible from anywhere and at any time. It dwarfs traditional marketing, making it an ink spot on dated piece of paper.

Advertising is the backbone of any successful business, regardless of size. Effective advertising is measured by the amount of business generated from a specific marketing campaign. Companies across the board are finding that nontraditional forms of marketing, such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and online videos are showing fast, effective results. These companies are using innovative methods to develop outstanding market repertoires.

Finebloom and Haenel is a Florida-based DUI law firm. In March 2010, the firm hired my company Everspark Interactive, an Atlanta-based SEO agency, to create a digital marketing campaign for their business. Within nine months, the firm has seen a 35% increase in business.

“This SEO marketing campaign has done amazing things for us,” said David Haenel, co-founder of Finebloom and Haenel. “The phone rings more and we have been on the first page of Google repeatedly from keyword searches.”

SEO marketing campaigns ensure that businesses make a unique impression to connect with consumers. Unlike traditional marketing, Internet marketing focuses on each business’ unique characteristics and promotes those characteristics to a target audience.

With the prominent shift from print to the internet, more consumers rely on digital sources for information. This information is global, and readily accessible through the use of computers and smartphones. Haenel predicts that businesses who continue to rely on traditional marketing, will soon struggle for survival.

“If you don’t use nontraditional marketing methods, you are going to get crushed,” Haenel warned.

He added that his firm will continue their SEO campaign into 2011, by adding mobile sites to their website, so that clients can access the firm’s information from their smartphones.

Benefits of nontraditional marketing:

1. Internet Marketing is More Measurable

Companies can effectively track marketing spending, as well as track the results of any Internet marketing campaign. Traditional marketing is based on a principle of trust, nontraditional marketing focuses on measurable results.

2. Internet Marketing Makes Strategic Decisions Based on Facts

Based on measurable results, Internet marketing can modify a campaign instantly to adjust to the public’s response. It can base those decisions on detailed analytics. Consumer response can be studied in detail and in real time.

3. Internet Marketing Effectively Reaches a Target Audience

Internet marketing can target an audience of any size and location through SEO tools. In contrast, traditional marketing focuses on a mass audience through magazines or television advertisements

4. Internet Marketing is a Constant Source

Internet marketing is ever-present. A Web address remains in the same spot, all the time. Consumers can find business services by doing keyword searches. In contrast, traditional marketing depends on allotted time-slots or print space to convey a message. If the consumer misses a television commercial, the business lost a potential client. Internet marketing is constant.

5. Internet Marketing Provides Better Word-of-Mouth

Social media sparks conversations that can reach an audience of massive proportions, within minutes. Word-of-mouth remains the most effective form of marketing and client growth.

6. Internet Marketing Increases Conversions

Internet marketing gives businesses the opportunity to track the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. They show which strategies work, and which don’t. This ensures a constant increase in conversions. By contrast, traditional marketing simply creates a campaign and relies on hope as its strategy for success. Internet marketing offers an up-to-date, accurate representation of results, which a business can choose to drop or develop to ensure the best possible outcome of their campaign.

—–

As the director of SEO at Everspark Interactive, Jason Hennessey oversees search marketing campaigns for high profile celebrities, lawyers, politicians and Fortune 500 companies. Within the industry he is known as “The Secret Weapon” people call on when they want to rank for extremely competitive terms in short periods of time. Hennessey has played an instrumental role in turning Everspark Interactive into a $1.2 million agency in only three months.

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Incentive and Content Unlocking Programs that Work

There has been a lot of negative press lately about incentivization and content programs in affiliate marketing. I’ve personally written a bunch of stuff in my blog at IndustryPace about content unlocking programs, the problems it’s caused in the industry. That being said, while there are more than a few bad players in the industry who are jumping around from network to network destroying offers, there are also some legit players who are doing it right, working with advertisers to create real products and providing value for both affiliates and the advertisers. So as part of my dedication to providing equal opportunity, it seems fair to mention and feature some of the companies in this part of the industry who are making money for affiliates.

AdscendMedia: Adscend basically re-invented the content unlocking system and has made a name as the legit source for content unlocking. They have taken a proactive stance against illegal or explicit material as a method to promote their programs. Because of this, they provide the highest payouts in content unlocking in the industry and feature advertisers that you cannot find anywhere else. If you are looking for a content unlocking system, check out Adscend.

SuperRewards:  A division of adknowledge, SuperRewards is the top virtual reward companies for games. If you are building a game or some system that needs to reward your users, this is the first company to go to create virtual gold opportunities. Plus, since its backed by Adknowledge, you know that you’re going to be working with a legit company.

EnvyusMedia. EnvyusMedia has a huge selection of unique and high converting programs that are worth checking out. EnvyusMedia came from nowhere last year to become one of the top new CPA Networks, partially because of bringing great new offers to the table. Check out their incent programs at OfferVault.

AxonMediaGroup. Another great network with a lot of incent programs, including legit form and lead generation that allows incent. It’s difficult to find incent programs that are lead based but AxonMedia Group has a bunch of insurance, medical, dental and investment offers that are all incent-allowable.

CPAWAY. Perhaps the largest selection of Programs in the industry, including tons of exclusive international offers. CPAWAY has become a “one-stop” source for all offers, ontime payments and now one of the king of incent offers. Check them out at OfferVault.

PointClickTrack: Huge network that specializes mainly in incentive based programs. Has many  tools such their own Content Unlocker / File Gateway, which also has a Donation Widget, and Virtual Currency Widget to help other websites monetize their traffic.  Check them out at OfferVault

What are some Incentive Based Content Unlocking Systems? (Special thanks for Adscend for the Ideas)
One) Create their own Windows themes and similar graphics and content lock them, some with high success w/ organic SEO traffic

Two) File conversion sites – like doc/docx to PDF.

Three) Indie bands/artist – Musicians to lock their content

Four) Ebooks – if you have rights to the ebook, you can show a few pages of the book and then lock for the rest of the access

Five) Instructional videos – e.g. guitar lessons

Six) Royalty free sound packs

Seven) Access to premium membership content. An example I ran into just yesterday was a website charging $1 USD for use of a special financial calculator online, they could use a content unlocker and generate around the same amount of revenues per use however would likely see more revenues because of the free option. There is a lot of room for monetizing small payment amounts on various sites.

Eight) Software! Our API allows full integration with software so developers can monetize their software any way they would like, this includes requiring a survey for unlocking certain features or requiring a survey with every use of the software.

Nine) Any movies, music, graphics, ebooks, etc. are fair game as long as the publisher owns rights to the copyrighted file. We have many publishers who create their own content

Check out these amazing affiliate tools here

ttp://adknowledge.com/publisher/games
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Is Article Marketing Dead?

In recent days, there has been a virtual maelstrom of outcry and heated opinions on Google’s recent algorithm “shift”. Nowhere else has this controversy manifested itself more than in the article marketing space.

In January, EzineArticles, the largest, and still most authoritative article directory online, cracked the coveted 100 most popular web sites in the world, serving 57 million unique visitors that month. Then, striking with the suddenness of a vicious lightning bolt, on Thursday, February 24, Chris Knight, CEO of EzineArticles, confirmed they lost 11.5% of their traffic and the following day, Friday, another 35% of their traffic vanished.

Later the same night, Chris made a blog post at EzineArticles saying that next month (March 2011, that is) their traffic may fall to half the levels it achieved in January.

What is going on? Does this sudden, swift, and dramatic decline signal the death knell for article marketers everywhere? Especially those that have come to rely on EZA primarily as the vehicle to deliver that laser targeted search engine traffic to their web sites?

Opinions are heated and varied. On EzineArticles’ blog, as of this writing, Chris’s post has garnered over 250 responses. Similar heated debates are popping up on the Warrior Forum, and, of course, AssociatePrograms.com’s own Brad Hauck discussed the duplicate content issue with respect to article directories such as EZA in the most recent newsletter.

After running an affiliate training service for almost 3 years that revolves around article marketing, and living and breathing the space, my answer to the questions posed above is both yes and no – that is, some article marketers are in for a rude awakening, while I smell opportunity for others.

Let me explain.

Chris Knight on his blog post mentioned various ways EZA intends to tighten up their rules even further. Here’s the crux of his argument: “We’ve been both quietly and publicly at war with a small percentage of our membership who aim to use our site to game the search engines with what we refer to as ‘article vomit’ or thinly-crafted software-spun articles.”

EZA will now spend more time on quality checks – format, grammar, spelling, and consistency – and has increased word counts to 400 words minimum for acceptance. Other possible actions include requiring articles submitted to them to be unique only to them (no longer allowing the same article to be submitted to various article directories), and more.

On Saturday, after I had time to read the various threads, Chris’s comments, EZA’s possible impending changes, I then performed a thorough review of the traffic being generated by members of my article marketing training service.

The good news is we, as a group, were not negatively impacted even though article marketing is the traffic source we most rely on to generate affiliate sales.

The real question is: Why?

The short answer is we keep things “legit” and “real.” It doesn’t matter if you’re in my training service or not. If you want to persevere and prosper with your online affiliate endeavors, I believe the same lessons will apply to you.

For example, from the outset, I have always advocated my members do the research for the industries and products we are promoting and learn to write the articles themselves under our guidance. Anyone in my service will vouch for the fact that I have always severely cautioned against using article spinners, and PLR services.

Well researched, authentic, meaty content
As a result, our members overwhelmingly produce well researched, meaty, authentic content in the niches we target, providing real value to people who come across those articles. In fact, one of the long standing perks of my service is that I personally review the first few articles students write to give them feedback on how to improve their writing – or point out things they are doing wrong.

As a corollary, because our articles tend to be highly informative, it’s with very rare exception that members of my service ever write articles under 400 words as well, thereby already protecting them from “sweeps” of thin content articles that EZA is already in the process of implementing.

Because I also foresaw some potential issues with duplicate content penalty, several months back I also initiated a preemptive protective action in my service to allow any member (new or longstanding) to obtain unique, original copy for their affiliate presell web site so that no two students would have duplicate content that appears on their sites.

In addition, about half of our members build their own presell web sites, and, as a whole, do a fantastic job of keeping their content original because it’s in alignment with the way we teach and do our article marketing – we don’t believe in or advocate derivative material. On this latest Google shift, I checked out some of their web sites and noticed their results were still strong, often claiming top rankings for desirable keywords.

Bad news for some affiliatesN
ow, the bad news. If you were the type of article marketer who was churning out hundreds, if not thousands, of short (250-300) word articles quickly, and using article spinners, and PLR services, your days are undoubtedly numbered. In fact, in the days ahead, it’s likely you’ll see most of your articles wiped clean out of EZA directory, if it hasn’t happened already.

However, if you target true evergreen products, do real research, and keep your content valuable, you’re actually going to find the latest changes to your benefit in the fullness of time. As the thin content article marketers get cleaned out, I strongly believe the result will be less competition for not only members of my service but legitimate article marketers everywhere.

In addition, EZA may also be reducing the number of Google AdSense ads they serve on pages of their site as well. If they do, this should translate into an even higher click-through for legitimate article marketers who stick it out because probably the biggest diverting factor from getting the readers over to your presell site was losing them to a Google AdSense ad served on EZA’s site itself. Of course, this is how EZA keeps their service free, but it’s still worth pointing out this potential upside to us article marketers beginning in the near future.

Recommended changes
Having said all of this, I am advocating certain changes to my members (and to all of you). First, I believe you should write only unique content for each article directory. If you write an article for EZA, that article should not be submitted to other article directories, and vice versa. EZA may or may not implement this rule, but I think you should be doing it anyway.

Moreover, whereas I used to think it was OK for someone to add articles they’ve written and own to their own web sites or blogs, I no longer advocate this. Perhaps I am being paranoid, but you never know just how far Google is going to go with the “duplicate content” thing. I suggest that members now keep their article marketing content unique and different from the content that they create on their blogs and/or presells.

Lastly, I think the days of “bum marketing” are coming to a close. “Bum marketers,” as near as I could tell, tended to focus on fad products. They did some quick, superficial research, blasted some article marketing to those fad products using thin content for a while, then rinsed and repeated the process for the next hot product of the month. Indeed, on EZA’s blog post on this issue, they mentioned that sweeps of certain areas have already happened, acai berry being one example they listed – and which also happens to represent a perfect example of a fad product.

Bum marketers, by their nature of constantly jumping around and promoting new things, never really develop deep knowledge in the niches on which they are writing. They also almost never use the products they are promoting, either, and this clearly shows in the content they create. By contrast, a significant portion of the members in my training service, through the knowledge they acquire, come to believe passionately in the products we promote and end up as consumers themselves, which, in turn, creates a genuine experience and furthers their knowledge, which manifests itself in their content.

In conclusion, life throws us all numerous challenges. It’s always how we react to circumstances, even if we cannot control them, that counts in the end. Of course, it’s always helpful to be keenly cognizant of potential issues before they crop up and nip them in the bud.

I believe one reason for our enduring success as an affiliate training service is because we have tried to anticipate potential issues before they have arisen, just as you must, and taken action accordingly. Of course, I’m also quite certain we’ll face issues in the future we had not anticipated, but our resolve will be to solve those problems when and if they arise.

The ability to adapt to change is one of the hallmarks of leading a successful and productive life, and in the Internet marketing space, change happens much quicker than it does in many other fields. If you expect to endure as an affiliate marketer for the long term, as I have for 9 years now on a full-time basis, you must always stick to creating content and promoting products worthy of longevity. Attempting to make the “fast buck” today may mean making no bucks later, whereas building a proper foundation, even if it’s a bit slower out of the gate, may mean a passive income that sets you free in the years ahead.

—–
Dan Ho is a super affiliate and the founder of AffiliateArticleWriters.com, a training service to build lifetime & passive income.

Amazing new Affiliate Tool Check it Out!

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New OfferVault

After many months of development, we have released the latest version of Offervault, which has been totally re-written from the ground up. Aside from several new features that you can take advantage of right now, the new system lays the groundwork for the rest of our planned upgrades throughout the rest of 2011.

The new ADVANCED SEARCH button provides new search capabilities including searches by NETWORK, CATEGORY, ALLOWED TRAFFIC TYPE, COUNTRY and PAYOUT RANGE.

The new SEARCH PREFERENCES button allows you to fully customize your search experience with settings tailored to the way you like to work. This includes an updated interface making email alerts
even easier to set up and use. Email alerts allow you to be notified automatically when new offers come out that match your pre-set
search criteria.

Look for the new STAR in the search box to show a drop down of your favorite searches, which you can save and recall with a simple click of the mouse.

Don’t forget to check the WEBINAR tab too. We have added new search capabilities so that you can more easily search among the 75+ archived webinars to find just the topics that you are looking
for, by both keyword and presenter.

http://offervault.com

In another big change, we have opened up the system to allow un-registered users to use the main search function. You still need to register and be logged in to take advantage of most of the more
advanced features, but since you are receiving this email, you are already registered.

We have included a new video tour that you can watch to get an overview of all the new features.

I hope you enjoy the new Offervault and all the new features that are now available to you. This is going to be a big year for Offervault, so keep a look out for more great features to come.

Please let us know what you think! Your feedback it very important to us.
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Shane Graper Believes in Hybryd Marketing? Is He Going Green?

I’m not sure what is the water in Denver, but companies are sprouting up left and right here. Shane Graper, like George Avery of GetAds left his employer in the wake of the Facebook and Attorney General scandals that rocked the industry. From that he moved onto creating his own company, with its own way of doing business and more importantly with an focus on professionalism. From talking to him and the other folks at the company, HybrydAds is very focused on that professional experience and wants to make it clear that they are not like any other company in the industry.

When did you know that you “really liked” affiliate and performance based marketing? I really knew this was something I liked when I had a crash course at Video Professor in 2004. That is when the light bulbs began to turn on and a career was born.

What has HybrydAds done in regards to compliance that you feel is important? Hybryd has spent countless hours analyzing traffic. We have been able to tie many different bad sources of traffic together. This has allowed HybrydAds to actively seek cooperation between other networks to keep a running list of those bad sources. We can share info without giving away secrets.

What do you look for in affiliates that help you know they might be a good choice to approve? First and foremost, can their information be validated? Hybryd does communicate with every Affiliate so that we know how we can provide the best service. We have moved mostly to a referral-based process to make approvals less painful. We still do approve a limited amount of applications and always welcome referrals.

You used DirectTrack while at Affiliate.com, what made you guys go with LinkTrust instead of the platform you knew? I’ve worked with several tracking platforms in the past so when weighing the choices that were out there for Tracking we looked at four things: Accuracy in Tracking, Growth, Reporting, and Cost. Comparing these across the available platforms LinkTrust won hands down.

Do you see this industry as “affiliate marketing” or “performance marketing” and any reason? Looking at this industry as only affiliate marketing is too microscopic. This industry has evolved into performance marketing from affiliate marketing. The Performance model includes the diversity of marketing that is available across our industry. Others might say its just semantics though.

What do you think of the industry groups like the Performance Marketing Association? Is there a need for a representative group? The PMA is great for creating a collective voice in our industry. I do think that there needs to be a representative group but the trick is getting everyone in the industry involved and cooperating.

If you could pitch an airline to use performance based advertising, what would you do? Performance based advertising could help offer more value to their customers. An airline could for example monetize the viewing of in air TV and movies with products and services. Why not try to improve marketing to a captive audience with nowhere to go for the duration of a flight. I could go on about data monetization but I wont. They are doing a bit of performance based advertising already; I was on a flight recently that tried to sign passengers up for a credit card with miles as an incentive. The only issue is it wasn’t interactive and flight attendants aren’t always the best sales force.

What exclusive offers would you like to introduce to our readership? We have been working hard to develop our own Education portal, DegreeChemistry.com. In addition we are getting ready to launch our own insurance portal that you can get a sneak peak of at SelectMyInsurance.com.

What do you think of adware or contextual advertising? Like any other form of advertising it can be effective if used with in the correct guidelines. We all know how successful the Search engines have been at it.

What are the benefits and risks? The benefits are that it can be extremely targeted and valuable to the consumer. The only concern of course will be regarding privacy.

What are you planning to do for the next 6 months of 2011? Without giving away all network secrets we are focusing pretty heavily on technology.

The Denver area in the last few years has become a new mecca of major CPA Networks, from GetAds, Intela & AdPerio. What do you like about the area and what makes you stay here? There is only one thing that Colorado doesn’t offer and that’s an ocean. Other than that, there is nothing you can’t find or do here. You can drive an hour in any direction and find a different climate or landscape for any activity.

If you could move HybrydAds to any other place besides Denver, where would it be? I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. If we did move it would either have to be a tropical island or a place that has a comparable climate with Denver.

What would be your dream car? My Dream Car would be a Truck. Fully loaded, Full Size, and good on gas. Is that too much to ask for?

Visit HybrydAds Affiliate Network here.
Check out all their offers on OfferVault

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LinkBuilding 101

Most people understand by now that links have a very real influence on rankings in search engines. How it works and in which ways a link can influence your ranking is often unclear though, resulting in many myths. This link building 101 tries to explain the basics of link building and to refute some of the myths around it.

 

 

How does a link help your site?

A link to your site “helps” in four ways:

  • It adds value to the “receiving page”, allowing it to improve its visibility in the search engines.
  • It adds value to the entire receiving domain, allowing each page on that domain to improve its rank ever so slightly.
  • The text of the link is an indication to the search engine of the topic of the website and more specifically the receiving page.
  • People click on links, resulting in so called “direct traffic”.

The value of a link for the receiving page is determined in part by the topic of the page the link is on. A link from a page that has the same topic as the receiving page is of far more value than a link from a page about an entirely different topic.

On top of that, a link from within an article is worth way more than a link from a sidebar or a footer. Furthermore the more links there are on a page, the less each individual link is worth.

So what makes a good link?

Imagine, you’re working on a link building campaign and you get to choose where to place a link and what page to point it at. You’ll have to consider the following questions:

  • How strong is the site / page that’s going to link out?
  • Which receiving pages on my site make most sense as far as topic is concerned?
  • Which page of this set of sensible pages would deliver the best ROI when it’s ranking?
  • Which page is most sensible for the visitor of the linking page, clicking on the link?

The last question is often the one best to ask of yourself: link building delivers, if done well, better rankings and more direct traffic. You have to keep in mind though that in most cases those visitors coming to you directly from the other site will behave differently from people coming from the search engines. Say you get a link from a site aimed at elderly women, these people will behave drastically different from the diverse public you’ll get from the search engine when the page starts ranking. In your design of the page, you’ll have to account for both.

How strong a site and/or a page is, can be judged on several criteria, PageRank being one of them, though often not very accurate. MozRank is useful at times, but the most useful and sensible check often is the following: does the page that you want a link from, rank in the top 20, 30 or even 50 for terms related to the page you’d want it to link to? If the answer to that is yes, a link on that page is usually a good idea.

The anchor text

If you’ve decided which page you’re going to be linking to, the second question arises: which anchor text will you be using? The anchor text in itself influences two things:

  • The anchor text indicates to the search engine what the topic might be of the page the link points at and it can therefor help that receiving page rank for that term. If you want to rank for “WordPress SEO”, you’d want to have links to that page with anchor texts like “WordPress SEO”, “SEO for WordPress”, etc.
  • The anchor text also has an effect on how many people will be clicking on the link. While from the above bullet you might have gathered that “click here” is a horrible anchor text, as you probably don’t want to rank for it, it does tend to get clicked well and therefor gets you more visitors.

Of course, don’t overdo this. If all links, or a too large percentage of links to your site and / or page have the same anchor text, you’ll look like a spammer. So if you’re actively link building, vary your anchor text.

As you see, these are not trivial decisions, ones you have to make on a site by site and page by page basis. You don’t always have the luxury of controlling anchor text and to be honest, that’s a good thing; way too much sites out there would have a far over optimized “link profile” if they had such a level of control. Because you have to make these decisions on a site by sate basis, buying a “backlink package”, something still far too common these days, is often a wrong decision.

Are there any rules about links?

There are two kinds of rules that influence SEO and thus link building. First of all, there are the rules of the search engines, with Google having said most about links. Then there’s the law about advertising, these laws differ per country but especially within the EU they tend to have the same “ring”.

What Google says about links and link building

In their article on link schemes Google gives some examples of links that can influence your ranking negatively. This deals with both links to and from your site (f.i.: don’t link to spam sites). They’re most clear about paid links though: they’re a violation of their guidelines and can lead to a ban of your website.

This isn’t to say that such links would have an immediate negative effect. In fact, in the short term they might even boost your rankings, as quite often Google has to take manual action to discount those links, as not in all cases Google see whether a link has been paid for or not. But, especially keeping in mind the recent debacles with JC Penney and Overstock.com, both of whom have been penalized by Google and publicly scolded for their behavior by the press, this tactic is seldom worth while.

Google recently published an article on quality links on the Google Webmaster Blog, it’s worth reading to get their perspective.

The law about links

I’ve talked about the Dutch specifics in an article on Marketingfacts recently, which in trun goes back to an article on eConsultancy: if something is an ad, it has to be visibly (for the visitor) marked as such. A paid link could under these new rules be called an ad and would therefor have to be disclosed. I don’t see a court case just yet, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

Want to read more about link building?

Outside of this link building 101 a lot is being written about the topic and a large part of it is, excusez le mot, crap. Because of that I’d like to point you at some sources that I do consider worth while:

  • Wiep.net
    The blog of my fellow countryman Wiep Knol, an amicable guy and great link builder.
  • Eric Ward aka LinkMoses
    When I went to my first class in high school in ’94, this guy was already doing link building. His insights are therefor based on a treasure trove of experience.
  • LinkSpiel by Debra Mastaler
    She has more of a wider marketing approach to link building and is therefor very usable for each and everyone

——

Joost de Valk is one of the formost Expert in Tweaking Website and Link Building 101

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How to Get Higher Affiliate Payout Raises

I commonly hear from affiliates the same thing: that they need better payouts and more importantly, why they aren’t getting a better payout. In this industry affiliates have become damn smart and with that a little more demanding than say 12 years ago when I started in this industry.  Let me tell you a little secret then that many affiliate networks don’t want you to know: despite all their complaining about how their margins are very little, most of them are not completely honest and they have a lot more room for payouts than they are telling you. With that in mind, and armed with some knowledge about what other networks are paying, plus the following tips, you can approach affiliate networks and increase your payouts.

1)      Ask for Tiered Pricing. Most of the newer software platforms such as Cake Marketing have the ability to price the leads or sales based on quantity made.  If your affiliate manager is not giving you the best price, then ask them what they can do for more leads per month IF you hit that goal. While this can be a little risky, it shows the affiliate manager that you are interested in being a partner, producing more, not just asking for more money.

2)      Find where the Network is getting the offer. If you haven’t figured out by now, many networks just get offers from other networks. While its great to use stuff like OfferVault (yes, a little plug here) to find better pricing, it doesn’t always mean that you can get a better price. If you can find where  your current affiliate network is getting their offer from, you can often approach the other network with wanting to run the offer. Use HttpWatch http://www.httpwatch.com/ for tracking the clicks and seeing where it goes – it will show you ever jump from your click on an advertisement, to what network it is going to and then to the end advertiser. One of the great methods about this technique is that you can often approach networks, tell them that you are running “so many” leads for another network that they work with, and it’s more likely that you’ll be accepted into that network.

3)      Tell your Affiliate Manager that you will rotate similar offers from another network into the mix (and do it!). If you haven’t learned already about rotating similar offers to find what works better, then you need to learn about this. It’s also a very, very effective method of making networks pay you more money, causing them to bid for your best traffic.  Also there is a factor where for whatever reason (well, there are actually lots of reason) sometimes offers don’t always consistently perform and rotating offers gives time for the “other” offer to refresh and perform better.  Frankly, it’s also a good “don’t put your eggs in one basket” method, for the “just incase” times when an affiliate network might have an “issue” about not paying.

4)      Offer to test other offers. Don’t be a one-hit wonder, ever. Ask your AMs what is doing well, and then tell them that you’ll start testing that offer if they raise the other one. If you are an emailer especially, this is a very particular and great strategy. Many AMs know what offers will work on your email list, but it makes sense that you want incentivize to try something new. Many times an AM will give in a little if you give a little back.

5)      Ask for a Bonus from their Advertiser. This is similar to tiered pricing, but a slightly different method. I have found that many advertisers, when questioned about if they will bonus certain affiliates who hit goals will actually jump on the opportunity. Ask your AM to ask the advertising side of their business to see if they’ll give you a $2,500 AX gift card (tax free!) if you do so many leads in a month. One great thing about this  is that there is no way for the Affiliate Network to take a “cut” from this.

6)      Ask Networks about their “Discrepancy Account.” It’s called by many other networks other names, but it exists in almost every single ad network and is probably one of the biggest secrets that affiliates don’t know about and that Affiliate Networks don’t want you to know about. You know when they tell you that you are getting paid a certain amount per sale or lead? That is based on their numbers and almost half of the time, campaigns on their system will underreport compared to their advertisers. Instead of crediting it to their affiliates, many of the networks will keep that money. Ask your AM if there are any unreported leads and if they can give you a boost from that account.

7)      Be Nice. Seriously. Affiliate Managers would rather deal with a nice guy than a jerk. While there are a few people out there who might take the abuse, you’d be amazed how many networks and managers would rather turn off your account than deal with a total putz.  Do things like add your AMs to Facebook, send them cards on their birthdays, and in general keep in touch. Don’t depend on conferences for the only time that you really engage the AMs! AMs spend their entire time in front of a computer, often only getting up once in a while to drink shitloads of diet-coke and then return for hours at a time.  Asking them about their life and offers will make you a friend and a business partner.

Written by Pace Lattin, originally published at ZacJohnson.com

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Quality Is in the Eye of Google

Adotas-“The Wall Street Journal’s front page is typically littered with mistakes now,” a coworker randomly commented.

“That’s because they laid off the proofreaders and copy editors to cut costs,” I snorted. “Huge mistake.”

I often lament not having a copy editor or proofreader at Adotas, not just because I’m in such a rush to produce content that I let mistakes seep through. Having another set of eyes examine your work before publication is invaluable. I see little errors all over the major tech sites I read — I figure the writers have to hit publish as soon as they type the last word, same as me. The Internet news monster must be fed… constantly.

“Isn’t there some kind of software publishers could use to copy edit?” someone else asked.

“Besides spell check, no, not really,” I replied. Grammar check is useless half the time because many English rules are elastic, and a good writer enjoys breaking the rules to draw attention to a point or sound colloquial. These are things a human can discern, but can you imagine an algorithm that could do the same? A computer can beat the hell out of a few “Jeopardy” champions, but it can’t replace a top-notch copy editor.

Yet copy desks tend to get axed at pubs when budgets are grim. Effectively, we’re killing our human quality control in published works, and there’s no machine to replace it.

I was thinking about the human element as I got up to date on the fallout from Google’s recent algorithm update — which affected 12% of searches and threatened to vanquish the hated content farms. One of the hardest hit by the update, human search engine and how-to video producer Mahalo, apparently has laid off a tenth of its workforce.

Mahalo founder and CEO Jason Calacanis announced the staff cuts were due to a serious dip in traffic and revenue, but that the company would not cut down on its video production. So just as much content pooped out with less actual humans involved — sounds like a winner.

Allen Stern over at Center Networks laments, “when Mahalo first launched, Jason told me numerous times he didn’t care about Google because he was going to build loyal users who would just come directly to Mahalo.”

That’s the dream, of course, but it seems hard to make it a reality as online publishers have become slaves to Google — the latest update shows King G can pick publishers off with a simple gesture. (Why do I keep thinking of the Queen of Hearts screaming “Off with his head!”?)

Although Demand Media, the company that epitomizes content farms for many tech journalists, did suffer a bit from the algo update, its flagship eHow site appears to have gotten a boost, much to the grumblings of the rest of the web. In addition, Demand seems to be bringing on higher-profile names to give the site the semblance of prestige. “Lifestyle expert” Racheal Ray, queen of the 30-minute meal, has been named the creative force behind eHow.com’s Food channel, putting her in charge of recruiting mules — I mean, talent — to create and be featured in original video programming.

Meanwhile, Associated Content, Yahoo’s content farm, admitted the algo change was cutting into its traffic. But sites having little to do with the mass production of cheap content also had the traffic rug pulled out from under them by the “farmer” update — Technorati, PR Newswire, Songkick, Slideshare, Complete Review, DaniWeb and Cult of Mac were slapped by the new algo.

But Cult of Mac has already been “reinstated” in Google’s search results — apparently Google Spam Czar Matt Cutts reached out to editor Leander Kahney after complaints about the delisting, and whaddayaknow? They’re back in.

Kahney suggests that the algorithm updates are still being tweaked, but ZDNet’s Larry Dignan thinks Cult of Mac simply got a pass: ”There will be more sites complaining about Google’s algorithm change and the search giant will probably make a few ‘one-off’ exceptions. The inflection point comes when Google has to make multiple ‘one-off’ calls. Ultimately, we’ve outsourced the quality call to Google.”

Doesn’t this sound horribly inefficient? And also terrifying in general?

Dignan asks a question I’ve been hollering for a while: how the hell does an algorithm decide something as subjective as quality? Dignan lays out the issues:

  1. “What’s the unassailable definition of quality?
  2. “Is an algorithm capable of making a subjective decision (one man’s spam is another man’s good read)?
  3. “And do we trust Google to be judge and jury via an algorithm we know nothing about?”

Here are the answers:

  1. There is none.
  2. Not that we’ve seen.
  3. Not a chance.

Quality control requires inputs and opinions from flesh and blood humans, and the search sector has technology now to do incorporate that kind efficiently. Of course, I’m talking about social search.

In effect, Blekko is basically crowdsourcing quality control with its upstart social search engine. Facebook has improved its search features because our friends make good curators, and Bing is highlighting Facebook data in its searches. Google’s social search injection the week before the algo update seemed to be far more useful, but Google has its hands tied without Facebook data.

The ineffectiveness of Google’s “farmer” update should be the final proof that we need a new discovery and research engine. Just like Mike Arrington commented, Google has become a resource mainly if you know exactly what you want — say I’m looking for the person who said such-and-such.

Just like publications need human editors to ensure editorial quality, it’s becoming clear search engines need human input to deliver quality results. And we publishers could really use a social search resource to emerge so we can escape from Google’s tyranny, gain some visibility for our insightful original content, build our ad revenue and hire back our copy editors.

Sound like a plan, guys? I know some great copy editors that could use work.

—–
Gavin Dunaway is senior editor for Adotas.com Previously he served as an editor at TheStreet.com and a staff writer at Mobility, the publication of trade association Worldwide ERC. He received a Bachelor’s degree in English from George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.  It is also rumored that he will be in the next season of The Bachelor.

 

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Five Tips on Creating Women’s Oriented Mailing Lists.

I’ve been very much into niche based marketing the last few months, believing that its one of the sure fire ways for performance based marketers to really compete in the marketplace. With the rise of Facebook as one of the main techniques to market products, there are so many options to target consumers. Women consumers I believe in our space have been under-targeted by CPA networks and affiliates and thus I’ve come up with some keypoints that I’ve learned over the last year to make a women’s oriented mailing list.

Before I start, probably the biggest issue I see in our space is that most affiliates are guys. The only contact that they have with women are at the  parties at stripclubs in Vegas during the convention. Thus, targeting women can be very hard, especially when faced with having to understand fundamental differences. Male Affiliates: When creating a list for women, remember that you haven’t a clue what women want (look how you dress, if you don’t get it) and that you are fundamentally retarded in this subject.

1)    Ask Women’s Opinions. While men might sign up for a product, enter their email and get the mail, women actually like answering questions and providing more information about themselves. Not only does this allow a feedback loop, but it also allows you to target and segment targets for follow-up mailings.

2)      Compliment Women in the Mailings. Make it clear that you are providing information and mailings because women “get it.” For example, if you are going to mail about a new coupon program that is targeted to them, don’t just say “This will get you 50% off at these stores” but do something like “Because I know you are looking only for the best deals, I’ve found the best coupon program ever… I  don’t want to bother you and waste your time…”

3)      Only send targeted emails. If you are stupid enough to send something that is obviously not for women, you’ll get an extreme unsubscribe rate. Remember that you’ve probably sold women on signing up to this list because it’s a women’s oriented list. This is always important – if you send an advertisement for the newest NASCAR racing DVD, women will not only unsubscribe but they will lose any trust you’ve created.

4)      Respect Women’s Time. Spam Sucks, so make it clear this is not spam and that you respect that time. Women are much busier than me, let’s be honest here:  often they are mothers, caretakers, business owners—all at once.  Point out sometimes that the product you are sending is not only because it’s great, but because it will make their life easier.

5)      Most Important: Create an Emotional Connection. Women do not respond to the “get rich” ads with women in Bikinis waxing cars. Remember that they want to see women that look like them and are doing things like them.  Study after study in marketing to women shows that women want to be able to look at marketing materials and say “That’s me!”  Remember, don’t sell the hype, but rewrite the copy (with permission) to sell how great it is for the woman you are targeting, and why they should get it. You’ll sell twice as many products and the women on the list will appreciate it much more.

What are some products you can market to women? EnvyusMedia has one of the largest Health & Beauty offers sections in the industry, you should really check them out.

After you build a relationship with you subscriber, you definitely need to try to the Cosmetic Surgery Referral Network. This offer is actually owned by a woman (Anita hi!) who has made it to appeal specifically to a real women’s audience and it’s one of the biggest products targeted to women on any network.

Don’t Forget that health and weight loss offers from AffiliateWise also do well for women, but I’d  make sure to work on the message. You need to make sure not to insult them, and find a good product that you know will show interest.

If you haven’t tried samples offers, you need to. This goes back to #1, of asking opinions. AxonMediaGroup has a great selection of Trial Sample offers

Have a great week, and get back to me on what you think of these ideas!

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Cake’s Jeff McCollum puts frosting onto Affiliate Software.

In the affiliate and CPA network software game, there have been a few companies that have dominated the game. For almost a decade everyone used DirectTrack, and then came HasOffers and LinkTrust. For a long time, that seemed to be the only choice – until last year, when Cake Marketing started to play in the game, soon making it real name for itself. Since then we’ve seen half a dozen major affiliate networks move over and dozens of other companies become clients in a small period of time. I decided to sit down with their Chief Honcho, Jeff McCollum and find out what they are doing that is making people pay attention.

What inspired your company to make your own performance marketing software?
We had all been in performance based marketing for years and realized the industry was moving faster than the available technology. We were frustrated with the time and resources it took to do the most common daily tasks but were most concerned with the unreliable and an inaccurate tracking.  I had worked in Silicone Valley for many years and knew what was possible if good developers could apply solid technology to the fast growing industry. The one thing I did not account for was the 3+ years it would take to build right.

What can you tell us about your fraud prevention tools?
A lot of thought has gone into the toolset we provide our clients for catching and dealing with fraud quickly and efficiently. The collective experiences of our team in finding some of the more sophisticated and creative fraudulent activity of the past few years has been vital in our efforts to improve the accountability of the industry as a whole. From finding improper marketing methods to examining unordinary conversion rates down to the Sub ID level to locating quicker than average click-to-conversion times, Cake gives you immediate notice of fraudulent activity for you to examine, classify, and ultimately shut down within minutes.

As you know, a competitor was hit last year with the revelations that all the affiliate data of their affiliate networks were stolen and resold. What have you done to prevent this happening from you?
Having built Cake Marketing in house from the ground up using only the best modern technologies, processes and techniques, we are able to avoid many of the pitfalls inherent in older or less capable systems.  Security has been a primary focus for us and by basing our continued development of features and utilities on a solid foundation; we are able to maintain an impeccable systems security record.  As some of our competitors are finding out, it is difficult to adapt a software solution to a changing business climate with constantly shifting rules and goals without sacrificing something, often security.   This is especially true in affiliate marketing where the changes are quick and those who fail to keep up get left behind.  Cake was built with this in mind and as a software service, is equipped to maintain what makes it great while changing to adapt to the market.

In addition, by keeping all of our development in house with every line of code and every decision being made within the walls of our offices, we are able to dedicate ourselves as a team to this goal without the risk of outside security breaches.  This dedication extends itself into all aspects of our platform from the architecture of our data centers, peer code reviews and auditing to the customer support, training and professional services.

Cake sells itself as a fully integrated system, especially made for lead capture and distribution. What is unique about your platform that no other system offers?
Cake Marketing is unique in many ways, but the lead capture and distribution engine is the most powerful of its kind and as an added bonus, completely integrates with our affiliate tracking solution.  Being able to send a lead to an email address or simple CRM is not unique to affiliate marketing platforms, but with other systems you will eventually need custom development or a separately licensed product to send leads the way you really need to.  With other platforms, lead generation is tacked on as an afterthought, while in Cake it was built from the start side by side with the tracking solution and can also be used as a standalone lead distribution engine.  Every possible scenario has been thought out and made to be easily configured within the Cake interface without the need for expensive and time-consuming development.

Feature for feature, Cake can match and beat the top standalone lead distribution solutions as well as the best competing affiliate tracking solutions.  The fact that we do both of these in one tightly integrated approach makes us a solution that no other system can top.

How does your lead validation system work better than other systems? What would you say is the most unique part of your system?
Lead validation is a very important part of affiliate marketing because it affects revenue on so many levels.  It can be used to detect fraud, to clean data, to categorize your traffic or as part of your manual review process.  Unfortunately, this often requires continual updates and changes to your websites and forms as your validation rules change or as new offers are added.  As one of the most unique parts of our validation system, Cake has solved this problem by using the same elegant interface that the rest of the system uses.  After placing a simple Cake supplied script onto your form, all validation will then be handled automatically and any changes you make within your system will instantly effect how your forms work online, including alerting the customer of invalid data so that they can fix it themselves.  Using Cake’s proprietary technologies, you can utilize any of our multitude of validators in this process (many of which cannot be found elsewhere), to seamlessly validate your existing forms.

In light of the revelation that Internet Explorer will be blocking a lot of cookies, and that Firefox is looking to do this in a future release, your cookieless tracking system seems very interesting. I’d love to know more about it, what can you tell us?
From our tracking platform’s inception, dealing with cookieless sessions has been a large focus. Whether users disable cookies completely or enable the Do Not Track option in newer browsers, Cake is able to examine the browser’s fingerprint to uniquely track a session from impression to click to conversion sans cookie. We call this Session Regeneration and it’s built into every aspect of our platform’s foundation. We give our clients specific options to configure how exactly this works, but using our default configuration our clients have solved the problem of missing cookies. Additionally we allow the passing of unique identifiers back and forth between Cake and the advertiser if/when the advertiser supports it to enable 100% tracking accuracy no matter the situation.

I’ve heard some good things about your customer support team, what can you tell me that makes it different?
Our Client Solutions Team (CS Team) is more than just customer service. Our CS Team is truly dedicated to providing the most intimate level of service to all Cake clients. The team informs clients on unique Cake solutions applicable to their unique business needs. Furthermore, our CS Team has significant input into the ongoing product development, leveraging the knowledge gained from client interaction. However, the biggest advantage is we offer all of our clients FREE 24/7 phone support. We know that a great CS Team is vital to our success.

What inspires the management and staff at Cake?
After spending years working for online marketing industry leaders (including NBCInteractive, News Corp., Experian Interactive) we recognized the need for a top tier product which executed to the expectations of senior management as well as provided the blocking and tackling solutions for the front line employees. We are driven each day to meet those obligations. The management team here is competitive and we live for the challenges that come up each day to meet the demanding needs of our clients. Who wouldn’t love coming to work with the most dedicated staff in the market taking on the problems of the most sophisticated marketers in the world and helping them succeed?

IF someone wanted to move over to Cake, how easy would it be? What is the time period involved and do you have any examples of transfers that you can talk about?
We have designed our product to reach full deployment within days. Our goals as a team are to have our clients up and running on a time frame that is comfortable for them. When clients want to be up and running in full steam we can have them up within 48 hours. We understand the anxiety of moving systems and have put a lot of time into creating a comprehensive process. Clients get a dedicated implementation rep to guide them through the training and to import their existing data (affiliates, advertisers, offers, etc.) into their Cake instance.

For affiliates, if they are on a Cake system what will they see in the network that they wouldn’t see in any other program?
We’ve put a lot of time into the design of the Cake Affiliate Portal in an effort to make finding offers, grabbing creative assets, placing pixels, testing offers, viewing reports, downloading new suppression lists, and keeping track of invoices/bills as intuitive, quick, and easy as possible. Seeing up to the second stats, gauging overall performance, and finding new great converting offers are all available in one easy to use dashboard, and when necessary digging in to find more specific information is only a couple clicks away. Additionally, all of this information is available via our Affiliate API for those affiliates looking to integrate this information into their own dashboards.

Specifically the things you won’t find in other systems are:

1.      Pixel placement (traditional iframe/javascript/image AND Postback URL/Server Pixels) to testing with immediate success feedback removes the need for affiliates to wait on account managers to place and test their pixels.

2.      The ease in which per subid/creative pricing is viewable/manageable. No matter how complicated your payment structure is, Cake breaks it down and makes it easy to understand.

3.      One click import into your own Cake system making brokering offers from networks a breeze. No need to manually import links/creatives, it all happens for you behind the scenes!

Why use Cake instead of building your own system?
This is the classic buy/outsource versus build decision. Our product has been built from the ground up over 4 years with millions of dollars invested ensuring that our foundation was sound and provides the most flexibility for our clients. Our product allows for clients to have a customized solution within a SaaS license model. This flexible solution can be fully deployed in weeks saving valuable resources and time. Building an independent solution would likely lack the power and scalability required. Furthermore it would take significant time until full deployment. Why pay full price for the Ferrari when you can lease it for a fraction of the price!

What is your dream car and why?
I am not much of a car guy I drive a Prius. I would much rather have a plane so I could travel easily and often with my family.

If you weren’t doing this as career what would be your second choice?
Starting an organization that would educate, mentor, and lend resources to people in countries of extreme poverty to provide a better opportunity.

Want to learn more about Cake?

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Google Farming Update: Quest for Quality

During this week, Google announced a significant algorithm-update which aims to increase quality in Google’s search results. Domains containing low-quality content are supposed to be found less often, high-quality pages are to achieve better rankings. At the moment this update is active in the US-Index, more countries are about to follow.

Quickly named an “Anti-Demand-Media”-Update, I couldn’t find any real data proving this claim. I’d like to change this with this posting: Based on a dataset of one million keywords, which were checked before the update and yesterday I can determine the biggest loser of this algorithm-change. The SISTRIX VisibilityIndex is an index value calculated from traffic on keywords, ranking and click-through rate on specific positions. Let’s start with a list of the 25 biggest losers:

# Domain Change SISTRIX (before) SISTRIX (after) # KWs (before) # KWs (after)
1 wisegeek.com -77% 121,58 28,22 74.024 21.940
2 ezinearticles.com -90% 65,08 6,65 184.508 54.277
3 suite101.com -94% 54,04 3,28 178.373 36.904
4 hubpages.com -87% 55,16 7,40 152.998 50.178
5 buzzle.com -85% 43,25 6,55 86.472 24.423
6 associatedcontent.com -93% 38,29 2,57 216.429 53.512
7 freedownloadscenter.com -90% 30,26 3,01 42.486 7.992
8 essortment.com -91% 25,73 2,32 27.501 7.459
9 fixya.com -80% 28,78 5,83 62.034 36.167
10 americantowns.com -91% 24,88 2,18 26.000 9.799
11 lovetoknow.com -83% 25,75 4,28 49.544 17.833
12 articlesbase.com -94% 19,96 1,16 82.274 31.365
13 howtodothings.com -84% 21,20 3,39 33.222 7.601
14 mahalo.com -84% 20,49 3,23 33.875 9.740
15 business.com -93% 17,24 1,13 21.556 4.813
16 doityourself.com -77% 20,89 4,90 23.256 6.870
17 merchantcircle.com -85% 18,43 2,67 93.347 34.681
18 thefind.com -83% 18,95 3,27 74.506 45.495
19 findarticles.com -90% 16,98 1,74 64.810 20.189
20 faqs.org -91% 16,52 1,46 33.648 11.142
21 tradekey.com -89% 16,83 1,79 37.364 16.268
22 answerbag.com -91% 12,93 1,11 67.314 26.054
23 trails.com -87% 12,05 1,62 38.346 8.511
24 examiner.com -79% 10,54 2,19 70.781 31.272
25 allbusiness.com -88% 8,86 1,08 16.457 6.034

The table shows the domain, percentage loss, SISTRIX before and after the update as well as the number of keywords found from the one million dataset for this domain before and after the algorithm-change. It is sorted by the biggest absolut loss in SISTRIX VisibilityIndex. Comparing these results with the announcement from Google, they seem to have reached their goal: a whole lot of low-quality domains lost significant visibility in the US Google-SERPs.

Let’s see in detail what Google did to the affected domains. The first conclusion is quite straightforward: the number of keywords these domains are ranking for dropped dramatically. Looking at mahalo.com as an example, it went from 33,875 keywords before the update to just 9,740 keywords after the update went public – a decrease of more than 70%. These were keywords like “zealand air“ (3), “digg“ (8) or “tax check“ (4) where the domain fell out of the top 100 results. The second outcome deals with the remaining keywords. Here is a chart on which Google result page the keywords of mahalo.com were to be found before and after the algorithm-update:
It’s eye-catching that mahalo.com did not only lose more than 70% of their keywords – the remaining keywords are also ranking much worse than before. More than two third of all keywords for this domain could be found on result page 8, 9 and 10. That’s the reason the SISTRIX value fell even more than the raw count of found keywords.

And how about Demand Media? Well, there is no sign that Google tried to downrank ehow.com. Ehow.com even gained SISTRIX value (from 270 to 310) and Keywords (from 317,320 to 324,021) during the algorithm-change. Looking at the SERP-Distribution chart from above for ehow.com, you’ll notice the difference. Quite a statement from Google regarding the quality of Demand Medias’ content, isn’t it? If you are interested in a full list of 100 Domains suffering from this update, please drop me a short notice.

—-

Reprinted from http://www.sistrix.com

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The Four Pillars of Building Trust to Increase Conversions

Human beings are social creatures that seek out companionship and relationships. Our map of reality can be viewed as a series of concentric circles which include the most trusted relationships and those who are in our hearts at the very center.

We crave trust. Without it, we would be consigned to a world where we must examine everyone’s actions with suspicion and assume that they are working only for their purposes and not ours. Because of the sheer number of social interactions that we have with complete strangers, we must at least extend some trust.  Otherwise many acts, both small and momentous, simply could not happen at all.

Even with total strangers in the “real world” we at least have their appearance and body language to go by. But what do you do online? Almost anyone can quickly create a website or landing page and masquerade as a wide variety of businesses. Many of these enterprises are untrustworthy. We are often barraged in the media about various scams perpetrated online and have our guard up.

As an online marketer, your job is very difficult compared to your bricks-and-mortar marketing counterpart. You must not only overcome anxieties, but do so in the most challenging of circumstances.

Online trust must be developed without any face-to-face contact, and it must be created instantly in the few precious seconds it takes a website visitor to evaluate your value proposition.

So how can you build instant trust online?

The following pillars of trust can be employed with great effectiveness.

Appearance

First impressions matter. We do judge a book by its cover. Recent research indicates that people will form an initial impression of your landing page or website within fifty milliseconds. This is almost as fast as visual processing happens in the brain, and can be considered as an instantaneous and automatic response. In other words, we subliminally decide where the page falls on our “cheesy” to “professional” continuum. And this initial reaction extends to a more considered review of the page, and will impact out likelihood of taking the desired conversion action.

Don’t get disqualified based solely on how you look

We prefer well-dressed and groomed job-candidates. We try to put our best foot forward on first dates. The same should be done online.

  • Professionalism of design – Regardless of the intended audience or your business purpose, the visual design should be professionally executed. It should hang together and function as a single unified whole. Fonts, colors, and graphical elements must combine into a single visual “look”.
  • Sparseness & neatness – Clutter can be your worst enemy, whether it is visual embellishments, or dense longwinded text. Less is more. Ruthlessly edit everything on the page until it is pared to its essence and has a natural and unforced feel. Give your page room to breathe.
  • Organization & clarity – Too many choices of what to do on the page can be paralyzing. Similarly, a disorganized page increases the visitor’s “cognitive load” and forces them to spend time simply trying to figure out in what order they should digest the information that you have presented. As the title of Steve Krug’s excellent book on web usability so elegantly puts it – “Don’t Make Me Think”.

Transactional Assurances

Will we be spammed if we enter our email in a form? Will the goods promised ever be delivered after we order from an online catalog? Will our very identity be stolen? Such questions are always in the background when we navigate around the Web.

Relieve point-of-action anxieties before they arise

The mechanics of the conversion action matter. Whether you are trying to collect an email for an online newsletter, or have someone purchase an expensive item or service, reassurances are needed about the transaction.

  • Forms of payment and delivery – Many ecommerce catalogs only show acceptable forms of payment and return policies after the checkout process has been started. In fact, they must be seen before they are needed, and prominently displayed above the fold on every page. The same is true of well-known delivery and shipping methods.
  • Data security and privacy –  The site that you transact with must be certified as safe by outside experts in terms of its ability to protect your data. Having privacy policies and computer security trustmarks from well-known vendors will instantly show someone that you have safeguarded their data properly.
  • Policies & guarantees – Often the transaction is not at issue. It is what happens afterward that concerns people. By prominently featuring your warranties, return policies, and guarantees, you can assuage these anxieties. Often, a visual seal can be created to draw the eye to these important elements.

Experts & Media

Your visitors are not likely to have heard of you. Unless you represent a truly world-class consumer company, people are unlikely to know your brand promise. They do not know what you stand for.

Borrow trust from better-known brands

  • Reviews & awards – Many services and products have won awards or at least been reviewed by relevant industry publications.  Using the award seals or “Reviewed by” language can be very effective.
  • Paid endorsements & spokespeople – Paid endorsements can transfer the trust or at least the celebrity of the spokesperson to the product or service in question.
  • Marquee clients – Using client logos with permission, or at least prominently featuring a written list of clients (unless specifically prohibited from doing so by contract language) will create powerful visual proof of your legitimacy. They confer an implicit halo effect – if you have worked with large companies, of course you can handle smaller “regular” ones.
  • Media Mentions – Media companies are experts at self-promotion and drumming their brands into our consciousness. Any association with them confers a notoriety and solidity to you landing page. Often “media” outlets can also be broadly defined as bloggers or authoritative voices in your specific niche.

There are several caveats to the use of hen using expert and media logos. They must appear above the fold and be seen at the same time as the call to action (not below or after it) in order to provide the context for the content on the page. On the other hand, they must be displayed subtly, so they do not dominate the visual conversation. The logos are often well designed, distinctive and instantly recognizable. So you may have to actually de-emphasize their impact by reducing size, decreasing color saturation (possibly using grayscale), and decreasing contrast with the background color chosen to display the logos.

Consensus of Peers

We often follow the lead of people like ourselves. If we see many friends driving a particular make of car, we are more apt to consider it. If our circle of acquaintances  turn us on to a new musical group, we are more likely to pay attention. Regardless of the actual cultural “tribes” that we belong to, our peers exert a very strong influence on us.

Support automatic compliance by demonstrating “social proof”

There are two important preconditions for “social proof” to be effective: 1) have to be many people who are taking similar action, and 2) they must be as much like us as possible.

  • Objective numbers – “the many” can be demonstrated by showing how many people have bought, downloaded, or started a free trial. Number should be cumulative since the inception of the business or product. Spell out the digits of each number (e.g. “Over 1,000,000 downloads”), and use larger fonts  to draw additional attention.
  • Likeness – Create affinity by demonstrating that the people taking action are similar to your website visitors. This can be done by picking appropriate colors, editorial tone, and graphics to make your visitors feel at home. You can also have a large number of detailed testimonials that discuss common situations faced by similar people.

If you build on the four pillars of trust above, you should have a solid foundation for improved conversions.

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Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization firm that offers conversion consulting, full-service guaranteed-improvement tests, and software tools to improve conversion rates. Tim is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization and a highly-regarded presenter at Search Engine Strategies, eMetrics, PPC Summit, Affiliate Summit, PubCon, Affiliate Conference, and LeadsCon. He also chairs  Conversion Conference, a two-day event focused exclusively on improving online conversions.

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Three Types of Offers that Always Work

Despite the growing popularity of Internet TV, both DishNetwork and DirectTV are a growing business.  A lot of it has to do with the huge population of sports fans that know that they can get the best quality games via these methods, but a lot more probably has to do with the aggressive affiliate programs that the resellers use. If there is one program that year after year is a constant, it is the affiliate programs for DishNetwork and DirectTV. This search will show you DishNetwork Affiliate Programs at OfferVault. I’ve also heard a rumor that HybridAds has a private email submit for DishNetwork that is killing it.

With the Price of Gold Going up, Gold Kits and Gold Seller Offers are probably still one of the hottest offers for mailers, but also for all types of people. These offers are partially doing well because of the economy and the price of Gold, but also because of the enormous advertising push being done on FoxNews and late night TV. With people like Glen Beck pushing gold companies and talking about it, tons of people know about these programs. Thus, when they are given the opportunity to redeem their gold for money via a mailing, they are more interested. Try Envyus Media and their CashForGold offer.

I have talked about how to make money on Dating Affiliate Programs many times.   Dating Affiliate Programs will always be hot, because for whatever reason people are always searching for new loves. I read in a study that as more and more people get on dating sites, more and more people try OTHER dating sites – because it’s almost like an addiction. People love the attention of an unknown suitor or admirer.. who might be stalker, but still its fun.  If you haven’t tried already, try NICHE dating.  For example, Hispanic Dating can be huge, partially because its less competitive  but also because there are a lot of keywords that cost a lot less money than the rest. For example, Online Dating goes for as much as $4.00 per click, while Domincan Women goes for $.43 per click on Google. Let’s also be honest, nothing really sells like the photos of Sexy Dominican Women too, there is are just a plethora of great photos out there for your ads!

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Try a Little Tenderness With Your Affiliates

ADOTAS – The relationship between an affiliate and an affiliate manager can be very rewarding over the lifetime of an affiliate program. However, there are times when as an affiliate manager you may experience the wrath of an angry affiliate.

Affiliates can feel hurt about a company’s decision to lower a commission, or eliminate a popular method of promotion. What’s more, a simple misunderstanding via email can turn into personal attacks on you, the affiliate manager, in forums or through unsavory email messages to your boss.

Below are just a few scenarios that you might face, and suggestions for addressing them. These are not absolute cures; however, consider them as tools for repairing your relationship with your affiliates.

Scenario 1: You lower the payout of your affiliate program, because your budget is not big enough.

Solution: If it’s absolutely necessary to lower your payout due to a small budget, then do so. But remember that reducing all the affiliates in your program to a lower threshold is not the best alternative.

Not all affiliates are the same. Top performers that send through a high-quality volume of traffic and sales shouldn’t be equated with someone who just learned about affiliate marketing yesterday and needs more time to optimize their campaigns. Try offering a tiered commission, so that your partners are compensated based on their performance.

If tiered commissions aren’t possible then at least segment a handful of top performers into a higher commission group. Give them a friendly phone call to notify them of this benefit. Also explore rewarding lower-tiered affiliates with a bonus if they have achieved a high threshold.

Scenario 2: You abruptly kick out affiliates from your program because they don’t make any money.

Solution: Ask yourself whether or not you clearly communicated your performance requirements to your affiliates. Did you send them an email threatening to remove them from your program? Affiliates can’t all be super performers from the start. Take a step back and evaluate your relationships with the partners in your program.

Forums and popular blogs are filled with negative comments about “break-up tactics.” If they’re talking about you, make a public statement and admit your error. There’s nothing more humbling to an affiliate when they see an affiliate manager or program representative admit their mistakes.

Offer the chance to those affiliates who felt they were wrongly removed to contact you personally to discuss the problem. Also, a peace offering isn’t a bad idea; what better way to show your willingness to work together again than offering a promotion.

Scenario 3: A new affiliate uses your forbidden keywords in their PPC campaign and didn’t realize it. You decide to blacklist him or her from all your affiliate programs.

Solution: I have seen merchants get extremely irate when they discover that an affiliate has used forbidden keywords in a paid search campaign. However, I have also seen newbie affiliates genuinely forget to scrub their keyword list upon, say, switching their campaigns from Yahoo to Google. Sometimes merchants also forget to make forbidden practices explicit.

Unless the rules are blatantly communicated, it’s best to halt blacklisting affiliates. Make sure to communicate the rules clearly rather than have them simply listed in your terms and conditions.

Explain the details through your welcome email to new affiliates, on your sponsored forums, in your affiliate program description and anywhere else affiliates are likely to read about you. Let’s be honest, terms and conditions aren’t always a guaranteed way to prevent prohibited activity.

As you can see it helps to establish a communication strategy for attracting and maintaining quality relationships. Make it part of your affiliate program’s objectives to start sending out clear and transparent messages in your affiliate program.

If your internal objectives are only about earning as much money as possible in your affiliate program during the next three months, then you need to rethink those objectives. The message you convey publically has to convey the same message in-house.

If you are seeking conversions of 8% or more from affiliates with a relevant website with organic traffic, it’s important to communicate this in the beginning. An explicit description of the type of partners you want will attract more niche affiliates.

In addition, if you’ve decided to message your affiliates about changes to your program, make sure it’s across multiple platforms. Assuming that affiliates will check their email or your terms and conditions is a misjudgement. Have a lateral flow of communication across your program and Facebook pages, and on Twitter.

There is no magic method for handling difficult scenarios with affiliates, but as an affiliate manager try to re-evaluate the way you treat your affiliates. Remember it’s easier to attract bees with honey than with vinegar.

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Maranda Moses is a communications strategist for Share Results and contributes some of their widely read blogs and articles on affiliate strategies, industry news, and trends. Over the years she’s honed her skills in the online marketing space as a senior account manager in the education, family, apparel and maternity insurance verticals.

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Learn more about Affiliate Management from Hydra GM in “Affiliates Need Facetime”