29Dec

Top 10 Affiliate Website Mistakes

Posted by: franklin kington

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Top 10 Affiliate Website

Mistakes an Affiliate

Manager Sees

With over 12,000 affiliates to manage in 5 separate merchants programs,

I review countless affiliate applications and their corresponding websites.It isn’t a pretty picture. And that’s part of the problem.

So I thought it appropriate to share the 10 most common mistakes I see affiliates make over and over each and every day.

1. The affiliate’s website is poorly designed.

A lot of times it’s just plain ugly. Ugly I can stand if it has a purpose. I started my Internet career doing web design and programming. I understand good website design, both for function and look.

The affiliate site has to have at least one or the other to be effective, having both is the best. Without one or both of these factors,

what are the chances for a visitor to be referred to my merchant’s site?

2. The affiliate site has no affinity to the merchant site.

If you have a website without anything in common with the merchant, how do you expect to sell the merchant’s products to your visitor?

If your site is all about computer equipment, why are you signing up for my wigs site? Why are you wasting both of our times?

3. The affiliate site has no voice or character.

How will a visitor find value on the affiliate’s site long enough to have reason or need to click through on my merchant’s text or banner link? None I would say.

4. The affiliate site has too many banners or text ads.

How will the visitor differentiate my offer from the competition? If the site is messy and busy, I may get lots of impressions,

but click throughs will be low and probably conversions too. Don’t junk up your site with too many ads that don’t have purpose.

5. Affiliate sites with expired coupons.

Seeing a site like this implies it’s a “weekender’s” site a part-time affair. Many affiliates started out this way,

but today it is highly unlikely that such a site will generate any traffic or sales for my merchants.

6. Affiliate sites with broken banners.

It still happens, merchants change their creatives, affiliates don’t keep up and there is an ugly red “x” where a banner should be. Don’t let this happen to you.

7. The affiliate site has no privacy policy.

This is a red light for visitors. This means the site is just trying to make a buck and has no interest in visitors for any other reason than getting them to make them money.

A sophisticated consumer, as most are getting as Internet experience increases, wants a sophisticated site to convert through

Not having even a simple privacy policy is a giveaway as to the lack of sophistication of the site owner.

8. NO ABILITY TO CONTACT THE WEBSITE OWNER.

If you will not disclose who you are, provide an email link or a site form,

it is unlikely a visitor to your site will get warm and fuzzy about his site visiting experience and will not covert as a result.

9. NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR THE AFFILIATE MANAGER.

In olden days affiliates didn’t want to be bothered by affiliate managers. Now with the tools and special offers merchants can offer through producing affiliates,

it is essential for good communications between the affiliate manager and the affiliate. It means more money for both.

10. Affiliate website owner not participating in the industry forums.

More and more as I talk with affiliates, we discuss forum postings, industry news and blogs. The top producers know what is going on in the industry.

They are creating the news and are creating financial opportunities at the same time.

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12Oct

Your Business Need Leads

Posted by: franklin kington

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Lead Generation Is Backbone Of Your Business

The survival of any business or website can be gauged by the owners ability to generate a

steady stream of targeted leads. No leads = No sales and without sales your business doesn’t exist If you own Your Own Business or If Your Promoting Affiliate Programs. Your #1 Priority is Building a List of Targeted,

Opt-In Subscribers that Know and Trust You.

They will be the determining factor whether your business succeeds or fails. You’ve heard it before, “The Money’s in The List”

and generating leads is in fact, building your list.

Let’s take a look at email marketing as a lead generation source. Using a signature in all your email communications will bring you an occaisional subscriber and I wouldn’t discount it’s use. However, I’m afraid it won’t bring you an over welming flood of subscribers.

I’d still use it since every subscriber is a lead generated.

I’m assuming you already publish a newsletter/ezine. If not, I strongly suggest you start one now. Doing Ad Swaps with other publishers in your target market is another effective form of email marketing. It’s as easy as You run my ad and I’ll run yours

Fresh eyeballs on your ad in your target market will bring you a good response.

Ezine/Newsletter Co-Ops is yet another way to attract new subscribers/leads. There are quite a few available. You can get your ad in front of over a million subscribers for free. But you do have to agree to be subscribed to all the ezines in the co-op.

This doesn’t have to be a problem.

Just use a seperate email account and retrieve the newsletters from there. The above is not the only co-op available.As I said, there are quite a few. You can search your favorite Search Engine for Free Ezine Co-Ops and chose the one’s that you like.

Buying Leads: This can be risky.

I’m sure you’ve seen the ads offering 5, 10, 20,000 double opt-in leads for X amount of dollars. My take on them is this,

They may have opted in to someone elses list,

but Not mine. Yes there are some very reputable companies that offer very responsive leads but they come at a high premium

.

If you decide you want to use purchased leads,

I can only suggest that you due diligence when researching them. Solo Ezine Ads: Not just any eZine will do. The response to your ad will depend on the quality of the ezine/newsletter you chose.

There are many to chose from.

Don’t be fooled by the size of the subscriber base. Bigger is not always better.

I’ve found the response to be better with subscribers in the 5000 to 10,000 range.

Pay Per Click Advertising can be an expensive proposition if your not experienced. Test your ad on the less popular sites. Don’t just jump right out there with Google and Yahoo.

You can eat up your budget in no time flat.

Do a search for PPC’s or Pay Per Click Search Engines and a ton of them will show up. Some even offer a cash incentive for first time users.

Interested leads can be acquired by posting in forums.

A word to the wise. Don’t go to these forums thinking you can just post a short blurb about whatever the topic is, leave your sig. go to the next and do the same.

They’ll bust you for spamming the board.

You’ll probably get banned, worst yet, reported to your ISP. Hang around, get to know people and post when you’ve got something relevant to say.

Then you can leave a link to your site in your signature and people interested will often click it, if your post was helpful or interesting. I’ve included a short list below to help you get started.

Submitting articles to e-zine

publishers and article directories is another lead generation tactic. This method produces very targeted leads. They liked what your article had to say and obviously wanted to read more.

This method will also produce links back to your site

and in time will improve your search engine position as well as your page rank. Giving you Free search engine traffic.

The one thing that really matters,

regardless of your method of generation, is keeping them in your target market. It makes no sense to advertise to Golfers if your selling Surfboards.

A lead generation strategy should be in place

before any other business is done. It’s the backbone of your business. Use the strategies above and you’ll have an ample supply of leads to market your goods and services to. Of course your gonna love all those trips to the bank. Happy List Building.