RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Bad, BAD Affiliates!

By

Bad, BAD affiliates!

You KNOW better than to risk being trampled at a brick and mortar store on Black Friday!

Set the good example, will ya? You should be shopping online — like you want your readers and site visitors to do.

Surely you could have found better bargains online WITH free shipping; which would have saved you time, energy (gas & physical)… the planet. 🙂

Anyway, all that said, I hope you had fun and got what you wanted.

BTW, I found a few Black Friday deals ONLINE just for you…

  • HostGator – 50% OFF EVERYTHING including Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting AND even Dedicated Servers!
  • StudioPress – Save 25% on StudioPress Themes for WordPress
  • Tiny Prints – $15 off any holiday order of $99 or more.
  • Peepers Reading Glasses – 2 DAYS ONLY! 25% off entire site. Use coupon code JOLLY25 at checkout.
  • Barcelo Hotels – Get a discount of up to 60% when you book on 26th & 27th November 2010.

There ya go! Save on hosting, themes and buy a pair of reading glasses so you can write and send Tiny Prints cards from your vacation at the Barcelo hotels. 🙂

Oh, and BTW, Affiliate Blogger PRO is STILL only 97 initial and 27/month… but only until January.

Have fun!

Affiliate Marketing in January: Resolve and Renew

By

It would be easy to come to the conclusion that January is a lousy month for affiliate marketing, as it follows hot on the heels of the year's most expensive party and gift giving season.

Well, that's hardly the case.

Smart shoppers know that January is when some of the year's best deals are to be had in big appliances, linens, gift and occasion cards, outdoor gear, prom dresses, video games and winter clothing.

Moreover, January is the time when people start working on resolutions and ways to improve their lives… or, at least until the 17th which is Ditch New Years Resolutions Day. 🙂 So think self-improvement, weight loss, fitness, smoking cessation and debt solution products, the latter of which will go briskly once the credit card bills arrive.

To top things off, January offers a whole host of holidays and unique celebrations that can be monetized by affiliate marketers, many of which are listed below.

Month-long Celebrations in January:

  • Hot Tea Month
  • National Bath Safety Month
  • National Blood Donor Month
  • National Braille Literacy Month
  • National Hobby Month
  • National Oatmeal Month
  • National Soup Month

Most notable holidays and events in January:

  • 1 New Year's Day
  • Epiphany
  • Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Chinese New Year

Celebrations by Date in January 2016:

  • 1 New Year's Day
  • 2 Run up the Flagpole and See if Anyone Salutes Day
  • 3 Festival of Sleep Day
  • 3 Fruitcake Toss Day
  • 3 Humiliation Day
  • 4 Trivia Day
  • 5 National Bird Day
  • 6 Bean Day
  • 6 Cuddle Up Day
  • 7 Old Rock Day
  • 8 Bubble Bath Day
  • 8 Male Watcher's Day
  • 9 Play God Day
  • 10 Houseplant Appreciation Day
  • 10 Peculiar People Day
  • 11 Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friend's Day
  • 12 Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day
  • 12 National Pharmacist Day
  • 13 International Skeptics Day
  • 13 Make Your Dream Come True Day
  • 14 Dress Up Your Pet Day
  • 15 National Hat Day
  • 16 Appreciate a Dragon Day
  • 16 National Nothing Day
  • 17 Ditch New Years Resolutions Day
  • 18 Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday , celebrated on the third Monday
  • 18 Thesaurus Day
  • 18 Winnie the Pooh Day
  • 19 National Popcorn Day
  • 20 National Buttercrunch Day
  • 20 Penguin Awareness Day
  • 21 National Hugging Day
  • 21 Squirrel Appreciation Day
  • 22 National Blonde Brownie Day
  • 23 National Pie Day
  • 23 National Handwriting Day
  • 23 Measure Your Feet Day
  • 24 Beer Can Appreciation Day
  • 24 Compliment Day
  • 25 Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day – last Monday of month
  • 25 Opposite Day
  • 26 Spouse's Day
  • 27 Chocolate Cake Day
  • 27 Punch the Clock Day
  • 28 Data Privacy Day
  • 28 Fun at Work Day
  • 28 National Kazoo Day
  • 29 National Puzzle Day
  • 29 National Cornchip Day
  • 30 National Inane Answering Message Day
  • 31 Backward Day
  • 31 Inspire Your Heart with Art Day

For more ideas on how to monetize early in January, read my article “How to Make Money from New Year’s Resolutions“.

And if you want to make sure you don't ditch your own resolutions to improve your Internet marketing business this year, read Make Your Resolutions a Reality and 10 Resolutions for Better Online Business this Year.

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

Christmas in July

By

Well, it's now mid-July which of course got me to thinking about Christmas… because summer heat is always such a gift.

Ho, ho, ho.

Actually, I was musing about a ‘Christmas in July' party that I and my friends had a very long time ago. We roasted a turkey, decorated the rental and strayed from tradition a bit by dining on the boathouse roof.

After entertaining myself with those delightful memories for awhile, I wondered if other people were contemplating Christmas in July.

Finding out was easy enough. I went to Google Insights for Search and searched for the term “Christmas” with results filtered over the last 30 days.

Christmas Search Terms

And it looks like I'm not the only one thinking of Christmas in July.

However, I certainly hope that those who were searching for “Christmas tree” in July were thinking about the artificial variety.

To the right of the most prevalent searches related to “Christmas”, Insights reports rising searches.

Rising Trends Related to Christmas

What is most notable perhaps are the returns for “Christmas holidays”. This is a term that travel bloggers might want to concentrate some effort on over the next couple of months as people plan their visits to (or away from) the relatives.

The rise of ‘Gifts' and ‘stocking' are good signs.

Recalling the elbow-to-rib hits I've taken in malls on Boxing Day, I know I'm not the only one who starts shopping early for Christmas. And let's not forget the ‘nuts about Christmas' types, who keep the brick-and-mortar “Christmas Store” viable all year long.

After seeing those results, I was getting really curious, and had to see if anyone was capitilizing on the term “christmas holidays 2010” during the merry month of July.

The search returned 20 results and no advertisers.

Broadening the search to “Christmas 2010” returned tons of results (mostly related to toys to be marketed this year) and only 1 advertiser.

So, it you want to get in there – now is a great time.

Remember — Christmas is ‘evergreen', and I'm not talking about the trees.

The holiday happens every 365 days (which all those frantic last-minute shoppers seem to forget until December 24th), so there's always a market, and that market is huge, even in July.

If you're nuts about Christmas (or any other holiday), you may want to consider taking advantage of the opportunity to get ahead of the pack now.

There are so many different ways you could approach the niche. Create a content-rich site about Christmas traditions, crafts, or fill it with holiday recipes. How about sharing tips for Christmas decorating schemes or tips for surviving the holidays?

Monetizing the site will be easy. Find merchants at affiliate networks that offer exceptionally unique gifts, toys, ornaments and/or books to sell on your site.

Advertise using PPC, and keep your Google Adwords bids low until December, when your sales will soar.

Last, but certainly not least, build and work your list. Share some Christmas in July spirit with your subscribers and you'll take your place at the top of the tree as a *star* affiliate by the time December rolls around.

Ho, Ho, HO. Merry (July) Christmas!

Rosalind’s Holiday Home Tour 2009

By

Having seen the dark little office from which I work, many NPT readers have asked me to do a video home tour, and this is the result… my Holiday Home Tour 2009 in which you will see dying poinsettias, the 10 cent Christmas ornaments and reason I'll have to workout like crazy between Christmas and Affiliate Summit. 🙂

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

10 Ways to Sell More this Christmas Season

By

Is your site ready for Christmas shoppers?

An Accenture survey forecasts that folks will be shopping for Christmas earlier this year, with 69 percent planning to complete the bulk of their holiday shopping by Dec. 7th. Too, consumers are more deal-oriented than ever before, with 25% of them expecting at least 50 percent discounts before they buy.

According to a Gallup survey, the Christmas spending forecast is down slightly this year, with consumers planning to spend $740 on gifts compared to $801 as per surveys taken at the same time last year.

With more merchants competing for fewer dollars, the deals are going to be phenomenal. In fact, merchants have already started to lower their prices to get a leg up on the competition.

Sears launched a campaign on October 31st, called “Black Friday Now” with deep discounts happening every Saturday from now until Christmas.

Saturdays???

‘Black Friday', which falls on the day after American Thanksgiving (November 27th) is the first day of the Christmas season and is usually the busiest shopping day of the year… offline.

‘Cyber Monday' is the Monday after Thanksgiving. The term was first used by Shop.org, whose research showed that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on that day.

So what does that tell us?

That we'd better plan to get our affiliate sites and PPC campaigns ready for the Christmas shopping rush earlier than ever. I've noticed that folks are talking about Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals on consumer sites already. In fact,

So, although the big Christmas shopping days are still almost a month away, you need to get your site and PPC campaigns ramped up now.

  1. Start checking the networks now for Black Friday deals. Here are 2 examples … Black Friday at Overstock.com and Big Savings, No Blarney: Book a Black Friday Round-Trip Flight to Ireland from $278 on Aer Lingus! (Expires 12/31/09)
  2. Make sure that you are receiving merchant emails. Many merchants have their 2009 holiday shopping catalogs online and are already pumping out Black Friday and Cyber Monday ‘deal' notices to their affiliates. Unless you are in the habit of checking each network's interface daily, turn on email notifications or you may miss some really great deals that you could be passing on to your customers.
  3. Contact your affiliate manager directly. If you have a working relationship with your affiliate manager, phone him or her and get the low-down on the best seasonal deals and best-converting offers.
  4. Decorate for Christmas. Pretty up your site with holiday graphics and pictures of happy shoppers. Just acknowledging the season with a ‘Happy Holidays' header or a “Your One-Stop Christmas Shop” graphic will show your spirit and get your customers in the mood to shop.
  5. Put up a ‘Black Friday Deals' page… or pages. Draw visitors deeper into your site with the promise of special savings opportunities.
  6. Do the legwork. Compare and contrast the deals that your merchants are offering. Sifting through a myriad of sites and offers is time-consuming. Save your potential customers time and effort by explaining the difference between offers on the same product. For example, show how that company that charges slightly more for a product but offers ‘free shipping' will save them money in the long run.
  7. Create urgency. Let your visitors know that these deals will not last by including offer expiry dates in your copy. Put up an “x number of Days ‘Til Christmas' countdown ticker on your site. You can find the “Till Christmas” code at Javascript Made Easy
  8. Set up your PPC campaigns well in advance. Drive targeted traffic to your Black Friday deals pages with pay per click advertising.
  9. Touch base regularly. Now's the time to put your autoresponder to best use by increasing the frequency of contact with your subscribers. Let them know that you're doing the legwork to find them the very best deals of the season. Let them know what's new and hot in your niche and tell them to stay on the lookout for more notices from you with sizzling deals.
  10. Seal the deal with great copy. Go beyond price points and convince your visitors that the products you're promoting make great gifts with tantalizing copy. For example, when describing spa or jewelery gifts for women, use words and phrases such as, ie. pamper her, soothing, relaxing, unique, innovative, hand-picked, romantic, heart-touching, romantic and indulgent. Be sure to stress the benefits to the gift-giver as well, eg. “she'll thank you again and again for…“.

Keep these suggestions in mind as you prepare your site for the 2009 holiday season – and you'll thank me for your increased conversions this year! 🙂

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Ros

From My Home to Yours… Merry Christmas!

By

merry-christmas-my-homeWell, I just finished prepping the house and there's still 24 hours left before my friends start arriving for our Christmas dinner festivities. Somewhere in between polishing the stemware and washing the kitchen floor, I realized that I already have almost everything I wanted for Christmas.

It snowedSnow (and lots of it).

The safe return of my good friend from north of 60 (that's the 60th parallel where it's minus 42 degrees celsius at the moment).

Plans with loved ones (in other words, the people who know you best but like you anyway).

The arrival of my Amazon order of 12 old Meryl Streep movies that I either didn't have or hadn't seen.

Christmas table is setFully functional servers (thank you, Steve!).

A definite plan to work directly with you in 2009 (one-on-one coaching, phone number & all) to help you get your Internet business off the ground… details of which whill be released just as soon as I've got a functional desktop* again (* Christmas wish #7 yet to be realized), most likely shortly after I get back from Affiliate Summit (if it's the motherboard as Ori suspects).

Six out of 7 realized wishes is pretty remarkable. Only slightly less if you count the usual ‘peace on earth'.

And this one I fervently hope comes true… a wish for you and yours to enjoy all the very best of the season – a happy and safe holiday, good times with family and friends, prosperity in the New Year and the ability to share generously with those less fortunate.

So, what are/were you Christmas wishes? Care to share? Please leave a comment below.

Cyber Monday 2008: Second Biggest Online Spending Day Ever

By

In a December 3rd press release, Comscore resported that Cyber Monday saw $846 million in online spending. Although spending over the holiday season to date ($12.03 billion) is down by 2% from last year, Cyber Monday's online sales were up by a whopping 15% over 2007 sales. Take a look at the following screenshot where you'll note that the preceding weekend also saw a jump in online sales by 19% over last year.

With online sales up marginally on Black Friday and significantly on Cyber Monday, analysts are still predicting a decline in the months to come. Considering that the job loss stats out today report 533,000 more jobs in the U.S. were lost in November – the biggest decline since 1974 – the outlook could look pretty grim.

HOWEVER, that depends entirely on what you are selling. For example, this is probably not the best time to start a new jewelry site. Want to know what you should sell? Read 8 Recession-Proof Product & Service Ideas for Affiliates… and stay tuned for more great recession-proof niches and product ideas. Let's prove the analysts wrong!

Categories