Monthly Archives: January 2008

Namecheap January Code and Domain Registration Tips

If you’re like me, you’re registering domain names all the time.  Except for a couple of domains that are scattered at GoDaddy and another domain name registrar (who’s service is less than spectacular, so I’m going to pass on naming them), I have all my domains at Namecheap.

The discount code/coupon code for Namecheap for January is: WINTERFEVER

The code will cut your registration cost from $9.29 to $8.41.

It won’t make or break the bank for most affiliate marketers out there, but if you save a couple of hundred dollars, that translates into a couple hundred more clicks for you to do testing.

As the new year starts up, I’m hitting the ground running with a new campaign and got a bunch of domains yesterday.

If you’re new at this,  here’re a couple of domain strategies to think about:

  • Domain names can be split tested like anything else. At $8-10 a pop, they don’t require as much effort as some of the other variables you might test. Split testing two similar domain names might mean the difference between a 1% and a 5% clickthrough rate (which is huge).
  • Go for a benefit-laden domain as these get visitors intrigued, curious and ultimately, motivated to click. Marketing guru Dan Kennedy had to come up with the product name for a new insect killer, his choice “Kills Bugs Dead”. The result? Sales went through the roof…Nuff said.
  • Adverbs in your domain name need to be in line with the mindset of your prospects. If you’re selling a high ticket item, you’d want to avoid “free”, “cheap” or “discount” and look at “Quality” or “Best” instead.
  • Go for a 1-year registration and if it’s a winner, you can renew it next year. Even if a “2 year registration costs just $1 more”, you’ll probably want to do more tweaking before settling on a domain. I prefer having a whole bunch of 1-year domains to test with.

If you need a hosting account to go with your domains, look for webhosting providers which host a large number of domains. In some cases the hosting account will host an unlimited number of domains.

You might like to check out:

–> Hostmonster

–> Bluehost (slightly higher grade)

They’re both brands/corporate entities owned by the CEO Matt Heaton and are based in Orem, Utah.

Friday Podcast: 5 Critical Factors To Make Or Break Your Web Business In 2008

In this edition of the Friday Podcast, I go into 5 important considerations if you’re serious about building your web business this year.

Note: The notes are pretty detailed, though the podcast itself contains even more content.

Enjoy!

[display_podcast]

Duration: 18 minutes | Filesize:  4.5 mb

Notes:

I get many questions about the tactical aspects of internet marketing, like what’s the best webhost, which is the best CPA network, how to configure a xml datafeed, how to use an autoresponder, which is the best ebook.

If you’re interested, I mention a number of these in the course of my blogging and i’ve listed a couple in my recommendations tabs.

But here’s the kicker, although these ‘technical’ questions represent about 90% of the questions that get asked, it’s the 10% of other questions that will help you grow your business and explode your profits!

The other questions deal with building your business, and positioning it for long term growth.

At the root of it,
Succeeding in internet marketing is simple and fundamental
1) Find a need.
2) Match it with a solution (could be a product/service)

Macro Issues in Internet Marketing

Most important than the ‘how do i learn HTML’ type questions are the macro or higher level considerations of your business strategy.

Your business strategy works as a business plan or blueprint to help you identify what you should or should not be doing.
It also goes into how you should be doing it.

If done correctly, your business plan will give you the answers to the questions you might be wondering about – like how do I select a partner, how much should i budget for my expenses and how much you should charge for your products, which offers or products should i promote.

Your business blueprint will drive what you do and when you’re stuck or you’re wondering about the next action you should take, it determines which of the tiny pieces of blog or affiliate or seo or ppc tools and software you will need.

I want to give you 5 important factors to take note of as you’re building your business this year.

————————-

1) TRUST

If you’ve dealt with a bank, insurance provider, realtor or another service provider who’s serious about building a long term relationship, you’ll notice that they will spend time to get to know you and what you’re about. If they were to try to force you to buy something the first time you met, it would seriously damage or even kill the relationship.

A significant part of the success I experienced in my business last year was due to the network i built up and the relationships and contacts i had made.

Spend a moment to think about the people you consider your good friends, and the people you do business with.
what is it that makes you trust them?

How would you bring those values and attitudes into your business?

Consciously or unconsciously, we buy from people we like and we trust.

As an internet marketer and as an affiliate,
promotion doesn’t always need to be something that you’re an affiliate or something you own. Might be a free resource.
You may not benefit from it, but your audience could stand to benefit greatly from.

Take a look at the products that prominent marketers like Wil Reynolds, Shawn Collins, Geordie Carswell, Sam Harrelson talk about and mention on their blogs.

Aaron Wall provides a number of free equivalents for products which other marketers are charging hundreds of dollars for, in a list of resources in his SEO Book. His intention is to help you grow your business and that builds trust.

Build trust.

You might recommend something free today, but if you build up your social goodwill bank (refer to blog post), you will reap the rewards later.

*** on a strong, reliable and trusted recommendation, conversions can be higher than 50%.

Continue reading

New Year’s Resolution = Smart Affiliate’s Window Of Opportunity!

According to a survey of 15,000 people by time management consultancy FranklinCovey, the top 3 resolutions for 2008 are:

  • Getting out of debt or saving money
  • losing weight
  • developing healthy habits like exercise

If you ask me, new year’s resolutions are in many cases “structured procrastination”.

You start out in January all pumped up, ready to lose weight, start going to the gym more regularly, but by mid-year the determination is pretty depleted and by August/September it’s a case of “too late, I guess I’ll work on it next year…”

If you’re a smart affiliate, you’d take note of these trends.

Look at the trends for “quit smoking” and “quit drinking”:

new year's resolution

Weight loss and lose weight couldn’t fit on that chart [It flew off the chart], but here’s what it looks like:

new year's resolution

See the January spikes?

Speak to your affiliate manager and you’d realize that Q1 is gangbusters time for many health and exercise related niches.

If you don’t get in, you’re leaving a huge chunk of change on the table…

I’m currently testing out a number of lucrative offers from the NeverBlueAds CPA/affiliate network.

If you sign up through the link above, you’ll be under the same affiliate manager that I have, the awesome Samantha “Sam” Brachat. Drop me a note through the contact form AFTER you’ve applied and I’ll help you get priority approval.

My 2007 Social Marketing Trail Of Success

Two elements are critical to the success of any social marketing campaign.

The first element is one that just about everyone is good at – The size of your network.

I say everyone is good at this element because all it takes to massively increase the number of friends in your MyBlogLog, BumpZee, YouTube, Facebook or other community is hitting the ‘add friend’ button and doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.

But here’s where it gets interesting, the fine line between social marketing and spamming is drawn when the relationship and more importantly permission and consensus are factored in.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve datamined someone’s email, cell phone from the net, your attempt to game the social network for personal gain falls flat on its face if you don’t have the relationship to back it up.

You might be wondering if this is merely ‘theoretical’ or ‘hypothetical’ or how well it works in real life…

Look at what happened to me last year…

I’ve been active on the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum for some time, giving advice on my pet area of blogging. So having been invited to be a ‘Blogging Guide’, I spend more time on the forum and create an instructional thread on “Blogging For Bucks

And one day I read a thread on the forum about this new Super Affiliate’s blog, Super Affiliate Mindset.

And after talking with PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta for some time, we decide to jointly work on a product, which eventually becomes the Super Affiliate Accelerator. (the site is being upgraded at the moment).

The project is intended to create a series of custom training to provide business strategies and PPC tactics to new and experienced affiliate marketers.

Part of the program involves inviting other established Internet Marketers in on some of the mastermind sessions we’re organizing.

So I ask my friend Wil Reynolds, founder of top SEO agency Seer Interactive, to join in on one of our upcoming calls.

And as part of my research, I watch some of Wil’s videos from Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s Affiliate Summit Seminar.

If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization, undoubtedly, Wil’s suggestions to check out 3 key blogs to keep you up to date on SEO developments will be intriguing.

What are the 3 blogs?

Listening to Wil’s recommendations, I opened my copy of SEOBook I’d purchased early last year.

I’d glanced through it a number of times and picked up great SEO tips and subsequently listed it on my recommendations page.

Now, with the weight of Wil’s endorsement, I re-read it (all 350 pages in a 2 hour sitting).

If you have not read it yet, you will not know that it goes beyond SEO, to encompass Aaron’s copywriting strategies and even PPC management. More importantly, Aaron includes elements of his Internet Marketing journey from spamming links to creating quality white hat links.

If you haven’t yet, why not spend the opening days of this year, checking out Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.