DoubleClick was sold for $3.1 billion in CASH to Google. Google was able to fend off their main competitor Bill Gates and Microsoft, along with smaller foes Yahoo and Time Warner. After a deal this enormous it would be wise to assume that more movement in the online community is sure to follow.
ValueClick is known for popular brands offering advertisers and publishers performance-based solutions through online marketing channels. (more…)
Affiliates who speak more that one language have an inherent advantage over affiliates who only speak one language. Whether realized or not, bilingual affiliates have the power to build multiple websites in different languages. Leveraging your skills, whether they are speech, computer, etc., will expand your potential for success. Seeking niches that are popular among different cultures is important, however, there must be merchants to support chosen niches. (more…)
As an affiliate manager you want your affiliates to have a go and get’em attitude. Most affiliates are hungry when they first jump into affiliate marketing, but ease off the gas when they don’t become an instant millionaire. If I ventured a guess, 1 in 75 affiliates truly want to be the best in affiliate marketing. (more…)
Affiliate managers will make or break their merchant program. It is easy to look at the negatives of what an affiliate manager can do to their program through misinformation or negligence towards their program. An affiliate manager can take positive stands to improve their affiliate program and to add earning potential for their affiliates. The five main keys to success all pertain to the affiliate manager being proactive, for without a desire to improve, an affiliate merchant’s program is destined to fail.
Send out marketing materials, share your sales knowledge and offer suggestions to your affiliates on how to improve their efforts to increase their earnings.
Some of the ugliest websites are the most successful. Craig’s List is the first one that comes to everyone’s mind, because it is probably the most dull, amateurish looking site on the Internet. It is now an enormous community that connects people locally and globally. Design is important to a website aesthetically, but a design alone will notattract repeat customers. Content is king. Content gives people things to think about or act on. A good website should aim to have their customers do something while they are on your website, whether it is buying, reading or clicking something. Furthermore, for a website to gain strong rankings in Google or any other search engine, I guarantee Goggle does not care about how your website looks. The Google Spider cares mainly about the accessibility of your site, links, and content. Original and unique content will earn you more points with Google. Affiliates, take heed. You will not get your pages ranked and attract visitors without effective content. Do not spend more time on your site design than on your content.
Share a Sale is the best network for affiliates because of their superior merchant and affiliate stats tracking, as well as useful affiliate tools. Share a Sale’s stats tracking offers easy to read graphs and displays stats accumulated for all programs joined. They display pertinent information about all programs in their network allowing affiliates to make informed decisions on who they choose to represent. Share a Sale offers affiliates the famed “Make a Pageâ€, where an affiliate tells Share a Sale their preferences and Share a Sale’s “Make a Page†will offer code for the affiliate to put into their own site.
The majority of people think of affiliate marketing as a get rich quick scheme that won’t ever work or they jump into affiliate marketing thinking all you have to do is set it up and people will come. Neither of these descriptions come to my mind when I think of affiliate marketing. Here are some common mistakes of new affiliate marketers:
People will sniff you out as an affiliate or just someone who wants to sell them something. A problem with a lack of knowledge about a topic/subject is that you are unable to personalize the content and add your own unique content.
It is a common misconception that banners are an affiliates best friend. This theory couldn’t be further from the truth. It is proven that affiliates have more success with solid content offering an effective pre-sell, using text links rather than banners to get the customer to the merchant’s site.
People will find it hard to read, navigate and become entranced in a site that has no topic. Credibility will decrease and potential customers will find what they need from someone who has developed a topic-related website.
Not only will Google be turned off by a subdomain, but so will potential customers. Domains can be purchased for $10 or less and will make a world of difference for an affiliate website.
Affiliates who set up their site and let it run its course will find it will run into the ground. Upgrades and changes of your site will positively affect Google and will look good to your returning visitors.
Any of these mistakes almost certainly means doom for your affiliate site. Hard work, research and continuous updates are necessary for the survival of affiliates and they should not be taken lightly.
I have no respect for affiliates who trick people into coming to their affiliate site with the promise of a free offer. Affiliates who sling ringtones often advertise something for free, but being as they are just affiliates and not merchants, they have don’t really have anything free to offer. Ringtone dealers aren’t the only sleaze bags out there, I’ll be the next scenario has gotten just about everyone who has ever had prolonged exposure to the Internet. The “win a free (enter pile of shit here)”. These links then take you to a page where they tell you to answer a couple of real quick questions, and you win this spectacular free iPod, xBox, PS3, vacation to Somalia, free dental exam from Dr. Kevorkian, or a Swedish Made Penis Enlarger. It turns out that you actually have to sign up for 3-10 offers, usually affiliate offers, to win your “free” piece of crap. Finally somebody is trying to clean up the Internet and scare these “free offer” people. The FTC has begun suing people for false advertising of free products and services. It is high time that these scummy people are policed and hopefully prosecuted. People feel that just because it is the Internet, there are no rules or consequences. Just like with the music copyright infringement scares, not everyone will be caught, and many people will continue with their old tactics. A lot of money can be made on the Internet, especially when affiliates try and entrap their customers.
