Top 10 Affiliate Website Mistakes an Affiliate Manager Sees

With over 12,000 affiliates to manage in 5 separate merchants programs, I review countless affiliate applications and their corresponding websites.

It isn’t a pretty picture. And that’s part of the problem.

So I thought it appropriate to share the 10 most common mistakes I see affiliates make over and over each and every day.

1. The affiliate’s website is poorly designed. A lot of times it’s just plain ugly. Ugly I can stand if it has a purpose. I started my Internet career doing web design and programming. I understand good website design, both for function and look. The affiliate site has to have at least one or the other to be effective, having both is the best. Without one or both of these factors, what are the chances for a visitor to be referred to my merchant’s site?
2. The affiliate site has no affinity to the merchant site. If you have a website without anything in common with the merchant, how do you expect to sell the merchant’s products to your visitor? If your site is all about computer equipment, why are you signing up for my wigs site? Why are you wasting both of our times?
3. The affiliate site has no voice or character. How will a visitor find value on the affiliate’s site long enough to have reason or need to clickthrough on my merchant’s text or banner link? None I would say.
4. The affiliate site has too many banners or text ads. How will the visitor differentiate my offer from the competition? If the site is messy and busy, I may get lots of impressions, but clickthroughs will be low and probably conversions too. Don’t junk up your site with too many ads that don’t have purpose.
5. Affiliate sites with expired coupons. Seeing a site like this implies it’s a “weekender’s” site a part-time affair. Many affiliates started out this way, but today it is highly unlikely that such a site will generate any traffic or sales for my merchants.
6. Affiliate sites with broken banners. It still happens, merchants change their creatives, affiliates don’t keep up and there is an ugly red “x” where a banner should be. Don’t let this happen to you.
7. The affiliate site has no privacy policy. This is a red light for visitors. This means the site is just trying to make a buck and has no interest in visitors for any other reason than getting them to make them money. A sophisticated consumer, as most are getting as Internet experience increases, wants a sophisticated site to convert through. Not having even a simple privacy policy is a giveaway as to the lack of sophistication of the site owner.
8. NO ABILITY TO CONTACT THE WEBSITE OWNER. If you will not disclose who you are, provide an email link or a site form, it is unlikely a visitor to your site will get warm and fuzzy about his site visiting experience and will not covert as a result.
9. NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR THE AFFILIATE MANAGER. In olden days affiliates didn’t want to be bothered by affiliate managers. Now with the tools and special offers merchants can offer through producing affiliates, it is essential for good communications between the affiliate manager and the affiliate. It means more money for both.
10. Affiliate website owner not participating in the industry forums. More and more as I talk with affiliates, we discuss forum postings, industry news and blogs. The top producers know what is going on in the industry. They are creating the news and are creating financial opportunities at the same time.

Internet and Affiliate Marketing: Celebrate The Small Victories

Most internet marketing ventures start as one-man operations. When mistakes are made, you know who to blame. But don’t just beat yourself up, remember that when progress is made, that was all you too. Celebrate the small victories.

When you are just starting in internet marketing, keeping a positive mindset can be a crucial ingredient of long term survival. On or off the web, most new businesses do not become profitable immediately. Sales can be mediocre as your marketing campaign gets going, and if you didn’t plan ahead for this fallow period you may begrudge the out-of-pocket expenses that arise. It is easy to get discouraged.

Worse, many marketers lack basic support and encouragement. In a normal workplace there are other employees to share the load and help solve problems. Not so for most start-ups, and your personal support network may lack enthusiasm. Your friends may think you’re a sucker involved with some newfangled scam. Your family may worry that your seemingly unprofitable internet career is interfering with your day job.

You must remember that you are your own manager, and good managers care about their employees& morale and motivation. Notice and enjoy the small milestones in your business as they pass by, whether it is finally getting your web design just right or suddenly nailing the top search position on a good keyword. Reward yourself with a day off or a good meal. Tell your friends about it even if their eyes glaze over; you listen to their stories about their dull jobs, right?

Verbalizing your success is for your own benefit, and it can help you assess your accomplishments and know when you’ve made real progress along your business plan. Don’t commit the common mistake of neglecting the hardest working, most under-appreciated person in your employ – yourself.

Making Big Money By Going Small on the Nets

You will hear over and over that the quickest way to find success on the net is to find an area with little competition. I second this advice.

Making Big Money By Going Small on the Net

Going small can refer to both marketing and business choice. In and of itself, you are trying to find a segment of the general market for a service or product line. One then develops a solution for the needs of that segment and then markets to it to get the word out. Let’s take a look at an example using one of the biggest companies in the world.

Toyota is a huge multinational company. At first glance, it appears that Toyota focuses on the auto business as a whole both from a marketing and production standpoint. This view is correct. Notwithstanding this fact, Toyota is excellent when it comes to identifying sub-markets that are wide open.

Toyota will search for niches for which it can supply a product in need. Toyota was one of the first companies to realize there was a group of car buyers who would be very interested in environmentally friendly cars. To answer this need, it came up with the legendary Prius. The Prius is the first mass production hybrid car. Where other car manufacturers saw Toyota taking a huge risk, Toyota saw it as an opportunity to identify a new niche and establish its brand. In marketing, it is often the first brand on the scene that takes the day.

Once Toyota took the plunge, it pursued an effective marketing plan. It didn’t promote the Prius in just any media. It focused on media outlets that were watched, read or listened to by people concerned about the environment. For example, it heavily promoted the car through environmental groups and their publications. As the only game in town at that time, Toyota not only dominated the business area – it was the entire niche.

Going small translates just as well to the Internet. In fact, your first sites should be focused on identifying niches and providing products or services to accommodate the need of those prospects.

One of the biggest mistakes made by new businesses on the web is biting off more than they can chew. You are not going to compete against Amazon for general book sales. On the other hand, you might be able to pound Amazon into the ground in the rare book market or in a specific sub-market such as home improvement periodicals. The point is to try to focus both your site and marketing on a segment of the market that is not already dominated.

Being a big fish in a small pond has its limitations, but it sure can be profitable!

How To Not Get Lost In The SEO World

The ever-increasing level of competition in the Web these days is like a mad scramble for most businesses, with thousands of sites and affiliates boxing-out each other for niche markets, increased traffic, and higher sales.

Website and business owners who spend money on optimizing their websites in the search engines want to know they are getting a good return on their investments. SEO firms and experts need concrete numbers to show that the campaign is working, and that they should continue to invest in optimization.

According to the experts, there are several good reasons why you should measure your SEO efforts, so that you wouldn’t get astray in terms of direction or investment. First, you need to justify how much you’re spending to management, your client, or whoever holds you responsible for getting traffic to your website. Second, is to make sure that all the time and funds you’re spending on SEO is actually working. Third, to enable you to secure more money for next year’s SEO budget. And lastly, to enable you to stay competitive always.

It is also notable to take note that you should understand industry averages, such as how much the average website owner spends on outsourcing SEO, and this could range from $100 to $500 per web page for example, and what sort of return you can expect to receive for paying premium cash. In finding out these spending averages, you are fully equipped with the knowledge when formulating a plan that will convince yourself, or the higher-ups, to spend the money on SEO.

Tips On How Not To Get Lost In The SEO World

It is far better to get started on your SEO journey of learning and make a couple mistakes, than to let months go by, never make a mistake and never get started. Here are a few tips on succeeding, and in preventing yourself from getting lost in the wide, and sometimes tricky world of SEO.

* Make a firm decision to get started. There are a lot of people who will buy a program or purchase a product, but for some reason have difficulty in getting to know how to use it: as a result, they never do.

* Gain self-confidence through experience and constant practice. Far too many people hesitate to try out their ideas. The sooner you strengthen your confidence, the sooner you will realize the potential for what you can achieve and do. In the beginning, start with a few of your own sites where you have full creative liberty without encountering the demands or pressures that come from a client.

* Gather advice from the SEO community by visiting respected forums and discussion groups. Although at times you may not get leading edge stuff, since most of that costs a lot of money, however you will get an awesome amount of pertinent information. Plus, you’ll also hear both sides of a story, both the pros and cons, from the debates that seethe within the community.

* Subscribe to reputable newsletters and learn from what the experts say. Many of them are free to sign up to and they can be a wonderful venue to start learning.

The Worst SEO Mistakes That Lead To Lowering Your Search Engine Ranking

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Though there are many different theories out there regarding what makes the best SEO technique, when it comes to some issues that will work against your SEO efforts, there are some issues where everyone agrees. Among these, the most prominent are:

• Not having a web page title
• Using too many graphics, images, or flash animation on a given web page
• Having a menu system that is prohibitively complex

It is extremely important that every web page on your site has a title. Without providing a descriptive title that is search engine optimized with the right keywords, you’ll not only hurt your ranking, but you’ll turn visitors away. Consider it the equivalent to owning a store without a sign and with blackened windows. To make sure that you’re doing your best on that level, make certain that each web page on your site has its own unique title that is specific to its content. Try to make sure that it includes the primary keyword for that page, to ensure proper SEO for search engine spiders.

By using too many graphics, images, or flash animation, you may be pleasing the eye, but search engine spiders won’t see it the same way. Search engines focus on the text content of your website. Their spiders crawl through your site looking for text, keywords, and other indications of purpose. They cannot, however, understand images or flash animations, nor will they ever understand their appeal. Therefore, though images are great ways to add appeal to your visitors, by adding too much to any given web page, you’re decreasing the value of your search engine optimization. To reduce this problem, try to create a balance on your page where the text content is given the true priority, and images, graphics, and flash animations are only a compliment, not a focus for the page. You can also help your website by adding alt tags to each of your images so that you are providing the search engine spiders with a bit of text, even when it’s an image that actually shows up on the page.

The menu system of your website is the key to being able to properly navigate around it. Search engine spiders are typically considered to be relatively basic programs and struggle with anything but the most primitive menu systems. For example, if your menu involves JavaScript or a Java applet, the search engine spider will not be able to recognize any of the features, and will not be capable of properly navigating the site. Certainly, these can be very appealing to people, but search engine spiders don’t have the same ability to interpret the features of a website as people do. For proper search engine optimization, a simple textual link is your best option as it is the easiest for a search engine spider to understand. It makes your site much more likely to be seen in full by the spider, and therefore receive the best indexing and ranking results. Furthermore, the majority of the time, an extremely complicated menu system can quickly be replicated and implemented using textual links and CSS. This will make an enormous difference in your SEO results, and will be welcomed by all of your visitors who are still using dial-up and other slow connections.

If you must use a complex menu or site navigation system, then make sure that you at least provide a site map that is readily available via a text link from the home page. This site map should use text to clearly link to every one of the other pages of your web site. This way, even if a spider is unable to use your regular menu system, it will be able to reach all of the pages by way of the site map.

By carefully watching to make sure that you’ve avoided these mistakes, you’ll be making a big difference in your odds of achieving high ranking due to your search engine optimization efforts. You’ll refrain from working against your own SEO efforts due to simple errors, and will enjoy much larger amounts of traffic to your website.

Linking Strategies for Newbies

One of the most crucial mistakes I made when I first started Internet Marketing was not completely understand the importance of proper back linking, anchor tags, keywords and the title tag. The most important things to search engines is providing relevancy to search results using keywords in the anchor tags and back links. Back links to your website has become one of the most or if not important aspects to better Search Engine Result Positioning (SERP) using your keywords in your anchor tags.

One of the most common mistakes that I personally made with my website was in the title was:

Title: Succeed Online with ES-Solution

The problem with that title was; What does that have to do with my website and keywords? Search Engines base a lot of importance on the keywords and the anchor tag contained in the back link. Additionally, I submitted my website to many directories and search engines using that title. What I am telling the search engines? That my most important keyword or keyword phrase is “Succeed Online with ES-Solution.” How many possible searchs do you believe would have that exact phrase or keywords? Zero.

My rankings for my keyword phrase “Internet Marketing eBooks” were even more horrible!

Steps to avoiding this same mistake:

Step 1: Never using a descriptive title

Step 2: Choose the most relevant Keywords for your Title

Step 3: Create back links using the appropriate anchor tag.

My actions:

1. I changed my title to “Internet Marketing eBooks”. Another important idea behind your title and keywords is that the search engines will shift around your keywords to make more phrases. I only have 3 Keywords but using different combination, I have 3 good keyword pharses:

(1) Internet Marketing eBooks
(2) Marketing eBooks
(3) Internet Marketing

2. And I began re-submiting my website to directories and search engines with the proper title (anchor tag): “Internet Marketing eBooks”

My results:

(1) I have several back links with the anchor text “Internet Marketing eBooks”, but unfortunately I still have some of the old back links with the anchor text “Succeed on with ES-Solution” dropping my overall relevancy to 54% when it should be 100%.

(2) I have managed to achieve the number one ranking as of 6 December 2005 for the keyword phrase “Internet Marketing eBooks” in MSN and the number two ranking in Yahoo.