When you embark on your search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign you will be entering into a new learning phase of your life. You have, no doubt, by this stage set up your very own website. You have included a good balance of images and text. You have produced eye catching headlines. The one thing you haven’t got is traffic to your site. SEO is what you now have to do to get visitors.

There is much more to SEO than simply scattering important keywords throughout your text and organising links. You will have to closely monitor the effect of these keywords and ascertain if the links are being productive or not. SEO is all about search engine rankings. This means you want to have your particular website ranked above that of your competitors when people search keywords associated with your products or services. It must at least make the search engine’s first page. This will be the aim of your keywords or key phrases.

Carefully Chosen Keywords are Important to Your Success

In this sense your choice of keywords is paramount to your ultimate success. You should therefore think about what words you would use if you wanted to bring up your own site, or the words you believe other people might use to bring up a site such as the one you have put together. For instance if you are a lawyer you wouldn’t simply use the word lawyer as there would be millions around the world. You will have to refine it to what kind of lawyer you are, and in what area you practice. It could be something like ‘family law Sydney’ or ‘Michigan family law attorneys.’

Google Analytics or Site Stats are Invaluable in Tracking Your Traffic

Google analytics or site stats are useful tools to have to measure what is working for you and what is not. It will give you various measurements from which you can evaluate what is happening on your site. For instance one area that is tracked is ‘visits’. Knowing and understand this statistic is one of your most valuable insights into what is happening on your site and how your SEO is performing. Visits will give you the following information:

• Page visits. This particular statistic lets you know how many pages on your site received visits during a certain period of time. You will see if it is trending up or down. If it is trending down you will need to find out why.
• Page views. A similar record as that of page visits but it will go further in that it will tell you how many pages were actually viewed by each visitor to your site. It tells you whether your visitor became interested in the visit or disappeared as fast as he or she landed. For instance if 100 people visited your site and 101 page views were recorded it shows you that they are not staying to look around. If however, you had 100 visitors with 10,000 page views you can consider yourself as being quite successful.
• Bounce rates. Bounce rates have to be compared against your visit readings. It gives you a measurement of how many people visited your site and whether they left immediately or hung around for a while. You will need to carefully study the percentage of bounces and put this up against your total traffic. This will tell you if the people making the visit are bothering to read, or look, at what you are trying to impart. If it happened that your traffic actually increased but your bounce rate increased as well you are not achieving any benefit. Once again it indicates people are leaving before learning what you have to say or sell. Similar to a person walking into a shop and immediately turning around and leaving without even bothering to look around. The ideal situation here would be when the traffic visiting your site increased and your bounce rate decreased. This will tell you that you are successfully getting people to come to your site, meaning the keywords are working to get them there and to keep them there, and that they are staying to look around a bit. This should mean you have a better chance of making sales.

Use Your Blog to Whet the Appetite for More

Before you settle back and wait for the money to start rolling in, you should be aware that bounce rates can sometimes be read incorrectly. If you have a good blog structured to point people towards your site for instance, your traffic may well increase because of the interest your blog created. Once on your site visitors may look around a bit but leave having got enough information from your blog.

Be careful that you are not imparting too much information in your blog and that your visitors are given more to interest them once they get to your web pages. If you find the visitors to your site are actually staying for some time it will indicate they are discovering what they want. If this is occurring your next job will be to take them further into your site and preferably not to leave until they have purchased from you.

Your key performance indicators (KPI) are therefore:

• Number of pages indexed
• Page yield
• Known brand

Your blog will help promote your specific brand, and when a visitor has reached your landing page he or she will be reassured if you have used the same background colour and font as you did in your blog. By doing this your visitor will be more inclined to sub-consciously trust you as they will get a sense of familiarity.

This article was written by Will from Life Insurance Finder. Visit Life Insurance Finder to compare life insurance quotes.

Probably the number one benefit of doing affiliate marketing is that you don’t actually need to create anything to make money online.

Products or services? You don’t need to develop one; just pick the affiliate products you are passionate about and tell everybody about the products (and of course, ask them to buy via your affiliate links…)

Websites or blogs? You don’t need to have one; sure, establishing a site can help a lot, but it’s not the only way to make money via affiliate marketing.

There are 1001 ways to make money online promoting affiliate products – one of the most effective ones is incorporating coupon codes in your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Coupon codes 101

Coupon codes are essentially discount codes that are redeemable only if you “mention” them when you purchase the products or services. When you shop online, when you are about to check out you are often asked to enter coupon code to redeem discounts or any other perks.

Let me ask you this question: Where are you looking for such coupon codes? It’s only common sense – you would answer: Coupon sites! Or if you are an adventurous shopper, you can Google for – in example – “GoDaddy Coupon codes” and there you go – plenty of sites to browse for the GoDaddy coupon codes popping out on your search engine result pages.

If you are promoting one particular product, you are usually given an option to use particular coupon codes to help you attract buyers to buy from you. I am actually interested in affiliate programs that launch monthly coupon codes available to all affiliate marketers. No hassle, no fuss.

In some affiliate programs, you can even make your own coupon codes – usually allowing you to take a portion of your affiliate income margin to be given to your customers. For example, if Affiliate Program X is offering you 30 percent affiliate income, you may want to share 10 percent to your prospects in the form of discounts.

Obviously, I tend to avoid affiliate programs that don’t offer the option for us to promote coupon codes to help attracting prospects.

How to make money from my coupon codes?

It’s pretty straightforward, really – if someone buys a product you are affiliated with using your coupon code, you will get the affiliate commission. It’s that simple.

So, for example, if you join a web hosting affiliate program offering the ability to use Web Hosting Coupon codes to promote the hosting provider, you might want to get people to use the coupon codes to sign up for the web hosting service.

Okay – I’ve got the coupon codes to promote my affiliate products… what next?

So, now you surely want to get your coupon codes to be visible to as many eyeballs as possible, right? There are actually some ways to do it, but one of the most cost effective ways is by submitting your coupon codes to as many coupon sites as possible.

The premise is this: By submitting your coupon codes to such coupon sites, you can get your coupon codes exposed and well-buzzed to the coupon site visitors… and the search engines! We know that the search engines are the main vehicles to deliver targeted traffics that convert well. With that being said, it’s only logical to submit to high-trafficked coupon code sites.

I hope this blog post can help you earn more from your joined affiliate programs! Please share your experience in using coupon codes to attract prospects by commenting on this article

When it comes to affiliate marketing, there is a plethora of choices. If your intent is to make some money, choose any. If your intent is to make good money, then you need to choose one of the top affiliate marketing networks.

Top Affiliate Marketing Networks

Affiliate marketing is an amazing way to make great money. The main thing to think about here is; choosing the right program. For example, loan affiliate marketing programs are so saturated…you would be lucky to make any money.

It’s not that you need laser focused affiliate marketing programs, but you need reliable, trust worthy programs. Listed below for you are the top affiliate marketing networks I know of. You can make great money with any one or all of these programs.

Empyre Media – The Affiliate Network that Stands Out from the Rest. If you are looking for top payouts, the best exclusive offers, personal attention to your unique needs and unparalleled affiliate support – then you need to be working with Empyre Media! From set-up, to pay per click, to affiliate training and support – Empyre Media provides customized service that’s unparalleled by other affiliate networks.

Profit from Local Shopping – Keep 100% commission! – Google, eBay, Groupon and other major Internet companies are grabbing a piece of the local online marketing pie. Savvy affiliates can now earn from LOCAL too! Feature brand name merchants from major affiliate networks. Easy widgets and datafeeds. PLUS it’s FREE – keep 100% of your hard-earned commission.

AffiliateWire – The New Breed of Affiliate Network. This high-paying network is quickly becoming the platform of choice for savvy affiliates. Operating in the PC Utility space, RevenueWire offers an average of 75%+ commission, 3%+ conversion rates, twice-monthly payouts & expert affiliate managers.

CPAway – Earn More Revenue the CPAway. Looking for a high integrity affiliate network that can help you maximize your revenue? CPAway was founded by a group of online performance-based marketers and is trusted by many partners to provide them with the offers, support and tracking they need to be successful. Top payouts and 1000+ campaigns. Join Here!

BidHere – High Commission Auction Affiliate Program with a Twist. Profit from online auctions! Generous commissions paid on both bid packages and product value. To ensure 100% transparency, we have partnered with Commission Junction & Google Affiliate Network.

Share Results is an affiliate network that specializes in personal attention and support. They offer numerous top affiliate programs including Real Networks, eLearners, Celebrity Seats, AdCafe, AutoTap, eDiets, Photobucket, ChimpFeet, KookooBear Kids and others.

Not your typical type of affiliate program, I know. However, after doing some research, I think shoes are a great way to make some affiliate money.

Affiliate Shoe Programs

When deciding what affiliate program is going to make you money; you need to first consider the demand. Are people going to want or need your product? Without the want or need, you have no offer. Rather, you will end up with a junk offer.

Now, where shoes are concerned, everyone wants shoes….NEEDS shoes. Work, play, fashion….people love their shoes. And people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for good shoes. This is where you come in. You, as a shoe affiliate will offer them exactly what they need.

As an affiliate marketer, you know all about the Clickbanks and Amazons; but sometimes you need to narrow down a bit further. Define a niche. So, if you select shoes as your next affiliate program, drill down more and select heels…or athletic. Not absolutely necessary, but it will drive more targeted traffic your way.

So, I found a few shoe affiliate programs that will help you make the most of your marketing and profiting efforts. Good payouts, great selections of shoes and reputable companies as well. The LAST thing a successful affiliate marketer does is use scam, junk companies or products. If someone buys a shoe from you and the heel falls off on the first wear..you are done.

You have lost a customer for life and your word of mouth marketing just got a swift kick in the teeth…with that broken heel. I found a great resource for shoe affiliates, listing some of the top programs for you to join, that are not your everyday affiliate hubs.

Check out this one for instance:

Shoebuy.com is my final pick of shoe superstores. I don’t think you can go wrong with advertising shoes from this site. In addition to having a great selection, they’ve got terrific service and low prices. In addition, you’ll earn a whopping 17 percent commission on every sale. Check them out on Commission Junction.

The link below will take you to the best resource for shoe affiliate programs I could find. It’s relevant, up to date and top notch information. Thanks to Jeff Greer for compiling this list.

Shoe Affiliate Programs

In my last post entitled there’s no best product to promote in affiliate marketing, I explained why there really is no product that can make you tons of money that easy. I emphasized the essence of testing and tweaking in affiliate marketing and how it can literally make or break your business. For today, I would like to contradict that thought a bit by talking about profiting from the latest trends.

What is a hot trend? Ok I will not quote a definition from some stupid ass resource site. Hot trends are simply the ones that are being talked about a lot (yes it speaks volume) and that people are willing to spend for it. In short, if an anime is getting a lot of buzz it doesn’t really mean it’s automatically profitable.

Some Good example of Hot trends

One good example is the recent buzz around Apple’s iPad. Because Apple finally released some info about it, it opened a profitable market for people, what is it? Email Submits! Just by surfing through PeerFly, I easily noticed an offer paying $1.20 per lead (email only) with a VERY high conversion rate of 40% (it obviously went down afterwards).

Another good example a long time ago is the Obama, McCain related offers. During the presidential campaigns, a lot of merchants and affiliate alike are cashing in through this trend simply because it was the “in” thing.

You may probably be thinking about saturation and stuffs but remember saturation and competition is good because it signifies there’s a money in that market.  More competition means more money.

How to Find the Hot Trends

People do it differently and I’m amazed on how a lot of marketers get creative with this. But for the blog’s audience and nature I will discuss the basic ways.

Twitter

Twitter is the top social media tool and just by searching for surging topics that are lasting a bit longer, you can already have your offers to promote. What I usually do is go to sites like TweetMeme and find the hottest post. After that I’ll match that with a certain offer.

Google Trends

Google Trends is the best tool for finding the latest buzz search-wise.  There’s a good comprehensive post on how to maximize the use of this tool located here.

Blog-Hopping

It does make sense actually to explore the big sites in the blogosphere to find what’s hot. I usually browse big and authority sites like TechCrunch, Mashable and etc to find out what’s kicking in.

How about you? Do you care about hot trends when doing your own affiliate marketing stuffs? Let me know!

Ok sorry for being hysterical in the title. By now you should already know that there is no such thing as secret in affiliate marketing. Or to be more specific, a secret that would literally explode your profits. Again affiliate marketing is all about testing and tweaking and the more you learn from your data, the more you will earn.

Before, it’s very easy to profit from Facebook. All you need to do is run that shady email submit and get it in front of as many as audience as possible. Time flies very fast and now with all those new terms, a lot of people find making money from Facebook impossible.

If you get lazy to do a good ad copy, most of the times it will just get rejected. Even if you do a good copy, sometimes it will get rejected even. The key there is by getting into the smallest niche or what is called microniches.

A good example. If you’re going to run a quiz offer where you are going to target literally everyone, target the tag entertainment and have as much people see the ad, are you going to make money? I doubt!

There’s no secret but here’s one thing you’ve got to bare in mind. When you promote something on Facebook, make sure you laser target your audience according to the offer you’re promoting. For instance, if you’re promoting the Avatar Quiz Offer, then target not just the Avatar movie avid fans. Target them by age, whether they’re single or not and stuffs. Do you think a 40 yr.old woman would be interested to take that quiz? I bet not! Or will an 11 year old devoted fan have the money to pay for the subscription? Naah!

At the end of the day, it’s just about simply trying to get as deep as possible. While you may get lesser impressions by doing this, it may literally double your EPC. What are you gonna do with 10 mil impressions and no leads? and on the flip side, how about 10000 impressions and 10 leads? Remember, the more your ad is clicked, the more it will be displayed. And the bottom line is that the cost per click would be much cheaper if you’re ad is getting clicked often.

What say you?

In wickedfire, most of the question is about what is the best product to be an affiliate for? What is the best product to promote? The cliche answer/s is either it depends or there’s no best product to promote. So today I’ll explain a bit what it means and why. Let’s now dissect it.

It depends

People normally base it on the per lead tag, epc, and stuffs. For example two years ago, the ringtone market is a hot commodity. Everyone is in there, everyone’s like making money with it. The truth is only few did. While ringtone is a lucrative niche, the problem is its saturated. To be able to get a position in Adwords or YSM you need to shred out a lot of cash since the cpc is absurdly high.

Last year’s flavor is the rebill offers. If you don’t know, rebills are the ones that the customer just need to pay less than $5 for shipping YET they don’t know its a recurring payment. It’s shady but its how it was really designed. Like ringtones, it’s high paying but I doubt a lot of people made huge money with it. Researching, its obvious that the same and the same people are the ones that make the most of it.

So in the end it depends not just on the price per lead or the rising trends, but also on how suitable it is for your budget.

There’s No Best Product

This is true if you ask me. Every time I log in to my Copeac account, I always see the hot offers and stuffs but I rarely promote those. Sometimes you’d be surprised on how some of the offers work, what’s converting and why its converting.

For instance, I would like to promote a quiz offer which is working in UK. It converts well simply because Im promoting on a different demographic. Maybe not a lot of people promote that offer or promote it in that geographical location.

The thing is you can follow what others do by promoting those hot campaigns and yet still fail badly or promote something unknown, lose money, then capitalize in the end.

Affiliate Marketing is a testing and tweaking business (and spending too). Even the highest converting products will suck if you do your campaigns poorly. And besides if there’s such a best product to promote, why would I tell it to you anyway?

]]> http://affiliatehat.com/what-is-the-best-product-to-promote/feed/ 7 http://affiliatehat.com/incentivizing-in-affiliate-marketing/ http://affiliatehat.com/incentivizing-in-affiliate-marketing/#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:49:06 +0000 Affiliate Hat http://www.affiliatehat.com/?p=144

Incentivizing in affiliate marketing also known as incentive marketing is a very popular marketing tactic which is done mostly by website owners that have a huge audience.  Because of its nature, it’s not too hard to thrive and make some reasonable income doing it.

How

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Incentivizing in affiliate marketing also known as incentive marketing is a very popular marketing tactic which is done mostly by website owners that have a huge audience.  Because of its nature, it’s not too hard to thrive and make some reasonable income doing it.

How it is done

Here’s a good example. Thesis theme is probably the hottest WordPress theme for the last 8 months and because of it, a lot of its affiliates are really doing well with it. So to incentivize Thesis, most people are offering what we call cash back. Thesis offers affiliates a 40% commission for every sale made and what wise affiliates do is share the commission with everyone who will buy under them. And therefore doing the math, instead of earning $35 per sale, the affiliate would make less because he’s going to give some cash back ($10-$15), YET can possibly quadruple his customers. Who wouldn’t want a discount anyways?

There are a lot of other ways to do this like adding something to the package, or giving a premium something as a bundle and many more.

Before doing this and conclusion

First and foremost, make sure the offer is incentivizable. If it’s not then obviously you will just be wasting your time doing it.

Second, make sure you have a good number of audiences and a tight community. You cannot just start a website and then have people believe you that you are really offering cash back. Reputation counts so if you already have an established website then it’s a big plus factor.

Lastly, communicate well with the merchant.  Because of its nature, some will abuse it. You definitely don’t want to give some cash to people who really don’t purchase under you. Have a constant communication with the merchant to make sure everything is running well.

Overall, this is a pretty good tactic. A lot of people are doing it but not a lot of them are being successful. Getting the process implemented properly and good communication with the merchant are the only things you need to get this thing working well. Good luck and tell me your own opinion.

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Ok, the last post was September 25. The blog obviously was kinda on a hiatus, doing nothing, having planned nothing and going nowhere. I don’t want to make any excuses. It’s my fault because I’m lame and lazy.

Second, if I am about to promise anything again here don’t believe me. During mid 2009 when this blog had it going, I promised that I would provide free high quality articles and that never happened. So consider me a liar.

Anyways enough on talking. This year we would try to back this site up, provide occasional good tips for affiliate marketing and web news and many more. As you may now this blog was purchased by Melvin and no offense but ever since then its a downward spiral. Melvin is a very busy person, a student and an entrepreneur.

He hired 3 writers and one of them is me, the other two had written couple articles here before and just vanished. So altogether it was all our fault too.

This year, I (or we) will try my best to resuscitate this blog by posting more. As what this blog is about, I would hand out several affiliate marketing tips for newcomers and hopefully get them started and see how it goes then.

The blog would also showcase some case studies to really increase the value of the content that it would hand out to you, readers.

If there’s still a reader of this blog, see you then.