Make Money Online

Things hot right now…

• Green Tea, Acai, diet rebills
• UK Crush
• Dating making a comeback (dating season about to start up)
• The usual saturation in financial offers
• Facebook (for the smart)

If you can’t make a profit in any of the above…affiliate marketing simply isn’t for you. Pack up your bags and go home.

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Affiliate Hotness

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Posted by Takayuki Funakoshi – AdSense Publisher Support

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Your guide to the Inside AdSense blog

Even though there are some major brands running affiliate programs (either within a third party network or independently), for the vast majority of companies, affiliate marketing is often perceived as a small fry tactic that’s better suited for brands that either (1) don’t have a major brand presence, or (2) have outright sketchy product offers. Well, now that Google Affiliate Network (GAN) is a reality, affiliate marketing is slated to finally get some mainstream credibility that’s long overdue.

Of course, this has led to some speculation that other, so-called second-tier affiliate networks are doomed. The reasoning goes that with a brand name like Google now behind the former Performics network, advertisers and affiliates alike will be loath to work with these other networks.

In reality, however, that’s just not the case. As good as Google is at some things, one thing it doesn’t do so well is relationships.
What does this mean for other networks and affiliates? It means that we’re all going to share in the very rosy future of affiliate marketing.

Now that GAN is on the scene, large brands that have previously shied away from affiliate marketing are probably going to give it a second thought. Being completely new to the affiliate marketing model, however, they’re going to need help setting up and managing their affiliate programs. The networks that can step up and help with program promotion and affiliate recruitment are going to gain, and so will their affiliates.

Relationships in Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a business model that is founded on the idea of an ongoing relationship. In fact, it’s through solid relationship building that merchants and affiliate collaborate to drive sales and increase their respective profits.

Investing in the advertiser-affiliate relationship is also an integral part to any viable affiliate marketing strategy. The networks that take the time to build those relationships and are known for their personalized approach will benefit from mainstream brands being attracted to the affiliate marketing medium

The Trust & Relationship Factor
Arguably, what’s kept many conventional retailers from embracing affiliate marketing is the nature of the merchant-affiliate relationship. As with many other kinds of online media, the challenge that affiliate marketers face is that relationships can rarely be established in person — and that makes them harder to build.

Relationship Management
If affiliate networks want to capture on the upcoming market growth they are going to have to focus on more traditional business development tactics, such as networking and account management. The affiliate networks that don’t have a household name behind them are going to have to focus on building new relationships and then managing them.

In addition to sales, business development, and lead generation, affiliate networks will need to establish themselves as respectable members of the online marketing community. They will need to show their faces in more places than ad:tech and Affiliate Summit and shake hands with other members of the business community, including marketing gurus and agencies, as well as marketing executives with brands they want to see in their networks.

Once a relationship becomes a working one, it’s going to require management, and that’s where the account management comes in. Affiliate networks will need to work closely with advertisers that are new to the industry to make sure that (1) their program is set up properly, and (2) they understand how to run it. This will help ensure that the program performs and prevent the relationship from becoming strained.

Part of the network-merchant relationship also rests with affiliates, so there’s also an account management aspect to there. By focusing on building relationships with their affiliates, networks can:

1. better promote their new advertisers,
2. better align their new advertisers with the appropriate affiliates, and
3. save on the time and costs of affiliate recruitment.

This will help networks increase not only the performance of their various (and newer) affiliate programs, but also the loyalty of their affiliate-base — something that both saves on costs and increases revenues.

Relationships at the Heart of Business
All business transactions are based on trust. People are willing to invest enough trust in a brand to do business with them because of they either (1) have a relationship with that brand, or (2) perceive that brand as having an established relationship with the marketplace at large.

Affiliate marketing is becoming more and more of a mainstream industry, so affiliate networks need to focus on more conventional business practices if they want to grow along with the rest of the industry. This means that they have to develop a relationship-focus. Relationship building generates trust, which not only reduces costs, but drives growth by making you a more desirable business partner.

Read more here:
Relationship Based Affiliate Marketing

1) Create a Powerful Homepage Message.
Your homepage message should be a targeted, benefit-oriented statement that outlines what you can do for the potential customer. In order to properly draft an intriguing homepage message, you will need to identify the inherent benefit to your potential customer base. No one wants to hear that you are “the best”; customers want to hear why your product/service is different and what it means to them. Put more simply, customers are asking, “What can you do for me?” Answer them.

2) Focus on Clarity.
These days, with so many people searching online for products and services, your homepage should clearly identify who you are, what you offer, your core competitive benefits, and your supporting text—all in a clean and easy-to-navigate user interface. Use graphics and pictures to help illustrate what service or product you provide, and how these benefit the customer. However, the homepage should be a “no-fluff” zone. A good rule of thumb for the homepage is “less is more.” Make it easy for the user to understand what you do. Too much verbiage, images, and graphics will only confuse the user. White space, good. Clutter, bad!

3) Make Effective Use of “Secondary Messaging.”
After you have presented your homepage message, you will need to incorporate “secondary messaging” on the homepage. This includes any additional messages that will be used to help clarify and drive home the points made in the primary message. Secondary messaging should also incite the user to take certain steps—that is, it should be a call to action. These calls to action could direct the user to e-mail the company for additional information, phone the sales rep, download a white paper, read a recent success story, etc. The secondary message will change from company to company (isn’t this stating the obvious?). A good marketer will know how to choose a penetrating secondary message.

4) Integrate Imagery and/or “Flash” to Emphasize Your Core Message.
Imagery and flash animation are important parts of your homepage. To help illustrate your company’s core competitive benefits, both strategies help customers visualize how you can meet their needs and requirements. Most people are visually oriented, so your imagery/flash will quickly convey and emphasize your message. Be consistent with what you are telling your potential prospects. Align your messaging with your visual strategies. Images and flash are also great ways to eliminate clutter; by adding a visual component to your website, you are alleviating the need for additional reference text.

5) Drive Toward a Specific Call to Action.
You have already heard a little bit about calls to action, but it is such an important strategy that we have also dedicated a specific section to it. Failure to convert online potential customers into sales leads is mostly attributable to homepages that lack primary and secondary calls to action on homepage. A call to action can be as simple as a link that states, “Contact us for more information” or “Tell us more about your needs and we will schedule a conference call.” Statistics have proven that if you can guide web users along your sales process, you will convert more of them into customers.

6) Know Your Audience, and Know the Audience Within Your Audience. OK, so maybe you don’t know who Carl Jung is, but chances are, you either have taken or soon will take a Myers-Briggs personality test. Most people can clearly state whether they are an introvert or an extrovert; your website should cater to these and other personality types. Develop your website not only for an audience that requires what you can provide, but also for disparate personalities within that audience. Some people prefer to pick up the phone to find out more information about your products or services. Some may prefer to e-mail you instead. Others may want to schedule a meeting. Your website should cater to as many of these personality types as possible, or else you will lose conversions. Make it easy for the web user to contact you . . . using whatever method they choose.

7) Make Your Homepage Easy to Navigate.
You must lay out your website with easy-to-navigate options and buttons. If you are a service-based company, then put an “XYZ . . . Services” tab on the top navigation bar. If you sell more than one service, then enable a pull-down menu showing options for your customers. Allow them to select the page that they want to research—without having to click first to find out more (a big no-no!). Another strategy is to use sidebars to help users navigate as they read your content. You will also need to ensure that your homepage uses an interlinking strategy, so that if web users hit the wrong button, they can easily get back on track and find the information they seek.

The Bottom Line Make it easy for a prospect to find out more about your products and/or services. Create a homepage that takes the guesswork out of it by guiding web users through the process, from understanding the message to taking action. Statistics have shown that the more clicks it takes for potential customers to find what they seek, the higher the rate at which they will abandon the website.

Scott C. Margenau is president of ImageWorks Studio, an award-winning marketing, branding and advertising firm specializing in online and off-line media. Visit http://www.imageworksstudio.com for more info.

Improve Web Site Conversions With These 7 Strategies

If you like customer service horror stories, then you’ll love this one.

The Story

In February of this year, our heroine, yours truly, called CapitalOne to pay off one of her 3 credit cards with this company and to change her address and phone as she had recently moved and her forwarded mail was coming to an end. There was a whopping $5 balance so digging deep into her financial reserves she paid the trolls $5 while still on the line. Apparently a few days, after the card was paid to zero balance, these mean people accessed a $29.75 late fee on the $0 balance. Business process=broken

Pretty sure that’s not legal, but where does she go to complain? Government process=broken

Of course, as luck would have it, the trolls changed the address/phone on 2 of the cards, but not on this particular card. Business process=broken?

6 months went by, and our heroine lived blissfully unaware that the illegitimate late fee of $29.75 remained on the card. She was not receiving statements, so she had no idea that the CapitalOne monster was about to strike.

After checking her credit report earlier today, the heroine found that CapitalOne had charged-off the account for, you guessed it, $29.75. Yep, she now has an illegitimate charge-off on her credit for $29.75!

After 4 hours on the phone with CapitalOne today, and after talking to many of the Troll’s minions, she learned that they would not reopen the account and that they would not address the negative credit reporting. 4 hours of her life wasted and credit damaged only because the Trolls at CapitalOne do not have their **** together…

The Rant

It’s a sad story, but one we’ve all lived through at some mega-business in the past. The CapitalOnes, Comcasts and other notorious offenders continue to victimize on a daily basis.

But, why does this happen? Do people really start companies with evil, nefarious aims? Do they think that they will increase their customer base by pissing off the people who are shoveling money in their coffers? No. These companies hire fancy, dancy consultants to come in and ‘help’ them piss off their customers in the form of cost-cutting. Throat-cutting would be more appropriate terminology.

Hey, big business… Cut the damn marketing budget before you cut customer care. All the new orders you bring in will eventually be lost due to your prime suckage.

If your customers are !screaming! to get help and all you can think about is how to cut costs, you are bound to lose money. These consultants rarely care for the longevity of your company. They were brought in to immediately lower costs, but they have no stake in the future of your company so they could care less what their cuts do to your future.

Business Example

I recently had a discussion with a friend at a large company. Friend and company will remain nameless, of course. He was explaining to me why their customer service sucks. While his team begged to keep their customer focus, the execs told them that they had to cut $40k from the budget immediately (thanks consultants!). This was, of course, to pay for the companies large social networking experiment. Don’t even get me started on that one…

6 months later my friend was able to show measurable losses of revenue after the significant cuts in customer care and had the foresight to forecast future losses. Because his team did this work, and showed that the $70K cut had put them on track to lose $900K by year’s end, they were unleashed to again serve their customers with excellence. But, how much impact was done in those 6 months? To have him tell it, the impact was substantial. In fact, months after, they are forced to adopt a new, costly customer retention program that will add additional losses to the big savings that the consultant brought them. The sad thing is that before they mucked with their current setup, they were retaining customers just fine and were one of the top 5 *****s in their field.

Sadly, as consumers we have no way to educate big business on this truth. One would think execs would have learned this in their obligatory MBA education from a top school… (I know, now I’m just being snarky).

We have no real way to speak out against these retarded cousins of the business world and I’m tired of just giving up. The Better Business Bureau is useless. Yelp is about the best way to get any attention when you are railroaded by companies, but that really doesn’t work well unless it’s a local business. Any suggestions on how we take back our time, energy and buying power? GetSatisfaction?Anyone else have a customer service nightmare they want to share?

The rest is here:

Less than a year ago, we announced the Android Developer Challenge, a two-part contest for developers to design engaging, innovative mobile applications for Android to the tune of $10 million total in awards. Since the kickoff of the first part of the contest (ADC I) last November, we’ve been eagerly waiting to see what these brilliant minds would come up with. The first round of ADC I closed earlier this year, awarding the top 50 entrants with $25,000 each. Today marks the closing of the second and final round of ADC I, in which 10 winners will receive $275,000 and 10 semi-finalists will be awarded $100,000. We’d like to wish a hearty congrats to all the award recipients!

Visit the Android Developers blog to read more about the finalists’ projects, and check back for updates on ADC II.

Posted by Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

Excerpted from:
Introducing the winners of the Android Developer Challenge I

Ever seen some arrogant jerk get knocked down a peg? Here’s an example of just that…

Excerpt from:
Arrogance Sucks

Maybe it’s just because I’m a geek, but I really ‘get’ this campaign. I got the initial call from Optimus Prime on Sunday, and since then I’ve sent a half dozen of these messages. This is fabulous!

Have Optimus Prime Call Your Friend (thanks Justin)

Oh, and if you are wondering, of the 7-8 people that have heard this in my circle, 2 are planning on getting the DVD. Pretty good conversion, if you ask me.

More here:
Effective Viral Phone Campaign – Transformers.com

• An evening at the Churchill Club . Rene Bonvanie's Blog . Blogs . Serena Communities
  <<Whereas a year ago doing a Web 2.0 “thing” was considered a rogue activity that started under a desk, it now has become a fact of life and an imperative to not only attract new employees and satisfy the millenials, but first and foremost to build a better business.>>
  (tags: web2.0 enterprise)

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links for 2008-08-28

In countries like India, great maps and comprehensive local data are hard to come by. And traditional mapping approaches are stretched to the limit in such environments, where infrastructure and local businesses are evolving at a furious pace.

This need inspired us in Google India to design and build Google Map Maker, which enables users everywhere over to create rich, deep maps and fresh local data. People can mark their favorite spots in their cities and hometowns, add features such as roads, parks, and buildings, tag small businesses to help users find them, and collaborate to map neighborhoods of interest. This product is motivated by the spirit of information democracy, where people can create information that are moderated and consumed by their peers.

Today, we are bringing home this innovation by launching Google Map Maker in India, which has already been deployed in 57 other countries.

We hope Google Map Maker will result in rich local data which will benefit Google users both on the web and on mobile. The creation of base maps where there were previously none will encourage many mashups, mapplets and other cool applications that make use of this data. We’re also excited to see Google Map Maker create a new breed of local map experts who bring their passion for their neighborhoods and communities into the online world, adding to local commerce, tourism and investment.

I will leave you with a map of IIT Bombay, the alma mater to many of us in Google India. When I spent a few hours mapping IIT Bombay — the place I lived in, the school I went to, and the streets I played on, it turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying experience that reconnected me to a place that is home to many of my memories. We hope you will find the Google Map Maker experience as fun and fulfilling as we do.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Software Engineer and creator, Google Map Maker

Source:
Empowering users to map their worlds

Back in May, we introduced a site called Google for Non-Profits, to showcase the tools organizations can use to raise funds and collaborate easily and efficiently. These tools, we hoped, would enable non-profits to focus less on creaky email systems or lost documents — and more on their missions.

For at least one non-profit, this was old news. Months before we unveiled our non-profit site, Marianne Clauw, who chairs CASA Washtenaw, an organization pairing volunteers with children in the local court system — learned about Google products through an employee in our Ann Arbor office. With a website that she now compares to a “dusty storefront” and data sitting in a “scarily unsecure, un-backed up” state, she remembers, “I could see right away that we needed to switch to Google services.”

Clauw and her colleague Ferlie Yruma used Google Page Creator (now Google Sites) to develop a shiny new website, complete with a YouTube video, a Google Calendar that reflects real-time updates, and a Checkout button allowing users to donate with a few clicks of a mouse. They applied and earned a Google Grant to run free AdWords advertising. As volunteer applications and donations trickled in, they began using Gmail and Docs to streamline the way they worked internally.

Here’s what they have to say about the experience:

“Non-profits are not competitive by nature,” observes Clauw. “But we live in a competitive landscape: for donors, for volunteers, for grants. What we’ve done with Google is a major step in being competitive.”

When CASA Washtenaw competes at a high level, Washtenaw County kids win. And for this non-profit, that’s the biggest prize of all.

Posted by Eileen Duffy, AdWords Associate

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Non-profit gives itself a Google makeover

It was a rumour and now it’s fact. And rather than repeat what’s already posted in the ShareaSale forum, click here and read about the great new tool that allows affiliates to create and generate their own video creatives, and link them to multiple merchants throughout the video through the use of cue points. Meaning an affiliate can create a niche focused video covering five related products and promote five different merchants all in one video, darned cool!

See the original post here:
Shareasale launches “Affiliate Create a video”

This is one of those things that you don’t want to miss. It’s limited to a few hundred developers and priority is being given to those devs who are hacking. Please request an invite here and add your name to Upcoming if you want to attend. We’ll be sending out invites shortly so act fast.

Continued here:
Open HackDay At Yahoo!