Keeping your blog up to date

If you have a blog, you are also going to need to understand the importance of keeping your blog up to date. People want to see updated content on a regular basis. If you continue to have updated content, people will return. To keep your blog properly updated, you also have to keep a close eye on it and how things are changing. Since things can change rather quickly, it’s a great idea to stay on top of it. The more often you respond and remain in contact with your blog and the members that are reading it, the better sense of community you will create and the more comfortable people will feel on your site.

Another good thing about blogs and a good reason to keep your content updated is because the search engines regularly update them. You can raise your search engine ranking and bring more traffic to your site which means more profit to you.

Thought for the day

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bike. Then I realised that The Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me.

Perhaps, it is the same with internet and affiliate marketing... if you are going to sit and wait for customers to visit your site, and buy products, then you better have a benevolent lord..

Alternately, if you go out and search the marketplace, steal some ideas and analyse these strategies so as to include the products your market and finally re-strategise and if possible bribe the buyers..... marketing would be a lot easier !

Ofcourse, don't forget to confess each Sunday...

Very soon, you will be offering the priest a share as well !

Neuro Linguistic Programming - NLP

Demand and supply has a funny criteria or in other words a standard or a base that it operates from. Whiz kids call it the benchmark, which of-course bounces off a lot of people.

Now returning to where we started……….the market at present, works on a funny standard , that is a 1,2, and 1,2,0 and a 1,2,3 standard. So basically you gotta write down each move [ie., if you have the time and you are quick on the uptake, by market standards] or else, you are lost!

So, where were we now ?

Did someone mention anything about USP……..or a unique selling proposition ?

Now did someone say some-thing ?

Must make an appointment with my psychiatrist!

Now lets create A as the demand and B as the supply and C as the constant. so that whenever there is a break in communication we can always move over to the other side. In other words, you have to know both sides……….

Oops...ego beckons…………. Let’s bathe in it…….or else C cannot control the neurotic……

Now where do the male and female elements fit in …..in such a process ?

NLP should be a lot more organized…..few understand it

Catch up with you later

How poor can people be

One day, a father and his rich family took their son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing him how poor people can be.

They spent a day and a night at the farm of a very poor family. When they returned from their trip, the father asked his son... How was the trip?

Very good dad!

Did you see how poor people can be... The father asked...

Yeah! said the son

And what did you learn ?

The son replied... I saw that we have a dog at home and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden; they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden; they have the stars. Our patio reaches to the front yard; they have a whole horizon.

When the little boy finished speaking, his father was speechless. His son added.. Thanks Dad, for showing me how poor we are..

It is the same with marketing... always assess yourself from a third person's viewpoint or if possible get someone else to do it for you.. You would be amazed at the strengths or weaknesses [in this case the assets and the portfolio your site carries] you have..

So go forth and market thee product !

Some free resource links are available at the below links...
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/2-alexa-tools.html

Kris Jones Delivers Keynote on the Future of Affiliate Marketing

Pepperjam Network, the fastest growing affiliate marketing network in the United States, announced today that Pepperjam's President & CEO Kris Jones delivered the keynote presentation at Affiliate Dag, the largest affiliate marketing conference ever held in Europe.

The event was held in Utrecht, which is located 30 miles outside of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Jones spoke about the future of affiliate marketing in the United States and Europe, including the impact that innovators such as Pepperjam Network and others will have on the global affiliate marketing industry.

"Delivering the keynote presentation at Affiliate Dag in the Netherlands was a true honor. I find European affiliate marketers and advertisers to be extremely progressive minded, forward thinking, and open to innovation. Europe is currently experiencing massive growth in e-commerce, as well as affiliate marketing, and is quickly becoming well prepared to compete aggressively in the global affiliate marketing marketplace," said Kristopher B. Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjam.

Affiliate Dag is a one day conference held in De Fabrique in Utrecht, Holland. Nearly 1,000 attendees and 25 speakers discussed topics ranging from minimizing channel conflict between search-engine marketing and affiliate marketing to selecting an appropriate affiliate network. The conference was coordinated by accomplished super affiliate Paul Schoenmakers. As mentioned above, Pepperjam President & CEO, Kristopher Jones, was the keynote speaker.

About Pepperjam Network

Pepperjam Network is a next generation affiliate marketing network that provides advertisers and publishers with industry leading pay-for-performance tracking, reporting, communication, and payment solutions. Pepperjam Network is a division of Pepperjam, a full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine for the last two consecutive years as one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States. Learn more at http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com


About Pepperjam

Pepperjam offers a full range of professional marketing management services in the areas of pay-per-click, search-engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and online media planning and buying. Since 1999 Pepperjam has developed a reputation for being one of the most innovative, aggressive, and effective internet marketing agencies in the business. Learn more at http://www.pepperjam.com

Affiliate Group Rebrands, Expands into Europe

On the heels of its expansion into the European market, a performance-based advertising company has launched a corporate re-branding. Epic Advertising is the new umbrella corporate name for the combined forces of AzgoogleAds.com and Bazaar Advertising, the latter a search marketing firm Azoogle acquired in 2007.

Epic Advertising chief marketing officer Michael Sprouse said Azoogle and Bazaar will remain distinct business units, facing the approved publishers who monetize their sites through their involvement with Epic. To clients seeking to place ads and receive the traffic generated by those publishers, the Epic brand-name will be the one-stop source for both performance-based and search engine strategies. Typically, Sprouse said, Bazaar's services mesh with clients who want an "agency of record" to handle all aspects of a search-based marketing plan, which can be a complement to a performance-based campaign.

For more details, visit - http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/affiliate/article.php/3744406

Article courtesy : Amy Mayer

AffStat 2008 Report

The AffStat 2008 Report is now available for immediate download in PDF format.

The survey covered the overall statistics for affiliate programs, as well as a number of issues that face affiliate managers.

Areas covered in the survey included affiliate networks, staffing, affiliate recruiting, and management.

Below are the questions being asked for the AffStat Report:

1. How does your program determine commissions?
2. Does your program have dedicated management (no other duties for affiliate manager)?
3. How many affiliates do you have?
4. How many new affiliates do you acquire per month?
5. How many click-throughs do your affiliates generate per month?
6. What is the conversion rate for your affiliate program?
7. What percent of your affiliates are active (defined as having generated at least one click last month)?
8. What percent of your affiliates earned commission last month?
9. What percent of the total transactions on your site are generated through affiliates?
10. Do you approve affiliates automatically or manually?
11. Which network(s), solution provider(s), or software program(s) do you use to track your affiliate program(s)?
12. Do you have a blog for your affiliate program?
13. What was the largest commission you paid to an individual affiliate in one month?
14. Do you permit your affiliates to bid on your trademark name(s) in pay per click search engines?
15. What types of rewards and/or incentives do you offer to your affiliates?
16. What is the biggest challenge in affiliate marketing?
17. What's your most effective method for recruiting affiliates?
18. Which type(s) of data feeds do you provide to affiliates?
19. Do you provide individual affiliates with exclusive coupons (i.e. coupons in name of affiliate site)?
20. Do you allow affiliates to promote coupon codes that were not made available through the affiliate program?
21. Do you manage the affiliate program in-house or are you an outsourced program manager?
22. What is your annual salary (including incentives and bonsues)? [in-house employees]
23. Does your salary include incentives and bonuses? [in-house employees]
24. What is your total monthly compensation for the affiliate program you manage (including percent of transactions if applicable)? [outsourced program managers]
25. Does your compensation include performance incentives? [outsourced program managers]

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Use Keywords In Page Titles

It is recommended that you use keywords in page titles itself.

This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but it's worth considering it in relation to them. Whatever text one places in the title tag (between the [title] and [/title] portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsoft's Internet Explorer or OPERA.

The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search-engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like ‘and’, ‘at’ and the like is crucial in search-engine-optimization.