Affiliation Cash - The affiliate frontline

GadZooks! The Fauklands are being invaded AGAIN!?

When it comes to ranking in the SERPs that count, there’s no such thing as enough back links (well, unless they come from bad neighbourhood sites… but that’s a post for another time). But how do you get good quality back links for free? Especially when sites with a decent PR are usually out right refusing, or want some hard cash?

Press releases…

Not only do these things often rank well for given terms, you’re also basically guaranteed a spot for a few minutes in the “real time” search on Google & Bing, and you’ll stick around for a little while in Google News if you’ve submitted to a quality site.

Of course the problem is finding quality sites that you can submit to, without it actually costing you anything. And I know you guys have better ways of spending your time than researching that stuff, so I’ve done it for you.

Here’s 18 free press release distribution sites for you, and I’ve thrown in their basic Google PR as well because I know some of you love to sculpt that stuff like it’s Play-Doh.

The real benefit of a press release is that, under Google’s current algorithm, as they age, they gain importance by virtue of being a press release and are more likely to show up in informational searches. It’s not like article marketing on EZA where they basically get tossed aside after a while because of the disposable nature of the site.

However you do need to keep in mind that you can’t just spam a press release site, and your article does need to be 1) professional in tone; and 2) actually seem newsworthy in some way.

Many of them actively actively approve or prune articles, and will ban spammy accounts.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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I don’t know about you, but when I’m searching for quality information, my first thought is that I always want the absolutely most recent thing. Especially if it comes from a source that isn’t well edited, most likely unverified, and has massive potentials for misuse or gross inaccuracy.

And because Wikipedia simply isn’t fast enough to do all that in realtime for me, I’m so amazingly glad that Google has decided to basically get live, streaming feed direct from Twitter.

Sarcasm aside, this has actually let a few glaringly obvious holes (at least temporarily) that can be exploited in Google’s insistence that newer = better, particularly if you combine it with their new “hey, we already know what everyone wants” attitude. And these glarignly obvious holes can be exploited to your benefit quite nicely for promoting your Affiliation Cash programs.

So let’s say you’re running aff links to one of our offerings that has a search parameter that you can embed into your affiliate link*. This little loophole is great because you can now tweet / status update that you’ve just watched / listened to a great movie / album that you got for free from this awesome website. You then insert the link with the correct address, and Bit.Ly hides your affiliate link nicely (even more so because most people don’t have the Bit.Ly extension for FireFox that allows them to see where the links go).

Ok, so you’ve done this once, and if you’re being fairly current, you might get 5-15 clicks out of Google before it drops out. Possibly more, possibly less, if the term is really popular. Certainly not enough to get a conversion every time… Sounds kinda like wasted effort, actually.

And if it does, then you’ve learnt absolutely nothing from me over the past year where I keep talking about things you nee to look into for yourself, like automation!

There are heaps of automation tools out there for Twitter and Facebook alike. Look around for some, and make sure that they have the ability to spin content. This is insanely important, because it will save you ludicrous amounts of time. You simply setup a line that’s readily spinnable to make it seem like you just listen to music or watch movies and TV shows non-stop, with enough current artists or movies, and let it go about once an hour on autopost, where it can spin the new content for you each time. Then, if the software supports conditions, attach the name to the correct search query on the site… Or don’t. Let the lazy slobs on Google search for that stuff once they get to the site in question.

Keep it going over a few different accounts, and the number of followers is entirely irrelevant, because you’re getting traffic from Google, not Twitter. Any followers gullible enough to fall for your army of automated, spinning bots.

Anyway, I’m sure Google’s bound to pick up on this soon. They’re not idiots over there, so you better take advantage of this one while you can.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

*If you have NFI what I’m talking about there, you’re welcome to email or MSN me, and I’ll explain in greater detail.

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Dammit! They're co-opting EVERYTHING!

We here at Affiliation Cash would like to wish all of our affiliates a very merry Christmas (and I suppose we should have wished you a happy Hannukah about two weeks ago… Apologies to Muslims, I have no clue when Ramadan is/was. Also, does anyone know what Buddhists do at this time of year?).

Either way, may the best of the season be with you and your loves ones.

Seasons greetings aside, this time of year is actually a gold mine of opportunity for those willing to put in a little bit of extra work.

Why?

December 26th.

Would you use this at ANY other time of year?

People world wide will have just opened gifts. Many of those gifts are going to be media players. Either brand new or upgraded. People are going to want to fill the extra capacity and capabilities of their new device. They’ll be looking for a way to do this cheaply. Others will buy the device and will be looking to purchase some sort of free downloading service to go along with it directly.

You might want to get a PPC campaign on the boil with things like “Need to fill up your new Mp3 player?” or “Need to put some Mp3s on Johhny’s Christmas iPod?” or some such.

Happy (Hannukah?) Hunting - Harvey

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Stay on top of the news!

Be ahead of it, and you can dress like this too!

If you’ve been paying attention to search engines, or Twitter, you’ll know about “trending topics”. It’s the thing everyone’s talking about. I’m certain a lot of you are sitting there, reading this and thinking “yeah, if I knew what was going to happen before everyone else, I would sooo have an huge cash making machine of a campaign!”

The fact of the matter is you can! Kind of…

Believe it or not, the news media is a 24 hour kind of thing. The news that people get on TV, on radio, in print. It’s all old by the time it reaches them. Even online news is old when it reaches the front page of a news site, even if it’s under the “Breaking News” headline. But you can access this news faster than that.

First off, a little back ground.

I was just like this, but less charming and more hobo and no magic newspaper

Years ago, I used to be a total insomniac. I’d go for days without sleeping, so I’d find myself wandering around my suburb with my dog and generally having people assume I was homeless because I also didn’t bother to shave all the time. In actuality, I would often wander by the local 7-11, and pickup the newspaper to go and read in the park while mindlessly tossing my dog’s ball. Tomorrow‘s newspaper! You see, newspapers are actually printed the day before, and come off the press around 10pm, so they can be at major distribution points prior to 1am, and into most places in the general public before 6am.

I was lucky enough to live near a major distribution point, which meant I often got access to the news by 11pm the day before it hit most stands.

Most of the information in it was thoroughly useless to me, although a few nuggets here and there allowed me to run a PPC campaign well before the rest of the country had woken up, and when they hit up Google for more info on something they’d read, there were some of my ads.

So how does this relate to the earlier part about getting the news before anyone else does?

Well, think about it for a moment. Where does the Newspaper actually get “the news”? They sure as hell don’t have their own staff anymore for any real journalism. That’s mostly left up to bloggers… and freelancers at press agencies like Reuters and Associated Press. Go to their websites, and get yourself onto the RSS feeds for anything that might take your fancy. If you’re using a proper RSS feed program or plugin, limit it to the last hour or two of news only. This way you won’t be distracted, and you’re likely to not have had news media outlets or other people using this trick jump the gun on you.

If you are past hour 5, give up on that trend. You have been beaten.

Considering Affiliation Cash’s programs are predominantly download based, you can limit it even further if you want to entertainment sections, but that’s up to you. Whatever it takes to make sure you don’t get distracted from what you should be doing, which is building a PPC campaign, or throwing up a spun article on your own site and then social bookmarking the bejeezus out of it (remember, sites that just copy and paste from others don’t rank as well, especially for news).

The reason for all this effort is because if you’re jumping onto the bandwagon when the topic has already hit the trend graphs, you’re too late. Other people are watching those to see what’s popular. This may take more effort, and there may be less volume, but there’s also a hell of a lot less competition.

Consider this nugget an early Christmas present.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Performics recently released yet another study revealing what we already know: People will take their friends words for the quality of a service.

This works particularly well on Facebook. This is also something we’ve already mentioned, and you probably already know. So why bother bringing it up in relation to affiliate marketing, and specifically for Affiliation Cash programs?

Because you can get people to Facebook share your pages!

Whilst you can’t directly advertise on Facebook as they have a policy against download based services, and you probably  can’t stick up a fan page either for the same reason (although I’d be interested to see the results if anyone tried), these are not nearly as effective as merely getting people to share about the URL of your site, particularly if you have a logo that still manages to look attractive in that tiny little Facebook box.

If you’re already using something like Facebook’s own sharing widget or an Add This button on your page, that’s great… But you can always go a step further if you’re a little inventive.

Remember, most regular users of Facebook will basically stay logged in on another window or tab all day long. Some clever and amazingly unethical use of Javascript could see each and every one of those people clicking your FB Share button.

Think about it.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Peopel will now show up with a list of which lists they're listed under.

I still simply do not get why people think Twitter is so fantastic or influential (it has fewer than one million active users), but at least they’ve finally implemented something that might be useful.

They’ve recently developed a “lists” feature, which basically allows you to separate your followers out from each other, but also to target specific ones with specific messages, and for you to search through people by what lists they may be on.

What a great way to a) weed out bots; and b) find more willing consumers by seeing what lists people are actively a part of, not just who they’re following.

You may now segregate people online like the regime of your choice

I’ll let you think out precisely what you can do with this, especially if you happen to be clever and know how to automate a few processes, program some bots, etc.

It will also (finally) allow you a better understanding of groups of people by cross-referencing which lists they may appear on, and doing secondary and tertiary level statistical analysis.

Euler diagrams, anyone?

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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According to MarketLive, the number of Americans shopping for their Xmas* presents online has risen a hefty 25%, bringing the ratio down from 1:5 to 1:4 people looking to get all their gifting needs online.

Utilize this!

PPC Campaigns

For those of you running PPC campaigns for your Affiliation Cash programs, this means getting the Xmas stuff up and running shortly, as people are already thinking about their Xmas shopping (I know I am, and I don’t even do Xmas!).

If you are using text based ads, try creating some new ad groups that involve matches for both “xmas” and “christmas”, intermixed with “gift”, “present” & “shopping”. You may also want to think about advertising using titles of songs and movies that are appropriate for the season.

You may also want to consider expanding into image based PPC campaigns. If you are able to show images that express what people are after, this often works substantially better than text, as images are much more emotively appealing. Consider the two pictures here. The mp3 player is a cool design, and definitely aimed at kids (or Japanese teenaged girls), but if a parent is looking for an Mp3 player for their kid, they’re going to see the happy kid so excited by his new Mp3 player because they can associate themselves with the situation - they envisage their own happy kid with the Mp3 player… Even if they’re not black.

Blogs and Websites

For a start, you’re going to want to try and get your SEO on for Xmas related terms. I recommend using the magic of link rotation and link farming. Don’t forget to use aLinks in that, as described in the just linked post.

Oddly enough, whilst Xmas only happens for a couple of months a year, there are people out there that SEO for it full time as that’s the period they make their annual wage, but they are generally retailers and often don’t understand the full magic behind SEO. You should have a natural advantage over them.

Either way, if you’re making regular posts, start using Xmas themes that are appropriate to content, and posting articles that will also focus on the Xmas related parts to your niche. Got a music blog? Find a review of the Top10 Xmas songs, (spin it,) and slap it up there with links to your Affiliation Cash program. Preferably with links to those albums / tracks within it if the program you’re monetizing through actually supports that.

Lastly, don’t forget to reskin your site for appropriate measure!

Wordpress makes it so easy (so long as you remember to re-update your plugins after changing the skin), and you’d be amazed at how the psychological mindset induced by having the right skin will increase the conversion rate. 3%-5% may not sound like much, but if you’re dealing with thousands of hits, it’s a couple hundred dollars more in your pocket

Happy Hannukah Hunting - Harvey

*It should be noted that by Xmas, I do mean to utilize this for any yule time celebration, be it Christmas, Kwanza, Hannukah, Bacchanalia, Festivus, or what ever it is that you do in your area or to get people to needlessly spend vast quantities of hard earned money on useless, chintsy stuff that their relatives aren’t going to appreciate anyway.

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As seen on...

Have you ever wondered why so many sites out there in Affiliate Marketing Land have these little logos?

As seen on TV… Shown on CNN… Reported by ABC…

In your gut, you know that if a website has those stickers on it and they’re being truthful, more often than not it’s because they’re in the middle of being sued as part of a class action or by an Attorney General. Yet people still put them up on their sites even when it’s not true. Why?

Because studies into consumer psychology continually, time and again, give results indicating that people are willing to believe it. They want to believe that if something has been on a source as authoritative as TV news, then it must be a good and legitimate thing… even though studies show more people than ever say that they don’t believe the mainstream news media. They also want to believe that other people have tried it, and group-think is a powerful marketing tool because deep down, no one actually likes being an individual.

Humans. We’re funny like that.

It's a goodthing no one can break into a website once you place this <img> file down

But these little stickers aren’t the only ones that are fantastic for gaining people’s trust. McAfee (am I the only one that thinks of anti-viral software when ordering coffee at McCafè?) like to keep their 1984 style eyes on everyone, and have been observing shoppers’ behavioural patterns when it comes to making purchases online. They’ve found that the simple addition of the little sticker given to sites by professional security companies like TRUSTe or Comodo increases sales by 11% (or decreases shopping cart abandonment by 5.5%, depending which way you look at it… either way, it’s statistically significant).

So what should we do about this if we don’t particularly feel like shelling out a few hundred, or even thousand, dollars in order to get a thin affiliate landing page tested to actually be hacker safe?

Why, just steal the GIF file, and pop it on your site! Maybe add some clever javascript that’ll detect their IP and feed it back to them, saying it’s been logged, or some other rubbish, and you’ll increase the confidence of your consumers by.. well, 11%.

Use this one to be nice and non-descript

But hey, that’s another one in every ten leads turning into a conversion for you, when over one in five leave a site due to security concerns, according to PayPal.

So go and give people their sense of security… The fools! BWAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Ah children, shining light of tomorrow’s consumerist behaviour, made even worse by easy access to money in the form of prepaid and top-up-able debit cards that allow them to shop online.

Kids are into freaky happy monsters these days

If that sounds a little on the cynical side, do forgive me. Norton have just released the list of the Top100 search terms that goes through Norton Safety Minder, their net nanny software that tracks what your children do online, and potentially filters out things you or Norton don’t think is appropriate for them.

Here’s a copy of the list as a TXT file, in descending order of frequency.

Hopefully this info will help you optimize your site, or PPC campaigns, for those younger kids.

Now, before a few of you jump onto Skype or MSN and tell me I’m a moron because kids don’t have spending money, I’m going to tell you why you’re wrong for two reasons.

Unless you want them running up bills on YOUR credit card, maybe watch your children online.

1) A lot of kids are being handed pre-paid debit cards instead of pocket money now. I’m getting the feeling a part of it is because it works like a real credit card, parents can give kids money without having to physicall be there, and highschool drug dealers generally don’t have EFTPOS facilities (although PayPal accepts prepaid cards *cough*)

2) Even if the kids don’t have one of these cards, they sure as hell can bug their parents. Advertising to the pre-teen market is huge because those kids have an amazing ability to whine and complain and issue forth various bodily fluids until they get their way. And if one of them gets their heart set on being able to download all the Miley Cyrus Mp3s, or episodes of Ben10 thanks to your site, chances are it’s going to be a conversion on their parents credit cards.

All that said, I’m not sure what’s more tragic: That kids are typing full on domains into search engines instead of just going to the domain, or that Miley Cyrus has about 6 different references in that list.

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People hate to think they might be missing a bargain, and we’ve become conditioned to only buy things when we think we’re getting a good deal. Not actually getting a good deal, mind yu, but thinking it.

It’s like that free phone that comes with a mobile plan that miraculously gives you ten times more credit than you’re paying for (hint: the credit is just a heck of a lot cheaper than they’re saying it is), or 50% off an item that has a 900% markup between wholesale and retail… But what makes it even more irresistable is the idea that perhaps this deal is finishing soon, for a limited time only, act now, don’t miss out, specials end at midnight tonight in this NEVER TO BE REPEATED SALE… that will happen again in 6 weeks time.

Buy Irrationally! Buy shares in GM!

But we want to harness that suspension of good judgement, that irrational desire to spend, that people only seem to have when they’re told something is on special. But how do we do that with a website?

Easy.

Tell peopel that the price you’re offering is a special price.

But that’s still not urgent enough, because they don’t know when the sale is going to truly end. Well, what if you could make it end at midnight, every night?

Install a script that will display a countdown towards midnight, based on the computers own local time, mentioning that the super special sale runs out at midnight tonight!

I’d provide some scripts, but there probably are better ones out there than what I could dig up… certainly better than what I could code. So by all means shop around for one. Either way, you should definitely split test a few thousands hits on your site, and check your results, instead of leaping in whole hog.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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