Affiliate Playground » Affiliate Marketing

Simplifying My Approach to Internet Marketing

Tom McEwin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:08:47 +0000

The internet marketing industry is a busy place.

Most of the time there is some sort of new product that has recently been released (or is about to be released) by one of the many gurus. And even when there is not, if you are on too many email lists, then your inbox will still get swamped.

Add to this all the hype which surrounds social media, and it is possible to waste countless hours:

getting ‘free’ training/reports/bonuses by signing up to mailing lists; and
hanging out on social media.

One of the things I realised mid way through last year is the importance of taking effective action, and avoiding time wasting activities that would otherwise take up the time I had dedicated to internet marketing.

Step 1: Turning Down the Noise

The first thing I did was to unsubscribe to a bunch of email lists I was on that weren’t delivering value to me.

I have still stayed on a few. But those that I’ve remained on have a really clear target audience, regularly deliver value to these lists, only recommend directly relevant products and do not just spam affiliate products.

Initially it surprised me how many of the IM guru lists I was getting rid of. But with a list big enough even a low conversion rate from a mail out can result in big dollars. So I can understand why the owners of these lists might over promote products (their own or someone else’s). But it doesn’t mean that I want to put up with it.

Step 2: Deciding on a New Approach

One of the things I realised about my approach is that there was something missing. I originally started this blog in order to chronicle my development as an internet marketer, record my thoughts as I work through particular topics (as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s) and to help me build my skills as an internet marketer (and blogger). I originally intended to keep doing this while I worked towards finding the real niche I wanted to target.

While I’ve had some successes, they aren’t what I had originally hoped for. So I decided to re-frame my approach.

Moving forward, I’ll be focusing on helping local businesses with their online presence. This provides an explanation as to why it has been a little while since my last post – I’ve been busy setting up a company, and dealing with all the associated arrangements.

Step 3: Working as Efficiently as Possible

I’ve also been giving a lot thought as to what part of my approach needs to change as part of this new business, to make sure I use my time as effectively as possible (given I only have so much time available).

This has involved not only really focusing on what I want out of this business, but also:

considering high yield versus low yield IM activities;
figuring out a scalable business model;
working out how to effectively implement this plan; and
working out how to avoid those tasks which suck up a lot of time but don’t deliver real results.

Enter Simpleology

In mid January a friend put me on to the training materials provided by Simpleology. The beginners’ course (which is free) is called Simpleology 101. It is beautifully simple and effective in helping you to:

focus on specific goals;
break these goals down into the critical steps (and no extra steps); and to
establishing a daily routine to continually work towards these goals.

This process is really good at helping manage the internet marketing noise, prioritise those things that really need to get done and dumping those things that just waste time.

If this sounds useful, then I highly recommend at least trying out Simpleology 101. The course only goes for 20 days and takes 10 – 15 minutes a day, so it is not a bit time commitment. Plus it is completely free. There are some upsells when signing up to the free version, but I simply ignored these.

So now I have less distractions, a better internet marketing plan and a process for increasing the amount of effective action I take.

Cheers,

Website Terms of Use – Boring to Read But Important to Know

Tom McEwin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:48:43 +0000

Most of the websites that can be used to make money working online will have specific terms and conditions that must be accepted when signing up. It is important to become familiar with these website terms of use in order to know precisely what is and is not allowed. Breaching the terms of service risks having an account banned and this would be no fun at all.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Reading Website Terms of Use – More Fun than Having an Account Banned

Why am I posting about this? Well, website terms of use are inevitably written in such a way to make them nice and tight legally but really boring to read (almost like it is hoped that people will sign up without properly reading them). However, because they set out what websites allow their users to do, they are pretty important. So I figured that if I review the terms and conditions for the websites I want to use then this forces me to read them in the first place and ensures that I understand them and don’t gloss over them. Plus it may be semi-useful for others who (like me) find them a pain in the backside to read given how they are written.

Hopefully I can also find a way to keep things fun, but this will depend on what kind material I have to work with.

Playing it Smart Requires an Understanding of Website Terms of Use

I’m the sort of guy who generally likes to play the rules. But this may not be enough of a motivating factor to make sure that I read and understand website terms of use. It is very easy to start reading the terms of service for a particular site and just zone out.

What is more important to me is the risk that I would be taking on if I do not read website terms of use properly. The pain involved in reading the darn things is no doubt much less than the pain of having an account banned after:

I have spent a decent amount of effort becoming familiar with how to use a particular website;
I have invested quite a bit of time building up which ever accounts I am using on that site; and
I have developed strategies that may rely on a particular account remaining active in order to work.

Taking the time to read website terms of use is my way of making sure I don’t get banned for a silly mistake. There are certainly types of behaviour that I would steer away from anyway, but unless I have read and understood the relevant terms of service, I simply won’t know if a site has a firm view about the precise way they like things to be done.

This is especially important given that I will be looking at using these websites in order to make money working online. Some sites are ok with affiliate links, whereas others really don’t like commercial use at all. This doesn’t mean that the more strict sites can’t be used to help generate an online income, just that they need to be used a bit more creatively.

An added bonus of becoming familiar with the terms and conditions for a particular website is that I may be better able to utilise the service that the site offers. This could conceivably make a huge difference in how well I am able to take advantage of a given site to generate online income.

In my next post I’ll be looking at the ClickBank Terms of Use – to see exactly what is and isn’t allowed.

Catch you then.

Using Affiliate Networks to Give the People What they Want

Tom McEwin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:34:49 +0000

In my last post I looked at how to make money working online by identifying a hungry crowd and attracting targeted internet traffic. In this post I am going to look at some handy affiliate programs that enable me to ‘give the people what they want’ – to feed the hungry crowd and earn a commission in doing so.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are several online affiliate networks which are free to join, and will provide a great range of products available for promotion. While there are plenty of other products available which can be marketed online, these affiliate networks are free to join and great to get started with:

For now, I’m going to focus on just two of these, the ClickBank Affiliate Program, and Amazon Associates.

ClickBank Affiliate Program

The ClickBank affiliate program logo

ClickBank is an affiliate network that focuses on providing digital content (e-books, software, memberships and subscriptions) to consumers around the world. The ClickBank network claims to have more than 100,000 active affiliates and over 12,000 vendors selling tens of thousands of unique digital products.

So why is the ClickBank Affiliate Program a great way to make money working online? Well, there are a couple of really good reasons, both of which flow from ClickBank only stocking digital products. Firstly, the products can be marketed anywhere around the globe easily – there are no shipping limitations to worry about. Secondly, because the products don’t need to be physically manufactured, the affiliate commission rates can be quite high, up to 75% in some cases. So this makes the commissions on inital sales really begin to add up.

Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon.com is the largest online retailer in the US. While it originally started out selling books it has since diversified in to a range of household, sporting and office goods, as well as music and ebooks. So chances are that Amazon will have something that your niche market (or hungry crowd) might be interested in. The commission rates on Amazon products generally range from about 4% to 8.5%, depending on the volume sold, but up to 10% on ebooks and mp3s.

Given that Amzaon has been around for quite a while, it is also a place that people who shop online are more likely to be familiar with and therefore more willing to purchase from. For more information on the Amazon affiliate program, check out the Amazon Associates site, and for information on how to easily set up an Amazon Store see the free version of Year of the Affiliate ebook.

Way Forward

In my next couple of posts, I’ll be reviewing the ClickBank Terms of Use, demonstrating how to sign up for the ClickBank Affiliate Program and covering off any useful introductory information I spot along the way.

Catch you then.

Getting Targeted Internet Traffic and a Hungry Crowd

Tom McEwin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:48:20 +0000

One of the key things I’ll need in order to make money working online is the ability to get targeted internet traffic. Once upon a time traffic used to be a bad thing – all it would do is slow you down while trying to get on the other side of town. Not so on the internet. On the internet, more traffic is good and targeted internet traffic is even better.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why Targeted Internet Traffic is a Good Thing

Traffic on the internet has a monetary value. This is quite clear given the amount of advertising dollars spent by companies to post ads on Google search rankings via Google Adwords.

But when it comes to affiliate marketing, I don’t want just any traffic, I want targeted internet traffic as these people are more likely to find what I am promoting to be of interest to them (and therefore are more likely to buy). The aim is to get a ‘hungry crowd‘ of people who all have a particular interest/desire and then give them what they want. As outlined by the old-school direct mail marketer, Gary Halbert, one of the aims of any marketer should be to:

“to constantly be on the look out for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or at least hungry!) for some particular product or service.”

Fortunately there are plenty of affiliate marketing tools which simplify this task.

Ask Google to find out where the hungry crowds are

Without a doubt Google is the world’s most popular search engine.

: Global Search Engine Traffic 9 Jan to 10 Feb 2010 (click chart for larger image)

While there are variations in the reported market share that Google has, it clearly dwarfs the other search engines, both in North America and globally:

gs.statcounter.com indicates that Google currently has roughly 90% of worldwide searches, and roughly 80% of North American searches;
Neilsen reported in August 2009 that Google was used for roughly 65% of US searches; and
Another site lists Googles global market share at more like 85% of worldwide searches.

So how does this help me identify a hungry crowd? Google, like most other search engines, keeps a detailed record of all the search queries that are entered. So it is possible to see what phrases and topics are getting the most attention from people searching the web. This will help me to find a target audience who are after something specific, who represent a particular market niche that I can engage with in order to attract targeted internet traffic.

Interrogating Google

By finding out what people are typing into Google, I am essentially doing what is called keyword research. A better way to describe this would be keyphrase research, as each ‘keyword’ can be a number of words long.

Fortunately there are plenty of tools which can help me to do my keyword research and find out what people are typing into Google. For example, the free Year of the Affiliate ebook, outlines how to use the following keyword tools:

I won’t be covering how to use these tools as Sean Rasmussen, the author of Year of the Affiliate, gives a great description of this in the part of his ebook that is available for free download.

However, one important keyword tool I will mention is Market Samurai. Market Samurai is without a doubt one of the best keyword research tools available today, and the primary affiliate marketing tool that I use.

The keyword research component of Market Samurai is incredibly powerful and is available for free download. There is also a paid part of this program, which comes on a 14 day trial and has a number of other neat features which are useful to analyse competitors. There are also a stack of helpful tutorial videos which the guys at Market Samurai have released, that show not only how powerful this tool is but are extremely useful in learning about how to rank well on Google and how save time by targetting the right type of internet traffic.

Finding the Right Hungry Crowd

So once I have the tools to interrogate Google, how do I find my hungry crowd? And what type of audience/niche should I be after in order to make money working online?

Well, unfortunately selecting a profitable niche requires a bit of work, even with the above keyword tools, and quite a bit of thinking. In terms of places to get started when brainstorming possible keywords, once way is to see what people are already buying. Or I can focus on a product I am already familiar with and see whether there is a hungry crowd that that I can target.

There are a few crucial things to keep in mind when doing keyword research, which the team at Market Samurai have called the 4 Golden Rules of Keyword Research:

Relevance: I want the keywords to be relevant to whatever it is I am promoting, in other words I want keywords that identify a hungry crowd;
Traffic: I want to target keywords which give provide enough targeted internet traffic for me to bother marketing to the audience I identify;
Competition: I want to avoid niches where there is already strong competition; and
Commerciality: I want to make sure I focus on keywords which are likely to lead to someone buying what I promote, and not merely continue browsing.

These rules are not only applicable to building a website to get targeted internet traffic, but also when using classified ad sites and article directories to funnel traffic. While the real power of Market Samurai lies in helping with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of websites so that they can rank well on Google, it is nevertheless great for getting Google to help spot what people want.

Once I have identifed a hungry crowd, then I can move on to the next step of trying to feed that crowd.