Marketing

Link Glossary: FFA Link Farm

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

FFA Link Farm:

  • A link farm ffa or (Free For All) are farms where anyone can add a link. Many of these ffa/link farms have been banned.

From what I’ve been noticing they seem to have been replaced by directory listings. These are nearly free for all’s, but they do involve some moderation from the webmasters to filter out blatant spam or inappropriate content.

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Glossary Definition From
The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

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March BAAMC Meeting

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing | 2 comments

Last week I was happy to attend the March lunch meeting of the Bay Area Affiliate Manager Coalition. It was a great meeting and I was super jazzed afterwards. I found, when trying to sit down and write this blog post, that I was way too excited about it. I’ve been looking for a subject to test out a video with, so I decided to bust out my trusted Aiptek HD Camera and throw a little HD action at you.

Please feel free to give me any feedback. And leave comments! Thanks!

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Alternate Language Creative

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

Alternate Language Creative

languagesI was presented with an interesting dilemma last week. An affiliate contacted me and pointed out that their visitor base consists mostly of non-English speaking users.

Of course we’re willing to accommodate this publisher. He’s excited about the program enough to ask for the creative that his visitors will understand and connect with. Now in this case the language in question was Spanish, which I don’t personally speak. So I gave the publisher the opportunity to give me the copy and we can work from there.

This makes me wonder how other affiliate managers deal with creating custom ads appealing to different demographics, languages, cultures, etc. Do they always create a few different versions of an ad for other demographics or take the requests in as they come? I guess it depends on their program and the types of publishers they have.

For the time being, I’m sticking with a case-by-case basis, although I know eventually it’ll need to be automated lest I go insane trying to appease these requests. I’ve said it many times before that everyone needs printing, in all languages, so eventually I can see the reach of our program extending across demographics. Eventually it would definitely be nice to come out of the gate with multiple versions of same ads. Networks, if you’re reading, you should work in a way to add different versions and not count against our total link count.

Alas, I’m betting that no one from any affiliate networks reads this so my plea will go unseen.

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Let Sleeping Husbands & Cats Lie

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

So what does this have to do with marketing or affiliate managing? Other than I am in these fields and wanted to share a cute picture of the cat sleeping on the husband, it’s a good metaphor for inactive affiliates.

Now, the only reason our cat is sleeping on him is because he’s asleep and doesn’t know it. If he were awake, the cat would be hitting the floor in less than a minute. At any moment he can wake up and kick Lunchbox to the curb (yes, my cat is named Lunchbox). So since he’s asleep, the status quo of the cat sleeping with him is maintained.

He could wake up at any time and the cat will be gone. An inactive affiliate could wake up to your program at any time and decide to clean house, drop your program, heavily promote your program, or just leave the cat on their lap – you never know. This is a good argument for why affiliate managers should leave inactive affiliates alone and not deactivate them. Use the “wait and see” tactics as a manager. It’s actually less work for you to leave inactive affiliates in the program (but still keep track of how MANY are inactive and reach out periodically) than to continually try to weed them out. And they could end up being great affiliates in the long run.

Now, this is what I’ve heard EVERYWHERE, but I have to tell you – honestly, inactive affiliates annoy me. I understand their reasons for signing up then not doing anything, I really do. I’ve done it myself. But in my professional life, I’m a neat freak. I like to keep the program tidy and make sure that the performers are being represented and those that are asleep at the wheel are not. Additionally, the more inactive affiliates are in our program the more dragged down our EPC gets.

We’re not the first company of our kind with a strong affiliate program, so trimming the fat is necessary to keep our EPC up and really stand out amongst the competition. Right now I see this as a necessary evil of the rat race. Eventually I hope that our EPCs will be good enough even with the less active affiliates to be a more wide open program.

In the meantime, just answer my email and let me help you :p

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Link Glossary: On-Page Factors

Posted on Mar 24, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

On Page Factors:

  • Ranking criteria that can be found on a web page. These factors include: text on the page, meta-tags, keyword density, keyword proximity, etc.

A brief word about some factors. Some people don’t seem to understand the importance of meta-tags, but they’re vital for SEO and SEM. Meta-tags increase the attractiveness of your website to search engines. Keyword density is also a must; if you are looking to improve your organic search results for a particular keyword, you must include that word in the text on your page at least 4 times as a rule of thumb.

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Glossary Definition From
The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

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Link Glossary: Link Popularity

Posted on Mar 21, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing | 1 comment

Link Popularity:

  • The measure the quantity and/or quality of sites that link back to your web page.

Popular links are important links. Like in High School.

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Glossary Definition From
The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

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