More good stuff from Seth Godin for affiliate marketers:

Seth Godin, author of Small is the New Big, has a mission — to help business people realize how smart they already are. He writes and talks relentlessly about the need to engage customers, to make your products or services remarkable, discussion-worthy, and to make sure your business ultimately keeps (and exceeds) its promises.

Chances are you've heard Godin's message before — he blogs (on TypePad), he speaks, he writes books. He founded the pionieering online marketing firm Yoyodyne and, most recently, the expertise portal Squidoo. His previous books include Permisison Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus, and All Marketers are Liars.

On Tuesday, August 22nd at 2:00 pm (PST) we'll be hosting a moderated Skypecast discussion with Seth Godin. To participate, all you need is Skype and this link: skypecasts.skype.com. If you can't join us, we'll be recording the conversation and releasing it as a podcast later next week.

Posted for you by the Affiliate Blogger.

Thanks to LinkConnector, I'm going to be attending the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp with James Martell, affiliate mentor associated with Commission Juntion.

I'll be talking about my training with James Martell and sharing a few tid bits along the journey. In the meantime, here's a shameless plug for Affiliate Marketers BootCamp complete with affiliate links (thanks for your support).

Affiliate Marketing Mastery Can Be Yours By Attending James Martell's BootCamp

Its been said that the very best way to learn anything is to study with a master.

And the reason is simply this: We learn so much more through personal interaction than from books or tapes.

With that in mind, James Martell has series of BootCamps — intensive, live workshops using animated screenshots of everything James does to be successful on the Net — to "mentor" his students on the essentials of running a first class publishing business to profit from "affiliate programs".

Many know of James' Affiliate Marketers Handbook — 2006, which was first published in May of 2002, but not everyone knows that James originally started teaching his "secrets" to a small group of lucky locals in 2001-2002.

At that time he got out of live trainings because it took precious time and energy away from his growing affiliate business.
And although his "downloadable" training provided everything someone needed to know to make excellent income from a home-based operation on the Net — many over the years have asked if he planned to teach a live class again.

Although he entertained the idea from time to time, he never saw the need, especially since so many were reporting mind boggling incomes themselves when applying the principles taught in the Handbook, his Google Mastery audio report and his twice-a-month audio newsletter, know affectionately as "the buzz".

But the demand was still there from those who felt they either needed a "kick-start" — or some advanced training about how to take their operations to the next level by modeling James more closely and putting a small staff in place as he has done.

And because he now has people trained to do much of the "grunt" work he and his wife Arlene used to do — he has determined that putting together another live class might not only be profitable for himself — but could also be quite profitable in the long run for those attending.

And, of course, James loves to teach so it seemed like a good decision to launch another live training — and one that promises to be "light years" ahead of anything done by either himself or others in this fascinating, emerging industry that offers so much lifestyle and income rewards to those who master the techniques involved.

More can be learned about this BootCamp HERE.

Jude Wright might be on of the most unorganized affiliate marketers, but not anymore. Jude's been working in Internet Marketing for a lot of years. Don't worry Jude, I won't say how many!

As a basically unorganized person, Jude admits, "I was losing everything! I needed a solution to help me find the information that I wrote on slips of paper, kept in notebooks and saved in emails. I wanted to find that information fast!"
 
An old hand at creating databases for the construction industry, Jude turned her attentions to making one for Internet Marketing too. 

The result is a MUST have application for Affiliate Marketers called i-MarketingOrganizer.

The Version 1 software application is the result of Jude's real world experiences in Affiliate Internet Marketing, lots of research, and hard work. i-MarketingOrganizer works beautifully!

Personally, I can't even begin to tell you how valuable a little application this is. Imagine having all your affiliate program account information at your fingertips 24/7 … imagine having all you passwords and usernames waiting for you on your desktop every time you need them … and most importantly, imagine finding any of them in seconds.

No more scraps of paper or notebooks filled with scribbles. Welcome to the enlightened age of Affiliate Marketing … welcome to the world of i-MarketingOrganizer.

I was reading a few relevant tips from Darren at ProBlogger about some Do's and Dont's for professional business blogs. I wanted to pass on his wisdoms because I think that they're right on the money, no pun intended.

These are the same strategies I use on my blogs Affiliate Blogger, Affiliate Marketers and Affiliate Blog.

The topic was about what to do if you have viewers coming to your blog, but they never buy anything through you. The advice is sage:

Product relevancy and quality - unless the products you're promoting relate to the content/topic of your blogging you're wasting your time. Not only should they be relevant - they should be quality affiliate products. Don't get sucked into promoting something just because it relates to your site. Test it for yourself and if it's rubbish - stay clear. You can hurt your own reputation by recommending second rate products.

Traffic - the more people that see the promotions you run the better. While traffic isn't the only factor, it is certainly a big one. Work at drawing people to your blog and particularly to the pages that you are featuring affiliate promotions on.

Placement - affiliate links IN content tend to out perform promotions that you run in sidebars or banner ads. One genuine review of the product (see next point) seen by a handful of readers can be much more powerful than a banner at the top of your blog seen by many readers.

Your reputation and 'Sales Pitch' - I find that affiliate products work best for me on sites where I have a loyal readership of people who respect what I say and when I give genuine recommendation that show not only the positives of a product but the weaknesses in it. The way you promote the product is as influencial as almost anything else. Don't hype, don't lie and don't spin it.

The Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Internet Marketing Advisory Board announced a Best Practices for Online Advertising Networks and Affiliate Marketing.

The DMA list is a simple five rules, but important rules that set a generalized guildline for the Affiliate Marketing Industry … something sorely lacking.

The only rule I see as having possible difficulty in obtaining,is the full disclosure of their eligible sites. These Marketing firms keep their sites a virtual secret to stay on top of their game … not something they would readily share.

The second Affiliate Bootcamp was a little rough going because of technical problems with the new VOIP conference facility, but everyone huddled together and a work-around was soon presented.

Good thing because the second class has a lot of visual aids to help you to understand the concepts and tools presented.

The big lesson to be learned in the second class is something I learned years ago … the hard way. It's imperative to your business success that you work in an organized manner. Keeping records of your URLs, usernames and passwords is not a trivial task.

One of the tools James Martell endorses and uses is Affiliate Organizer. Affiliate Organizer's affiliate program is only open to customers who have purchased Affiliate Organizer.

According to James…

As a successful affiliate marketer and author of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook I learned very early on the importance of *properly recording* all the usernames, passwords, control panels, hosting companies, domain name registrars, software serial numbers, etc. provided to me by the various companies so that I could *find this important information when I needed it*.

Getting and staying organized can be a daunting task, however I could see that it was important if I wanted to succeed with affiliate programs, …so I had to figure out a way. I did, and then dedicated the first chapter of my training manual to the subject and titled it: "How To Get And Stay Organized".

It's that important.

That sums up my sharing a little about the second Affiliate Marketer's Bootcamp class.

In case you missed my first post on Affiliate Bootcamp ….

Joining solid affiliate programs is a good start. But the affiliate program is usually only going to give you banner ads and text ads … most don't provide the content part.

Here's my advice, do a search on "free rewrite articles." Pick an article repository, go there, search on your keywords … not sure what they are for you, but an example would be "music" … be as specific in the keywords as you can. Music might be too general.

Grab yourself some articles. You must publish articles with the author's signature at the bottom. Give credit for the content where credit is due.

Now, keep yourself out of trouble with Google. You have to write some content too. You need to have about 20-40% of the content on the page be unique. On every page!

So, if I were you I'd write a few paragraphs about the article's topic, maybe getting a little focused on the keywords you're going for on that page. Definately use your keywords as the anchor text for the affiliate program's links.

Meaning, if you're talking about electric guitars on a page and have an article on electric guitars, then in the part you write, link the words "electric guitars" to the affiliate program's link to their electric guitars. See?

You can't touch the content of the author's article. It's a matter of honor on that reguard. It's your way of valuing that author giving you free content.

Basically, you're writing an intro to the article and you need to make a clear distinction between what you're writing and what the other guy wrote. This should resolve your content issues for now.

It's a lot of work, but that's how it's done. Dig in!

Currently, I don't offer any one-on-one tutoring at Affiliate Guild … yet! If you guys think that's something I should do sooner rather than later, then let me know. I would have to charge a fee, but I also could keep it reasonable. Affiliate Guild has a complete school already in place, so it's not that hard to do.

You might have read my posts about the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp. Taking this course is really helping me to be more aware of what the newer affiliate's needs are. It's all information I already know, but it's always good to hear it again. I'll be blogging and posting about things I think could benefit others. Maybe some of that will help you as well?!

The Affiliate Guild has recently posted a great affiliate help list tips of 25 things that new and struggling affiliates trying to make a go of affiliate marketing should take a look at and give careful consideration to.

The Good Advice for New Affiliates post was inspired by Linda Buquet's super affiliate contest going on at 5 star affiliate programs.

Good Advice for New Affiliates
from the Affiliate Guild

25 Affiliate Tips To Success
1. Too much time building websites will bog you down. Make easy to maintain sites.

2. SEO does matter if you want targeted traffic.

3. Get a newsletter email opt-in on every page of every website you own.

4. Either get a forum or get a blog going. (Need one built?)

5. Write about your affiliate programs (article-repository.com). Tell everyone!

6. Focus on conversion not payout. Commissions are important though.

7. Get really, really niche.

8. Find affiliate programs that will be around awhile.

9. Find a search engine friendly cloaking script for your links.

10. There is more to affiliate life than Google! Diversify!

11. Learn about your affiliate programs and speak intellegently about them.

12. If you don't see what you want to represent, go get it. Consider your own affiliate network.

13. Make friends with Affiliate Managers … and if you have a lot of traffic ask for a bigger percentage on payout.

14. Work with reputable leadership (affiliate guild)

15. Buy from the affiliate program if you want to know how they work. We do it.

16. Monetize your websites.

17. If you have enough traffic sell ad space. If you have good SEO ranking, charge more for ads.

18. Ask for the sale. Most affiliate program banners don't close sales, you must do it.

19. You must work 8-10+ hours daily to be a successful super affiliate.

20. Keep it really simple … accomplish your goals with focused resources.

21. Find affiliate programs that offer a wide variety of advertising opportunities from banners to datafeeds.

22. Find affiliate programs that require strong marketing ethics and follow them, WIN-WIN.

23. Find affiliate programs that payout on schedule everytime. You're in control here!

24. Look for affiliate programs with affiliate tracking for phone sales you generate.

25. Look for affiliate programs with solid servers and software that works 100% of the time. Other affiliates write about the bad ones, so be aware and read the affiliate forums and blogs.

Posted by Bobbie Grennier on August 10, 2006 05:53 PM | Permalink