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Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing arrangement between online merchants and distributors (affiliates) in which the affiliate earns a commission.

 

 

Video: How Affiliate Marketing Works #2

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After my recent debacle with YouTube in which they took down some of my most informative videos, I decided to remake my “How Affiliate Marketing Works” video.

The newest version demonstrates how I make money from my personal blog at RosalindGardner.me and covers blog content, finding and installing your affiliate links.

Of course, to learn all about how affiliate marketing works, get the Super Affiliate Handbook – the affiliate marketing industry's standard training manual OR join my multi-media affiliate coaching membership site at Affiliate Blogger PRO.

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

Congratulations – You Just Earned $0.00

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I love receiving affiliate commission sales notices that state how much I just earned from the sale of a product that I've recommended on my site.

But those that read “You have earned an affiliate fee of 0.00 USD for the sale of XYZ product on Wed Apr 6 2011 9:44:29 MST“, don't thrill me so much.

They make me sit up and take real notice and ask “Huh, WHY???“. (Imagine a really whiny voice – especially considering I received 2 of those notices within minutes that meant a loss of more than $100 in commissions. Grrrr.)

In this particular case, the answer was pretty simple.

The merchant had moved their program to another affiliate network and was no longer paying commissions on sales generated by affiliate links from their affiliation with the previous affiliate network.

Good grief! I thought I'd changed all those links!

Sure enough, a review through my various sites led me to the errant link quickly.

I changed it even more quickly.

Just one more reason to pay attention to your merchant's email announcements and make sure that your affiliate links are actually generating commissions!

Affiliate Marketing in April: No Fooling Around

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Don't let April showers get you down! Rainy days are a great excuse to buckle down to work.

The month can start off great with an April Fool's joke like sharing Google's Motion, detailing a new way to communicate using email. Check it out, it's hilarious.

Figuring out how to monetize an April Fool's joke might be a little difficult however.

So, checking our holiday calendar, you'll see that we have the following popular events, holidays and special days coming up this month:

  1. Tax Filing Deadline (15th in the U.S. – 30th in Canada)
  2. Earth Day – April 22nd
  3. Easter Weekend – April 22nd – 24th

Holidays and observances in April 2016:

  • 1 April Fool's Day
  • 1 International Fun at Work Day
  • 1 International Tatting Day
  • 2 Children's Book Day
  • 2 National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
  • 2 Reconciliation Day
  • 3 Don't Go to Work Unless it's Fun Day – we know your decision
  • 3 Tweed Day
  • 4 Hug a Newsman Day
  • 4 National Walk to Work Day – first Friday of month
  • 4 Walk Around Things Day
  • 4 School Librarian Day
  • 4 Tell a Lie Day
  • 5 Go for Broke Day
  • 6 Plan Your Epitaph Day – a little morbid if you ask me
  • 6 Sorry Charlie Day
  • 7 Caramel Popcorn Day – Most likely created by a popcorn maker, or an Ecard company.
  • 7 National Beer Day
  • 7 No Housework Day
  • 7 World Health Day
  • 8 All is Ours Day
  • 8 Draw a Picture of a Bird Day
  • 9 Name Yourself Day
  • 9 Winston Churchill Day
  • 10 Golfer's Day
  • 10 National Siblings Day
  • 11 Eight Track Tape Day – do you remember those?
  • 11 Barbershop Quartet Day
  • 11 National Submarine Day
  • 12 Big Wind Day – this day blows me away!
  • 12 Russian Cosmonaut Day
  • 13 Scrabble Day
  • 14 Ex Spouse Day
  • 14 International Moment of Laughter Day
  • 14 Look up at the Sky Day – don't you have anything better to do?
  • 14 National Pecan Day
  • 14 Reach as High as You Can Day
  • 15 Rubber Eraser Day
  • 15 Titanic Remembrance Day
  • 16 National Eggs Benedict Day
  • 16 National Librarian Day
  • 16 National Stress Awareness Day
  • 17 Bat Appreciation Day
  • 17 Blah, Blah, Blah Day
  • 17 National Cheeseball Day
  • 17 Pet Owners Independence Day
  • 18 International Juggler's Day – also applies to multi tasking office workers
  • 18 Newspaper Columnists Day
  • 18 Patriot's Day – third Monday of the month
  • 19 National Garlic Day
  • 20 Look Alike Day
  • 20 Volunteer Recognition Day
  • 21 Kindergarten Day
  • 21 National High Five Day third Thursday
  • 22 Girl Scout Leader Day
  • 22 National Jelly Bean Day
  • 23 Lover's Day
  • 23 National Zucchini Bread Day – they hold this at a time when you are not sick of all that zucchini.
  • 23 Take a Chance Day
  • 23 World Laboratory Day
  • 24 Pig in a Blanket Day
  • 25 East meets West Day
  • 25 World Penguin Day
  • 26 Hug an Australian Day
  • 26 National Pretzel Day
  • 26 Richter Scale Day
  • 27 Administrative Professionals Day (Executive Admin's Day, Secretary's Day) – date varies
  • 27 Babe Ruth Day
  • 27 National Prime Rib Day
  • 27 Tell a Story Day
  • 28 International Astronomy Day
  • 28 Great Poetry Reading Day
  • 28 Kiss Your Mate Day – guys, do not forget this one. Kiss her, then read her some poetry.
  • 28 Take Your Daughter to Work 4th Thursday
  • 29 Arbor Day -last Friday of month
  • 29 Greenery Day
  • 29 National Shrimp Scampi Day
  • 30 Hairstyle Appreciation Day
  • 30 National Honesty Day

Here is a short list of products that you might consider promoting this month:

  • Tax filing software
  • Credit reporting and repair
  • Money management books
  • Energy-saving gadgets, e.g. the TED 5000-C – The Energy Detective I have one of these and it really makes you think twice about the energy you're using when you can see exactly how much it is costing you per hour.
  • Green gifts (see the CafePress list below)
  • Trees for Earth Day (look at NatureHills Nursery on ShareaSale)
  • Religious books icons and ornaments from Amazon
  • Chocolate bunnies (look for something really unique)
  • Easter goodies, decor, clothing (bunny suit?), toys, movies (I'm not the only one who watches the The Ten Commandments every year, am I?), books….

CafePress lists the following as the most popular green gifts in their store.

  • Green t-shirts
  • Green sweatshirts & hoodies
  • Green bags
  • Green long sleeve t's
  • Green tank tops
  • Green mugs
  • Green baby bodysuits
  • Green kids baseball jerseys
  • Green baby bibs
  • Green apron & kitchen aprons
  • Green polos
  • Green hats & caps
  • Green plus size
  • Green more fun stuff
  • Green steins
  • Green teddy bears

That should give you a good start.

As always take a good look around Amazon and check out their holiday and event product recommendations. Then see if you can find the same product listed with one of your merchants in an affiliate network where the commission will be higher. Make sure that the merchant is a BIG name merchant though – one that your customers will be as comfortable purchasing from as they would be ordering on Amazon.

Have a happy green Easter and don't let the taxes get you down!

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

How to Spot a Scarcity Marketing Scam

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Scarcity marketing is a strategy used by sellers to create a sense of urgency in the prospect to buy a product immediately.

This is most often accomplished by stating that the product is available for a limited time or in limited quantities, e.g. “Offer ends March 31st” or “Only 36 copies left”.

The latter tactic works especially well when the prospective buyer knows that there were only a couple hundred units originally and now there are only 36 available.

For example, take a look at the screenshot below which shows the order page for a Clickbank product that I looked at this morning.

“WOW!, that is selling like hotcakes – I'd better buy it now!” you might think.

That's almost what I did until I stopped and thought harder for a moment.

The text under Item Description, “… WARNING: ONLY 36 COPIES LEFT…” is the description that the vendor supplies to Clickbank when they post the product in the Marketplace.

Smell a rat?

Wait, it gets stinkier still.

A seller might want to limit sales if they have a training program to which they attend to students personally (like I do at Affiliate Blogger PRO) and therefore more sales means more work.

But no Clickbank vendor in their right mind would limit sales of an ebook to 215 copies. It just doesn't make sense. Maybe if they were doing a deeply discounted offer – but not for the full price of $47.

Nor would that Clickbank vendor get hundreds of affiliates to promote the product. Seriously, would YOU bother to promote a product where there were only 215 copies available and you knew that all the so-called ‘Top Guns' were promoting it as well?

I hope not!

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying that scarcity marketing is not an ethical strategy – it IS, when used in an honest and upright manner.

But I sure as heck wouldn't even consider buying a product from someone who so blatantly lies to (tries to scam) their prospects.

Anyway, check out the sales page (it's great copy although I wish he'd stop yelling at some point) and then click through to the order page and see if there aren't still just 36 copies left. LOL

By the way, if you really want to buy the product – that is my affiliate link – feel free to use it. 🙂

As always, stop and think before you click “Order”.

Affiliate Marketing in March: Go Green

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Affiliate Marketing in MarchCheck out the holiday calendar and you'll notice that there are a number of holidays and observances which lend themselves to affiliate marketing opportunities in March.

The most popular dates and events are:

  1. St. Patrick's Day – March 17th
  2. Spring equinox – March 20th
  3. NCAA March Madness

Month-long Celebrations in March

  • Irish American Month
  • Music in Our Schools Month
  • National Craft Month
  • National Frozen Food Month
  • National Irish American Heritage Month- designated by Congress in 1995.
  • National Nutrition Month
  • National Peanut Month
  • National Women's History Month
  • Red Cross Month
  • Social Workers Month

Celebrations by Date in March 2016:

  • 1 National Pig Day
  • 1 Peanut Butter Lovers' Day
  • 2 Old Stuff Day
  • 3 I Want You to be Happy Day
  • 3 If Pets Had Thumbs Day
  • 3 National Anthem Day
  • 3 Peach Blossom Day
  • 4 Employee Appreciation Day first Friday in March
  • 4 Holy Experiment Day
  • 4 Hug a GI Day
  • 4 National Walk to Work Day
  • 4 National Salesperson Day – first Friday in the month
  • 5 Multiple Personality Day
  • 6 Dentist's Day
  • 6 National Frozen Food Day
  • 7 National Crown Roast of Pork Day
  • 8 Be Nasty Day
  • 8 International (Working) Women's Day
  • 9 Panic Day
  • 10 Middle Name Pride Day
  • 10 Popcorn Lover's Day second Thursday
  • 11 Johnny Appleseed Day
  • 11 Worship of Tools Day – guys, you can relate
  • 12 Girl Scouts Day
  • 12 Plant a Flower Day
  • 13 Ear Muff Day
  • 13 Jewel Day
  • 14 Learn about Butterflies Day
  • 14 National Potato Chip Day
  • 14 National Pi Day- Why today? Because today is 3.14, the value of Pi.
  • 15 Everything You Think is Wrong Day
  • 15 Ides of March
  • 15 Incredible Kid Day
  • 15 Dumbstruck Day
  • 15 National Agriculture Day – date varies
  • 16 Everything You Do is Right Day
  • 16 Freedom of Information Day
  • 17 Submarine Day – the hero sandwich or the boat??
  • 17 Saint Patrick's Day
  • 18 Goddess of Fertility Day
  • 18 National Agriculture Day (date varies)
  • 18 Supreme Sacrifice Day
  • 19 National Quilting Day – third Saturday of month
  • 19 Poultry Day
  • 20 International Earth Day
  • 20 Extraterrestrial Abductions Day
  • 20 Proposal Day
  • 21 Credit Card Reduction Day
  • 21 Fragrance Day
  • 22 National Goof Off Day
  • 23 National Chip and Dip Day
  • 23 Near Miss Day
  • 24 National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day
  • 25 Good Friday – date varies
  • 25 Pecan Day
  • 25 Waffle Day
  • 26 Make Up Your Own Holiday Day
  • 26 National Spinach Day
  • 27 Easter Date varies
  • 27 National “Joe” Day
  • 28 Dyngus Day always the Monday after Easter
  • 28 Something on a Stick Day
  • 29 National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
  • 29 Smoke and Mirrors Day
  • 30 National Doctor's Day
  • 30 I am in Control Day
  • 30 Take a Walk in the Park Day
  • 31 Bunsen Burner Day
  • 31 National Clam on the Half Shell Day

The defining color for the month is decidedly green.

But your blog doesn't need to be dedicated to basketball, holidays, all things Irish, green living or gardening to profit from those topics.

Here are examples of how to integrate these topics into a number of different niche topics.

  1. Community blog – Write about planned festivities in your town.
  2. Personal blog – Post about how you plan to celebrate the events.
  3. Sports – Not a basketball fan? Blog about teams that go green for St. Patty's.
  4. Fashion blog – pretty green handbags for spring.
  5. Cooking blog – your favorite green recipes… and don't forget to talk about the green beer!
  6. Health blog – Best greens for healthy nutrition.
  7. Travel – spring break destinations. Greener travel.
  8. Mommy blog – kids' St. Patrick's Day party.

Use your imagination. Almost any two niches can be married successfully with a little thought.

What should you sell?

Well, you can sell just about anything related to the niche and the theme – i.e. t-shirts, cookbooks, team jerseys (any type of clothing), event tickets, gift cards – you name it.

Be unique in both your content product offerings.

Search your favorite affiliate networks for St. Patrick's and spring specials. Shareasale in particular always has “Prepare for the Upcoming Holidays” near the top of its interface with holiday names linked to promotions from your affiliated merchants.

Here's a unique product / service that I came across recently that would work for so many different types of blogs, and not just in March.

It's called Going Green Today and it's on the Performance Based ECO affiliate network. What they do is create action plans for 90 day Green Makeovers through free lifestyle assessments. Visitors take the assessments to see if they can save $2000 from their costs of living.

Look for it in the near future on http://RosalindGardner.com which sports a Greener Living section.

See… no matter what the month, you can blog about almost anything. 🙂

So, what are you blogging about in March?

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

The Death of Bum Marketing

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I think it is very likely that what has become known as Bum Marketing is doomed to die a dismal death in the near future.

What is Bum Marketing?

Bum Marketing is a strategy used to generate affiliate commissions through distribution of articles written specifically to rank highly for low-competition keywords.

The method was promoted as an easy way for beginners to make money online without having to invest much money, time or effort.

SO easy in fact that a ‘homeless bum' could do it from the local library! (Ya right).

How does Bum Marketing work?

  1. Do extensive keyword research to find low competition niche markets and products with moderate to high demand.
  2. Find a product or service that can be promoted to that niche through an affiliate program.
  3. Write scads of articles following a keyword density formula designed to get top search engine rankings quickly.
  4. Submit those articles to popular article directories.

The objective being to get readers of those articles to visit your site for more information about the product or to have them opt-in to a list through a squeeze page.

Why is Bum Marketing Dead?

Google's latest algorithm change, Farmer, spells death for Bum Marketing sites in the same way as crappy, useless Adsense sites were targeted in past algorithm changes.

Chris Knight of the uber-popular EzineArticles article directory made the following comments in his Search Engine Algorithm Changes post about the site's traffic on February 26, 2011:

Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half.

and..

Traffic was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. In our life-to-date, this is the single most significant reduction in market trust we’ve experienced from Google.

By result, Chris is having to implement a number of changes to his article directory to ward off potential spammers, i.e. bum marketers. Some of those changes include:

  • No more submissions through a WordPress plugin,
  • raising the bar on articles written for keyword density,
  • removing articles in ‘spammy' categories such as reverse cell phone lookup and acai berry
  • and requiring exclusivity.

Hmmm.. those changes will make it much more difficult to be a bum marketer, don't you think?

I'm not opposed to article marketing, but as a solo marketing method, it is NOT (and never has been) a sustainable way to do business online.

Rather than posting all your content to article directories and risk having it disappear from the search engine results through an algorithm change or removal by an editor, control your destiny by starting a blog and driving traffic to exclusive high-quality articles.

In other words, don't be (or become) a bum.

Join Affiliate Blogger PRO. 🙂

Content Farms Hammered by Google

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Webmasters who spent their time gaming search engine results with low-quality content farms and scraper sites have been hit hard since Google's latest algorithm change last week.

In a February 24th, 2011 post on the official Google blog, Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts stated:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Although a CNN Money report cited a number comments made on the WebmasterWorld forum about the traffic and business-killing nature of this latest change, I've personally noticed that are just as many statements to the contrary by webmasters who don't rely on content farms to drive traffic to their sites.

I too have seen traffic increases to my sites in the past few days, ranging anywhere from 15.2% to 82.36% and 125.5%.

So, no complaints here.

As always, follow Google's guidelines regarding quality content and your sites will do fine. Try to game the results and you could find yourself looking for a job offline.

So… did your traffic increase or decrease since the latest Google Update?

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