The Truth About Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals
These holiday times are some of the best times to be an affiliate. If you have ever dreamed of making money online, there is no better way to do it than now. Many merchants are cutting prices on most popular products, so there is no excuse in not selling these days. But you want to make sure you don’t ruin your credibility by cutting corners. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are days that people rush to stores to pick up gadgets and necessities and save money in the process. What they do expect to get from your site is a) places they can buy the items they want for the lowest price b) promotions they may have missed c) gift ideas for the holiday season.
There are a lot of affiliates that want to make the most money by putting the least effort forward. So essentially, they grab the feeds that are provided to them by the merchants and just slaps them on their pages without doing any research. A lot of merchants are known for combining good deals with bad ones. So while you are getting a very good deal on some of their items, you may be getting no so good ones with the others. But if you slap all their deals on your pages without comparing prices, then you are not exactly providing real value to your users. (more…)
Affiliates and The Art of Fear Mongering
You know what makes super marketers good at what they do? A lot of them don’t hesitate to take advantage of their prospects’ emotions to sell them things. Whether you feel sad, insecure, depressed, or afraid of something, the fact that you feel those emotions makes you susceptible to some of the tactics used by affiliate marketers. Super affiliates don’t even hesitate to go after fellow affiliates, and you can easily see that these days with the FTC rules going into the effect on December 1st. I can’t tell you how many e-mails I have received from people who are just trying to help me out and keep me out of jail (by selling me a bunch of legal documents for $197).
That’s the classic method of spinning a bad news to your advantage to make some quick bucks. The FTC has come up with a vague set of rules that could potentially get a lot of affiliates and bloggers in trouble. People don’t like to be threatened with an $11,00o penalty per violation, which means many are looking for ways to protect themselves against any possible liabilities. Of course, not everyone can afford a lawyer, which is exactly the reason why promoting a $197 product in front of these folks makes sense. (more…)
The FTC Does Affiliates a Favor
There have been a lot of talks and rants about how the FTC overstepped its boundaries. There is no question the new FTC rulings could lead to some sites being targeted while others spared with no specific reason. The ruling is comprehensive and vague at the same time (if that is possible). The FTC talks about how everyone needs to be transparent online and disclose monetary and other types of gains on blogs, affiliate sites, and portals. But the FTC may have given affiliates even more ways to make money online by keeping things as vague as possible. Right after the FTC released its ruling on affiliates and bloggers, many smart online marketers started creating products to market to other affiliates who are hoping to stay compliant with the FTC guidelines.
Think about it. There are going to be a lot of newbie affiliate marketers out there who have no idea what they are doing and will part ways with their hard earned money to stay in the good graces of the FTC. Even blackhat marketers have taken advantage of this opportunity as well. Some people are selling compliance badges to people who are trusting enough to buy them, thinking that the FTC will pass on their sites as long as they have badges all over them. (more…)
Should You Use Adsense Next To Your Affiliate Offers?
Google Adsense is an easy way to make a few bucks here or there. If you happen to have the right strategy going with your affiliate portal, you may actually be able to make a decent amount of money per month and make a living off of Google. At first, publishers and bloggers were the ones using Google Adsense to monetize their work. But recently affiliate marketers and product makers have also added Adsense to their landing pages. After all, if you are not going to get a conversion from your visitors, you may as well get paid for them to leave, right?
The issue of Adsense on affiliate landing pages is very controversial. As an affiliate, your goal is to drive traffic to your landing pages and optimize them in a way that helps your bottom line. If you are driving paid traffic to your website, the last thing you want is give your visitors an easy way to get out of your website. Google Adsense ads are a big exit sign. There is return mechanism to get back the visitors who have clicked on your ads. So you are at their mercy. In most cases, these people don’t come back to your website.
Many super affiliates who are using their own sales-letters to make money online are using their Google Adsense units at the very end of their newsletters. That is an interesting practice, as you give your visitors enough chance to take advantage of your offer. But in case they have read the whole newsletter and still are not ready to take you upon your offer, you may as well make a buck or two when they leave. The more controversial practice is using sidebar Adsense units and putting ads in a prominent position on your website. Can that possibly work?
Affiliates on Twitter: The Next Battle Ground
There are many affiliate marketers who take advantage of the latest technologies to make more money online. There is such a thing as early mover, and the sooner you position yourself to take advantage of the latest developments all around you, the better you can position yourself to start dominating your market. Twitter has quickly become one of those battlegrounds for affiliates. Twitter is one of the best services to drive traffic to any website. It’s not just about the quantity of traffic but rather the quality of it as well. Let’s say you have a website about credit cards, and you have 10,000 people following you on Twitter. If you have truly put the time in to gain your followers trust, there is no reason you can’t make money from your efforts.
Just like any other technology, there is a right way and wrong way to use it. There are many affiliates who are using black hat tactics to create bogus accounts on Twitter and use them to bombard the community with their affiliate offers. You can almost tell an automated account for a real one these days. But the scripts and bots are becoming more sophisticated. That practice is going to get a bit more difficult to execute with the latest FTC ruling. And let’s not forget about the community backlash against spammers. If you are dubbed as a spammer, it’s going to get you ignored or banned on twitter. You’ll lose all your followers in the process.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with using automated tools such as Humming Bird or TweetAdder. You can have all the followers in the world, but I personally don’t see any problem with that practice as long as you are not spamming your followers. Having lots of followers is a big responsibility. If you can’t gain their trust and provide them with valuable content, you are going to lose them eventually. So while having them can be a big boost for your business, it will keep you honest as well (unless you don’t mind getting banned on Twitter).
