Choosing the wrong product or service to market as an Affiliate or choosing the wrong Affiliate Program is not only a waste of your time, it is also a money losing proposition. Let me explain, Like most bloggers I work a full time job and do the blogging and website stuff in my spare time. At work our Antivirus software had expired and I was delegated the task of either renewing or finding a more suitable candidate for replacement. Being the ever enterprising internet marketer, I thought let me look into Antivirus software makers that have an affiliate program and maybe I can make a little money and make a site for other people like me looking for this information.
So I did my homework and found one that I really liked and thought would be a good match for my company and what we needed. I went to their homepage and looked at the various types of products that were available and the pricing. I then signed up for the affiliate program, created a small site about Antivirus software and placed my links on the page.
A funny thing happened along the way…..
When I went to my site and clicked through my Affiliate link I was quite surprised to find out that the software was going to cost 33% more through my Affiliate link than if I had purchased it through their own site. Considering the Affiliate payout was only 20%, this particular Affiliate program is netting this company 13% more than when they sell it on their own page. The usual process once you find a product that fits the bill, is to find the lowest price possible for that product. So how am I going to make any money if that product can be bought for 33% off of the price someone will have to pay going through my affiliate link? Right, not going to happen, I can do all the promotion in the world and get all the clicks in the world, but what good is that if they don’t buy it from me?
When choosing an affiliate program to work with, you should always check the link and verify that the pricing is at least the same as the products home page. Affiliate Marketing is a tough business with thousands of other Affiliate Marketers out there to compete with, why make your job harder by choosing the wrong Affiliate Marketing Program. Choose wisely, and research your niche, your audience and your affiliate marketing programs.
Anybody else having problems with Entrecard? I try to drop my cards on other sites but I cannot do it using Firefox browser. I can do it using Internet Explorer, but for some reason when I use Firefox I get “Get It” instead of “Drop Yours”. While I am pointing out problems I am having with Entrecard I should also mention for you Entrecard users out there, How about looking at your dashboard once in a while. I still adverts waiting to be approved or denied since January 3rd, I don’t want to cancel as I think this will have a negative impact on my Advert rating. On the plus side I do like the new changes that the folks at Entrecard have come up with, the new way of displaying the inbox is very cool, and I like the fact that I can add my favorites.
Hey friends, it’s been about a month now using Entrecard and I just wanted to take a post to fill you in on what that has meant to raymondloesch.com - Earning a Living Online. Next to StumbleUpon and Organic Search it’s been holding it’s own in terms of bringing in the traffic. here are my stats as of today:
As you can see the stats are pretty good, although I don’t think these stats are for the whole month as I know I dropped more than 1,914 cards. Speaking of which I had my first 300 card drop day yesterday, I can’t believe I was able to reach that mark as I tend to read most blogs I drop a card on, It took over 6 hours to drop 300 Entrecards. I don’t think I will be able to do that again, although with the new script I picked up from TechiePortal.com I just may be able to hit that number again. The script opens a new EntreCard site on pressing the Win+Z button, you should definitely check this one out. The stats claim that I have advertised on 28 sites, I know that is wrong also, I know I have advertised on at least twice that and still have 20 adverts pending a couple from as far back as Jan 3. I am afraid to cancel these adverts I think that may hurt my stats someow, just don’t know how yet.
If anybody can make sense of the stats please drop me a line, I would like to have a better understanding of how they arrive at some of their numbers. Is Entrecard bringing quality visitors to my site? I don’t have the full answer to that yet, but I can tell you I have made quite a few friends, found some great blogs to subscribe to, increased my RSS subscribers and have learned a few new things. So all in all being an Entrecard member has been a tremendous benefit to me and my blog. The biggest benefit I see to being a member of Entrecard is having your blog seen by people who might not otherwise find your blog. I advertise on as many blogs as I can, some bring good traffic and some bring little traffic, but they all at least bring some traffic.
Finally I wanted to give a big thumbs up to CavemanConclusion.com for the ingenious little trick he has going on with his Entrecard Widget. Half of the Entrecard sites you visit try to hide the widget at the bottom of their site, so you will at least read through to get to it. Now I understand the reasoning behind this, you want your visitors to see what is actually on your site. The rest of us proudly put it above the fold so it easy to find. Cavemanconclusion.com makes his widget jump around a few times before you can actually click to drop your card, I love this. I don’t recommend that others do this as the novelty will wear off very quickly, but it is very cool so please do go and check it out.
Is Pay Per Play a new way to monetize your Blog or just a new flash in the pan idea going the way of Swypefile. Truthfully I don’t know but I am going to get on this bandwagon just as I did Swypefile and see where it goes. In case you have not heard of Pay Per Play yet, it is a new advertising idea that pays you on 100% of your web traffic. Pay Per Play pays on 5 second audio ads that play when your website is loaded, it pays 25% of the cost of the ad for every 1000 page views as long as the whole message is played. Pay Per Play also pays 5% of all your direct referrals and their direct referrals. This is definitely a possible goldmine for those getting in on the ground floor. If you are interested in this then you need to sign up before February 1st as that is when they are going live and are not excepting new affiliates after that date. Check out this video for more information and then click here to sign up. Gee, if only John Chow or [Tag-Tec]Seth Godin[Tag-Tec] would sign up under me
Say what you want about Social Media but it is everywhere. You Tube, Face Book, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Entrecard, and Friendster just to name a few of the thousands of sites that are out there to help us get to know one another and share. That is what Social media is about Share and Communicate in a way that is less personal and confrontational but gets you out there. Check out This video put out on YouTube in regards to Social sites and their downfall.
This is why we need SMARTS now. We are probably at the hight or very near the hight of Social Marketing and need to maximize it to it’s fullest potential before the downslide into oblivion and the next big thing. Stompernet and it’s release of 5 great videos from the Going Natural 2.0 series is proof positive that Social Marketing works. I proved it in my post Going Natural 2.0 - This Stuff Really Works This will be the last post on Going Natural 2.0 as they are raising the price as of 2:00 PM on Friday January, 18th.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled.