06/17/09 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Blogs & Blogging | No Comments »
One of the keys to success in affiliate marketing is contextual relevance. Sure, there is no fixed cost associating with running your program through the thousands of coupon and deal related sites that exist to make a quick buck. Unfortunately, the time spent managing an extensive set of publishers and keeping an eye out for the ever present fraud, sucks the value out of the few leads or sales you might generate from a site that doesn’t reach your target audience.
Finding unique ways to reach your consumer pays off in dividends. Why not through blog plugins?
Mind you, I’m not talking about creating affiliate widgets or plugins to promote your business through blogs, I’m talking about reaching the blogger, a unique audience, through the plugin application. In a win for plugin developers, you can help them monetize their work without their needing to turn to the email spam or lead gen models that many use today. Offer a valuable product or service to the audience that consumes the plugin, and the developer has an unobtrusive, mutually valuable, revenue stream.
Consider the promotion of Omniture through Alex King’s Popularity Contest, MailChimp to bloggers who use Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7, or SEO books and services from within Semper Fi’s fantastic All in One SEO Plugin. Don’t misunderstanding me, I don’t mean to suggest that those plugins are doing this, and I hope they don’t look to me unfavorably for suggesting the possibility, my point is those plugins reach bloggers with clear intent and interest in the products or services that could be promoted through the Admin pages of the WordPress dashboard. Truth be told, I’m fearful of commercializing WordPress; on the other hand, I’m a huge fan of the belief that targeted advertising is good content and affiliate programs only appear where they work – I can’t say I’m distasteful of valuable products and services recommended through tools I use.
Win/win
At Outright.com, we’re offering free income and expense tracking, simple bookkeeping, to help entrepreneurs earning some money take care of their taxes. My target audience? The AdSense or affiliate plugin user; the blogger with some revenue from their blog, the blogger who has income to track, expenses to deduct, and taxes to pay. Contextual relevance to an AdSense plugin? You bet. And the performance has been exceptional.
Manoj Thulasidas set up such a partnership with his fantastic AdSense plugins. Conversion rates are high, validating demand from bloggers using AdSense for an effective, efficient, and inexpensive means of tracking their income and expenses. Grab Easy Adsenser to add AdSense banners and widgets to your blog posts and sidebar or use AdSense Now for a turnkey, simple integration.
If you reach bloggers earning some income through your plugins. Come check out what we’re doing through our affiliate program. You can get started quickly with ShareASale or if a LinkShare publisher, jump into our program through their Lead Advantage Network. I’d love to hear from anyone trying this; I know there are a few and I expect to find more success stories to share.
09/15/08 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, Blogs & Blogging, Brand Marketing, Comparison Shopping, Conferences / Events, Display Advertising, Insights / Research, Local, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Social Media, Vendors / Agencies, Vertical Search, Web 2.0 | 5 Comments »
One of the advantages of working for a local search engine that uses event listings to promote the business listings, is that I have, at my finger tips, a rich index of seminars, summits, and conferences all rank ordered by demand (popularity), based on the search query volume for each. It is amazing what a search engine can tell you.
Where do you need to be? (in no particular order)
- Search Engine Strategies (SES)
- Pubcon (WebmasterWorld)
- ad:tech
- eTail
- Search Insider Summit
- Affiliate Summit
- Shop.org
- Online Market World
- Direct Marketing Association
- eMetrics Summit
- Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
- OMMA Expo
- Internet Marketing Conference
- SXSW – which you should attend just because
- iMedia Agency Summit & iMedia Summits
- PPC Summit
- MarketingProfs
- American Marketing Association (AMA)
- Online Marketing Summit
- MIXX Expo
- Media Relations Summit
- ACCM (DMA)
- DM Days (DMA)
- Searchnomics
- ClickZ Specifics
- Internet Retailer
- Web Analytics Association Base Camp
- Next Generation Marketing
- eRetailer Summit
- New Marketing Summit
- IAB Events
- MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit
- Apartment Internet Marketing – really!
- Frost & Sullivan Marketing World
- T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
- Catalog & ECommerce Club
- Blog World Expo
- eComXpo
Missing anything? Let me know in the comments and be sure to add it here
09/08/08 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, Blogs & Blogging, Brand Marketing, Comparison Shopping, Display Advertising, Fun, Insights / Research, Local, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Social Media, Vertical Search, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »
Book your calendar, next Wednesday morning (11 CST) to, effectively, hear from 25 of the most successful online marketing gurus in the business. Put this link on your calendar. No, we won’t all be on the air but Online Marketing Heroes author Michael Miller will be and it is a unique opportunity to talk with a man who’s talked with the rest of us. In one show catch up on what PR people, copywriters, search engine specialists, direct marketing gurus and consultants are doing best.
Miller has written almost 100 best-selling books including Making a Living from Your eBay Business; Is It Safe?: Protecting Your Computer, Your Business, and Yourself Online; Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics; and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music History (a personal favorite… god I need to find time to work on that site! Anyone know a good designer?).
The show gives you a unique opportunity to hear a bit about each topic while throwing questions his direction during their on air chat with listeners. Have questions for Michael? Be one of the first 5 callers with a question (877.474.3302) and receive a complimentary book!
If you aren’t able to dial in the day of the broadcast, please email questions to radio@ama.org prior to the show. Read more about the show here and I hope to catch you calling in!
04/11/08 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, Blogs & Blogging, Brand Marketing, Comparison Shopping, Conferences / Events, Display Advertising, Fun, Insights / Research, Local, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Social Media, Vertical Search, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
ad:tech San Francisco, the interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition, starts next week at the Moscone Center. The show blends keynote speakers, topic driven panels and workshops to provide us with the tools and techniques needed to keep up and compete. It has, perhaps, the best show floor in the industry making it one of the must attend conferences if only to get up to speed on new vendors, services, and technologies.
While social networks are potentially creating some effective marketing opportunities, traditional and effective internet opportunities remain unsaturated. Search, rightfully so, commands an ever increasing portion of Internet ad spending, local is still an open market (though I’m bent on changing that), and profound improvements in Web-based video technology are threatening to change the definition and economics of “television”.
Who attends:
Brands, Agencies, Publishers, Portals & Service Providers, CEO’s, CMO’s, Marketing Execs, Brand Managers, Creatives, Media Buyers and Planners, Product Managers, Solution Providers…
Who else is going?
I’ll be there, in fact, with a booth behind me so stop by 5684 say hello!
03/05/08 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, Blogs & Blogging, Brand Marketing, Comparison Shopping, Display Advertising, Google, Insights / Research, Local, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Social Media, Targeting, Vendors / Agencies, Vertical Search, Web 2.0, Yahoo! | 9 Comments »
Certainly, one has to have a degree of ego involved with starting one’s own blog, after all, these are my thoughts; thoughts I presume are of interest to someone. Sure, perhaps it isn’t really “ego” but, needless to say, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t hope someone cared and derived a modicum of value. With that it mind, it is with great pride, continued hope, and a shedding of a layer of humility that I let id loose, take a moment to do more than wax poetic, and share with you one of my most honored moments.
Wiley, famed publisher of Frommers, For Dummies, and CliffsNotes, recently shipped, “Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurusâ€, to major bookstores
. Internet advertising experts interviewed for the book include consultants, agencies, CEOs, PR professionals, advertisers, and publishers discussing everything from paid search to PR, social media marketing to affiliate marketing, SEO to online retail.
Featured:
Joan Holman, Greg Hartnett, Jacob Hawkins, Mark Oldani, Jeffrey Glueck, Lauren Freedman, Tamara Adlin, Steve Rubel, Greg Jarboe, Eric Ward, Jordan Gold, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Chris Baggott, Ed Shull, Brian Lusk, Lee Odden (should I really link to Top Rank again? seems gratuitous), Jill Whalen, Liana Evans, Perry Marshall, Kevin Lee, Ron Belanger, David Fischer, Phil Terry, Patrick Duparcq (who has, perhaps, the first online marketing college course I’ve seen) and… me.
Lee Odden reached out to a few of us and asked of those involved to share a summary in a collaborative post. I’m not going to steal his thunder but I don’t think he’ll mind if I borrow the idea. Here are a few excerpts:
Yahoo’s Ron Belanger on search
It started out as a direct marketing medium, but today more and more traditional marketers–including brand marketers–are beginning to utilize search engine advertising.
- * Use search advertising to take advantage of high-impact moments where a customer is interested in receiving a product or marketing message.
- * Search marketing isn’t just for national advertisers; local businesses can use search marketing to target down to the individual market level.
- * Social search lets you locate and communicate with passionistas–your most passionate brand advocates.
- * Search advertising is a low-barrier, low-risk medium. It costs you very little to get started, and the potential results are huge. So dip your toe in the water and start advertising!
Didit Co-Founder Didit Kevin Lee on analytics and optimization
We are in the midst of a change in the advertising ecosystem and those marketers who embrace change with passion will triumph over those who fail to evolve with the massive shifts in consumer behavior and preference. Paid Search Marketing and Online Media is only the beginning of this macroeconomic shift in the way content and advertising is “consumed†by the consumer. Marketers will increasingly rely on data-driven models for media and advertising, but they better be sure the data is accurate and the models comprehensive. Bad data is sometimes worse than no data at all.
- * Consumers are beginning to pay attention only to advertising that’s relevant to their needs.
- * The way to reach consumers online is via narrowcasting a relevant message to each individual segment of your target audience; not by mass marketing a general message that everyone sees.
- * Creativity in online marketing involves the ability to analyze data and formulate strategies based on that analysis.
- * Search needs to be considered in relation to other forms for advertising; everything interacts with everything else; nothing is a silo onto itself.
- * Carve out a portion of your marketing budget for experimentation with new media and advertising types.
KeyRelevance Director Internet Marketing Li Evans on priorities and SEO
“search marketing†isn’t about title tags and keyword densities anymore, search marketing has taken on a whole new meaning with the search engines trying to deliver the most relevant and engaging experiences for their users. Marketers need to realize, the days of “post-Florida†are gone, this is a whole new marketing medium that we ourselves need to adapt too.
- * For the time being, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask are the most important search engines; the smaller players don’t have much chance of breaking through the ranks.
- * Google is the big dog, of course, but other engines might be better to reach particular types of users.
- * Even though search engines rank different factors differently, the same basic SEO techniques will help your ranking across the board.
- * When optimizing your site, focus on relevant content first and link building second.
TopRank® and Online Marketing Blog’s Lee Odden on social media and blogs
- * Publish your media to different sites and channels to maximize the potential search engine hits—images to an image-sharing site, videos to YouTube, and so forth.
- * All media are valuable, but none so much so as text, because of its importance to search engines.
- * Most blog software is search-engine friendly out of the box and can provide a platform for delivering fresh content for the search bots.
- * When content gets noticed and cited by multiple blogs, you get multiple links back to your main web site—which drives direct traffic and can increase search engine rankings.
- * To succeed with social networking, you have to be transparent and honest. You must provide value in order to receive value.
I confess not knowing the illustrious set of folks interviewed as well as Lee so head over to Top Rank for more excerpts. Author Michael Miller though has done a fabulous job aggregating the most important considerations from the great variety of online marketing considerations. If you want a phenominal, general overview of everything you should know, grab a copy of the book.
As for myself? A chapter on local marketing
- * Optimize your site for local search—make sure you include locality information as part of your keyword set.
- * Focus on local directories as much as you do the big search engines.
- * Think beyond the business listing. You’ll retain your customers with a business listing but attract customers with search engines like Zvents.
- * Make sure you have a version of your site available that’s optimized for mobile devices.
- * Include latitude and longitude information for inclusion in upcoming GPS-enabled devices.
Good god… Am I going to have to start a book club?
02/04/08 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »
ProfitPeelers has launched, in beta, an affiliate web service allowing publishers to easily add a script to their site that adds a peel away ad to the page. These unobtrusive ads are believed to convert at much higher rates meaning more dollars for publishers and more opportunity for marketers.
I’m excited about the ease of use and potential but this company seems a little spammy; they have the site set up on multiple domains and use one of those “Make Money From Home” or “Miracle Weight Loss Drug” site designs (see: peelawayadscript.com – edwinsoft.com/peelawayad – peelawayads.net – peelawaycorners.com). Another cause for concern is that most of their affiliates are in that same car salesman genre of wealth strategy, real estate millionaire, lotto secret get rich quick schemes. So why am I intrigued? ProfitPeelers appeared in a recent addition of Revenue magazine (October ‘07; pg. 106) in an article by Affiliate Classroom CEO Anik Singal, I’m hoping their editors vetted the credibility of the company, and advertisers also include Netflix, Disney, Gevalia, and Columbia House. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt as the web service seems like a worthy business venture and I’m optimistic of the opportunity.
Should my experience change, you’ll be the first to know and if you are willing to give them a try (that is a referral link) keep me informed. If you are familiar with the company, I welcome your comments.
06/25/07 by seobrien | Affiliate Marketing, Comparison Shopping, Conferences / Events, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Social Media, Vendors / Agencies, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »
Coming up this week is Searchnomics in Santa Clara, CA on Wednesday, I’ll be there and you can catch me on a panel at 22. Register today and you can still benefit from a reduced price with promo code “vol2″
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As for next month:
Affiliate Summit is the must attend series and Affiliate Summit East is in Miami starting on the 8th. I spent a week in Miami and HIGHLY recommend it for the great nightlife, wonderful weather, and hot beaches. You don’t want to miss Nikki Beach or their Sunday brunch. But, of course, you’re going for work.
If you are in the Bay Area on the 14th, Community Next has a great session on Viral Marketing for entreprenuers, marketers, and VCs.
eCommerce professionals should get to Shop.org’s Online Merchanding Workshop; this year in Coronado, CA on the 19th and 20th.
For those not in eCommerce, get to Portland, OR for ISF’s Executive Summit which, this year, is focused on Web 2.0 and Social Media.
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In Denver, CO on the 24th is the next Online Marketing Summit hosted by the Online Marketing Coalition.
July is a big month for conferences so keep your calendar open and your airline miles ready.
If I’ve missed one, add it to the calendar and I’ll promote it. If you’d like a handy dandy blog widget like the one I’ve included in this post, visit the Online Marketing Conferences Widgetbox
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