Alternate Language Creative
I 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.
Read MoreLet Sleeping Husbands & Cats Lie
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
Read MoreReputation Management Made Easy – By Trackur!
I wish I could tell you all that this amazing service is free, but alas like most good things nowadays there’s a price to pay. This is definitely a service that’s worth the coin.
Trackur.com, launched earlier this year by Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com, is an amazing tool that basically scours the web for you to find references to your keyword. I enjoyed my free trial, and am excited to see that the minimum price has gone down to $18/month. It’ll be much easier to sell execs on using this service now that it’s ultra affordable.
This ain’t yo mama’s reputation management!
Google Alerts have pretty much been the standard in the past, but once you try Trackur I promise you’ll cancel half those alerts. I found SO much more on Trackur that the Google Alerts never mentioned. Trackur scours all of the web, so if something happens to get past Google’s spiders (not likely but hey, it’s possible) it’ll show up on Trackur.
So don’t let me sing the praises for it – go sign up for the free trial. It’s a great tool that I’ll definitely be hounding the execs here to use. And I know this sounds like I have something to gain from this post, but I don’t. It’s just such a great service I think it deserves more recognition!
Read MoreLink Glossary: On-Page Factors
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
Link Glossary: Link Popularity
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
Explain the value to me
Okay, so there are some websites that I just don’t get. So this is a participation welcome post. Well, okay all of my posts are, of course, welcome to comments, discussion, and participation. But today we’re going to jump into web 2.0 and the world of user generated content!
There are a couple of biggun websites out there that I just don’t understand what the value of these pages are. On one hand I do understand the getting your name out there and a wide & varied web presence will generate traffic (however little). But on the other hand, there’s only one of me so where do I allocate my personal resources?
Here are the websites I just don’t get – someone explain it to me! Remember, this blog is dofollow so feel free to throw in a link for your trouble!
- Squidoo.com – Isn’t this just a big affiliate link venue?
- FriendFeed.com – This seems like a lot of redundancy since the people I’m inclined to follow on friendfeed I already follow through their channels that are linked. Make sense?
- Technorati.com – Is this just scrapped content heaven? Is there any value to your Technorati authority?
- Mahalo.com – What is SO much better about this cultivated human powered search engine?
