Building a Successful Affiliate Website

Here is the chronological order of the success of Shopping-Bargains.com.

Created by Mike Allen

• 1995 Graduated College with Master Degree
• 1996 Made first online purchase
• 1997 -99 Learned about powerful coupon code ** Google is born ** Search engines are not very effective
  
• 1999 Shopping-Bargains.com is born ** Used free hosting ** Quickly moved shared hosting ** Joined two affiliates amazon.com and netgrocer ** joined 2 networks bfree and linkshare
  
• Learned in 1999 ** Meet the customers needs ** Quality webhosting is vital ** Affiliate marketing exist ** Content management is a lot of work ** Affiliate income is not automatic ** This hobby had potential ** Start setting goals
  
• 2000 - 2003 ** Joined Commission Junction ** Share A Sale ** Performic (bought by google) ** Added more retailers and content ** Moved to table layout and upgraded ** Aquired shoppingbargains.com (without dash) ** Trademark easier with dash (- ) in URL ** added first part time person ( this person did data entry only )
• Main Lesson 2000 - 03 ** Affiliate marketing works ** Merchant communication is great ** Manually updating content is painful (35,000 products - redesign site) ** Search engines become really big now ** search more accurate ** online advertising is very effective too ** This not hobby anymore and becomes a business ** need help ** become a LLC business ** Building the BRAND and investment in the company is vital
• 2003 - 04 ** The big migration ** Dynamic content ** Database driven ** Dedicated server is acquired ** Build database in Cold Fusion ( looking back I wish I did it in PHP instead) ** Standardize Layouts ** Navigation ** Read Quit my day job - Jeremy Palmer ** Started to interact with the affiliate industry ** Use Abestweb.com for resource ** Involve more with affiliate managers (building relationships)
• Main lesson learned 03 - 04 ** running a business is expensive ** I must focus on content, not developement ** Quality sites are trusted more ** web layout + usability really matter ** Read the book "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug ** Affiliate income fluctuates widely ** Search engines don't like change
• 2005 - present ** More industry involvement ** Advisory boards / service ** won several awards ** Blogging ** Added more retailers ** Created newsletter >> Like mail chimp for segmented list and not expensive ** Social Media - Blogging, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Some use of Video ** Tools to use - for me to coupon.com - popshops.com (all the affiliates in one spot) - google custom search (With Google Custom Search, you can harness the power of Google to create a customized search experience for your own website.) ** Business enhancements - hired more part time people ** New revenue stream - slotting (where you put perferred products on your site and get paid for it) - google ad sense, chitika
• 2005 trends noticed ** Buiness cycles and trends produce big impacts ** Search Engines algorythmes change and it effects bottom line ** Media mentions and Social can be huge ** the ecomony impacts conversions ** Legal issues arise the bigger you get ** Infrigment and typo must be addressed ** content must be protected ** more tools - open office, aff meter , affbook.com, ** go to trade shows - affiliate summit, search engine strategy, pubcon
• Suggestions to think about ** Find a problem to Solve ** Offer creative solutions ** think long term ** build your own brand ** Invest in education ** Expect to fail
• To see the whole PDF hand out < go to >

Thank you Mike... facebook/com/mike.shoppingbargains or twitter.com/mta1
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins bahamas

ShareASale - SFIMA - Other Speaker

More notes from a few speakers today.

Carolyn Tang - Share A Sale an affiliate network
This network is one of the hottest in the industry - everyone is raving about its integrity, honesty, and payments.

Big affiliate site that work within their network, FatWallet.com >> Tim Storm ( started 5 years ago and has 80 employees)

Stats to keep up on:
Raw Data

1. Impressions
2. Clicks
3. Number of Orders
4. Sales$$

Derived Data

1. Conversion Rate
2. EPC >> Earning per click
3. Returns

Jay Berkowitz 10 Golden Rules
The types of Affiliate that are out there.
SEO >> Natural and Paid
Email >> Building List
High Traffic Websites
Shopping / Bargins / Coupon
Information products pages
Lead Generation pages

You might want to see this video from Tony Robbins
In this interview I meet with two very successful students, Frank Kern and John Reese. Both of them are self-made multi millionaires who made their fortunes by selling products on the Internet. What’s particularly interesting about both of them is that neither had any “real” education. Neither one finished college and they both went from being broke to becoming wealthy.

Andy Rodriguez Consulting
I thought of Johnny Hawaiian contacting this guy. If he reads this, you might want to follow through with him.

He said a supper affiliate is someone who earns at least $10,000 a month commission.
He helps companies both with finding Affiliate Networks or Growing the Affiliate business
Tools her recomended
Wordtracker >> with word tracker you can see the cost for 1 year
Syntryx >> Find affiliates for any products

andy@andyrodriguez.com

Sites to look at:
Affiliate Tips Blog by Shawn Collins
ABestWeb is the world's largest affiliate marketing forum with 60,000 members and over 943,000 posts
Affiliate Summit conference
Geekcast - pod cast about affiliate marketing
Quit your day Job
Shoemoney.com >> Not my favorite but they showed at the show where they have a photo of this guy with a check from google adsense for $132,000 for a month check. Pretty impressive. Look at the check.
zacjohnson.com - Super affiliate blog
ReveNews Blog - Discussion of Online Advertising, CPA, SEO, Affiliate and Next Generation Marketing

More to write about>>
God Bless,
John
dolphin swims miami

Trust Agents - Affiliate Marketing SFIMA

Hi Everyone,
Wow, I went to inspiring Internet class today about affiliate marketing, which was up my alley.

The first speaker was Juliene Smith who wrote the NY times best seller Trust Agents
His books and speak was about building channels and talking to many people
Blogs > Facebook > Twitter

• Building a strong Channel of People can last forever
• Controlling your future means controlling your channel platform > your network
• Emailing will help communicate to your channel of people
• Building tribes is critical
• Social Capital > facilitate the exchange of the groups
• You need to be part of every conversation
• Create websites that are visible and indexable
• Make sure you have the inside language with your group >> connection with your group >> Buzz words that ever talks about within your group
• Your offering >> Differentiate from the Crowd
• Pattern Breaking >> Be a human artist >> so your crowd can remember you
• Understanding leverage >> Social Capital = Financial Capital >> Keep the friction friction low
• You need to be the lead dog of your group. When you are the lead dog, you have less competition >> Similar to network marketing pyramid - You at the top and the rest of your group below you.
• Habit of fear won't let you take risk to be the lead dog.
  

Chris Brogan Blog advises businesses, organizations, and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships

Book to Read:

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant (Hardcover)
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (Hardcover)

2 Website for me to look startcooking and startcooking blog

More notes to come.
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins in Miami

Your offering >> Differentiate from the Crowd

Email Service Providers

Here is another story I have read about Email Service Providers (ESP) and how to use them properly. Some Companies to Look at Aweber, Listtrack, iContact, Exact Target, and Mail Chimp.

Proper Selection Process of an ESP
Real Basic....

• Handling Authentication
• Quality Control Features
• Third Party Intergration
• Foster an environment of Permission based marketing - Double Opted In emails
• Do they have Metrics to Track, opt out subscribers, spam complaints
• The ability to quickly create individual emails and campaigns
• To preview and test content and run spam checks
• Schedule delivery of Emails or Campaigns
• Set Up Autoresponders

Also, look for advanced feature ...

• Segmentation - the ability to create small email groups
• Subscribers Level of activity or interaction - Sending to the real buyers
• Abandonment - How to get those that leave your email list to come back and buy again
• Coupling emails with social media

Some ESP have autmatic RSS feeds into their email programs. I know Aweber offer this.

Some Industry with High Inbox acceptance

• Books, Music, and Movies 95%
• Food and Beverage 87%
• Sports / Outdoor 87%
• Misc Retail 82%
• Gifts and Collectables 78%

3 Basic Elements of Every Email

1. Personalization
2. Branding
3. Call to Action

Sender OK has a plug in for Outlook, Gmail, Live and Yahoo, where you add a social network into the header panel of messages

Success Story:
Dreamfields Pasta built a marketing database of excess of 280,000 brand advocates in the san of 24 months. << Check out this site

Something to think about. I have used Aweber for many years but would like to check out the other ESP to see what they offer and cost. Also, I am trying Mail Chimp for my civic association because they offer 500 email users for FREE for life. It will work great for the civic association.

God Bless,
John
Today is the perfect day to go swimming with the dolphins !!

Meeting Notes Nov 5 09

Rich and I listen to James Martells Affiliate Buzz.

They talked to internet manager to Lazy Environmentalist.

• He talked about the following:
• To fix his site, he looked page by page
• He needed to figure out with the Key Words what the customer really wanted
• Then he need to figure out what key words the search engine wanted.
• Fix the headlines
• Added H1 tags
• Took off options - Goal one product - 1 sale
• With optimization, increase google adsense by 600%
• Know your analytics - use google - Always test
• Biggest Tip >> Keep Moving and don't stop
  

Rich talked about a Key Work optimization program, Web CEO.

Rich want to talk about Benefits of Fish Oil and how these keys where optimized. He used the Web CEO tool to help.

Rich also show us his new directory which is geared toward the following keys word, compare dog food.

Rich made this Squeeze page, for Land in Belize, check it out.

Rich asked about Flip Video. here are the specs
UltraHD™, 120 minutes

The Flip UltraHD camcorder combines Flip Video's signature shoot-and-share simplicity with the power of vivid, vibrant HD video. With 120 minutes of record time, you'll never miss another minute again. And because of UltraHD's pocket-sized portability, you'll truly be able to capture HD video anytime, anywhere.

Tips to Better Google Analytics

Here is another article review I doing from Website Magazine.

I recently was using Google Analytic recently to update my swimming with the dolphins site. There is tons of information and I am glad for this article and I hope to implement some of the ideas.

The Basics

• Make sure to tag all your pages with Google Anaylitcs code
• Google has created Conversion University - This is a free Tutorial from google with video - A must
• Check for proper installation of the google analytic - Sites to help. EpikOne, Firebug, or WASP

Setting Up Goals

• what do you want your customers to do: Subscribe to mailing list, become a lead, buy your product.
• Finding out where your customers are falling out of your website.
• Not having goals will cost you money.
• Here is good article about setting up goals. Zen Cart Optimation Blog

E Commerce and Lead Gen-Tracking

• The most common misstep is the failure to filter out internal Traffic.
• On your anaylitics home page, on the bottom right is link called "filter manager". Here you can exclude internal traffic, as well from any other domain you don't want to track, like your competitors.
• Also, you might want to filter out repeat visitors.
• Filtering out unqualified visitors will help you get a handle on exactly how well you are converting qualified visitors.
• Google analitics also allows segmentation and tracking of results from adwords campaigns.

The Bottom Line: Take Action
The purpose of the Web Analytics is to turn the information into something you can optimize on your website.

Getting Started

• Look at your top entry and exit pages and optimize those with a 40% percent plus exit rate.
• Look at your top referring keywords and optimize landing pages for terms with a 40% percent plus exit rate.
• Look at your goal conversion funnels, and start optimizing

Another Resource : Grok Dot.com
Enjoy Optimizing!!
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins Waikiki

BING is becoming a Fast Growing Search Engine

Just read a news brief about BING, the newer search engine from Microsoft.

What the article said....

1. Bing is the fastert growing search engine, according to Nielsen. BING's search market share in August rose 22.1 percent to 10.7 percent of all sarches, up from 9 percent in July.
2. Google still remains the big boy, with 65% share of all searches.
3. But Google only rose 2.6% in July, AOL 1.8%, Ask.com 2.9% - All have grown but not as much as Bing.
4. The only Search that fell was Yahoo, 4.2% fall.

Bing introduction to the Visual Search feature has been a hit. bing.com/visualsearch/ You need to check it out. From Bings research, more people click at an image then text.

Read this story Bing Cashback: 6 Reasons to get started now
Hope this help.
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins in Miami