I think most successful bloggers can be coined as Mavens, when they find something that offers a genuine usefulness, they will share this information with everyone, not for their own gain, but with the hopes that others will enjoy this information as much as they have.

I have come across an awesome (free) twitter tool that I would love to share with everyone who owns a site that is also looking to grow twitter followers, while making additional revenue!

My long time industry friend Mike Tito hit me up a few months back to let me know he was involved with a new start up company called LiveIntent led by Matt Keiser (founder of Datran) that had developed a new very cool technology to help grow twitter followers. I was intrigued….

How it works:

- A free drop down window allows for multiple follows on a single click.

- The user can go through and select or dis-select which social personalities they like.

- Once they hit the “follow” button a pop up will ask them to log into twitter (unless they are not logged in). The user is never taken away from the website.

- Along with the website publisher personalities they could also bring advertisers within the window, to bring extra revenues to the site.

If you are interested in adding this tool to your site, reach out to me and I will queue you up directly with Mike.

For all those who do not know there was a unique diet product that started in the UK called The Pink Patch. The product is a small patch that you stick on your body in an inconspicuous place that is similar to a band aide that suppresses your appetite and gives you energy. This product was marketed so heavily in the UK a few years back that it has developed quite a recognizable brand.

This product has many features that help it sell:

- appetite control
- boost energy levels
- contains 5-HTP, which is a natural mood enhancer
- relieves symptoms of PMS
- contains natural ingredients such as Lecithin and Flaxseed which help break down cholesterol and boost your immune system.

There are even additional tips you can blog to the user about to make it work at its optimum:

- If you drink alcohol, step away from the keg and drink vino, as its better for you - packed with anti-oxidants.
- Drink lots of water: clears your skin, flushes your system, keeps skin supple and less likely to wrinkle prematurely.
- Need energy? Drink Green Tea instead of Coffee.

Who doesn’t want a magic little patch to get them skinny?? This is a unique diet product that stands out amongst the rest that already has a creditable, recognizable brand name .

The Pink Patch product available in France, Spain and Germany. France is showing the best conversions right now and would be the one to try first.

In search engine marketing you will hear about two main strategies: long tail and short tail, otherwise known as broad keywords and narrow keywords. Long tail is a coined search term used to describe the targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords.

If you take a look at this graph below you will see there is a direct correlation between search volume and conversion rates.

Many debates have been made against which is the better strategy - going for shear volume, with lower conversions. Or reaching a more targeted small audience that produces higher conversion rates. Or reaching a more targeted small audience that produces higher conversion rates.

Lets think about a case in study: Buying a new TV

I start off searching for “TVs” or “TV reviews” because I am not sure which type, size or brand I wanted and needed to collect more info. The paid search vendors stretch all the way down the side of the page. Since price is a factor I narrowed my selection down to some specific types - so I narrowed my search down to “plasma TVs” or “flat screen TVs”, once I knew what size I wanted I narrowed it even more to “52” plasma TV.”

After further research I decide to go with a “Pioneer 52” Plasma HD TV,” which takes me directly to a paid search link that Best Buy has posted advertising 15% off. Best Buy is only one of 4 paid search listings on the right hand side.

This case study example tells me that long tail search user are closer to purchasing opposed to not just collecting information, essentially driving up your costs with clicks that do not lead to sales. Your long tail keywords might not drive as many viewers as “TVs” does, however if you optimize your page for those specific keywords you will experience a higher conversion rate.

The final days of summer means one thing for kids, that their care free summer is ending and the first day of school is nearing. While many children anticipate this day, parents may become anxious due to the additional expenses of back-to-school shopping. In these tough economic times parents must shell out additional dollars to cover expenses of books, clothes, school supplies and more. According to the National Retail Federation 2009 Back-to-school spending amongst the school aged and college aged consumers will reach $47.5 billion.

According to the survey, the economy is having a major impact on back to school spending as 4 out of 5 Americans have made changes in their spending habits. 56.2% will be hunting for sales, 49.6% plan to spend less, 41.7% will be shopping for generic brands, 40% will increase their use of coupons and 22.2% will be looking online for bargains.

Another interesting study done by Compete, a site analytics software concluded that keywords for Staples.com increased by 332% while Walmart.com increased by 23% and target by 61%. This tells us that more and more consumers are shopping online for their back to school needs.

Affiliates should take advantage of this high spending season, and focus this month on running EDU and back-to school related campaigns. We have updated our Ink and Toner offer: Simply Ink, with all new back to school creative along with an additional 10% off coupon for even more savings on top of the already low prices. Contact your affiliate manager for more info.

Mailer Mailer, an email/newsletter platform recently released their email marketing metrics report for 2009. The report was based off all email sent through the software between July 1st - December 21, 2008.

Here is a summary of the data collected:

75% of opens occur within 24 hrs, 85% within 48 hrs.

Overall open rates stand at 12.52%, a decline from the 1st half of 2008- 13.2%, which is in line with the basic overall trend: 17.2% (2nd half 2006), 16.1 (1st half 2007), 13.98 (2nd half 2007).

As the economy worsens banking/finance and real estate opens are on the decline, while spiritual and general consumer goods continues to rise.


Subject lines 35 characters or less gained more attention and had higher click rate then those that were longer than 35 characters. In general open rates decrease as character lengths increase.

When just the message is personalized was there an improvement in opens and clicks. It actually hurt opens and clicks when only the subject was personalized.

Click rates held steady from the first half of 2008 - .08%. However the over trend does show a decrease in click rates from 3% on average in 2007. This report includes a combination of both text and html creative.

General consumer goods, transportation and non for profit had the highest bounce rates. While banking, finance and manufacturing had the best delivery rates.
 


According to a recent 2009 study done by the ReturnPath, they found the average inbox placement rate for permissioned, commercial email in US and Canada was 79.3%. Of the nearly 21% of email that is not delivered to the inbox just 3.3% is sent to the junk folder, and 17.4% is not delivered at all.
In the US Gmail had the highest non delivery rate of 23%, while cox saw the the most deliverability with only 8% non delivery rate. 
 
Although deliverability, opens and clicks are on the decrease and certain industries are affected more than others during a recession, email marketing is still reported to garner the highest ROI among all direct response methods.  A study done by the direct marketing association shows email marketing’s average ROI to be $45.06 for every dollar spent, which is more than double Internet marketing’s ROI of $19.94 for every dollar spent. 

So yes, email marketing continues to live strong.

I just spoke to one of my most talented white hat search publishers who got a lifetime ban from Google last week for running continuity products. Has this happened to you? I heard that this happened to quite a few people over the past week or so. This raises some interesting questions… Are the days of flogs, comparison sites and hidden continuity changes really beginning to come to an end? Or will they find a new home on say a PPV platform where many affiliates have turned to market their Acai’s and Colon Cleanses.

If you are as search publisher who is getting down right fed up with Google and Facebook denying their ads and would like to try a new platform such as PPV, talk to one of the account mangers here for a personal referral into one of these networks.

Whether you are an advertiser, blogger or small business owner there are several things to consider when purchasing a domain.

Keyword Research:
Best to brainstorm 5 keyword terms that most people would search for that best describe your domain. Then once you have those you can add prefixes an suffixes to find an good domain. So if you are looking for Flowers for one might consider the words: Flowers, Bouquet, Gift, Arrangement, Delivery..etc

Top Domain Level:
If you are at all concerned with obtaining “type-in” traffic, branding, or name recognition then it is best to use a .com domain versus .net, .biz, .info. Most people type-in .com so if you have a .net people will visit the .com version first. It is also a good idea to buy up all the other versions of your domain so that others cannot benefit from your traffic or branding - so if you choose MyBouquet.com it is smart to buy up MyBouquet.net, Mybouquet.biz…etc. Also the general rule of thumb - use .org when you want your site to be associated with non for profit.

Make it Easy:
You want your domain to be easy to remember and easy to type. If you want to get clever with play on words and creative spellings just remember people will type it as they heard it and will make it difficult for word of mouth to work. Best to avoid hyphens and numbers for this reason. For example getflowers4someone.com is long, difficult to remember and some people will type in getflowersforsomeone.com.

Use of Intuitive Names:
Domains that tell the user exactly where they are going tend to get more clicks than ones that are creative or ambiguious. For example these domains tell the user exactly what type of content to expect: AutoTrader.com, CareerBuilder.com, WebMD, Cheaptickets.com. Domains such as Monster.com, Amazon.com, Orbitz.com are all very successful examples of non-intuitive domain names, however they more reliant upon their branding.

I just made it back from Denver for the debut of the first inaugural Affiliate Convention. First off let me give props to Brandy Shapiro-Babin and her team at Webmaster Radio for organizing this show, I know it wasn’t an easy task and came off very organized with a great line-up of familiar speakers including Tim Ash, Heather Paulson, Evan Weber and Kris Jones touching on interesting topics such as Landing Page Optimization, Social Media Negotiation Tactics, Industry Trends and Mobile Marketing.

I really love the venue and location of the show, Denver is a great great city and a nice central location for east and west coasters to meet. The Convention Center itself is conveniently located right downtown with tons of great bars and restaurants perfect for after show dinners and mixers.

Both the parties and presentations were great places to network, the only area lacking was the trade room floor as it was 2 rows of booths occupied by the usual affiliate networks. Being that this is the first year I am sure the showroom floor will grow with exhibitors, but lets face it most affiliates go for education, networking and parties so I am confident to say that most people would classify this show as a success!

Before I begin let me first say that since Twitter is a new medium so it is not yet an approved traffic source for most Advertisers. So before you start marketing on Twitter get approval in writing from your affiliate manager per offer you choose to run so not to risk losing commissions for running on a non-approved traffic source. This is a suggestion I make strongly for any offer you decide to run via Tweet, not only on AKMG but across any network.

Tip #1 Targeted Following
If you already have a large following on Twitter good for you! You are one step ahead, however if you are just starting to build your followers, you should keep in mind a targeted user base = higher conversions. So if you keep in mind a central interest theme to your followers - like music, affiliate marketing tips, humor, etc.. you will be more apt to appeal to users to grow your followers while attracting a niche targeted group.

Tip #2 Growing and Keeping your Followers
A well thought out profile will help to attract followers. This is a helpful article that give tips on improving your profile in order to attract followers. To gain a large base of follower there are tools that can help you grow and maintain your user base. Please refer to this article for a whole list of helpful tools.

Tip #3 Relevancy is Key
Think about your following and post offers that your users would genuinely be interested in that is in line with a lot of the topics you normally tweet about. The idea is to make it seem less spammy as possible. If you post random offers you are likely to annoy your followers and lose them not to mention again, it will improve your conversions and revenue.

Tip #4 Do Not Over Market and Provide Value
Be sure not to over market on your Twitter, you will lose followers quickly if you do. It is important to Tweet about topics or add something of value such as humor, tips etc that your followers find VALUE in. Then slip in a Tweet here and there with the offer you are promoting but don’t let it appear as thought your objective is to “sell” something, but rather you are letting them in on a cool secret you found.

Tip #5 Indirectly Link
When at all possible indirectly link to an affiliate link. It is less intrusive and more conducive to the Twitter culture. For example you could link to a blog you wrote that contains an affiliate link.

Whether you have an established user base, like one celeb that recently signed up and started Tweeting with our affiliate links, or you are considering starting a following solely with the intentions to generate revenue always keep in mind that the users are more savvy internet users and are more likely to tune out spammy blatant marketing. So find ways to add value to your followers and only market relevant useful products that your followers will be thankful for and success will be inevitable.

I hear all the time of affiliates complaining that theirs ads do not get approved in FB, so I thought its time to finally address it. If you look at FaceBook’s Advertising section it will list “Best Practices” and “Common Reasons for Rejection” I would suggest reading these pages, however from listening to my affiliates frustrations over ad submission it seems a wee bit more tricky.

A few tips I have found:

1) Choose offers that fit into the Facebook environments for an easier time with approval.
2) In order to keep keywords and target market details in your ad text iFrame your offer and put a title above the iFrame that related your ad to the offer.
3) Make sure the copy matched the offer and do not use offers that are misleading. State exactly what it is that the user has to do in order to receive the promotion.

I have also heard of some slightly more blackhat tricks, oops I mean tips .
I’ve heard multiple submissions and patience works. Have heard of affiliates submitting an offer over the course of 2 days and finally gets approved without changing anything. Some have said it’s the time of day – at midnight, later getting approved early morning around 10. And of course I am sure a majority of ads are approved by even more blackhat ways such as cloaking, redirection, and sneaky ways to use tools in Prosper202. I however cannot recommend using these suggestions if you value your account, as sooner or later one will get found out and kicked off. But hopefully for them they have made some money by that time.

I must say what really upsets me is when I have talented white hat affiliates complain they have never had an ad approved on FB, when I constantly see ads that have no business getting approved. Which I am sure is thanks to all the blackhat methods. So Facebook – your strict approval methods are causing affiliates to turn to the dark side in order to Advertise on your site. Which is only going to get trickier and more difficult for you to catch. So lighten up will you!?!