Archive for Affiliate Articles
What is an in house campaign
Posted by: | CommentsI was asked yesterday what I meant when I said ‘promoting an in house ad’ onsite.
As a publisher you have limited prime ad space on each of your pages. With each page you create you are faced with the decision of what to place in these spots (ideally you will have an adserver tag which will rotate your offers/campaigns but that is another training post).
An in house ad would mean that you are promoting an offer to your visitors that benefits your website over an advertisers campaign.
Here are some examples of possible inhouse campaigns:
1) Announcing something new on your website such as a ‘giveaway page or new tool’.
2) Encouraging sign ups; (register now) or newsletter subscriptions (get offers to your inbox for free)
3) Featuring another page of your website
4) Visitor surveys
Sometimes (especially with a new site) increasing your subscriber base is more important then a paid advertisement . Why? The value of your ad space is based on your traffic volume. So until you have enough visitors and subscribers (those who return to your site) the spot has little or no value as a paid advertisement.
To recap:
1) In house campaigns are not paid advertisements but your own ads and offers that increase your traffic /subscriber base or announce new features on your site.
2) When you first create your design and page layouts the top spaces should be used to increase your followers and encourage return visits to your website.
Affiliate Question – How to create an affiliate post
Posted by: | Comments“I have done posts on my blog but they have always been product reviews. I am not sure how to go about doing one that is just for the purpose of affiliate links. “
The goal of an affiliate post is to generate traffic from search engines specific to the offer or product being featured on the page.
A parent looking for childrens Halloween costumes would type what into a search engine?
So the goal for a post would be creating a SEO rich post using these keywords and making a specific call to action to get users to click your affiliate link.
Here’s an example using Kidorable;
Keywords: Kidorable, children, Halloween costume
Post title: Kidorable as a Halloween Costume for children
Content should be about 350-500 words and include your Keywords.
i.e.
Have you ever thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great if my child could use their Halloween costume year round?’ Well I have found the answer!
Kidorable’s unique line of rain gear for children makes a great Halloween costume that not only keeps your children dry but your child gets to wear their Halloween costume all year long.
I really liked these ideas for a Kidorable Halloween costume …
Feature some of the products. Offer tips on personalizing the rain gear – include a coupon code – get creative it’s your unique content.
Be sure to also include META tags. Including keywords, title, and description.
Make sure your urls are search engine friendly
We always include a banner for our programs that is 500 by 100 which fits perfect at the end of a blog post – where it is more likely to be clicked by a reader of the post. you can grab the html code in your CJ dashboard:
To promote an affiliate program effectively you want to have a bit of a plan.
The banner would be great on any Halloween related posts. Banners in a post or article will CLICK better then sidebar items…
You could even simply create posts about Halloween in general :
Halloween craft ideas for kids
Halloween safety
My kids Halloween costumes
Think about who would click a Kidorable banner – what are they interested in? Write a post for that shopper and include the banner …
Hope that helps!
Are you Harnessing Twitter?
Posted by: | CommentsAs I was visiting some of our affiliate partners websites this morning I noticed that most of our affiliate partners have listed their Twitter and Facebook profiles on their sidebars. I personally have found Twitter to be a great way to generate visitors (aka traffic) to my blogs but over and over I see established affilaite sites (with great content) not utilizing their twitter accounts as a means to generate traffic to their blogs and websites.
My Twitter Affiliate Traffic Tips:
1) Build your followship. Ask yourself who are the people you will find your offers and tweets interesting. Only these followers will engage (click) your tweets. I personally use Tweet Adder to locate unique targeted tweeples to follow. Tweet adder is affordable and can help manage all aspects of your Twitter management.
2) Interact with your followers – do not JUST post out your offers and links.
3) Use a Twitter management tool such as HootSuite to manage your twitter accounts. Schedule future tweets.
As an affiliate you need to build a followship of over 4000 targeted followers before you will see a lot of benefit to your campaigns.
So put it on your to do list.
review your Twitter efforts and establish a way to build your follow-ship and manage your interaction with your followers.
Let’s talk links – affiliate training
Posted by: | CommentsYour goal should be (for any site or blog) to build an ongoing (and increasing) stream of QUALITY traffic (visitors) to your blog and keeping them on your site or blog so they INTERACT with aspects of your blog that will generate revenue.
Why do links matter?
Both the incoming links to your website AND your outgoing links matter.
Incoming Links: Incoming links matter to the search engines, your credibility, and the quality of your visitors.
Incoming links from websites with relevant content create relevant visitors. 10 RELEVANT visitors has more impact to your revenue then 100 non interested visitors who don’t stay to read your site or interact. i.e. if you have a blog about pregnancy, you want links back from websites relevant to those interested in pregnancy.
Outgoing Links: Outgoing links matter to your success and revenue potential.
It is basic math. You want your visitor to click your affiliate link (or other revenue generating link). If your side bar is cluttered with too many outgoing buttons, badges, and links, you are ASKING your visitor to LEAVE your blog or website over asking them to interact with a revenue generating aspect of your website.
You need a LINK strategy for every one of your websites and blogs. You also need to review the effectiveness of your links. Does that entre card widget or blog frog widget bring you QUALITY visitors? Revenue? Does that banner generate you revenue? If not it’s time to make some changes.
Speaking of banner ads – Are you monetizing your ad space by using an ad server? Or do you show the same banner to EVERYONE on every page?
Google offers a free adserver solution – so there’s no reason you aren’t using an adserver:
