Making Money with Affiliate Advertising

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

When I was a teenager, I had a job collating a weekly shopper news flyer. The couple who published it supplemented their income by selling advertising space in their paper. Affiliate advertising works along the same lines. If you provide the space for the advertising on your website, you can earn money for doing so by becoming an affiliate of the company that is doing the advertising.

Many websites these days and I've even noticed some blogs, too, have advertisements displayed on their pages. If you have a website, it isn't hard to get get these ads and start profiting, especially if you have a lot of traffic on your site, by becoming an "affiliate" either directly or with an affiliate network. Affiliate networks allow you to select from a variety of advertisers.

Here are some resources of affiliate networks where you can research companies that may fall into the same niche as your website:

http://www.affiliatescout.com/

http://www.webaffiliatesdirectory.com/affiliate_programs.html

http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/affiliate.shtml

Fill out this form for a free consultation on how Full Partner can help with your website project,
or call 800-778-0317, ext 1 to speak to a Web Business Strategist now.

Landing Page Resources

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

"In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines."   Wikipedia.  Wikipedia has a thorough discussion of landing pages.

"You’re about to launch a big online marketing campaign complete with media buys, search engine placement, banner ads and blog buzz. You’ve tested your creative and your clickthrough rate is strong. You know once you go live, tons of targeted traffic will be hitting your site..."  Read more at the source:  11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages by Michael Nguyen. This is an excellent article with lots of tips for making your landing pages stronger.

Excerpted from the article Creating effective landing pages - optimization tips:

"Creating effective landing pages - optimization tips

"The basics of developing landing pages
There a few questions to ask yourself when creating a landing page:

• What are you offering?
• Who do you wish to appeal to?
• Why would they be interested in your offer?
• What do they need to do to participate/purchase?

"Write down all your ideas, make it as lengthy as you like. Then, bring it down to it's core elements, making it as motivating as possible without it being over-hyped.

"Think of your landing page as a summary of all the usual pages connected with the product/service you are offering. The goal of the landing page is to usually convert potential clients *quickly*, or  to have them take some sort of action rapidly so you can follow up with them later."   Read the full article here:  "Creating effective landing pages - optimization tips" 

More resources:  Here are a couple of books on Landing Pages:

Split Testing for Tracking the Effectiveness of Your Landing Pages

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

What is split test campaign and how is it different than A/B testing?

A split test campaign tracks clicks on a virtual page link that can be embedded into an email broadcast, newsletter, or any other internet marketing link that has two or more pages on your website as the possible destination, whereas A/B Testing is useful for tracking email copy. The landing pages in a split test campaign might have different content on them that you want to test for effectiveness, so it splits the testing at the level of the web page copy instead of the email copy. It works by using a special link object associated with a marketing campaign that you create and use in your email broadcasts and newsletters.

Sounds great...  How does a split test campaign work?

When a split test campaign link is clicked, the system will direct the visitor to one of the destination pages at random. If you have 3 destination pages in your campaign, then 1/3 of the visitors will go to page A, 1/3 to page B and 1/3 to page C.  A cookie is set when the visitor clicks on the split test campaign link so that future clicks from that visitor go to the original destination page.

If you are a Full Partner client you can easily do split testing on your email campaigns. You can also click here to get immediate access to our help text on the split test campaign: www.fullpartner.com/SplitTestCampaign

Read more on split-testing at Web Marketing Today or at E-Commerce-Guide.com.

A/B Testing and Email Sub-Lists

Ever Wonder What Kind of Email Marketing Copy Your Clients Respond to Best?

Would they prefer Sales copy or perhaps more direct and informative copy? Well now you can find out just the kind of marketing copy that will make them not only read your emails, but get them to click through to your site which could result in a sales conversion for you!

A/B testing is something that can help you answer that question. In order for A/B testing to work, you need to be able to break your lists into 2 or more sub-lists for various purpsoes. 

Say you have written 2 emails that sell your product and you want to send the email that gives the best response. The classic A/B test is to split your list into 3 parts:

Test List A = 10% of the list
Test List B = 10% of the list
Final Production List C = the remaining 80% of the list

With this strategy, you prove the effectiveness of email A or B on only 20% of the list, and then the winner is broadcast to the remaining 80%.

For a more thorough discussion of A/B Testing see:  "How to Improve A/B Testing" by Bryan Eisenberg. 

Eisenberg states: .

"A/B testing is a proven means to increase conversion rate. It's not as simple as it appears. It's more than simply testing two or more versions of Web pages, banners, search ads, or whatever persuasive element you can imagine. It also has limitations.

A/B testing, unlike the intuitive creative process, must be treated like a true scientific experiment.."  Read full article at the source.

Viral Marketing Exponentially Magnifies Your Campaigns

Developing a large customer base is an organization’s chief marketing aim. There are many ways to fulfill this intention—some more effective (and less expensive) than others.

Viral Marketing is a low cost method that helps put your current contacts to work for you with little effort—and, often, added benefits on their part.

Often known as “tell-a-friend” marketing, viral campaigns encourage a user or contact to send material to friends and associates. Unlike blast emails and general mailings, "tell-a-friend" marketing uses the personal referral as its foundation. Viral marketing is one of the buzz words in internet marketing. It's no surprise because, well, it's all about creating "buzz" for your products and services. It gets its name from its potential to rapidly multiply your messages to hundreds and thousands of fresh eyes.

Don't let the name fool you, though. Viral marketing has nothing to do with negative connotations of viruses. Viruses can be harmful, but viral marketing is 100 percent healthy--and one of the easiest and cheapest things you can do--to expand online your presence.

An effective motivating tactic to make the most of your viral campaigns is to offer users an incentive for sending your message to a certain number of friends. E-books, videos, webinars, coupons, and white pages all serve as great incentive gifts.

With viral marketing, it's a win-win situation for your users, for their referrals, and, most-of-all, for you!

For more information on Viral Marketing see:  The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson.

How to Formulate Your Mission Statement

Every website should have a principal objective that can be summarized into a concise mission statement. The mission statement will be the guiding idea around which the entire site will emerge.

Begin by thinking strategically about your company's future and where you want it to be in the next 5 to 10 years. Our task with formulating the mission statement is to inject a sense of purpose into the site's functions. You need a strong sense of direction to galvanize your site.

Decide: "Who are we?"; "What do we do?"; "Where are we headed?"

Your mission statement should reflect what your company seeks to do and become, and provide a clear view of what your company intends to do for its customers.

To formulate the mission statement we will break the task into 3 parts:

1. Key market - in particular who are your customers?
2. Contribution - what do you do that helps your customers?
3. Distinction - why do your customers prefer to deal with you over your competitors?

Check out the Mission Statement builder from Nightingale Conant. 

Avoid These E-Commerce Mistakes

From " Top Ten E-Commerce Mistakes" by Jeff Ropelato

" 1. Weak Site Design
The first thing a potential customer sees is your websites design. All the elements of your web site's design - navigational structure, product presentation, copy and testimonials, proof of security - all mix together to give your visitors an overall impression of your business.

2. Site Usability Inadequate
Make sure the sites purpose is clear. This means explaining what your site is about. Help the customers find what they need. This involves making everything obvious, ensuring that every link and tool is accessible on every page. Your customers should be able to see your best material right away.

3. Obstacles to Shopping
There are several reasons that customers will leave your site looking for another in a heartbeat. If you confuse them with your navigational structure, ask to many personal questions, make it difficult to order, credit card fears, download time, and most of all not having a professional trustworthy website feel.

4. No Marketing Plan
There are millions of websites out there, with millions of potential customers. What will you do to drive sales to your site? You need to have a good marketing strategy. Which should include search engine optimization; pay per clicks, pop-under's, banner ads, and affiliates just to name a few..."

Read the last 6 mistakes at source.

Resources for E-Zine Publishing

Posted on May 27, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

"Email newsletters are a powerful marketing tool. No other promotional method gives you the same value at such a low cost."

Read full article and find many useful tips at:   E-Zinez.com - The Handbook of E-Zine Publishing 

E-Zine University "exists to help you become a successful E-Zine Publisher. Several leading online experts share their expertise with you in this educational forum."

Capture Interest with Audio Visual Content

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

Is your website making the best use of audio-visual tools to keep your clients' attention?
 
Many tools exist that allow you to easily add audio visual content to your website without expensive equipment or technical know-how.

These two companies help you put audio content directly on your site:
Instant Audio:  www.instantaudio.com
Audio Generator:  www.audiogenerator.com

And of course, there is YouTube and Google - you can easily upload your own content and then grab the code off any YouTube or Google video and insert that video on your site with little effort. 

Going a step further, Chatwise allows you to dialog directly in a live online chat with your customers:  www.chatwise.com 

Another really cool service is SitePal.  SitePal allows you to add a fully customizable speaking avatar to your website, your flash applications and emails. You don't need programming skills to use their service.   www.sitepal.com

Green Computing - Recycling

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Sallee Haerr

Are you recycling those old components?

"Computers sure are handy when they are working... but once they've chewed their last byte, things can get a little messy. Toxic chemicals, carcinogens and heavy metals are all part of what makes their clocks tick, and improper disposal can bring them all a little too close for human comfort. Computer recycling is nothing new, but getting your old electronics to the great motherboard in the sky can be tricky to do responsibly." 

Read more on "How to: Recycle Your Computer" at:      http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/how_to_recycle_1.php

Here's a company that specializes in recycling technotrash - it's better than taking it to the landfill: 
www.greendisk.com

Also check out the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's page on donating or recycling old computers: 
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm

More about computer recycling:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_recycling 

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