Monthly Archives: July 2008

Friday Podcast: ShareResults Founder And CEO Nicky Senyard

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This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve conducted in the Friday Podcast series.

Nicky Senyard, originally from Australia, is an affiliate marketing veteran, having founded two affiliate networks – the ShareResults affiliate network and Income Access focused on online gaming.

I’ve known Income Access affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso from the forums for close to 2 years and his professionalism has always been apparent. It’s no wonder that Nicky has created one of the most personable and enjoyable networks to work with.

nicky senyardjamie fortunasole ngyuen

(Left-to-right: ShareResults/Income Access founder and CEO Nicky Senyard, Income Access affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso, ShareResults affiliate manager Le Michelle Ngyuen)

During our discussion we covered a gamut of topics including:

  • Business considerations when merchants add affiliate marketing to their sales/distribution channels
  • How the affiliate-to-network and merchant-to-network relationships can be enhanced
  • Geographic growth of affiliate marketing opportunities across North America/Canada, Europe and Asia

Merchants and affiliates will get some great content out of this session.

Check out the Friday Podcast:

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-> ShareResults affiliate network

-> Income Access online gaming network

Is Social Proof The Magic Bullet To Increasing Opt-In Rates?

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Email solutions provider Aweber has been adding a slew of new features to their autoresponder service, including email analytics and stats, and more recently, a widget-like chicklet to display the number of members on your list.

The question is: What effect does it have on your email list opt-in rates and is it significant?

email deliverability

Displaying your number of subscribers would make sense if you have achieved critical mass in your niche market. For a celebrity/entertainment Perez Hilton-type blog, I’d think at least 10,000 is a good number. For a specialized niche like Dog Training, a list size of 1,000 qualified customers (not leads! Or mere readers) might be the sweet spot.

I think displaying the raw number of subscribers is a good idea for mass consumer type blogs, because there’s a groupthink (or “sheep” mentality) that says “if 100,000 people are on the Britney Spears list, then it must be good to join in…”).

As an astute marketer, I’d think the power of Continue reading →

Are Infoproduct Marketers Selling Their Souls In Major Affiliate Promotions?

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If you’ve been watching the info product space, you’ll know that John Reese is launching a new version of his Traffic Secrets course on Jul 15th.

So every info product “guru” has been mailing their list for the last couple of weeks, trying to warm them up and maximize sales conversions on launch day.

greed

In common with other high profile info product launches, this typically results in a bonus offering frenzy, where short-sighted list owners will offer the farm (including the kitchen sink and their next born) in exchange for a product purchase through their affiliate link.

Just for the record, I’m referring to the affiliate promotions, not the core product.

It can get a little ridiculous when someone is offering you $1,000 or $10,000 or even $25,000 worth of “bonuses” for purchasing a $397 or $997 product.

Granted many of these bonus products may be virtual or digital in nature with zero stocking and zero duplication costs, but I think doing a hype-y promotion of this nature takes its toll – and it will extract a higher price than the 50% or 75% commission you might earn – it will affect your reputation.

If nothing else, this is pretty incestuous and unhealthy.

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If you’re in the internet marketing or business opportunity niche for the long term, your reputation will Continue reading →

Yahoo! MyBlogLog Service Updates – Worth The Wait?

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Yahoo! MyBlogLog has included a couple of updates since the last time I took a close look at the service.

For one, sorting through “followers” and considering reciprocal “friend adding” is easier because you can filter through the list of friends in a pretty speedy fashion (especially if you have a hundred or more pending followers).

mybloglog pending

A number of weeks ago, MyBlogLog community manager Miss Tilly mentioned the introducing of a Connector widget.

It looks like Continue reading →

Friday Podcast: Profitable Social Marketing

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Marketing on the social networks like Facebook, MySpace,  can be difficult to monetize if your marketing efforts aren’t focused.

In this podcast, I covered 3 principles that will help you better plan and generate income from your social marketing campaigns.

The principles are:

  • Pre-qualification
  • Building a sales funnel
  • Following up with your leads, especially using non-traditional communication channels

Check out the Friday Podcast:

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Google Sheds Light on Factors influencing Search Engine Rankings

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Google search engine ranking team Google Fellow Amit Singhal published a blog post “Introduction to Google Ranking” at the official Google blog.

While not going into the specific nuts-and-bolts factors influencing SERPs (or search engine results pages), Amit outlined a number of broad principles to keep in mind when optimizing your web pages.

Principle 1: “Best locally relevant results served globally”

As I’ve earlier noted, your geographic location, specifically your IP number can determine the search results returned.

Amit’s assurance that they operate on the “no query left behind” principle, meaning every user query gets the most relevant results, is yet another assertion that the “user experience” more so than the affiliate marketer, SEO or even adwords advertiser’s interest is given priority.

google ranking factors

If you’ve been following developments (and educated guesses) in the SEO field, you’ll know that meta criteria like “time on site” and other deeper level criteria from Google Analytics (and no doubt, Google own deeper level analytics, and possibly algorithms derived from basic analytics) are being incorporated into these ranking factors.

I applaud the SEOs who’re on the leading edge in following and sometimes trying to step ahead of Google to rank higher in the SERPs. For the average internet marketer, developing a long term sustainable business model and providing original, quality, link worthy content is probably the best route for now.

Principle 2: Keep It Simple

What’s simple to a UC Berkeley or Carnegie Mellon comp sci major might Continue reading →