RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Make Money with PayPerPost

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Want to make some extra money as a blogger? Then take a look at PayPerPost, where advertisers are willing to pay you for your opinion on various topics.

PayPerPost works like this… You get your site approved, then search a list of opportunities, make a blog posting, get your post approved, and then get paid. The two highest paid opportunities available at this time are both from PayPerPost itself, at $20.00 per post. Most opportunities pay between $4.00 and $7.00. I found that the number of opportunities was somewhat limited however, with only 39 showing up this morning.

The site highlights 10 “Top Earners”, all of whom have earned more than $2000.00, and some as much as $3500.00.

Although I didn't find any examples of this, watch out for merchants who have affiliate programs in place. By placing a direct (non-paying) link to their site, you could be losing money… or making a lot less than if you were doing real affiliate marketing and using an affiliate link in the same post.

Sign up for PayPerPost and use my email addy – ‘partners at rosalinds.com' – as the referrer. I make a whole $5 when you make your first blog post. 🙂

MasteryTV’s Tom Wood: Biggest Spammer in My Inbox

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I signed up as a MasteryTV affiliate partner when it first launched and I've been trying to get off Tom Wood's list ever since.

In every email he sends there is a link labelled “Immediate and Permanent Removal from Mailings”. I've clicked that link (which is coded with my email address) each time I receive spam from Mr. Wood, and yet the crap still arrives week after week after *&/=@! week.

I've phoned the MasteryTV offices twice and both times left a message. Yet, still the mail comes.

OK, so Tom Wood is a SPAMMER. But more interesting is the fact that his affiliate program has been replaced with a ‘refer a friend' link.

What a neat trick. Get affiliates to promote your site, then remove the program so they can't earn anything and THEN spam the heck out of them.

All-round nice guy that Tom Wood.

Merchants: PLEASE Keep Your Links Updated

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Cheese me. I was in the Linkshare interface the other night getting Allzine links for blog posting about on the Roamsters.com site. Thirty magazines were returned in the Travel & Leisure category. I grabbed about ten of them, creating ten draft posts with magazine pictures and titles and planned to write descriptions of them later.

Well, good thing I clicked on some of those links. More than half of them no longer exist in Allzine's product database. Really, when I searched the Travel & Leisure category within Allzines itself, only 9 magazines were returned, meaning that 21 TWENTY-ONE!!!! of the Linkshare links were no good.

Of the nine that WERE good, some of them had broken graphics.

Lesson to affiliates: Check the merchant's site first to see whether or not the product is still offered. It's a hassle, I know, but better than wasting your time putting up product links that don't work and thereby frustrating your visitors.

Suggestion to merchants: Kindly make sure your product links are up to date!

Do Your Visitors Need a Shrink?

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Now, here's an interesting offer from eAdvertising.com.

It's a lead gen offer for Finding a Therapist (marriage counseling, therapy, psychological help).

The user enters ZIP on first page, selects from “issue” pulldown on second page, and then selects on a REAL therapist in their area, from whom they will receive a FREE first visit.

Affiliates get $8 per signup, which requires your visitor's first name, last name, phone number, best time to contact, email address zip. The offer is not incentivizable and accepts US Traffic Only.

I'd recommend placing this offer on any page of your site that receives copious traffic from comment spammers. Maybe they'll get the hint. 🙂

Should You Promote that Product as an Affiliate?

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A number of folks asked why I didn't participate in a recent launch of a product for affiliate marketers. Well, here's my advice…

Forget the Big Product Launches…

I set stiff criteria for how and when I choose to promote products, especially products available within the Internet and affiliate marketing niche.

First, I rarely participate in the ‘big' product launches anymore, as many of those products (and their producers) have gone the way of the dodo bird. Stephen Ducharme is only one example.

Do a search for his name today and in the top results are an article by Damon Zaharides titled “Stephen Ducharme Belly Flop” and a thread in Michael Green's HowToCorp forum “Screw Stephen Ducharme Over”. People were that mad at him for selling them a pack o' lies.

Marketers who promoted his product had to do some serious back-pedaling to regain their subscribers' trust. However, breaking a trust is like breaking a porcelain container. You can glue it back together, but the cracks will always show and it may never again hold water.

Do you want to lose subscribers or your reputation as an honest broker?

I thought not.

To protect your reputation, and more importantly, do right by your customers, here are my top 6 criteria for choosing products to promote.

  1. Reputable Merchant. If Yanik Silver tells me that has a new product available, I know my customers will be properly treated and respected. The merchants I trust have built their reputations based on quality products and excellent customer service, i.e. sound business principles.

    Likewise, there are merchants within your niche with whom you have worked that can be trusted without question.

    If you do not know a merchant, research their reputation online. Review and test their sites for attractiveness, usability and customer service responsiveness. If you have any doubts regarding their reputation, do not promote the product.

  2. Relevant High-Quality Product. Regardless of whether or not you know a merchant, review the product for quality and relevance. Will it benefit your subscribers in their work? Does it fulfill the promise made in the sales letter? Do all the features work?

    If you are unable to review the product, tell your subscriber that is the case, and explain why you feel confident to recommend the product without review. Remind them that the product comes with a guarantee if they are not satisfied.

  3. Reasonable Price. I hate the price gouging that goes on the Internet as much as anyone. If there is an existing product of similar quality available at a lower price, I do not recommend that you promote the new product. In fact, you may want to take the opportunity to do a comparative review ending with a recommendation for the lower-priced product.
  4. Low-Hype Sales Tactics. Sales letters for good products do not scream ridiculous promises.

    Regardless of merchant reputation or product quality, I recommend that you not promote products that make use of excessive hype or if the product name implies that users will achieve extraordinary results. There is a big difference between ‘How I Made X (Reasonable Sum) in One Year” and “Make X Million in X Minutes”. 🙂 Moreover, you do not want to make surfers more skeptical than they already are.

  5. Limit Choice to Prevent Confusion. There are a million “How to Build an Online Business” books, courses and tutorials available, yet I choose to promote only a few, (eg. IMC's Insiders Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet).

    Each of those that I promote is markedly different from the others in both price and content. One might be available only online at a nice low price, while the other is a comprehensive physical product that includes manuals, DVD's and CD recordings.

    Do not promote a new product simply because it is new. Stick to the tried and true to build your reputation as a consistent and dependable marketer.

  6. High Commission. Finally, yet importantly, you need to determine whether the commission rate is acceptable.

    Do not promote products for merchants who pay less than the going rate. For example, the standard commission rate for a conference seat is around 25%, while outstanding JV partners are offered between 33 and 50%. A merchant that pays 10% is just plain stingy. Do not reward greedy merchants. Work to become an outstanding JV partner for a merchant who respects your effort.

    7. Use these strategies to guide your decisions every time you have the option to promote a new product. Your efforts will build and maintain your reputation as an ‘honest broker' and frankly, nothing is more important to staying in business than your good reputation.

    Cheers ~ Ros

    P.S. I have 20 questions listed in the Super Affiliate Handbook that I recommend you ask before joining an affiliate program.

I’m Affiliating with this Merchant…NOT!

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I thought I'd come up with something unique and interesting when I discovered SmokingDate.com…

As I'm often on the prowl for new offers to promote to my dating site crowd at Sage-Hearts.com, I thought I'd come up with something unique and interesting when I discovered SmokingDate.com.

The site bills itself as ‘Online Dating for Smokers and Smoker-Friendly Singles'.

Well, as a good affiliate who wants to make sure that the site will be acceptable to my visitors and is a lucrative prospective for my business, I had to check the site out.

So, I used their Search function from the homepage and they've placed Google Adsense at the top of their results pages!

YIKES!

Not only that, but against the SmokingDate.com blue, white and rust color scheme; the Adsense box is a BRIGHT, impossible-to-miss green.

That should have qualified as Strikes 1, 2 AND 3; however, being the nice affiliate that I am, I decide to them another chance and see whether I can find a workaround.

It occurs to me that if I'm allowed to send visitors from my site directly to the Free Registration page on SmokingDating.com, I may stand a better chance of earning a commission.

WRONG!

SmokingDate.com has Adsense ads on every flippin' page on their site.

Worse, not only are they monetizing the top of all their pages with Adsense, they've got a “Win a Plasma TV” banner from Advertising.com at the bottom of most pages.

SHEESH!

What the heck are these people thinking?

ARE they thinking?

That they choose to push their own traffic through those prominent ad placements and make just pennies on the dollar is their problem.

But they went to the trouble of setting up an affiliate program which they link to on every page of the site, so they obviously want affiliates to promote their product.

I'll send them traffic which I've earned through either paid or natural search listings, THEY earn revenue from Adsense, and I'll make nothing.

SURE I will… NOT!

That's hardly what I call a win-win situation.

Perhaps they think that affiliates are too uneducated to notice this flagrant abuse?

Well, here's the shocker.

We DO notice, and we WON'T sign up for ANY merchant that places Adsense ANYWHERE on the public sections of their site.

Note to Affiliates: Review your existing promotions and remove those that have ‘leaky' links (ie. Adsense or other advertising that leads visitors offsite and for which you don't receive a commission) in the public areas of their sites.

Replace those offers with comparable offers to merchants that respect their affiliates.

Now watch your income soar!

If you don't ‘get it' quite yet, you will. Just read the Super Affiliate Handbook to learn more about sneaky merchant tricks.

Note to Merchants: Affiliates can be your company's best asset. Treat us with respect and we'll return the love.To learn how to make the most of your program, I recommend the Lurn's “AC Certified“.

Now play nice everyone!

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