RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Are You Alienating Your Subscribers?

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How irritating is this? You get an email offer or see an offer (for something you actually want) on a website, click the link and end up on a page that says something like, “Offer not available in your area”.

Otherwise, you send out an offer like the Maxim magazine offer (pictured left), and your non-U.S.-based subscribers get redirected to SurveyScout instead.

Residents of Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand (or anywhere else that isn't the U.S.) end up on those pages far too often when marketers send U.S.-only offers to their entire list of newsletter subscribers.

There are two big downsides to this.

First of all, you may lose those subscribers through alienation.

Secondly, your affiliate manager may terminate your affiliation with their program when they receive thousands of invalid clicks which then wrecks their EPC.

If you accept newsletters signups from all over the world, subscribers from countries other than the U.S. probably represent a HUGE percentage of your list.

Here are a 3 ways you can avoid losing those subscribers and your affiliations. [Read more…]

Don’t Get Held Hostage by a Webmaster!

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Many folks are surprised when they find out that I do most of the design work on my web sites and have been doing so since I started my business in 1998.

You may think that doing your own design is a waste of time and that it is better to outsource it all. And sure, I have outsourced some of my design work, particularly the ebook covers. But I personally find it frustrating to wait for site and logo designers.

Sometimes you fork out $199 for a logo or header graphic which ends up looking like a 2 year-old could have done a better job; or, you hire the same designer that everyone and his brother in the niche uses, and your design ends up looking like the ‘same old, same old' with only color and text variations.

So, I don't wait for designers… especially when I can do a good job myself in 10 minutes to an hour. Not to mention that it's fun! For me, it's a break from the ‘work' of writing. 🙂

What's ‘fun' for me however, is a a DAUNTING prospect for others. For newbies especially, designing or building their own website may seem absolutely impossible..

Quite frankly, however, I think it is a far worse prospect for your business when you let someone else have control over every aspect of your site. Too often the webmasters I talk to have been ‘working on their sites' for six months to a year and more, and they still don't have a clue how to FTP a page to the server, let alone insert a table into an HTML page.

As far as I'm concerned, that's like making your auto mechanic responsible for making sure that there is gas in your car and air in your tires.

For example, one webmaster, with whom I spoke recently, spent a THOUSAND Aussie dollars, (about $780 US) to a company for initial hosting and design work. All she got was … [Read more…]

Whose Customer is She Anyway?

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Here is an email that I received regarding my affiliate policy for the Super Affiliate Handbook…

Hi, I promote a lot of ClickBank products, but when I clicked on your affiliate signup area on the Super Affiliate Handbook website, I came across something I've never seen before:

“Customers who purchase products and services through the Affiliate Program will be deemed to be customers of SuperAffiliateHandbook.com.”

ClickBank provides all affiliates with the name and e-mail address of the individual who buys through our affiliate link.

I've typically imported people who have bought through my affiliate links into a database and have treated them as “my” customers and as legitimate leads for similar offers in the future. The truth is, aren't these people *CLICKBANK* customers?

I already wrote to ClickBank to ask them about this, but also though I'd ask you where you're coming from in saying that ClickBank affiliates can't legitimately make use of the information that ClickBank (not you) provide us regarding people who buy through our affiliate links.

I look forward to your response,

Max

Here is my take / response on the matter for Max and all other Clickbank affiliates…

[Read more…]

Adsense Earnings Up by 512% in December

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Unlike Joel Comm, I'm not a Google Adsense guru. I've never tried to become an Adsense guru, as I've always believed that earning a percentage of product sales as an affiliate was preferable to earning a percentage of a click on an Adsense ad. Too, I was worried that sending visitors away from the site through Adsense would decimate my product sales as an affiliate. Lastly, I didn't want to eat up too much site real estate by displaying a bunch of obvious ads.

Well, my stance has changed completely. During December, my Adsense earnings increased by a whopping 512% over the previous month. As you will see in the screenshots included, November's earnings were $292.98 while December was $1500.06. Page impressions, Clicks, Page CTR, and Page eCPM all increased as well.

The increase is particularly remarkable from the standpoint that I did not set out to increase my Adsense earnings. As a matter of fact…

  • As part of a traffic quality test, I actually suspended a pay per click campaign that had been delivering 2000 – 2500 clicks per day to Sage-Hearts.com.
  • I also removed the Adsense ads displayed at the top of the pages at Sage-Hearts.com.
  • Product sales during the period actually increased as well.

So why did the earnings increase so much?

Well, I simply sent a few more newsletters to my online dating newsletter subscriber list than usual!

Each newsletter contained links to one or more blog posts that were of interest to my visitors but that did not promote a product. After perusing the article, readers would then move through the site via the standard navigation to view product offers, or leave the site via the ads. I was making money either way!

By displaying only one unit of Adsense ads, I was also earning more per click as Adsense ad values decline with each subsequent placement.

Lessons learned… The beauty of using Adsense to monetize your site – or a particular portion of your site – is that it should free you from the compulsion to promote a product every time you send a newsletter.

Furthermore, when your newsletter readers don't feel that they are being ‘pitched to' each time they hear from you; they'll trust you more, stay on your list longer and ultimately you will stand a better chance of making that sale when you do promote a product.

As the old saying goes – The money is in the list. Build it big (with Aweber) and then make the most of it through diversified monetization channels.

Now that makes sense! Adsense.

Affiliate Marketing: Mixing Pleasure with Business

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Here in the land of Peaches and Beaches we're now into full-on summer, which brings with it the joys of swimming, hiking, biking and an endless supply of fruit. There are also wine festivals, sailing regattas and of course, the annual Pacific Northwest Elvis Festival.

As a car buff, I particularly enjoy the Peach City Beach Cruise, which is billed as “Canada's premier family oriented Rod, Antique and Classic Car Show”.

All manner of fabulous cars line up and parade along our beachfront “Magic Mile” while restaurant patrons vigorously encourage passing drivers to “SPIN those tires!”.

Aaah… but how I love the roar of big engines and the fragrance of burning rubber on a sultry summer evening in late June.

Ed and I joined the parade last Friday night in my new/old 1991 Mercedes Benz 500sl Roadster (AMG)… and no, I did NOT spin my tires… really, I didn't! 🙂

But boy, we had fun!

And once again, I have to thank affiliate marketing for my good fortune and all the ‘extra' fun I've enjoyed since I became an affiliate marketer back in 1998. 🙂

Sure, it takes work to ‘get there', and all those summer diversions make it more difficult to sit down at your computer and get to work.

But if you do it ‘right' – select and master a niche in which you're interested – you get to talk (write, blog) about what's fun for you, which is the next best thing to being there and doing the fun stuff.

Better yet, getting the work done gets you more toys (or more savings, if you're so inclined) and even more ways to have fun.

So, get it done.

Take an hour and write that product review or newsletter and post it to your blog. You'll be amazed how writing just one post everyday builds your web presence, your list and your revenues.

Then go HAVE fun!

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. The ‘sister' car in the photograph belongs to my buddy, Jonathan, who makes his fortune buying and selling on eBay.

The Internet Marketer’s Laundry List

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OK, so what the heck was I thinking?

This week I…

  1. Wrote more new content for the Super Affiliate Handbook, including a chapter called “Limes are Greener” – an approach to using Google Adwords that not many people utilize.
  2. Then did rewrites on my rewrites…
  3. Tried to get THOUSANDS of current SAH owners to confirm/validate their email addresses…
  4. Got carpal tunnel syndrome trying to respond to all the Spam Arrest verifications, so figured out a better way to handle the SAH update…
  5. Built 3 new web pages to support that ‘better way'…
  6. Teed up a deal with Joel to handle the SAH updates starting on WEDNESDAY (tomorrow).
  7. Found a ‘better approach' to Blog Alerts and got fixed that up in Aweber.
    (Hint – don't try to build a new list of blog subscribers. Set the rss-to-email to feed to your current list.)
  8. Had a TOTAL bird when I thought that 5 previous blog posts were being automatically delivered to my whole list.
    (Another hint – don't set the feed up to run ‘automatically').
  9. Had another bird when I broke my blog … again!!
    (Don't look at it in Firefox, please.)
  10. Posted a job at Freelancer to get the blog fixed.
    Still waiting for the right geek to come along 🙂 …
  11. Wrote a press release for a new website…
  12. Set up the ‘Best PLR‘ challenge that required reading and pondering…
  13. Selected the winners of that challenge.
  14. Sent all the ‘TV Stars‘ zipped Handbook files that contained NOTHING…
    (I'm STILL working that one out)…
  15. Wrote an outline for my next Revenue mag article…
  16. Bought and read an interesting marketing manual for poker affiliates…
  17. Have been watching Sterling Valentine's countdown to his BIG LAUNCH DAY (today) with great interest…
  18. …and last but not least… wrote this post.

Phew!

OK, that might not seem like much until you know that I was also getting ready to leave home for another month.

(Yes, Anik, I know you told me not to take any more vacations, but I can't help myself.)

Anyway, spring planting, mowing, raking and trimming (hacking, really) a half acre lot really leaves me wondering why I fired the gardener who ‘came with the house'.

Actually, I thought it would be good exercise and boy, I was RIGHT!

Tuesday morning I fly to Toronto to help my brother and best friend, Ed, finish packing up his house. In 2 weeks we'll be taking another 2 weeks to sight-see our way back out West.

Yup.

He's moving in!

Really, what the heck WAS I thinking? (Probably that he likes to cook, and I don't!) 🙂

(Ed and Joel riding Ogopogo in Kelowna, B.C.)

Anyway, it's getting late and I have yet to pack. More importantly, I need to find out whether Izzie killed Denny.

Have a GREAT week!

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. As for what I was thinking… actually, this is all alot of FUN! 🙂

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