Web Hostgods

Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Craig Cortright

Archive for October, 2005

Meat and Potatoes for Your Affiliate Diet

Posted by admin On October - 31 - 2005

Think of banner ads as the spice in your affiliate diet. Sprinkle them around, but for a heartier helping of sales, you’ll need something more solid! Learn to give your visitors longer, more descriptive pre-sales text. Revamp your affiliate advertising using these simple steps:

Pull the Reader in
To convince your audience that your text is worth reading, make your first sentence or two very interesting. Make a bold statement, say something seemingly ridiculous, or appeal to your prospect’s emotional side. Then, tie this grabber in with the rest of your copy.

Introduce the Product
What is the product you’re advertising? What does it do? Directly after your grabber, give a compact explanation of your product. Keep this explanation short, while still being very clear. This should still be a very short section of your text.

Explain the Product’s Significance
What will it do for me?

By writing your own copy, you can directly target your unique audience. Make the most of this opportunity! Clearly explain how your readers will benefit from this product.

No one knows your audience like you do. Suggest a variety of product uses just for them, and give examples. This is the time for details - make this section long and rich.

Tell the Reader to Make a Purchase
You’ve come so far - you’ve laid out exactly what the product is and how it will help your unique audience. Now, seal the deal - tell your readers to purchase the product! Include your affiliate link in this section.

This step may sound strange, but it’s necessary. Often, people hear about a product and are genuinely interested, but fail to actually make a purchase. A clear call to a simple action cuts down on buyer ambivalence. Don’t be pushy - just change your verb tenses to the imperative. Instead of:

“If you think that you fit this profile, you might want to think about buying this product.”

Say: “Click here to order an account today.”

Drive Sales - Use Long Copy
If you don’t feel ready to write long copy yourself, ask your affiliate program manager for help! Many companies release well-written articles by respected authors that you can reprint free of charge.

The novelty of the Web is wearing off. People online now are busy. Surfers won’t make a purchase unless you make a great case for what they’ll get out of it. And you’re not going to do that with just a banner ad.

Beka Ruse fights spam as the Business Development Manager at AWeber Communications. Ad tracking, live stats, and a strict anti-spam policy. Automated E-Mail Follow Up From AWeber.

Creating an Affiliate Program for Traffic Control

Posted by admin On October - 30 - 2005

The following is what Gerry Graham of 4 Adjustable Beds, 4 Lift Chairs and 4 Wheelchair Lifts & Ramps had to say in response the the question, What is the Future of Affiliate Marketing?

We are a small Internet sales and marketing company. Current revenues are $2.4 million. We sell mobility products to the handicapped over six specialized websites.

Approximately 80% of our business comes through our 800 call center. The other 20% is from online orders.

We are in the process of initiating our own affiliate program because it appears to us to be the only viable way of creating “traffic” to our sites with any degree of control.

Standard search enging rankings are lucrative when you have them. However, as has been recently the case, the “Google dance” or the Yahoo shuffle can play havoc with traffic and therefore earnings.

Our strategy is to develop an affiliate program with high quality business related partners who will send us traffic. In turn, we will compensate them amply.

We hope the result will be excellent partnerships and happy customers with less dependence on the fickleness of standard SE rankings.


What is the Future of Affiliate Marketing?

Posted by admin On October - 29 - 2005

In the past, articles have frequently asked CEOs and CMOs what the future holds for affiliate marketing. These have pretty much been the sole voices of the future.

I’d like to hear some different voices - how about the opinions of the people in the trenches of affiliate marketing? What do you think is going to happen in the future for affiliate marketing?

There are no right or wrong answers - just your unique opinions. The author of any response that is published at affiliatetip.com or affiliatesummit.com will receive their choice of one of the following:

  • Size: small ‘It’s an affiliate thing, you wouldn’t understand.’ t-shirt

  • Size: medium ‘It’s an affiliate thing, you wouldn’t understand.’ t-shirt
  • Size: large ‘It’s an affiliate thing, you wouldn’t understand.’ t-shirt
  • Affiliate Summit coffee mug
  • Affiliate Summit optical mouse for a notebook computer

Submit your opinions about the future of affiliate marketing at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=281531467120

Where in the World are Affiliate Marketers

Posted by admin On October - 28 - 2005

I was pouring through my logs this morning, and I was curious about the locations of visitors to my affiliate marketing related sites.

Taking a look at the visitors to affiliatetip.com, affiliatemanager.net, and affstat.com, an overwhelming portion of the traffic came from the U.S., as one might expect.

Next up were Canada and the UK respectively. Rounding out the top five were Australia and Japan. Below is a list of the top twenty affiliate marketing countries, not officially, but as reported in my logs.

  1. United States

  2. Canada
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Australia
  5. Japan
  6. Netherlands
  7. Switzerland
  8. France
  9. Israel
  10. Germany
  11. Norway
  12. Brazil
  13. Argentina
  14. Russian Federation
  15. Italy
  16. Singapore
  17. Mexico
  18. Belgium
  19. Poland
  20. Austria

Let

Posted by admin On October - 28 - 2005

I’m going to be heading to ad:tech NYC on Monday, Nov. 7 and possibly Tuesday, Nov. 8. If you’ll be there, I’m always interested in meeting up with other affiliate marketers.

Let me know if you’ll be there, and maybe we can get together for a meeting, lunch, concktails, etc.

Shoot me an e-mail at shawn(at)affiliatetip.com and we can try to work something out.

Get a Free Pass to Affiliate Summit 2006, Number 3

Posted by admin On October - 27 - 2005

I will periodically give away passes for Affiliate Summit 2006 to the first person to answer a question I post to this blog. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to see the questions as soon as they are published.

There is going to be an optional session at Affiliate Summit 2006, the Explode Your Business with Blogging!.

This session is being led by Dave Taylor, Principal of Intuitive Systems.

In the Explode Your Business with Blogging! session, Dave will explain what the blogging phenomenon is all about and how a weblog can help you gain control of your Web content, improve your search engine ranking and sales. This workshop will help you identify topics you should write about on your blog, how to identify and interact with other bloggers in your market segment, and how to write smart, effective blog entries and comments on other weblogs that will gain you attention and links.

Anyhow, the money question this time around - which page in the current issue of Revenue magazine features a photo of Dave Taylor?

For everybody that doesn’t win this free pass, don’t forget to register now - passes are going fast.

In order to timestamp the first correct answer, please submit your answer at http://www.askshawncollins.com

Note: passes are not transferable, so if you are already registered, please do not bother to answer.

Ask Ronald Bell: The Straight Dope on Affiliate Marketing

Posted by admin On October - 27 - 2005

Do you know where I can find information on the size of the industry and general information, or a positive article on the state of affiliate marketing?

There are a number of resources where you can find information and statistics on affiliate marketing. MarketingSherpa and Internet Retailer routinely publish converage of the industry.

Also, you can read case studies, editorials and articles on affiliate marketing at ReveNews, and I’ve got a database of articles listed at http://www.shawncollinsconsulting.com/articles.shtml.

Additionally, I collect and publish statistics on affiliate marketing once a year. The report is called AffStat.