Monthly : March 2008

Everything a person looks at, experiences or examines gets filtered through a specific world view. Seth Godin, in his book All Marketers are Liarsemphasizes this issue (among other things) as a key point in crafting stories or messages that will appeal to potential customers. One of the key themes in the book, is that merchants should not try and appeal to a multitude of world views, or else they risk their message becoming too diluted, unfocused and generic. Affiliate marketing can be a valuable tool in expanding a merchants reach to different types of customers with different world views. Just on Read More…

As an affiliate manager, I’m often asked, “Which convert better: text links or banners?” At first glance, the most obvious answer it text links. Glancing at a report or statistics will reveal that most of the time text links do convert better than banner ads. However, there’s more to the story than just that. I believe it has to do with how text links are used as opposed to banners that contribute greatly to the higher conversion / success rate. Consider for a moment how text links are employed as opposed to banners. Let’s first take a look at how Read More…

In Strategies for Affiliate Landing Pages Part 1 we discussed the idea of a value added landing page, talked about two types of site visitors, and discussed strategies for designing a landing page for early buying cycle visitors. Now, I’d like to discuss strategies for those buyers who know exactly what they want to purchase. You can usually identify these buyers by how they are arriving at your site. If they’ve used exact product names, or very specific keywords, then you can generally assume that they have already narrowed down their choice to this specific product. Now it’s all a matter of Read More…

Well there was a lot of hubbub that came out of he Affiliate Summit and Jason Calacanis’ keynote talk. He called affiliates to the table, especially those with what he termed “thin landing pages.” The warning that he sounded, is that some bad affiliates are polluting the well for everyone. Granted, deceptive landing pages, cookie stuffing, deceptive redirection, misleading offers, etc., are polluting the well, however thin landing pages really are just poor business execution. Affiliates aren’t paid on clicks, they are paid only when the sale is made, so if affiliates do not send pre-sold or targeted traffic to Read More…