Affiliate Marketing for your Business?

What is Affiliate marketing? According to Wikipedia, Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing gives your business access to a vast network of sites to promote your products. This vast network drives traffic to your website. Most of the time, it is done through an affiliate management company. These companies already have hundreds of thousands of publishers in their network, you just need to offer these publishers a lucrative commission to attract them to promote your products. You can also increase your commission at different sales tier to encourage publishers to work harder to push your products.

You usually offer your affiliate network discount coupons or special offers for them to promote to their visitors. These offers should be updated in a timely manner to keep the offer fresh and make the visitors come back regularly for your offers.

In my opinion, customers acquired through affiliate marketing are either bargain seeker or people looking for extra value for their purchase (i.e. point collector). Some of your affiliates might offer points/ cash back to their members. For point collectors, most of the time they don’t mind buying a higher priced item, since they can get more points/ cash back out of their purchase. For bargain seeker, they searched through the web for discount coupons before making their purchase. With affiliate marketing, on top of other marketing methods, you can acquire different type of customer, not to miss out any one of them.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to increase your products’ exposure. Of course there is a cost associated with affiliate marketing. Besides paying the commission own to the performing publishers, you would also need to pay your affiliate management company a management fee. The fee differs from one management company to another. Check out the affiliate management companies below and see if there is a program right for your business. (of course there are more than 5, search on the web for more)

1) Commission Junction
2) Linkshare
3) CX Digital Affiliate Network
4) Hydra Network
5) Panthera Network

If you are a publisher, you can join one of these networks and post ads on your website. You can make money when someone referred by your site made a purchase. However, some vendors do not approve all sites but only quality site they think are relevant. Make sure your site is functioning well before applying to be one of their affiliates.

Create a Blog for your Business?

Should you create a blog for your business?

There are different Pros and Cons. Personally I like the idea of creating a blog for a business. However, at the business level, there might be some concerns for different businesses.

You have a website, why do you need a blog?

For me, website is a place for you to provide one way information to your visitors. Whereas in a blog, people can interact with your posting and visitors can discuss among themselves or with you, all topics are archive in chronological order/ category. Anyone who is interested in a certain topic can read all related postings. The communication is both ways, visitor tells you what they think and you explain to them and others who read the postings. The best thing is, customer get to communicate with insider of the company. In some case can be CEO, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager or Service Manager etc. In some case it can be the master blogger. Anyhow, it is still another channel for the management to know about what is going on in the field.

Moreover, you can create reciprocal linkages between your website and your blog. The rich and extra content in your blog will get itself a high page rank. This in turns will bring more traffic to your website. The reciprocal linkages in both sites (your website and your blog) might help themselves to improve their Search engine page rank.

What if your customer asks you some question you don’t know how to answer?

This is many businesses’ concern and that’s why many of them are reluctant to have a blog. If a business chooses not to answer, it will seem to be irresponsive and won’t get the company any good images. If a business chooses to answer, which it should, it needs to answer very skillfully, need to satisfy the customer and still not disclosing anything it doesn’t want to tell or get away with something it doesn’t know how to answer. Moreover, the customer will respond back in your blog. I think the business needs to have a very good Public Relation (PR) team to do that.

Uncontrolled postings…

This is another concern of many businesses. Some bloggers just keep on posting, maybe even on some irrelevant topics. Anyhow, this one is easy, the blog administrator can just delete the irrelevant posts. Some bloggers just keep on confronting the business. It can be a tougher situation. You cannot just delete or block a blogger. If you do that, and some mad blogger might bad mouth your company. Your PR team should get you a good tactic based on the situation.

I guess based on the priority of your company, you can decide whether you should get your company a blog. If your first priority is to get a channel for the management to have interaction with the customers, and confrontation is not a concern (you know how to handle it), a blog might be good for your company. When you do have your blog, make sure your master bloggers are responsive to the postings there. Otherwise you have defeated your purpose of having a blog and this will also gain your company a bad image.

Buying Multiple Domains to Improve Site Traffic?

Many people might ask, will buying more domain names improve your site traffic? Should we use buying domain names as one of the internet marketing strategy to increase web traffic? It really depends. However, frankly, in most cases it doesn’t.

It will help a bit if you use the domain with keywords as your main address but not as a forward. For example, you own an online store with the site address “junepharmacy.com”, and you buy the domain name “onlinedrugstore.com” and have it forward to junepharmacy.com. The new purchased domain will not help generating traffic for junepharmacy.com unless there is a famous drug store called “onlinedrugstore.com” and its customer mistyped it as “onlinedrugstore.ca” (Some people does purchase typos of popular sites and in many cases this does help to increase their site traffic).

However, if you use the domain “onlinedrugstore.ca” as your main site address, it might help generating more traffic to your website. It helps as there are keywords in the domain name. When people types in “Online drug store” in Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines, your site will be very relevant and will show up in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) enjoying a good page rank.

So you might only need to buy one premium domain for internet marketing purpose. Select your domain very carefully and don’t waste your money buying multiple domains if not necessary. If you need to use your company name as the domain, name all your other pages with keywords, this will surely help (e.g. www.junepharmacy.com/onlinedrugstore.html).

SEO Tip - Prevent New Site/URL to Hurt your Page Rank

Many internet marketers have the same doubt at some point. Should they revamp their website? They want to improve their sites with new technology, new look and feel. However, would the new improved site, the new URLs/ new domain hurt the good page rank the current website is enjoying?

It could if you don’t do what is necessary to correct the possible damage. However, it is an easy fix. All you have to do is, from the old URLs, make redirection towards the new URLs to specify that the page has permanently changed its address (301 redirect or called permanent redirection). Then the search engine will stop indexing the old URLs and update its index by assigning the new URL to the page.

If you don’t do the 301 redirect, your new site will be lost in the search engine index, people will have no way to get to your new site. The 301 redirection is very important as we don't want the search engine to index the old non working page and at the same time we won't lose the position (page rank) and index the old page has gained throughout the year.

SEO Tip - Maintain & Improve your Google Page Rank by Updating Your Site Content

You have put together a great site and achieved a high rank in Google. However, don’t ever think you can then relax and still can keep your high page rank in Google. The job of search engine optimization (SEO) never ends. Your page rank will drop if your site do not have fresh content or do not have regular updates. I do not know Google’s page rank algorithm. However, when I see a drop in my page rank, I can gain some page rank back by adding new content in my website.

Of course, the best thing is to create a new content page. If not, at least slight changes in the existing pages. You will see the positive effect on page rank a few days after new content is added. (at least from my experience)

Don’t think you can stop working as soon as you have built a good site, it is a long and continuous effort to keep your site in good ranking. If you do not have new content, your page rank will continue to drop. However, when you think about it, Google’s algorithm enables it to return the best and most update results for any particular search.

Effective Email Marketing - Tips to succeed in E-mail Marketing Campaigns

Few tricks in Email Marketing can help to boost your E-mail Marketing campaigns. Pay attention to the following 4 elements (in no particular order) in your E-Blast can increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) and effectiveness of your Email Marketing campaigns.

1) From Address (Email Sender Address)
2) E-mail Subject Line
3) Content
4) Day and time of delivery

1) From Address (E-mail Sender Address)

- If you see an email from an unknown or spam like sender (weird characters), of course you are not going to open it but just to trash it. However, if it is from an well known organization, an organization known to the recipient or a real person name, recipients are more likely to open the E-mail.

2) Email Subject Line

- The Email Subject Line has to be relevant to the recipient and answer the needs (e.g. attractive offer for a consumer or "Tips to rank high in Google" for an internet marketer) or fix an issue for the recipient (e.g. Help you lose 10 lbs in 10 days). It should clearly describe the topic of the email. Sometimes, mention an authoritative body in the Subject Line will help the Click Through Rate. For example, recipient in US pharmaceutical sector will be alert to read something with subject line “FDA approves…”; a mailing solution company in UK will alert mail solution user by addressing it to “Important news for Royal Mail users”.

3) Content

- Content has to be short and to the point. It has to be easy to read as people usually only scan through their email to spot if there is anything that interested them. Do not disclose all the important information but just enough to attract people to click the link and go to your website to read more.

Moreover, content has to be relevant to the recipient. For example, you won’t send information about dogs to cat owners.

Last but not least, use some relevant graphics to make the content more interesting. When I said relevant graphics, don’t put picture about dogs when you are talking about cats. Since you don’t have a lot of space to put a lot of pictures, only put the one which are eye catching, relevant and interesting, the ones that can grab attention and raise recipient's interest in the articles.

4) Day and time of delivery – Best day and time to send your Email Marketing Campaigns

Best Day to send:

Tuesday to Thursday mornings are usually the best days to send your email campaigns. You will usually get the optimum response from an email campaign sent on Wednesday. Monday and Friday would usually get the worst response rate. Imagine on Mondays, everyone has a whole bunch of email sitting in their inbox waiting for them to check. People will usually skip yours, which are the non work related ones. Same for Fridays, people just want to finish the urgent work need to be done that day and wait for the weekend to come. They won’t bother checking your marketing email if it is sent on Fridays. When accumulating with the email sent on Saturday and Sunday, your Friday email will be at the bottom of the unopen pile and will most likely to be skipped when you are back to work on Monday. Don’t send your email campaign during a business holiday or weekend. Business people are not there to read them and accumulated Ad mail will only be deleted.

Best time to send:

If you have an international list, segment it by time zone will help you increase your response rate by being able to deliver your email campaign at the best time.

Generally 10:00-10:30 a.m. and 1:00-1:30 p.m. are the best time to send. At 10, people have usually checked all email or cleaned up all “spam” accumulated during the previous night. They have already warmed up a bit for the day (they might want a small break at that time). At 1, they just finished lunch and they are more relaxed before getting back into their work.

If the above is not enough for you, there is also a very systematic formula available online. Click here to go to the Email Labs website for more details.

Time of the year:

For seasonal goods, this is very important. You won’t promote the wrong thing at the wrong time. Moreover, don’t send a campaign right before and right after a holiday. Or your email will most likely be skipped.

Netscape is exiting the Web Browser scene: No more support for the Browser from Feb 1 2008

Announced in the Netscape blog on December 28, 2007, there will be no more security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator from February 1, 2008. Netscape.com will still continue to serve as a general use Internet portal. After February 1 2008, Netscape users have to go to the UFAQ, the Netscape Archive, the Netscape Community Forum for information about Netscape. Tom Drapeau, the director of AOL's Netscape brand encouraged Netscape users to adopt Firefox. This signifies the end of Netscape's era.

I used Netscape more than 10 years ago, when I first started exploring the internet. Netscape has dominated the web browser market at that time. Back then I was using Alta Vista as my search engine. Today, I no longer use Netscape but Firefox and I have long been using Google instead of anything else as my search engine.

The market is very practical, if a company don't innovate and continuously provide the best product, it will be replaced by newer, better and innovative companies in no time. Netscape used to have more than 80% market share in 1995. Now, according to the study done by the web metrics company Net Application in Dec 2007, Netscape's browser share at just 0.60 %, while Microsoft Internet Explorer dominated with a 77.4 % share and Firefox accounted for 16 %.

When I look at the browser my blog's visitors used, a pathetic 0% of them use Netscape. In the table below, you can see the % is skewed to favor Firefox. It is not surprising as techies tend to use Firefox more. I would think my visitors, people who are interested in internet marketing are more tech savvy than the general internet public.










When we look at the browser usage for a consumer product blog, you can see the difference. We have a majority 60.33% using Microsoft Internet Explorer while only 34.71% is using Firefox. Sadly for Netscape, still 0% share.








From the two blog browser usages shown, we still see Firefox has a skewed % instead of the lower 16% Firefox market share. These results are skewed as blog readers tends to be more tech savvy than the general internet users. Firefox has a bigger popularity within the tech savvy population.

Anyhow, all Netscape users should quickly adopt Firefox (or other web browser) as support will cease from Feb 1 2008.

Tested List of Blog Directories: Increase Your Blog Traffic, Submit Your Blog to June's List of over 60 Free Blog Directories

Submit Your Blog (and RSS Feed) to June's List of more than 60 Free Blog /RSS directories below and gain traffic by:
1) Reciprocal linkages (Helps improve your search engine ranking)
2) Additional entries in different search engines
3) Traffic from different Blog Directories

The Most Comprehensive List of Tried and Tested Free Blog Directories:
(The hyperlinks are to the sites' main pages since some of the sites change their "Add a Blog" page periodically)

I.Top 16 Free Blog /RSS Directories: (Get you Extra Entries in different Search Engines)









Color coded: Green=Google; Red= Yahoo; Blue=MSN; Yellow=AltaVista; Purple=All the Web

1) 2-review.com Give your blog extra entries in Google, All the Web, Yahoo and AltaVista.
2) BlogCatalog Give your blog an extra entry in Google.
3) Bloggernity Give your blog an extra entry in Google and Yahoo.
4) Digg A news, video and image directory: Give your blog an extra entry in Google, Yahoo, All the Web and AltaVista.
5) Dmoz Open Directory Project: Additional entries in most search engines.
6) Emarketingblogs.com Blog directory for internet marketing topics only: Give your blog an extra entry in Google.
7) Blog-search Give your blog an extra entry in All the Web and AltaVista.
8) Feedblitz.com Allow others to subscribe to your site's RSS Feed. Give your blog an extra entry in Google. (Create RSS Feed for your Blog here or at Feedburner (now owned by Google) so you can submit your blog to all RSS feed sites too.)
9) Feedmap.org Mapping your blog and locating other bloggers around you. It gives your blog an extra entry in All the Web and AltaVista.
10) Globeofblogs Allow you to exchange Blog Ad with other Blogs. It also gives your blog an extra entry in Google, Yahoo, All the Web, AltaVista and MSN.
11) Plusmo Allow your reader to subscribe your site feed onto their mobile device. It also gives your blog an extra entry in Google.
12) Technorati Give your blog an extra entry in Google and MSN.
13) Today Give your blog an extra entry in Yahoo, AltaVista and All the Web.
14) Total Blog Directory Give your blog an extra entry in Google, All the Web and AltaVista.
15) Webetopia If your Blog content answers one of their many questions, your site will gain a link from their site and an entry from Google.
16) Zimbio A great way to submit all pages of your blog. Others can rate your site on Zimbio and your site will gain an extra entry in Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and All the Web.

II. 47 Tried and Tested Free Blog/ RSS Directories:
1) 2Rss You can submit your blog's RSS Feed here.
2) Answers Submit your blog here after it is at least 3 months old.
3) BOTW Blog Directory No time guarantee if you don't pay for a review. I didn't try this one so I don't know about the quality.
4) Blawg A blog directory dedicated to the legal industry.
5) BlogsbyCategory A Free Blog directory with categories.
6) Blogarama A Free Blog directory.
7) Blogbib Only English Blog is allowed in this directory.
8) Blogbunch Submit your blog's RSS Feed here.
9) Blogdigger Submit your blog's RSS Feed here.
10) Blogdup Free Blog Directory with categories.
11) Blogflux Free Blog Directory: Your Blog must be at least 7 days old and have at least 5 posts.
12) Bloghop Free Blog Directory.
13) Bloghub Free Blog Directory.
14) Blogintro Free Blog Directory.
15) Bloglines Free online tool for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content.
16) Bloglisting Free Blog Directory, no Category.
17) BlogMap Submit your blog feed, RSS or Atom feed here.
18) BlogOrama Free Blog Directory with Categories.
19) BlogPulse Free Blog Directory, no Category.
20) Blogz Free Blog Directory, no Category.
21) BoingBoing Need to sign up to suggest a link.
22) Bulletize Free Blog Directory with Categories.
23) Chordata Free RSS and Atom feed directory.
24) Feedage Submit your RSS Feed here, others can subscribe to your feed too.
25) Feedboy Free RSS Feed Submission.
26) Feedburner Free Tool for you to create RSS Feed for your site. It is now owned by Google and 2 of their previously paid services, TotalStats and MyBrand are now free.
27) Feeds4all Free RSS Feed submission.
28) Feedsfarm Submit your News related RSS Feed here.
29) FindingBlog Free Blog Directory.
30) Fybersearch Free Blog submission but no guarantee listing..
31) GeekPhilosopher Register to list your blog Free
32) iBlog Business Directory Free Business related Blog Directory.
33) Icerocket Free Blog Directory with no Category.
34) Link With Us Free Blog Directory with Categories.
35) LSBlogs Free Blog Directory: Go to "How to submit" link on the left to sign up.
36) Plazoo Free Feed submission, available in 7 languages: Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Polish and Russian.
37) Postami Free Feed Submission: Go to RSS Finder to submit your site feed
38) Pressradar Free News Feed submission.
39) Rateitall Free Blog Directory.
40) Redtram Blog submission: Free, listed within 30-90 days; with 30 Euro, guarantee to be listed in 2 days. It is available in 9 languages: Czech, Russian, English, French, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.
41) Search4Rss Feed Search Engine with free feed submission
42) Smallbusiness.com It is a Wiki dedicated to topics related small businesses. You would need to register to add your blog in the weblog there. All content are maintained by registered users.
43) Small Business Blog Directory Free Blog Directory for topics related to small businesses.
44) Strategic Board Free Blog Feed Submission. Need registration.
45) Syndic8 Free Feed Submission and Directory. Go to "Suggest" to add your Feed.
46) Topix Free news site. Register and become an editor. Add your RSS Feed by clicking the "from an URL" link in the editor's tools.
47) TruthLaidBear Register to add your Blog in this free Blog Directory (the ecosystem).