I left a short comment on the post that I would like to expand on. As a disclaimer, I would like to mention that I make money on affiliate sales and have set up a few clients with affiliate programs. There is also affiliate links sprinkled through my website so be careful.

That all important Affiliate Link, that code that you get that is embedded in your links, banners, skyscrapers and anything else that will accept a hyperlink. All you have to do is embed it and people will click on it and you make money or do you.

Most links will register a client’s computer by embedding a cookie on to their computer. So what happens when a client cleans his cookies? What happens if he sees and discovers the product and investigates just enough before he clicks through and then searches for the site? And the one that is just about always the case is if you’re in B2B sales, how often does the purchase occur on the computer that was registered. Do you think the purchasing agent ask the requester whose site they found the product on? Do you think the requester even mentions it?

However, when your prospect is registered, what happens next? First there is typically a minimum payout and a time limit on how long the cookies last. Did you know most cookies expire in less than 90 days? Did you know that there may be a minimum threshold before sales are paid out? The thinking behind that is that you will have the highest registration in the initial 90 days and the least conversion. Meaning the affiliate resource gets the e-mail address to forever market too for a very limited if any cost.

The 13 billion dollar mark has spawned a highly competitive market for handling the affiliate resources account. There are some great ones out there and I am only here to discuss one thing. What happens when your affiliate resource switches suppliers? That’s right, your cookies all disappear and you have to re-register all of your prospects again. It also means you have to change all your links that you have created to the new one.

Read the fine print well, if there is any. I have been told that half my affiliate sales were non-commissionable because the people that clicked through my site were commissioned and they could not pay out commission to both of us.

This is my favorite bug-a-boo. I drive people to a site, they register and I now have a good solid lead. My affiliate resource starts sending him his auto-responder to sell the product therefore doing all the work. Hmm, work = auto-responder? He may convert a few, maybe not, but then what happens is that a new wave of auto-responders start being sent; selling my affiliate resource’s, affiliates! That’s right, my resource tries to move him into one of his affiliates and guess what, you don’t get to participate in this sale. No way, no how!

So now let’s get to the real skivvy, RUN THE NUMBERS! Nobody is going to tell you this but think about how many impressions you have to make to get a click-thru. Than how many leads turn into sales and then your payout. The truth is seldom is it better than direct mail numbers of 1 to 3%. So picking 2%, (and that is  very high on impressions to leads) if you have 10,000 impressions that is 200 leads and as a result 2 sales. If you make, $50 a sale that is $100 for your efforts. If you can accomplish, I would bet that you are doing better than 95% of the affiliates out there. So, look at two things: How much traffic does your website get or how big is your e-zine list? For the sake of explanation, let’s say my numbers above our correct. Are you willing to give up that number of leads to someone else for a $100.

Affiliate Marketing is not an easy way to make a living. You can participate in launches, book offerings and other affiliate efforts that could increase the odds of success and prove more successful. There are some great and I mean great partnership, coaching and program structures that could prove very lucrative for you. But if you are just looking for a cookie, in my opinion most would be better served in the hole they came from. What are your thoughts?

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1. There needs to be strong common interest among the group for all to succeed. I look at downtown stores located in close proximity, strip mall occupants, small business communities and yes, people with common ideal clients. The problem with the ideal client theory is that so many times companies product and services overlap that there is competition within the group. Now, I am not saying there would not be competition in the other groups but there is a common need to attract people and satisfy them with the products once they are there. Lead groups work well but again, do you pass on your best leads and is there actually promotion taking place?
2. There needs to be a lead marketing coordinator. The coordinator leads the effort create the community with joint material both on-line and off-line. And not all marketing material needs to be joint, either.  This is interesting in the sense that it is very difficult to create a community by yourself and difficult to have the marketing expertise and time required in house.

It all sounds great, but why not just hire a marketing firm to do this? You can, but if you do not install a marketing system and train everyone in the group on the "System," it will be a disjointed effort and it will simply fail! I cannot emphasize the training part of it more than I do. There needs to be an understanding on what needs to be accomplished and what everyone needs to do to make it successful.

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This is an interesting twist to this dilemma, creating a marketing power group. I know, you have heard all of this before with network groups and it just always seems that everyone is willing to work with you or work with your customers right? Well, this is a way to create something over and above a network group. It is about creating something much stronger and including an online presence that will ROCK!

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Twitter’s New Users Drive 600% Growth

Popular microblogging site Twitter now has about 4M-5M users, the majority of whom joined in 2008 and have contributed to the site’s 600% growth in the last 12 months, according to the first “State of the Twittershpere” (pdf)  report from HubSpot. The research, which covers…

Spam Doubles, Personalized Spam Quadruples in 2008

Spam nearly doubled worldwide since last year and now accounts for nearly 200 billion email messages each day (approximately 90% of email sent), while “personalized” spam based on personal information stolen from the web, has quadrupled in the same time period, according to a study…

Now, is there a correlation? I hardly think so but are the twitter people running away from the spammers. But what am I doing following hundreds, thousands of people? Can I say that it is just another form of sophisticated spamming?   Help me here? What is going on?

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Nick Wilsdon is the CTO of e3internet, an online marketing agency based in Russia. You can contact him through this site, LinkedIn or Skype.

Nick says:

Earlier this month, Google gave their users access to a free library of document templates. I found time last night to dig around and discovered some useful ones for search marketers. To save you some time, here are direct links to the ones I downloaded.

1. Non Disclosure Contract (NDA)

2. Presentation Backgrounds

3. Company Newsletters

4. Basic Google Adwords Proposal

5. Adwords Creative Generator

6. Travel Expenses and Itinerary Templates

7. Video Christmas Template

Was it worth publishing?

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Taken from the Duct Tape Marketing Blog by John Jantsch

I don’t think small business folks can here this enough – don’t get too concerned about what it is or how it works – it’s just plumbing – get excited about what you can do with it.

Even if you have no clue what RSS is, there’s a good chance you’ve consumed an RSS feed one way or another by way of blog content. Every blog comes equipped with the programming to write to RSS feeds. This can be in the form of a main blog feed, category specific feed or even a comment feed.

But RSS technology is everywhere now and is the secret to allowing your to filter through the flood of information you need to be tracking just to stay competitive. And, there’s more.

Here are two resources for your RSS learning pleasure:

1. Everything I’ve written and recorded on the subject
2. 100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS

P.S. I did delete a paragraph or two. But it still is important!

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Free cross-product webinar for webmasters

via The Official Google Blog by A Googler on 6/26/08

Posted by Jon Stona, Product Marketing Team
Three of our most useful products for website owners are Google Webmaster Tools , Google Analytics , and Google Website Optimizer . On July 8, we’re joining forces to bring you a free webinar about all of them so you can learn more about how they can boost your website when used together.

Our first-ever joint webinar for Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and Website Optimizer will take place:
DATE: Tuesday, July 8
TIME: 9:00 a.m. PT (Pacific Time)
JOIN US: Register to attend
If you can’t make that date, you’ll be able to access an archived version of the presentation via the same registration URL. And lest you forget, you can always visit Google Webmaster Central to see everything we offer to help you build and maintain your best site.

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to The Official Google Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

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1. Backup all material.
2. Sometimes, there is something in nothing.
3. Backups sometimes, most of the time, don’t look like the real thing.
4. Backups are better than nothing.

 Imagine my personalities swings through this 6-hour process!

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Top 10 Marketing-Related Business Websites – April 2008

Technorati Tags: Marketing Charts,Marketing,Duct Tape Marketing

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