Tips for a Great Product Review
What’s the most important way that most people find out about which new products to buy, and which to avoid? Whether it’s groceries, clothes, or beauty products, the opinion of respected friends and colleagues is a big factor. It’s how sites Amazon have increased conversions, turning browsers into buyers. Beyond asking your friends for their advice, the second best source sometimes is an impartial product review.
Product review is an ability to express or share one’s opinion about the product, whether it is good or bad. The essential questions that need to be answered to have a good product review are:
- What does the product promise?
- How well does it live up to this promise?
- Is it a good value? for whom?
To answer these questions first you have to read the documentation to understand everything the product can do or at least what it promises to do. Of course, it always helps to have actually used the product yourself. While you’re exploring the features, look also what the product doesn’t do – sometimes it’s easy to get sucked in with all the promises it makes, but remember that people looking to buy want honest opinions on the cons of the products as well. Revealing the downside of a particular product won’t necessarily make someone decide not to purchase it – it just depends what their personal goals for the product are in their own life.
To avoid common mistakes when writing your review, first you have to avoid irrelevant introduction and do not recite the feature list. Most of the time the merchant site will list the features, so you should only highlight the features (or lack of features) you feel are important towards the decision making process of whether or not to purchase the specific item you’re reviewing. The type of online shoppers who do a lot of product research before making a purchase are the type to read your review, so respect their time. There are usually many reviews for popular products, so keep your review succinct and include only what information might be relevant to the purchasing decision.
Keep in mind that you should also remain impartial, especially if the product was provided to you for free for the purposes of reviewing it. Just because you got the product free it doesn’t mean that it’s a gift and you should thank the vendor by providing thumbs up review. You have to consider the matters most is the reader, who is a user group like you, and not the vendors “gift” because you’re telling someone how to spend their money. In order to avoid any compliance issues with the FTC, you need to also be sure to disclose when a product is provided to you for free. Remember to consider, if not in the text of your review but just to yourself, you have to answer the question: would you spend your own hard earned money on this product?
Read MoreUnderstanding What “Deep Link” Means And How To Get More For Your Site
Guest Post by Sam Mauzy.
Deep links lead clients to specific pages that they are looking for without having through the entire content. They are quick links to various areas of interest in your web page. To understand how to use these links for your benefit, you need to take some time to consider their advantages.
Increases relevancy of the website
By using chosen keywords as your anchor text, you enable users to directly access the relevant pages without bouncing around in your main page. It’s easier to rank the pages with the anchor text instead of the whole page. This makes your web page more relevant and highly ranked.
Ease of page navigation
Deep linking provides a simple way of navigating through pages and pages of content. By giving users means of going direct to what is relevant to them you make it a pleasant journey going through your webpage. It saves them time and the search engines will return better rankings for your pages. A good navigational structure for your webpage attracts traffic and makes your web pages trustworthy.
Search rankings
Use of deep links ‘tell’ the search engines that other people are interested on the pages of your website, not just the homepage. It goes to show that they regard the content of your website highly and go beyond looking at your attractive main page. Search engines will therefore rank your site and specific pages as important and put them high in their rankings of useful sites. Of course this translates to more traffic and business for you at the end of the day.
Increase in traffic inflow
Deep linking increases traffic flow to your pages and your website. This is because search engines will rank your page high as they take your site to be important depending on the number of deep links you have. Also, when clients get what they want with ease, they also rank your site as useful and pass the word around that your website contains specific content that they want. This automatically opens your site to more clients and more opportunities. Increased traffic for any website is good business.
Domain authority
External deep links coupled with internal ones make your webpage have authority over other pages. Remember the search engines highly regard sites that have a lot of back links and they rank them high up. When other highly ranked websites have your links, the search engines are convinced that your website has authority over the others and that your content is more important. For example, Wikipedia can be said to have authority over other similar sites and that’s why it’s ranked so highly by most search engines, all these thanks to deep linking.
You will boost your search engine ranking if you are able to get more for your site. Another thing that most website owners also do today embedding back links to other pages apart from the home page, and submitting those link pages to different directories. This is a great way of having your website to have more traffic through the search engines. You don’t even need to do the job yourself, as there are service providers that can do deep link submission for you, giving you an opportunity to take advantage of this important SEO marketing strategy. You only need to look for providers who can do it in a way that does not appear as spam to the search engines.
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Sam is a contributing blogger for a site that specializes in ecommerce conversion rate optimization.
3 Essentials to Effective Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is the new gold rush in the commercial world. And it’s not just big businesses that are whole-heartedly embracing online avenues, small businesses and even single-person entrepreneurs and freelancers now view the Internet as the de facto method for sales growth, exposure, and blog allegiance. Here are a few ground rules for responsible and effective Internet marketing:
Use affiliate marketing smartly.
Don’t litter your blog with hundreds of affiliate links and then get shocked when your readers are turned off. Pick and choose your affiliates carefully, as you would colleagues or partners in any kind of business environment. When you align yourself with an online merchant, you’re in a sense tying your reputation to theirs. If you’re against synthetic chemical-laden manufacturing, for example, and you’re considering affiliate links from companies who manufacture custom water bottles, make sure the company you endorse produces polycarbonate alternative bottles. The point is to make your links consistent, credible, and ethical. Nothing will destroy your credibility quicker than completely selling out your principles over a single affiliate.
Don’t be too repetitious.
Obviously, aggressive marketing requires certain levels of redundancy. How many times have you seen a company tweet the release of a new product a thousand different ways? Or send out multiple email newsletters in a single week? But don’t keep posting the exact same link to your Kickstarter page over and over again with no new information. This just makes you seem either desperate, dense, or dim-witted, depending on who your friends are. Always provide new information or a new context when reposting your own link.
Utilize several different platforms.
If you’re stuck on just Twitter or just Facebook you’re missing the point of social media. It’s not about one application, it’s about the totality of social media sites sharing, integrating and working together with powerful Internet tools like SEO. If you’re releasing a new project combine crowdfunding, viral video on YouTube, microblogging, podcasting, Fan Pages and whatever else you can think of. A successful Internet marketing campaign is rarely relegated to a single site. Diversify your portfolio, so to speak.
Do you consider yourself a self-promoter, a marketer, an advertiser? If the answer is yes, then you’ve probably dabbled in Internet marketing and will do so again in the future. Make sure you’re representing yourself and your brand effectively without being seen as distasteful, spammy, or tedious.
Read MoreUnlocking Your Future – the Key to Working from Home
Guest Post by James Martell
In my dad’s day, a businessman commuted from the suburbs to the office for hours each week, often traveling on business trips to meet with clients or suppliers, and spent more time away from home than he ever did with his family. Those days are disappearing, and it’s time to embrace a new normal.
Blast from the past
Back in 1998, when I first started understanding how the internet would be the future of business, everyone was a bit leery of it. When I did my first promotion for a company in the United States, everybody thought it was crazy for a Canadian like me to do business with someone from another country, not to mention someone I had never even met. I must admit I had my own doubts about it, but they were all laid to rest when the first check cleared the bank.
Today’s Information Age
Flash forward twelve years and the internet is the way we all do business, so why are so many of us still leaving our homes and families to punch a time clock in an office? Working from home is the key to your freedom and happiness; you just have to follow some simple guidelines and success can be yours.
Create your own space
Start by creating your own work space. Working from home is great, because it allows you the freedom to manage your own time and do with it what matters most, but you can’t treat your work time like home time. Creating a separate space to be your work area is essential, and allows you to mentally focus on your work, as well as keep things organized.
Some people I’ve talked to prefer to create their own office, complete with a nice home office computer desk and filing cabinets. Others prefer to make a section in their garage or a corner of the bedroom their work area. However much space you need, or the tools you require, just make sure it is a space that is all your own, and dedicated solely to your work. No setting up on half the kitchen the table and pretending you can eat dinner around it or the kids won’t scatter it. It just doesn’t work!
Social marketing
Use the internet to work for you. It’s important to realize that there’s a lot of competition out there these days, and you’ll need more going for you than just a well written landing page if you’re going to be a success. You’re going to have to make what you’re offering look appealing to the consumer and convince them that others think it has value too. Whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a product or a service, one of the best ways to sell it is with social marketing.
Just as our parents turned to the yellow pages or watched ads on TV, today everybody goes to search engines like Google when they want or need something. It’s the first place many of us get our information now.
When we want to know if the information we gathered from the web is credible, we rely on people we know for endorsements. The power of word of mouth has grown immeasurably since the advent of Facebook and Twitter. Millions of consumers are turning to these resources before making purchases and more and more of us are doing the actual buying or ordering on the internet as well. I’m sure you’ve found this to be true in your own life just as I have. These are great tools that you can use to your advantage. By getting people to talk about your product or service and consumers will seek you out.
Tools of tomorrow, here today
If all this sounds like a lot of work, just remember, you don’t have to do it all alone. Working from home isn’t for hermits or the antisocial. Thanks to today’s technology, it is as vibrant and active and social as you want to make it.
- Increase knowledge and education with webinars.
- Bring the boardroom right into your home by holding meetings and networking with them through business video conferencing or Skype.
- Utilize smart phone apps or laptops to access everything you need anywhere you go.
Do all the things you want to do with your life, and still have the access to handle all your business needs and communicate with the people you need to accomplish it all. Social networking is first and foremost about keeping social as much as you can.
Follow these guidelines and you’ll be on the path to success, and free to enjoy it when you achieve it. Your future is just waiting for you.
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James Martell, author of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook works from his home office computer desk teaching others how to make money with affiliate programs utilizing powerful tools like business video conferencing.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics #59: A Gateway Conference
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Mike and I jump back into the saddle with this whole podcasting thing. We talk briefly about how great Affiliate Summit West 2012 was, get off track in some places, and try to get the innocent kids in the Midwest hooked on some affiliate marketing conference goodness. In in this episode we discuss:
- Affiliate Summit Central – a gateway conference to bigger conferences.
- Speculation about the night life of Austin, TX.
- Anybody using Pinterest? Thread on the Affiliate Summit Forum
- The Story of Skimlinks and Pinterest by Shawn Collins
- Pinterest “Pin It” Button WordPress Plugin
- 0% of Affiliate Marketers are Female. Say whaa? The rebutted 10 Great Women of Affiliate Marketing
- Some chatter about the Affiliate Summit Meetups in NY and SF
Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Be old fashioned and just leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics!
Read MoreAwesome Custom Stickers for the Masses
I love stickers. As a child, I admit, I had those awesome Paul Frank sticker albums full of puffy stickers and scratch-n-sniffs. Growing up with a somewhat unique name like Trisha, I’ve always been a big proponent of self-expression, uniqueness, and customization. As a result, I customize EVERYTHING… I even dropped the $50 on the pretty purple ‘lid’ for my new Dell 🙂 So I love the idea of completely customized stickers to throw around to promote my personal sites. I loved the excellent quality laptop-friendly stickers we had made from StickerGiant for our Get Noticed Fast panel a few years ago at Affiliate Summit East 2009, which solidified my status of “big fan” of StickerGiant.com, specifically.
StickerGiant is celebrating 12 years in business and wants to spread the love by giving one lucky of our blog readers a free custom sticker print job. If you haven’t heard of StickerGiant, you should, these folks are easy to get a hold of, they are super quick, have really high quality stickers and make your artwork print ready for free, check out the stickers they did for us:
The best part of my gloating of these awesome stickers? You can win some too!
To Enter: Just comment on this post, and perhaps describe your sticker needs. One random winner will win a custom sticker printing job from StickerGiant.
Contest ends on January 3, 2012! If you can’t wait to see if you’ve won, by all means just go check out StickerGiant.com and order some yourself!
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