The U.S. Is A Brand New Market

After reading all the good reviews about Buy.at launching in the U.S. I thought I would head over on Opening Day to take a look at what they were about and to look into creating an account depending on what the folks from the U.K. had to offer. After all, I am always excited to see what sorts of innovations other affiliate networks are developing, especially from other countries because I think they have an ability to look at things from a completely different perspective than U.S. companies.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed.

We Do Not Know You Yet

There was not much description or examples of features or content on their pages, and they only have one affiliate program, CD WOW!, whose brand I did not recognize and had never heard of… (which doesn’t mean a lot – I don’t get out much:) ) - I recognize all of this could be because they are just getting off the ground – but, from what I understand they have been around for a while in the U.K. so I was hoping for more.

Note: An article about the 2003 lawsuit involving CD WOW! and the British Phonographic Industry (pronounced with an F - NOT a P) can be found here at Wikipedia and here at The Register.

Again, due to the high praise folks have been posting about But.at recently, I thought there might be more content “inside”. So, I started the account creation process where I found they wanted a Primary URL, permanent Buy.at handle which apparently cannot be changed and Financial Details – routing & account numbers.

Now, I don’t mind the URL and handle so much, but, they mention that, “…your web handle is permanent, and as such needs to be unique to yourself, and be suitable for use across all of your operations.”

It Is Better To Date Before We Get Married

I don’t even know what “operations” I’m interested in with Buy.at yet, and they want me to create some sort of permanent handle? A lot of thoughts ran through my head – should I use my common “handle”? If I do, what if they turn out to be less stellar than I have heard? I don’t want that “handle” nor do I want a Primary URL to be associated there… What if they turn out to be great? If clients will be exposed to it, I don’t want some sort of generic “xyz2468” thing to be my handle. Remember, there is nothing on any of their U.S. pages where they disclose how these pieces of information will be used in their programs.

I was also extremely uncomfortable giving an affiliate network I am not familiar with my routing & account numbers without, at least, reading a privacy disclosure statement or knowing more about what the network has to offer.

Bottom line – And this is just me– I did not create an account with them today. There may be a lot more trust in the U.K. where folks feel more comfortable making these sorts of commitments and giving away sensitive information without the full picture. But, I think for me, at least, I will wait for a little more disclosure and a lot more trust to be built by them before I jump in.

What do you think?

I need to outsource!
I need to recognize that I cannot do it all.
I need a company willing to offer designs BEFORE taking my money
I need a web graphic design company that is not going to take advantage.

I think the web design bid process is backward - If a company believes in their ability, they should offer concepts for potential clients to consider. We, as consumers, should be able to make a decision between different designs which different companies offer to us.

We should be able to make decisions based on which one we as THE “business owners” believe match our vision.

Right?

Wrong…

Apparently, the way it works these days is that every firm I have contacted wants me to give them money before I see one single line… Before I see one single design concept.

They want me to give them the money earned with my blood and my sweat before they show me their ability.

They demand money I have earned for my family, earned by sacrificing sleep and time with family so that they can OVERCHARGE me for hosting fees and added pages.

Any of you that know of any firm who will not steal my money – who are competent in design. Please comment - I would love to give them credit and business if they will not take advantage.

Recently, I have noticed what seems to be a growing trend from sites and blogs that I consider to be legit, as well as, extremely valuable, promising money or fame for the quantity of comments left on their site.

What Do You Think?

I am curious what folks really think about this practice. To be honest, I am not sure what I think the about entire issue. I believe there are many ways and multiple sides to examine.

I think rewarding others by providing trackback links to those who write and comment about your site, or the products you are promoting, or your articles is a great way to say “thank you.” However, doing so based on models of quantity may ultimately backfire.

Human SPAM or Computer SPAM - It’s Still SPAM!

Most of the SPAM comments I have seen from my other blogs this year have been, “Right on! Keep up the good work!” or “Good Post” or “Great Article”, quite frankly, I don’t care if that comment comes from a human being or an automated posting application – I do not see any value in these comments. I’m grown-up enough not to need my ego stroked for no apparent reason. Also, there are many services today which provide that level of feedback from readers, such as, “digg” or “BUMPzee!”. I think comment value comes from well thought out reactions to our articles. It makes our articles better and the communities we are trying to build more valuable.

Moderating SPAM… really?

The sites that have started to promise these types of rewards affirm that they will not allow comments from folks who appear to be SPAMming, but, I have to wonder how many resources will be needed to really ensure that level of quality, and how long it will be before their comments are never read by those who frequent their site because they are full of “Good post” or “Wow, great article, couldn’t have said it better myself” or “Keep up the good work – Great Article.” All of which would take less than 10 seconds for a person to write.

An Alternative - How About Quality?

I really think it would be much better to re-consider the reward model being used and apply a “Post Quality” metric to reward your commentators that way. I doubt there would be a way to automate this, but for those of us who work hard to generate legitimate content – that is a manual process too. I do not believe it would be that much more of a time investment to read a few comments and make a subjective decision to reward the ones which we like and appreciate the most.

Your Turn - Let Us Know What You Think

It is Sunday, the “official” day of rest. I thought it would be a great opportunity to write a really quick and easy article about rest, so that I can get back to my lounging around.

As new affiliates we often find ourselves becoming obsessed with the amount of work to be done along with all the opportunities out there. Personally, this week, I have been working on affiliate/blog/website things from around 6p.m. – 3a.m. after working my regular job during the day… I also have a family, church and other things in my life.

What I have heard recently from other affiliates & bloggers is that they have similar situations.

I just want to encourage folks to remember the people and things in their lives still need attention too. If you do not want to take Sunday off from affiliate marketing, schedule another day, at least once per week. Take time; get a good night’s sleep before and after your “off” day. Schedule a couple of things to do with other people AWAY you’re your computer, AWAY from your desk. Have fun!

Remember, we do not live to make money – we make money to live.

I really doubt that the majority of us would like to look back on our lives as we lay on our death bed, and say, “You know, if I had to do it over again, I really wish I had spent more time working on that website!”

I would love to hear what you folks do on your day off. Please feel free to comment; maybe we can inspire each other to keep a balance in our lives.

First of all, you should read a post by VladTheAffiliate on My Affiliate Journey called Can You Afford Pay Per Click? Also, it might not hurt to read my post below called 5 Common Sense Tips About Affiliate Marketing and the comment by Mike from InsureMe.com at the bottom of the article. The key quote being:

One thing that I’ve learned early is – don’t give Google a dime unless you can get more than a dime back. Sounds simple, but there is always the temptation of thinking you can overspend and then hoping Google will start showing you some love. Truth is – it is likely that you will never see the love you need to recover the loss.

Alright, after all of that if you are still interested in using AdWords, I am guessing you believe that if you spend a dollar on AdWords you will get two dollars back, right? Well, the answer is complicated but the bottom line is simple; if you want to have any chance at all for this thing called AdWords to work, you will have to write compelling ads.

Be careful to follow Google’s Editorial Guidelines – mainly you can accomplish this by being careful not to “trick” or “get away” with anything “sneaky” - also, no triple punctuation marks like !!! or ??? or even ?!? that is a no-no with Google.

Capitalize Every Word In The Ad

One of my affiliate sites, currently under re-development, focuses on insurance. An ad I created for it reads as follows:
Cheap Car Insurance Quote
Compare To Get Your Best Rate – Up
To 5 Agents Bid For Your Business!

Notice that I am capitalizing words which are normally not capitalized in a title or sentence. Make sure you capitalize “And”, “But”, “To”, “Up”, “All”, and all the other words in your ad.

Tell Them What Your Product/Service Is or Isn’t

Remember the client has just performed a search, hopefully, on your title keywords which are part of your keyword list. But, some of those individual keywords may only vaguely represent your service. I have had bids on specific makes and models of cars in the past. So, somebody might do a search for “BMW Series 3” and come up with my ad. I want them to know that my ad is for a Car Insurance Quote – NOT for BMW auto parts or a leather seat cover because I am probably paying $4 - $6 per click. Insurance is a VERY expensive CPC market, so not many people are crazy enough to play there.

Call To Action – Try to Compel the Reader to Action

Notice in the above ad, that we are asking the customer to “Compare To Get…” Ask them to do something.

Give Them a Benefit Statement

Let them know why they would want to click on your ad. We need to let them know that they are in the driver’s seat, so to speak by telling them that up to 5 agents will bid for their business. Agents will be competing against each other for their business. Hopefully, they will like that and click the ad.

Brainstorm The Composition Of The Title And Ad Body

Get out a pad of paper and a pencil – Write down your ideas for headlines. Try to have at least ten different ideas, where you are telling the client what your service is, or what it isn’t. Try different arrangements; Put the Call to Action in your title and the Benefit Statement and Product Description in the body, or vice versa. Mix and match, be creative. Create multiple ads and track their performance, then use the best one.

Have Fun – But Remember, It MUST Pay For Itself!

Affiliate marketing is a business, you are in it to make money, not to support Google’s stock price.

Do NOT make the mistake I made and overspend your budget. If you spend a dime, make sure you are making a quarter back. If you spend a quarter, make sure you make fifty cents back.

Received feedback yesterday from a couple of guys who I respect about a few changes they felt needed to be made to help the site be more user friendly. So, I spent some time yesterday and this morning making changes to header styles and AdWords placement/style.

I cleaned up some of the Theme code for the sidebar, tried to make things look a little more uniform.

Hopefully, this work will make articles easier and friendlier to read.

I welcome any sort of feedback – good, bad, or indifferent. I am and will always be “in process.” I appreciate you folks for coming by and reading my stuff, clicking on my links and taking part in the site.

In the process of improving the site, I ran across a pretty neat resource called the Web Page Analyzer from Website Optimization. It is a free tool which will examine your site for size, composition, and download times at various speeds, and then makes very specific recommendations about how you can improve the speed of your site with best practices, HCI and website optimization. Check it out at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

I found it useful and it made me begin thinking about how I could possibly improve the loading times for the Theme and Plug-ins I use. No major internal programming changes yet. But, it gives me another thing to think about with regards to the site.

I am hoping to add a forum in the next few days, if I can figure out how to get that set up.

Boring Definitions – Stay with Me

Perception –
1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2. The effect or product of perceiving.
3. Psychology
a. Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.
b. The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected.
c. Insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by perceiving.
d. The capacity for such insight.
4.
a. Insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by perceiving.
b. The capacity for such insight.

Reality –
1. The quality or state of being actual or true.
2. One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: “the weight of history and political realities” (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.)
3. The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
4. That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.

Intent –
1. A course of action that one intends to follow.
2.
a. An aim that guides action; an objective.
b. intentions Purpose with respect to marriage: honorable intentions.
3. Medicine The process by which or the manner in which a wound heals.
4. Archaic Import; meaning.

Perception Is Reality?

Perception and reality can trump one another, can’t they? If we take Perception definition 2 it trumps Reality definition 4 because how can we know something exists objectively if we do not observe it or the evidence of it? Reality 1, 3 & 4 can be thought to trump perception 3 because all are based on the fact that things are real whether they can be observed or not and the definition of perception is that we must be able to perceive through our senses that something is real.

American Idol Is Full Of Good Intentions?!?!

It is said that everybody believes their intentions to be good and right. There is evidence of this every week on American Idol – where people who truly believe and intend to prove that they can sing, fail miserably. We know they fail because our perception causes us to cringe when we hear the first few notes.

So, we can ask, which is correct, the reality or the perception? Whose reality is correct, and whose perception is correct? Are they the same thing? Does it depend on our point of view?

Philosophers, Theologians and Scholars have spent years and lifetimes wrestling with the differences between perception, reality and intent. My point with regards to affiliate marketing, simply put, is this. Remembering the client is ALWAYS right we must allow our target audience the ability to perceive correctly the reality of our intent.

Courage, Courage, Courage

We must have the courage to admit our site design is not working and change it to fit the ability of our potential clients to perceive our intent

We must have the courage to admit that our current affiliate program is not converting correctly because they do not get how to allow clients the perception of an honest and safe transaction.

We must have the courage to make the hard decision to admit that we do not have the ability or the time to sing the whole song (design and write content) by ourselves.

What The Heck Does Simon Cowell Have To Do With It?

We should be the creators of the idea behind the work, not the actual laborers – Heck, as I understand it Simon Cowell cannot carry a tune to save his life – but he understands his audience and their ability to perceive what they like, and he GIVES it to them…

The Nuts of the Article

As affiliates, let’s have the courage to make the conscience decision to marry the perception of reality with our intent to present ourselves in a way that allows our current and potential clients to clearly perceive our intentions.

References:

American Psychological Association (APA):
Perception. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Perception

Chicago Manual Style (CMS):
Perception. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Perception (accessed: February 21, 2007).

Modern Language Association (MLA):
“Perception.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 21 Feb. 2007. dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Perception

Discouraged Affiliates Ask, “Where The Heck Is All The Money?”

I have to admit that it is fairly discouraging to get my measly $150 check from my top affiliate program when I read that the top 5 affiliates in that program each made $78,000, $78,000, $74,000, 67,000, & $60,000 last month. I mean really, why don’t we just pour salt & vinegar into an open wound?

It has occurred to me and I still at times think that with all of this money flying around out there, when do I get my share? What I try to keep in mind is the good news that I am brining home some extra $$$ albeit not much, it is consistent. I remind myself, that I have seen the potential for these ventures to pay-off. Some of what I am doing is generating a result and that is cause enough not to be discouraged.

Getting Rich Quick Is A Fantasy

Yeah, that’s right, I said it, what are you gonna do about it? “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is,” – common sense words from every hard working person/mentor I have ever met continues to ring true. Well, it seems that common sense isn’t so common.

How many affiliates have asked, begged, pleaded for the magic fairy dust which will create the income stream described above? The more I read and research, the more I find that it just doesn’t happen over night.

There Is NO Magic Fairy Dust

One of the neatest posts I watched and then read the other day was by Shawn Collins of http://www.affiliatetip.com – as he was answering the age old question “How do I make money as an affiliate marketer?” he mentions that he would WORK new sites for a couple of months before making a decision whether or not they were working. Now, in the scheme of things, most folks have probably spent years becoming proficient in their careers, so a couple of months may not seem like a long time. But, if you are not used to generating new content daily – 60 days could seem like an eternity.

Be Consistent In Your Affiliate Efforts

Bottom line, if you don’t work it, they won’t come. I know from experience, if you do not consistently write and contribute new content daily for a couple of months, you will not see the results you are looking for. Treat being an affiliate like a part time job. Invest 12 – 20 hours per week, and then see what happens after a couple of months. If you do not put in the time, do not expect a return.

Do Something You Love And The Money Will Follow

It is not hard to come up with ideas or to be creative about things that you love to do, think about, participate in, etc. There are volumes out there that would suggest that you do the thing which is going to make you the most EPC or that you need to have a plan to get rich. Here is my honest, practical advice - Make sure that you have an idea of a plan in your head before you get started. But, the most important thing to do is to get started doing something you love. You cannot learn/do/create everything at once.

Good luck and let me know where the chips fall.

And it started out innocent enough. A good blog posting from Tat called “Determining Which Crap To Take Off Your Site” where he made an innocent comment, a totally harmless comment, “BumpZee stays (it’s really BUMPZee but I’m lazy) and may go up higher on the page.”

To which Scott Jangro replied to almost immediately, being the involved community creator he is, “I’ve been thinking of changing the official spelling because I’m lazy too. I usually just spell it Bumpzee.”

“Noooooo!” I thought, “Say it isn’t so!”

I have been writing posts now for two whole days and working hard to make sure I type B-U-M-P-z-e-e-! BUMPzee! - Because I dig the name!

So, that spun me off in a whole new direction today, because, hey, who needs to work when the fate of our affiliate community hangs in the balance??? I went out and found a survey tool called Democracy 2.0.1 – Downloaded it – Tested it (well, I created a site survey and voted once… so, technically, I tested it… right?) – And now, my brothers and sisters, I present it to you – the poll for the future of BUMPzee!

*ahem* er, well, officially, this poll means nothing, heck Scott doesn’t even know I am writing this article, but let’s have a little fun, shall we?

So, without further ado:

I have figured out how to get the BUMPzee! buttons to work consistently in WordPress 2.0 by using a wonderfully free and easy plug-in called AdSense Deluxe.

AdSense Deluxe was created to allow folks to install AdSense in their WordPress 1.5+ blogs.  The reason it was needed was that <script> and WordPress do not play nice together when you are writing posts.

Of course, you can write <script> if you are modifying the WordPress files directly.  But, the beauty of AdSense Deluxe is that it will allow you to add <script> directly to your written posts.

It is a bit clunky to use it with BUMPzee! because you need to create a new AdSense Block for each article, but let’s consider it a “stop gap” until Jangro can create a more user friendly way for us “WordPressers” to have the live BUMPzee! button functionality. 

You can download AdSense Deluxe from here.  The compressed folder comes with a readme.txt which is exceedingly easy to understand and to install.

Once you install AdSense into your plug-ins directory, you can go to the Options panel through the WP Dashboard and create a new AdSense Block for each article you wish to track.

For that matter, you can use AdSense to make adding ANY sort of <script> in your written articles – this should be extremely valuable to affiliates who need to use scripting and want it to be part of their content.  Check out http://www.NewsMasterNetwork.com under the article titled Full Coverage Car Insurance – Fact or Fantasy? you will see an InsureMe box installed directly into the article text using AdSense Deluxe to accomplish it.

I hope you find this useful – it is amazing what you remember after not sleeping for a couple of days!