Tag Archives: affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketers, Your Domains And Lawyer Letters

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For content-based domain affiliates, taking note of your domain portfolio and potential copyright conflicts are an ongoing concern, especially if you’re planning to be in the game for the longterm.

I own a domain which contains the term “ebay” in it. Although I feel anyone looking at the domain probably wouldn’t mistake it for an eBay property that a name like eBayMarketing or eBaySupplies might convey.

Nonetheless, I received an email from enforcement@ebay.com from “Edith, eBay Legal Department” which however nicely written, amounts to a cease and desist notification, and I am supposed to “Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this matter as requested. If we do not receive confirmation from you that you will comply with our request, we will have no choice but to pursue all available remedies against you.”

“Edith” further mentions that “We have filed several successful federal court actions in the United States against companies and individuals employing the famous eBay trademark in their domain names, as well as more than six proceedings before the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organization’s arbitration panel. eBay prevailed in each case and the domain names at issue were all ordered to be transferred to eBay.”

And “the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has recently denied registration of the mark “ebaysecurities” by a third party. Like your domain name, “ebaysecurities” incorporated the entire eBay trademark, adding only a generic term to eBay’s famous mark. The USPTO recognized that eBay is a famous trademark and denied registration of ebaysecurities. eBay is concerned that any use of the domain name in question, will cause confusion as to whether you or your company’s activities are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by eBay when, in fact, they are not. ”

The domain is one in my portfolio and I haven’t developed it yet, so letting it expire isn’t a major issue.

I would think that eBay would be more forward in replying to the email seeking clarificatons I’d sent about 2 weeks ago, to date I haven’t received a reply.

Having dealt with lawyers previously, I would guess that Continue reading →

Google Adwords Holiday Profit Tips

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The Google Adwords team has published a number of tips for optimizing your campaigns across 3 verticals: retail, entertainment and automotive.

Here’s a couple of techniques to bump your CTR (clickthrough rate) and conversions:

  • Behavioral-based bid management

Research shows that consumers are surfing shopping sites and doing price comparisons during work hours. Bump your ad positions during office hours to get better ad positioning (and consequently, higher conversions).

buying cycle

  • Match your consumers stage in the buying cycle

Your keywords determine your websites’ visitor profile. For buyers early in the buying cycle, they’d be looking for information, product reviews, so create an appropriate content site.

Buyers in the later stage, primed to buy, will be looking for coupon codes, bonuses, and other goodies, so a coupon site or inventive site will convert better for that demographic.

  • Highly targeted landing pages

Spend more time focusing on targeted and highly relevant keywords. Instead of “holiday events”, shoot for Continue reading →

Product Review of Brad Callen’s Affiliate Elite

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Internet Marketer Brad Callen, known for his products SEO Elite and Keyword Elite has just released a new software aimed at helping affiliate marketers bring their campaigns to the next level.

Containing various affiliate product analytics tools, spy and intelligence tools as well as PPC tools, Affiliate Elite looks poised to put another weapon into every affiliates’ marketing arsenal.

Rather than merely write about Affiliate Elite, I’ve created walkthrough videos and review videos capturing Affiliate Elite’s key features.

Here’s an introduction of Affiliate Elite, which consists of 4 modules:

  • Affiliate Product Finder (for Clickbank and Paydotcom) / Marketplace datafeed analytics tool
  • Google reverse search
  • Analyze Adwords Competition
  • Super Affiliate Finders

Here’s a walkthrough of Affiliate Elite’s features:



Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite Product Review Part 1

And detailed looks at: Affiliate Product Finder


Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite Product Review Part 2

Google Reverse Search


Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite Product Review Part 3

AdWords Competition Analyzer


Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite Product Review Part 4

Super Affiliate Finder


Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite Product Review Part 5

Overall, this could be a good addition to your affiliate toolkit and compliements similar tools such as WordTracker, SpyFu, KeyCompete and others.

PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta and I have put together a special Affiliate Elite bonus which will bring your affiliate campaigns to the next level if you get Affiliate Elite through us.

You can check it out at:

–> Super Affiliate Mastermind promotion for Brad Callen’s Affiliate Elite

Monday Question: What Are The Ingredients To Making Substantial Income Online?

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In contrast to the numerous “I am new to the Internet, I have no money and I don’t have a computer (I’m typing this to you at work), I want to make a full time living online as a Super Affiliate. Please advise me” emails I received [Do send me the answer to that because I don’t have a ready answer…], I’ve got a more realistic question this week:

I am willing to learn, I have bought a number of ebooks, and have made a few affiliate sales (about $50-100 worth of commissions each month), but at this rate, I doubt I’ll be able to quit my day job and live on my online income anytime soon. What do you suggest I buy next and how much do I have to spend before I make a full time online income? Thanks!

Here’s a list of what I bought:

[A list of about 5 ebooks follow. I’m guess she’s spent about $300 on them]

Patty

—

My Answer:

It’s encouraging to see new Internet marketers take responsibility for their actions and I think the fact that you’re generating sales from your website each month shows that you’re taking consistent effort.

To make the gap between generating “hobby money” (I define this as less than $2,000 a month in online income) and a living based on your online businesses means that you need a couple of ingredients:

  • A Game Plan

Have you defined what income level you’re aiming for? ($1,000? $10,000? $100,000 per month?). More importantly, have you listed the amount of time and resources you’re willing to put into this?

Most new marketers write down a $20,000 a month goal when they start out, and they put in barely 2 hours a week into their business. There’s a serious effort-reward gap in the equation…

money

An online business still follows the effort -> result equation. You don’t just need to dream big, you need to put in the sweat equity at least in the early stages.

  • Focus and Consistency

Do your research before you begin. What niche are you going to focus on? Is it a niche market? Is the demand sufficient to sustain your revenue (and profit?)?

Is it a competitive market? Can you compete effectively?

What’re your monetization strategies? A goal of 100 Adsense clicks a day might be a good start, but are they only paying $0.10 a click? Are there affiliate programs available? Would you create your own product?

Once your research has concluded and you’ve decided on your business model, you need to be focused and consistent in your efforts. There was an Internet marketer who built their blog up to about 500 visitors a day, she left for a 6 week vacation and the visitors dropped to about 5 a day when she returned. It took another couple of months to build it up to her pre-vacation traffic level.

  • Go Beyond Costs, Focus On Results

Here’s one takeaway from my buddy, Amit Mehta’s post “What’s Your Investment Plan?“, you need to figure out what your expect return or result is from any investment you make…

It’s not just a cost issue, you need to take stock of Continue reading →

Monday Question: Drive Away Browsers And Seek Buyers

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A client of mine showed me their blog, and asked: “I’m not happy with the income my blog is generating. Can you help me increase my profit? I run both google adsense and affiliate offers“.

While I can’t show the blog or do a screencapture due to confidentiality reasons, here are some points to help you bring your blog monetization to the next level.

Nothing beats a well-tuned blog. This means tracking your analytics and conversions, and making the improvements and tracking, and repeating the cycle.

Broadly, you need to understand the intention and outcome of every visitor to your blog.

Are they there to browse? To make a comparison? To make a purchase?

I’ve found that AdSense publishing is suited for browsers who are still looking for information and aren’t close to making a buying decision yet.

I’ve found AdSense to provide a fairly low ROI (return on investment), so I’ve focused on my affiliate marketing efforts.

You can’t have it both ways…

It’s unlikely that a visitor will both click on an adsense ad AND buy a product from you – It’s either one or the other.

I’ve heard pseudo blogging “experts” say that you should have both adsense and affiliate offers on your blog, because someone who doesn’t buy, will click on your adsense ads instead.

THIS IS COMPLETE NONSENSE.

If you follow such ill-founded advice, you could possibly Continue reading →

New PPC Marketers Must Overcome These Challenges…

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As I’m working with PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta on our Super Affiliate Accelerator project, I’ve stumbled on a number of challenges that new PPC marketers are going to face, and have developed some workarounds for them. Plus new PPC marketers can get free AdWords traffic too.

Which PPC Ebook Should I Buy?

The first challenge, PPC marketers will face is the plethora of PPC ebooks (primarily focused on AdWords) out there. There’s a large number of PPC-focused forums and affiliate marketing forums with large PPC sub-sections.

So which do you choose?

Before buying anything, I’d suggest time checking out the AdWords Help Center and reading the Inside AdWords blog. (They’re both FREE).

As you know, I buy just about every Internet marketing product out there and a number of AdWords “Insider” ebooks merely rehash the content contained with the Help Center.

So save your $47 (use it for your PPC costs instead) and check out the resources, the Google AdWords team has provided for free…

Can I Test Google AdWords For Free?

If you’re new to using paid traffic, you might have a slight phobia as I did (as I’ve been using free social traffic generation methods to bring traffic to my sites). But here’s a way to get free adwords traffic.

There’s a number of free AdWords coupons out there (so you can have a free PPC trial if you choose to).

You can google for Continue reading →