SiteSell Blog

12 Factors Define a Good Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate Marketing

You've found a potential affiliate marketing program to join. How do you know if they are a quality merchant-partner, a so-so company or even a scam-artist? Watch for the following 12 positive criteria when you evaluate the program...

+ High quality product or service -- remember, it's your reputation that is on the line (and online!). Don't recommend products that UNDERdeliver.

+ Merchant has a good site that sells effectively.

+ Ability for affiliate to link straight to individual products, rather than just to the home page. (If the visitor has to find the product that you recommend, your Conversion Rate plummets.)

+ Type of payment model -- Pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead are good. This is true "performance marketing." If your referred visitor delivers the desired response, you get paid.

Affiliate Marketing - The Art of PREselling

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing requires a solid understanding of the merchant's products you plan to promote... and how to do so without "selling". That's where PREselling comes in. If you can grasp this concept and execute it with your business, you'll be light years ahead of most affiliates.

Your job as an affiliate marketer is to provide useful, relevant content that relates to the products you are promoting, yet leaves the reader wanting to know more. Within your excellent PREselling content, you'll include a strategically placed link to the sales page. The job of the sales page is to close the sale with the ready-to-buy visitor you've sent there.

Think about how you are going to reach, talk to, and refer visitors with your affiliate link. In other words, how you are going to convert a visitor into a customer?

Effective PREselling is all about attracting your target group, delivering valuable, relevant content, and gently leading visitors to your link after they have come to respect and like you.

Is Ken Really Anti-Blogging?

Ken's Blog

I made a post recently in the SBI! Forums about how you can add a WordPress blog into your SBI! site, including how and when to do it.  It got me thinking about something I'd like to dispel.  Something I've always thought was a little goofy, but I keep seeing it out there in the blogosphere.  So please bear with me while I address it...

Ken is not anti-blogging.

That would be like being anti-information.  Clearly...

In certain circumstances, blogging is very much the right choice.

Many bloggers think that I am anti-blogging, probably because of our "Blog Or Build" web page.  But it makes no sense to be so fiercely for or against a format, which in the end is all that blogging is...

The Value Of Passionate Case Studies Versus Vague Testimonials

Business Tips

Review the Case Studies site. A wide variety of businesses tell their stories in their own words. And they update regularly. These people are real, credible, detailed, and passionate. And their updates reinforce that SBI! success is no short-term fluke.

Every company features "Success Stories." Yawn. Or vague, sensational "testimonials." What a waste of time in the competitive small business B2B space...

What are you doing (honestly, of course) to make yours stand out? And oh yes... if customers are not e-mailing you with great and passionate stories, improve your product instead of "baffling them with BS," as the old saying goes.

Affiliate Marketing - A Low-Maintenance Income Stream

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in e-business. No need to own a product or offer a service. No worries about storage, shipping or payment processing. You simply send people (i.e., potential customers) to a merchant's website that you represent as their affiliate. If your referrals buy (or complete a required action -- filling in a form, for example), the merchant pays you a commission.

That, in essence, is the beauty of the affiliate concept. You can be up and building a business in record time, at minimal risk.

If you're an online entrepreneur in need of a product to promote, affiliate marketing programs are the answer. Top-notch merchants supply everything, such as excellent products, ordering, credit-card processing, and delivery. Your job is to supply the marketing.

All you need to do is to put yourself in the pathway between customers and quality merchants and earn a commission for your efforts. But, like any "real" business, effort and passion are essential ingredients for long-term success. "Get-rich-quick" schemes don't work.

What's needed for successful affiliate marketing? It boils down to these 3 critical factors...

The Twitter-Spammer, The NY Cab Driver, And You

Ken's Blog

The other day I read about a really clever way to use Twitter to make money offline.  The author wrote about it because "the game was over."  But somehow, and I'm not sure why or how, this guy got me thinking about a New York cab driver who drove us home recently.

Evaluating models for making money online is very much the same, or should be, as weighing ways to make money OFFline.  The methods range all the way from outright fraud to a variety of methods of exchanging value for value by building businesses that add value for a given market.  But how we think of them differs (sort of how many people think differently of stealing a CD offline vs. downloading pirated music online).

Somehow, we haven't quite wrapped our minds around the fact that the principles are the same, even if the environment is different.  So when I read about monetization ideas, I'll often correlate them to what the equivalent would be OFFline.  At first, while my "mind is still thinking ONline," I may start to get excited about the possibility of writing a monetization article or even creating a tool for SBI!.

And then, a little voice niggles at me ("something's not right with this")...

Getting Free Targeted Web Traffic to Your Site Is Not Rocket Science

Traffic Generation

Building your own free targeted web traffic is how you will truly own your online business.

There's nothing wrong with supplementing traffic by buying Pay-Per-Click advertising, or opening a Yahoo! or eBay store. But, keep in mind... the day you stop paying for your traffic is the day your traffic stops. And your business too.

Free targeted web traffic is your site's lifeblood. Users find your site at the search engines, because they were searching for information, products or services that you write about. They read your content, become PREsold... and turn into customers.

How do you build your own free targeted web traffic?

Website Blueprint - Become the Architect for Your Site's Success

Keyword Research

A website blueprint is like the blueprint for your house. It has to be complete before you lay the first brick or write your first page.

In the previous article, we discussed keyword research for your site concept. The next step is to look at the keyword research for your site’s content pages... the keywords that will form your website blueprint.

The decisions you make now determine the size of the success of all your efforts over the next 12 months, and beyond. So...

Time spent now is time well invested. The most common reason for failure in the online business world is failing to spend the necessary time here to make the right niche decision. It is not hard, but it does require patience and thought. It might even mean modifying your current site concept keyword, or choosing a different one. In other words...

Take your time and get this right. You will be well on your way to a profitable e-business.

How Can You Improve Your Product or Service Today?

Business Tips

Do you regularly review your products or services to see how you can improve them? One small change, well thought out, in just one feature, could become the glue that has customers loving and sticking to your product or service.

What one thing can you do this week that will improve your customers' experience and cement your business relationship?

Writing Great Content Starts With Your VPP

Content & Article Writing

Where do you best start with content creation? You start with your VPP, or Valuable PREselling Proposition. Your VPP answers, in a few words, two critical questions about your site concept...

• What specific and high-value information does your site deliver?
• What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., your angle of approach - more on this in a second)?

Answering these questions will help you to create quality content, and keep your site's content focused on your site concept or niche.

When deciding your VPP, think about:

1) What's The Spin? (AKA "Positioning")?

This is your angle of approach. How are you going to position your site's content? For example, a teen may write about her family holiday adventures at their favorite holiday spot, Anguilla. But her dad will write in a more sophisticated tone, and his content may be on Anguilla's investment opportunities.

2) Don't Mix Themes

Keep your content focused on your theme and you'll avoid the risk of diluting your site's search engine effectiveness. And you won't cloud your message to your visitors.

Example: Anguilla-beaches.com does not write about Antigua or Barbados. (It does, however, write about St. Martin because that is a common day trip, just a few miles away.)

Decide on your angle, and stick to it.

Your "spin" is one of your most important decisions. It determines how you position yourself and your content. It makes your site unique and stand out from the crowd.

We talked about the difference between PREselling and selling.

You'll recognize high quality content that PREsells, because ...

1. It has a "been there... done that" voice and flair.
2. It has specific, "zing knowledge" that comes from real experience.
3. It is supported by a depth of useful information. This is where good reference material plays an important part.
4. It is consistent, from page to page, from e-zine issue to issue, from week to month to year.
5. It is for the customer, absolutely.

Good PREselling is critical to your success. You don't PREsell after you've written the content. You do it BEFORE you write... you plan it as you finalize what your content will be. Good PREselling means...

1. Write to communicate.
2. Develop your own "voice" with flair and substance.
3. Spin your site/biz/SELF into a unique position.
4. Honestly convince people to trust and like you.

Learn more about how to write great content, how to develop YOUR voice and how to connect with your visitor. Download our free ebook "Make Your Content PREsell."