Internet Marketing

Christmas is a key time for boosting your affiliate marketing income. There is a massive surge in internet traffic, coming from buyers with credit cards in hand, looking for gifts to buy their family and friends. To ensure that you get hold of the slice of the pie that is yours, it’s key to prepare early. So how do you go about preparing for the Christmas rush? Read on and let’s find out what you can do to optimise your sales this Christmas. Select your products. There are certain products that will sell better over this time than at any other time of the year. For example, toys, video games and electronic goods come to mind. There are also other products that work very well as gifts such as pampering skin products, watches, hampers and alcohol. Anything that can be given as a Christmas gift should be considered. Keywords. There will be a difference in the number of searches for any products that are going on now, compared to Christmas time. Remember that people are going to be sitting with credit cards at the ready – so select keywords that people who are ready to buy will be using. Think about how you would approach the purchase of a gift for a friend, what would you search for and which words would you use. Think about why you have chosen the product that you decided upon. The thought process that you used will need to be considered in your strategy for promoting your affiliate marketing products. Decide on your SEO strategy. Selecting appropriate keywords to focus on is an essential part of your strategy. Which sites can you use to build backlinks from for your site? How can you get yourself some free traffic – or even paid for traffic? You might want to make the use of Google’s adwords scheme or even Facebook’s marketing system for instant traffic. Study the competition. Enter some of the keywords that you have an interest in using into Google. You can now look at how the affiliate marketing and other competition have used their keywords. Where have they linked to for their backlinks and how have them optimised their sites. You might also want to take a note of the calls to actions that they have implemented that resonate with you. Systematise your approach. What I really mean here – is how can you replicate your approach so that you can reuse it for other niches and products? Document what you are doing and how you’ve done it. If you build it into a system you can always outsource it for another person to do for you on several products. Remember, if you decide to promote products from Amazon, you won’t just get commission from the product that you are promoting, you’ll get it from any of the products that your traffic buys. There is a great trust factor related to Amazon and many gifts to purchase. People also need to buy more than one gift, so it can work very well in your favour. So Christmas is coming and I urge you to get ready now for promoting your goods. You don’t want to miss out on the best season of the year for affiliate marketing and making money online.

Social networking has been taking the globe by storm since the introduction of Facebook. With such a huge number of people using these sites to connect to their friends, former school friends and former colleagues – social networking sites offer a lot of opportunities for the affiliate marketing crowd. So let’s look at some advantages to be gained from using sites like Facebook to promote your business or products: Reaches large numbers of people: With so many people being active on these sites, it would be a shame not to make the most of this. Over 600 million Facebook accounts (as I write this) can be reached through this medium. Facebook have been pretty smart with their advertising strategy too. You can target your ad to reach a particular age group or demographic – thus making it easier to promote your affiliate marketing products. Increase of traffic: Using the Facebook advertising system will bring more traffic to your site, just as long as you create ads that are compelling and invite plenty of clicks. You should also gain some traffic from your business pages as long as you invest some time into networking and building up your connections. Business pages: These pages can be easily set up. They offer space for graphical promotion in the form of the profile photograph area and also the photograph set that can be displayed across the top of the screen. Be sure to include a link through to your main site from the information that shows on the main page. One way to encourage people to join or ‘like’ your page is to offer the chance to win one of your products. Interact with your prospects: Use your business page to attend to any questions or concerns from your contacts. Any comments that are added to the Facebook business page will be brought to your attention quickly as you will receive an email from Facebook. This is one of the reasons why beginners should start off selecting one niche area of affiliate marketing products – they can build up one Facebook page at a time to support their promotional efforts. Post discounts, specials and offers. Facebook, Facebook Marketplace, Twitter and Groupon all offer a place to post offers and discounted products. With so many subscribers and users of these sites, it’s possible to reach many potential consumers. Tip: it’s important to learn the basics of good copywriting to get the best from these and in fact from any marketing that you do. Build credibility: Anybody who is anybody in online business should have a presence on social networking. Without a presence, it’s harder to build credibility – especially if your affiliate marketing business is relatively new. Brand awareness: Building awareness of your affiliate marketing business can be so much more effective with the use of sites like Facebook and Twitter. There is space to add your brand image such as logos, and it’s also an opportunity for people to learn about what deals you are offering and how you go about your business.

Employing an appropriate Internet marketing strategy is extremely beneficial to do as soon as possible. It is comparatively inexpensive, globally effective, and works 24/7/365 with no lunch, coffee-breaks or sick days. In order to capitalize well on Internet marketing, investments need to be made in a good website, an effective strategy, and suitable SEO principles must be employed, in order for the RIGHT kind of traffic to see your website. Knowing your main target audience and how they get information, were they communicate, their buying habits and ways they make their purchasing decisions and what influences them are key issues. Getting customers’ attention is like serving a good meal. Knowing where they start first to get their information and which website they go to first when they log in to the ‘net are your main course. Let’s not forget about the supporting cast, the things that run alongside your main marketing campaign. It’s not just meat, but potatoes and veggies too, and a plate of biscuits. Directory submissions are considered one of the side dishes, so perhaps something that is not initially done, but should eventually get round to be done. Finding what you want online is thanks to the power of search engines cataloguing the many millions of pages on the web, and it is the directories that support this SEO-based effort. Directory submissions rank high along with link building, social media, social book marks and contextual blogging as effective ways to reach your market where it gathers and communicates. A strong combination of Internet marketing tactics makes an SEO effort worthwhile, as you will more than likely gain plenty of sales as a result. Don’t forget fresh content. It is easy to push a huge levle of enthusiasm into your marketing efforts at an early stage and leave things be, but this is the wrong way of doing things – consistency is key. It can be a little painstaking, but directory submissions are an absolute must as far as manual procedures go. Directories each have managers and editors that will ultimately conclude on whether your website’s entry is acceptable. If you try to submit to directories via automated means, the search engines will leave your efforts in the dark and block attempts at submitting entries. It is not recommended that you use blackhat strategies in your online marketing efforts, as this will lead to negative effects on your company and perhaps far worse. High levels of investment in web development can be lost by the SEO manager of a site taking a black hat approach. Therefore, making the most of the plausible paths to success in online marketing is the best way forward to Internet marketing success. As long as your submission entry is within guidelines, you and your website stand to benefit from the support of a web directory entry – directory submissions are yet another way to boost your search engine results’ visibility.

In order to make money by promoting a product that you are affiliated with, the merchant of this product will need to have a plan in place to pay affiliate commissions for referrals. Many times the easiest way to do this is to join an established marketplace website that can automate the process, which will usually give you affiliate tracking tools for free. Now for the affiliate marketer, while it may be a good thing that they can sign up as an affiliate for free to promote a certain product, one of the down sides of a free affiliate program is that there will be increased competition. Many proprietary affiliate programs that are not using any sort of marketplace service will require you to become a paid member in order to promote their product, and one of the most notable benefits to working with this sort of program is that there will be far less competition with other marketers. This is usually the case when you are driving website traffic to a niche-oriented e-commerce website or when you are promoting some other kind of physical product such as supplements or beauty supplies. It can also be the case that you must be a paid user of the product in order to promote it, which can give you firsthand experience about what it will be like for your customers. While you can make money online by promoting digital products such as ebooks, software, or membership sites, there is also much to be had when it comes to promoting physical, tangible products as well. Not only are you contributing more to the actual economy that is driven by the supply and demand of physical goods, but you can also make a solid income by referring new customers to a certain product. And instead of having such a large line of competing affiliates such as you would by promoting a product from an affiliate marketplace, there will be fewer competitors since you actually need to pay money to be an affiliate. Another great benefit of promoting a paid affiliate plan is that when you need to pay to promote it, this usually indicates that you are dealing with a much higher quality product. Many times when you are promoting a physical product, this will be a company with regular brick and mortar business operations that also participates with an internet marketing referral program. By selecting whether you should promote a product with a free or paid affiliate program, you can increase your odds of success by determining in advance the quality of the product you are promoting and the level of competition you will be dealing with.

Affilate marketing is one of the best ways for any person to make money these days on the internet. There are numerous affiliate marketing beginners that are struggling to earn money though because they do not understand some effective advice that will make it simpler for them to achieve this goal.  If you are a beginner to affiliate marketing, then it is essential that you take time to learn what this advice is so you can begin using it to make money and stop struggling to earn it. Here is the advice that every beginner has to learn and use. 1. Learn the business, but take action also – The first thing that all beginners need to do is to learn as much about the affiliate marketing business as possible. You can easily accomplish this with a little research and by using forums, guides or even better a mentor to teach you. As you are learning though, you need to take action with all that you learn. It is wise to begin learning about one marketing method that you can start using to get traffic to your business. Marketing the affiliate programs you promote is the first step to taking action so you really can earn money. 2. Be persistent and stay focused – You are going to have to keep yourself focused and be persistent every day on working your new business. If you are not willing to put in the hard work that has to be done every day, then you will always struggle to make any income. Staying focused is important because there are a lot of things on the internet that can easily distract you from working, but you have to prevent this if you want to earn an income online. 3. Build relationships – Too many beginners do not understand how imperative it is to build relationships online. You have to do this because this is how people will get to know you as a person and this is also how they will come to trust you. Once they trust you, they will start spending their hard earned money with you and your business. 4. Have faith in yourself to make money – You have to have faith in yourself to actually earn money because if you do not, then you need to be prepared to struggle. Faith in yourself really will make a big difference in your success to making a good income with your business. Now that you have this effective advice in your head, you as an affiliate marketing beginner are more prepared to really earn money with your business. Just do not give up, work hard and take your time and before you know it you will be making the income you want to be.

Do you want to locate the perfect niche affiliate program for your business, but are unsure where your search should begin? There are various ways to use for locating the best program for you.  Once you learn what these ways are, you can begin using any one of them or a combination of them to locate the niche that fits your business the best. Below are the best ways to use for finding a good niche easily. One: Major search engines – This is the most obvious and usual method used for finding a good niche. It will take some time to locate what you want because you will get a lot of results that you need to search through. Just be sure you search through each niche carefully and thoroughly so you can make sure it is a good one for your business and that it is profitable. Two: Forums – There are a variety of forums that you can become a member of. You will be able to read posts from other members about niches or you can simply ask the other members and they will be more than happy to suggest some niches for you. Three: Blogs – There are many blogs about affiliate programs in various niches that you can start reading. This will provide you with many niche ideas so you can choose the best one for your particular business. Four: Social networking sites – There are many social networking sites that you may visit to find out about numerous niche programs. Plus, you can use the social networking sites to enquire about specific niches if you wish to and can get help from others for information on it. Five: Reviews – You can locate many reviews that have been completed about various affiliate programs. This will not only help you locate a good niche, but it will also help you find important information about the programs. This is going to make it much simpler for you to choose the right affiliate programs without any difficulties. Just be sure to give yourself time to read numerous reviews so you really do get a clear picture about every affiliate program you come across. These are the best ways for any person to locate the best niche affiliate program for your business. You just need to be prepared to give yourself time to search and decide on the best programs for your business because no one can make this decision for you. If you take your time you can make your decisions with confidence.

Saturday, September 17 is Software Freedom Day. To that end, a few announcements about this weekend’s hackathon and WordCamp Portland.

3.3 Hackathon

WordPress 3.3 is about to hit feature freeze. This means it’s the last chance to squeeze in features that haven’t quite been finished, and enhancements and fixes that no one has had time to address yet. Around this time, there are often dozens of tickets that have patches, but the patches have not been tested enough to be committed to core. Then the contributors who worked hard on the patches are disappointed that their code doesn’t make it into the current release. You can help us prevent this!

This weekend, we’ll be running a has-patch needs-testing marathon for the 3.3 milestone. Basically, we’re looking for people who can help test patches and/or refresh patches that need updating. Lead developers and core contributors will be hanging around in the #wordpress-dev channel on irc.freenode.net to answer questions as needed, and will be committing patches as they get enough verification. As you test the patches, report your findings on the trac tickets in question. If all developers who make a living working with WordPress helped out for even an hour or two this weekend, we could clear the 200 tickets or so that are in this situation. To make it fun, why not get together with other WordPress devs and have an in-person hackathon meetup?

WordCamp Portland

At WordCamp Portland this weekend, some of the WordPress core team will be in attendance, including me, Nacin, and Koop. In addition to giving presentations and participating in the unconference sessions, we’ll be involved with a couple of other cool things at WCPDX:

• Hacker Room. There will be room set aside for people to work on core bugs and features slated for the 3.3 release. Hopefully PDX developers will hang out in here some of the time helping with the marathon.
• Welcome Free Software Projects! Normally WordCamps are 100% focused on WordPress, but in light of Software Freedom Day, the WC PDX organizers, in conjunction with the WordPress Foundation, would like to extend an invitation to all free software projects to participate in WordCamp Portland. There are a couple of rooms set aside that can be used for unconference sessions and/or hacker rooms for other projects. It would be great to have local representatives from a bunch of projects there — almost a micro version of OS Bridge or OSCON — to maximize the free software love and cross-pollinate ideas. Developers from other projects are also welcome in the WP hackathon room if they’d like to pitch in. Saturday will also feature the Software Freedom Day Happy Hour at the end of sessions. For more information or to get your project involved, contact the event organizers via the WordCamp Portland website or email support at wordcamp dot org.
• Usability Testing of 3.3 Alpha. As mentioned, we’re about to hit freeze, so we’ll be giving WordCamp Portland attendees a sneak peek at 3.3, seeing how they adjust to the new features, and getting feedback to help us with our last round of fixes before we get to Beta. There will be a signup sheet to participate.

So, if you live it the Portland/Seattle area and haven’t already bought a ticket to attend WordCamp Portland, hurry up, as it’s going to be a great celebration of Software Freedom Day and WordPress.

This coming weekend, two WordCamps will be going on simultaneously — yep, it’s WordCamp season again! This weekend will be the first of many this autumn with multiple WordCamps. Tomorrow (not quite the weekend but close enough) is WordCamp Cape Town, and then this weekend, first-time WordCamp Albuquerque coincides with 4-time returning champ WordCamp Portland, a cool juxtaposition of a more established local community with one that is just getting started. If you’re anywhere near the Portland area, you should try to attend. The WordPress Foundation will be sponsoring some special activities around Software Freedom Day, and some members of the core team (me, Nacin, Koop) will be there.

Is there a WordCamp coming up near you? Let’s find out!

Sep 15: WordCamp Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa

Sep 16-18: WordCamp Albuquerque Albuquerque, NM

Sep 17-18: WordCamp Portland Portland, OR

Sep 24: WordCamp Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

Sep 24: WordCamp Germany Koln, Germany

Sep 25: WordCamp Sofia Sofia, Bulgaria

Oct 1: WordCamp Louisville Louisville, Kentucky

Oct 8-9: WordCamp Sevilla Seville, Spain

Each year, members of the web community from around the world submit session proposals to the South by Southwest Interactive conference, an event that played a role in the birth of WordPress. We head to Austin every year, do a BBQ or throw a party, but despite the fact that almost 15% of the web is powered by WordPress, there aren’t many sessions related to WordPress on the schedule. This year, more than 3200 proposals are competing for about 350 slots, and who has time to read through, vote, and comment on 3200 proposals? Out of those 3200 proposals, only 8 relate to WordPress! I thought it would be handy to post a guide to the WordPressy proposals for SXSWi 2012, so that if you would like to check them out and vote on them it woud be fast and easy. Leaving a comment in addition to your thumbs up/down vote helps the staff and advisory board know which sessions are likely to have an interested audience, so make sure to leave comments on the sessions you think would be cool (remember, they also publish the podcasts afterward). Voting ends in about 24 hours, so if you want to weigh in, now’s the time. Thanks for helping spread the word!

WordPress-specific Sessions

This list is based on searching for “WordPress” in proposal titles, descriptions, and tags. Clicking the proposal title will take you to that page in the SXSW PanelPicker, where you can vote and comment. Names that are linked go to those people’s WordPress.org profiles.

Blog Wars: Movable Type vs. WordPress Revisited

Mark Jaquith – WordPress Lead Developer
Byrne Reese – Endevver
These days people tend to pit us against Drupal rather than Movable Type, but looking back at the early rivalry and learning from the positive and negative aspects of it would be cool as we position ourselves in competition with new platforms. I like seeing Mark present at conferences, he always prepares well and does a good job. Though I’m guessing these guys will be all friendly and collaborative, I might take a nostalgia hit and imagine them in a fistfight just to liven things up.

Designing WordPress

Jane Wells – WordPress User Experience Lead
Disclosure: This is me! Balancing the desire for truly open and participatory design processes against the often more efficient and consistent results of a more curated design method is something we’ve been working on for the past year or so in WordPress core. I’d use the design process for several recent core features (like the UI refresh and internal linking) to illustrate the issues we’ve faced and the results we’ve achieved.

Open Source Social Networking

John James Jacoby – BuddyPress Lead Developer
J-trip (as John James Jacoby is fondly known by many in the community) is the lead dev for BuddyPress and the new bbPress plugin. He’s proposing a panel discussion among reps from several open source social network platforms. It’s always cool hearing more about BuddyPress, but it would be even cooler to figure out how it fits in with and/or stacks up against other platforms.

Welcome to the Chaos – the Distributed Workplace

Nikolay Bachiyski – WordPress Core Developer, GlotPress Lead Developer
Lori McLeese – Automattic
This one isn’t about WordPress per se, though using WordPress as a communication tool is one of the topics and Automattic is obviously a WordPress-based business. The main reason I think people should vote for this session is because Nikolay, core committing developer for internationalization and lead developer of GlotPress, our translation tool, is an awesome speaker. He is hysterically funny when he presents. I would bet money this presentation will involve a bear.

Deploying WordPress: From Zero to Ninja

Grant Norwood – Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
When Mark Jaquith says a presentation on security and deployment is on his short list, I’m impressed. (He said it in the comments on the proposal.)

Beyond the Theme – Using WordPress as an API

David Tufts – kickpress.org
Obviously a hot topic in the community right now, seems like a no-brainer to choose.

Local Government Online: WordPress Beats Drupal

Jase Wilson – Luminopolis
There was a presentation at WordCamp San Francisco this month on moving a news site from Drupal to WordPress. More and more the question comes up of which tool is best for various situations and requirements. And obviously getting government to use more open source software would be a cost-saver in these tough economic times.

WordPress website built live in 45 minutes

Glenn Todd – Dvize Creative
Live walkthroughs are always fun, and help prove to the uninitiated how easy WordPress can be.

So: go vote on these session proposals and help spread the WordPress love. If you know of any WordPress-related proposals that didn’t come up in my search, let me know in a comment and I’ll update this post. Thanks, and maybe we’ll see you in Austin in March!