Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 55: Interviewing Erin Cigich
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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!
You’ve come to love it – our interviews! This go-round we’re interviewing speakers at the upcoming Affiliate Summit East at the New York Hilton in New York City. Today we’re chatting with Erin Cigich about her origins in affiliate marketing & her presentation “Making Affiliate Marketing a Career”. In in this episode we discuss:
- Erin’s ascent to the top at Clickbooth, her origins in marketing , and SEO.
- Determining your strengths to maximize your longevity and stability in affiliate marketing.
- Clickbooth’s new CPC network & staying flexible with your niches and traffic sources.
- Follow Erin on Twitter: @ErinCigich
- Include Erin’s presentation on your calendar, Sunday August 21st at 3:30pm in Sutton (South & Regent)
- Show some love to today’s co-host Eric Nagel! Blog: EricNagel.com & Twitter: @esnagel
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 More12 Steps to Becoming an SEO Expert
Guest Post by Amber McDougon .
If you dream of becoming a successful freelance SEO consultant, or joining or creating a robust SEO Services company, this 12-step program details the path to success.
1. Know Your Basics
This step is simple for those familiar with SEO, like bloggers and web developers. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies SEO, do a search for phrases like “SEO techniques.” The links will uncover articles about respected techniques, as well as so-called black hat tactics that should be avoided. There are books on the topic abound, but honestly, most of the information can be found online.
2. Going Live
Start an SEO-related website once you have a command of the basics. Begin with an unambiguous plan. Clearly detail the site through a complete development life cycle: Initial capital and time investment, the right hosting plan, simple setup and administration, the best CMS for you, required optimizations, and monitoring of important metrics and dimensions.
3. Optimize and Thrive
Double and triple check that you are utilizing every optimization tactic in your newly-acquired arsenal: Effective keyword research, optimized tags, metas and headers, a properly configured robots.txt, compelling content, keyword-to-content ratio, etc. These will become first nature before long.
Take the time and the steps necessary to build your own page rank. Social media is immensely useful to this end. Prove to potential clients that you understand the finer points of SEO by building a quality site that gets results.
4. Establish a Base of Satisfied Clientele
Good references are a prerequisite to landing that big project, more often than not. Friends and family can play an important role in your success. Help build websites for them. Do to their sites what you did to yours.
Search in the beginning for the smaller fish in the pond. Once your portfolio boasts satisfied clients, many will personally vouch for the results they had due to your expertise.
5. Do the Legwork: Network
Standard business marketing applies; Word of mouth, business cards, cold calls, make bids for jobs, and so on. With enough legwork, projects are sure to flow your direction.
6. Have an Open Door Policy
Inform potential clients about the process you will implement. Be an open book when it comes to details. When a homeowner hires a renovation company, the homeowner wants specific details of the work to be done. A simple “We do it all!” doesn’t pass muster. Undisclosed changes made without the owner’s permission could end badly.
7. Research, Work, Research, Work
Search algorithms change with lightning speed. Follow closely the blogs of search engineers. Remember the basics that brought you this far. Distractions can cause simple oversights, so always double check your work. Update XML sitemaps after even minor changes so that spiders index those updates.
8. Silence is Not Always Golden
Do not tell a client some new feature will appear on their site in three days, then neglect to update them for two days. A quick phone call or e-mail will suffice. During these points of contact, elaborate on how well the feature works. Use screenshots or uploaded files to backup your claims.
9. A Good Name Equals More Sales
Up-selling is easier for those with reputations for honest work and full disclosure. Up-sell every chance you get.
10. Reach Out and Touch…Everyone
Satisfied clients almost always allow blurbs about how well you improved their business. Note on your site about what you did for them.
11. Entrepreneur or Team Player?
You have built a fine reputation and strong skills. Should you freelance some more, or join or start an SEO firm? Pros and cons are part of each choice. Weigh this decision with the same care you exercised in both yours and your clients’ businesses.
12. “Kaizen”
“Kaizen” is Japanese for “continuous improvement” and “change for the better.” It’s a business philosophy advocating the tweaking of any aspect that could be enhanced or streamlined, down to the smallest detail.
—
Amber McDougon who is a professional writer and blogger with a particular interest in the open source Joomla platform. She has been helping companies build and maintain their online relationships with customers since 2005.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 46: Interviewing Amanda Orson
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!
We’re continuing our series of interviews with some speakers at Affiliate Summit West 2011, taking place at the Wynn Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas. This time, we talk to Amanda Orson about her origins in affiliate marketing & her panel “Local Lead Generation – Heaven & Hell”. Unfortunately, her co-panelist Ad Hustler was unable to join us. In in this episode we discuss:
- You might know Amanda better as @Phillian on Twitter (got questions for their panel, ask now)!
- Amanda got her start by picking up a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek
by Timothy Ferriss and reading up on WickedFire.com.
- They’ll be looking at things from both an SEO approach and an SEM approach.
- Find good PPC stuff on Chad Frederiksen’s blog CDF Networks.
- Mike’s interest in how the local lead gen can be worked into Pay Per Call technologies.
- Amanda says don’t come for her, come for Ad Hustler!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! You can also ask Trisha questions through FormSpring.me. Or leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics.
Read MoreSessions I Want to See at Affiliate Summit East 2010
Have you ever looked at the schedule for a conference and wondered, “How did these sessions get picked?” I know I have. The conference I go to the most, Affiliate Summit, has always had a closed-door process for putting together their agenda from their speaker proposals. Yesterday I told you about how Affiliate Summit has opened up voting for the panels that will be on the agenda for Affiliate Summit East 2010, and implored you to vote for the Podcasting 101 panel I hope to sit on. Today, I’m going to share the love and tell you about the other panels I voted for and hope to see on the agenda.
Any long-term readers of my blog know that one of my favorite things to do is to attend conferences, take copious amounts of notes, and share them here with you. I learn a lot in these sessions, and feel it’s practically my responsibility to pass on that learning to everyone else. Granted, it’s not the same as attending the sessions at the conferences yourself, but it’s close. I vote for 15 panels out of 117 up for voting on the Affiliate Summit Slinkset site.
Bear with me, with 15 panels to explain my vote for, this is going to be a long post. Here’s the ones I voted for, and why.
- Beyond Business Cards: Move beyond passing out stacks of business cards and adding legions of Twitter followers to promote your business. 11 steps to forging relationships to yield results beyond leads and self-promotions. Speakers: Jen Goode, Au-Co Mai, Lisa Picarille, Lisa Riolo, & Karen Garcia. Why This Got My Vote: There are a lot of people in the industry that will tell you that the core of affiliate marketing is building relationships, and I agree. Not enough people will give you advice or actionable items on how to build these all-important relationships though. I know almost all the speakers on the panel, and they’re fantastic at networking and building lasting relationships, so I have no doubt that their 11 actions are going to be dynamite.
- Bloggers Successfully Connecting with Audiences and Advertisers: Advice and tips for bloggers to increase their success in connect with audiences and at the same time making them more appealing to advertisers and increase revenue. Speakers: Murray Newlands, Kristopher B. Jones, Drew Bennett, Tim Jones, & Eric Schechter. Why This Got My Vote: Honestly, this is more a chance for vindication. At the last summit, these same speakers appeared on the Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO panel (sub John Carcutt for Eric) and I was let down by the ho-hum content. It took them 30 minutes to even mention the word “monetize”, and it seemed less focused on monetizing and SEO and more focused on general “how to start blogging. I know that the panelists, being bloggers themselves, were all very interested in getting feedback, so I’m really hoping that they take the feedback from the last time and refocus and deliver a really kick-ass panel this time around.
- Trademark Bidding in Affiliate Marketing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of trademark bidding in affiliate marketing. An in-depth look at the impact trademark bidding has on all players in the affiliate space. Speakers: Paul Schroader, Justin Bowen, Chuck Hamrick, John W. Dozier, & David Naffziger. Why This Got My Vote: This is a seriously confusing area in the PPC arena, and any light that can be shed on it is always good for affiliates. As well, David has a great product with Brand Verity to help, and a lot of insight to be shared. Not the sexiest topic, but an important one.
- Connecting Your Community: Online/Off Social Good: There are opportunities for affiliates and advertisers to support great causes, both online and off to foster a larger online community. This panel will look at examples in social media that helped. Speakers: Dina Riccobono, Sloane Barrent, & Bruce Wang. Why This Got My Vote: So much emphasis in affiliate marketing is about ME, and how can I make a fortune, but people should remember that there’s a world out there that can also benefit from your support. I’m interested in people learning more from Dina and the panel on how they can successfully integrate their work and marketing efforts into also benefiting great causes and making the world a better place.
- Affiliate Program Case Studies: Strategies and Practices: Discussion of what it takes for a retailer to get their affiliate channel to the next level. Merchant case studies reveal and illustrate strategies and practices that attract and keep affiliates. Speakers: Melanie Seery, Madeleine McGregor, Adam Riemer, & Kimberly Salvino. Why This Got My Vote: Case studies are always great, because they show real results. It’s more than just hypothetical tactics, it’s proof positive. All of the speakers are very knowledgeable and represent various angles of a merchant program that really works, from the network, affiliate, and affiliate managers.
- Creating a Stronger, Balanced Affiliate-Merchant Agreement: Can we have a stronger, fairer Affiliate-Merchant Terms of Service agreement to better protect affiliates and merchants? Discussion of the current inadequacies and challenges in creating a better TOS. Speakers: Melanie Seery, Brian Littleon, Adam Riemer, & Kimberly Salvino. Why This Got My Vote: Well, honestly it almost didn’t. This panel has the same panelists as the last one I voted for, except for the substitution of Brian for Madeline. Affiliate Summit has a policy of not allowing people to speak on more than one panel, so theoretically once the advisory board makes the final agenda, one of these panels won’t be on it. But, this is just as valuable as the case studies panel. Many merchants don’t have a good TOS, so any help they can get is helpful!
- Search Marketing Campaign Review: Attendees will apply to have their site and campaigns reviewed before the conference. Our panel of experts, one each in SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social, and Affiliate will choose 4-5 companies. Speakers: Kate Morris, Joanna Lord, Scott Polk, Kristy Bolsinger, Jane Copeland, Carolyn Shelby. Why This Got My Vote: I’m a big fan of interactive panels, and real-life examples. This panel will allow for real-time, off the cuff analysis and can be incredibly helpful to everyone in attendance. My first affiliate summit, I attended a site review similar to this kind of clinic-approach panel and volunteered up the site of the company I worked for at the time. It was an eye opener! In the interest of full disclosure, I briefly worked with Kate Morris during our time at New Edge Media, and I know Kate to be really good at explaining how things can be changed for the better in a constructive way, which is what people need for public critiques!
- Seven Deadly Sins of Affiliate Marketing 2010: A fast paced multi-media presentation on affiliate danger zones focusing on the latest FTC enforcement priorities and initiatives and plaintiffs’ targets infused with useful tips and humor. Speaker: Bennet Kelley. Why This Got My Vote: With a title like that, how could you NOT vote for it! Actually, I’ve seen Bennet speak before and he’s incredibly knowledgeable and makes sometimes boring topics like law, enforcement, and the FTC actually interesting and relevant. I feel very strongly that it’s in every affiliate’s best interest to know what their limitations are legally with their marketing efforts, so this is important.
- Innovate! New Exciting Applications of Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is increasingly used in new web start-ups, services and applications. Discover the most exciting new ideas that are helping to grow and highlight affiliate marketing industry. Speaker: Joe Stepniewski. Why This Got My Vote: Affiliates are some of the most creative and innovative marketers out there, online or off. I love to hear what crazy things affiliates are coming up with and what tools and tricks are out there. Working for a vendor of an affiliate tool myself now, I’m excited to see what kind of innovation is out there that might compliment the For Me To Coupon service.
- Feed Powered Affiliate Marketing: A review of how product feeds are playing an ever-increasing role in online marketing and how they can be successfully deployed in affiliate marketing. Using real case studies and examples. Speakers: Lee Brignell-Cash & Robert Durkin. Why This Got My Vote: Again, considering I work with data feeds every day now, I’m interested in the creative things affiliates are doing with various types of data feeds. A lot of affiliates are concerned with how to best optimize their time and marketing efforts, yet not enough use data feeds to help automate their sites. Hopefully more sessions like this can bring data feeds to more affiliates.
- The New Frontier for Infomercials: Affiliate Marketing!: Marketers behind the Snuggie know the power of TV to drive online sales. They have big budgets and are more focused than ever on driving online sales. Discover more about this giant opportunity. Speakers: Rebecca Madigan, Peter Bordes, & Ron C. Pruett, Jr. Why This Got My Vote: I admit it, I have a fascination with informercials and TV pitchmen. So I’m fascinated to see how they’re going to tie this in with affiliate marketing. I’m a bit surprised that someone from Impact Radius isn’t involved in this, given their big focus on integrating traditional media with affiliate offers, but my intrigue has been piqued nonetheless!
- Successful Multiple Network Strategies for Merchants: The arguments for and against launching performance marketing programs in multiple networks–and how to make the strategy you do select successful. Speakers: Lisa Riolo & Durk Price. Why This Got My Vote: I’ve yet to see a merchant that really leverages multiple networks right. Most seem to just throw their program up onto as many networks as possible with no real strategy at all, so I’m exited to see what tips can be shared for these merchants to really leverage multiple networks instead of just casting their nets as wide as possible.
- Demystifying Online Attribution: Real answers on how to track a customer’s searches through all phases of the buying cycle, how to measure cross channel assists, and how to avoid the dangers of only last click attribution. Speakers: Don Batsford & Jonathan Treiber. Why This Got My Vote: A lot of affiliates (and even some merchants) know the basics of cookies and how affiliate links are tracked, but when you start talking to them about click attribution, how to separate affiliate traffic from PPC traffic from organic traffic, eyes start to glaze over. Hopefully this session, aimed mostly at merchants/advertisers, will help new affiliate merchants understand how to better differentiate their traffic sources and become more aware of how tracking really works.
- Conquering The Mega Niches for Mega Profits: Very few affiliate marketers dare to enter the most competitive and profitable niches. They follow the general advice of focusing on the small opportunities. Speaker: Hamlet Batista. Why This Got My Vote: It’s always encouraging for a super affiliate to come to the conference and share some of their secret sauce with smaller affiliates hoping to really crack some opportunities. I’ve met Hamlet and I know he’s been incredibly successful in large niches (hello Viagra!), and he’s a good speaker as well – just the right mix of informative and motivational for those smaller affiliates looking for hope!
- Are You Kidding Me? Merchant Mistakes: Going over common Merchant Mistakes and why they are bad. Limiting to 100 Affiliates, Not participating in forums, Being on AutoApprove, etc. Speaker: Adam Riemer. Why This Got My Vote: I love Adam on a personal level – he’s a riot to chat with and is super passionate about the industry to boot. So this session promises to at least be entertaining. As well, as a self-taught (former) affiliate manager, I’m always interested to hear other affiliate managers’ opinions on the dos & don’ts of managing merchant programs. Unfortunately, as Adam is listed as a panelist on two other potential panels, as I mentioned before he can only speak on one, so I’m torn as to which I’d rather see him on!
I heartily encourage you to click on the links and vote for these sessions as well. Just click the blue arrow to the left of the session titles to vote. You will have to register for an account, but it’s a great opportunity to get the most out of your money when attending Affiliate Summit. If you haven’t already done so, register for Affiliate Summit today. I will have a pass to give away at the end of this month so stay tuned for contest details!
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Read MoreASE09 Session: SEO Tools You Can Use Today
Session Description: This session is a quick moving brain dump of how to use the most advanced powerful tools to help you with SEO. Expect to learn how you can walk out and use several SEO tools to grow revenues today. The speaker was:
- Wil Reynolds, Associate, SEER Interactive (Twitter @wilreynolds)
I’d never previously had the chance to hear Wil speak, despite meeting him a few times. It always seemed poorly matched up against other sessions that were more relevant to me as an affiliate manager. This time I made sure to make it to Wil’s session, and I was NOT disappointed. He’s an SEO genius and did, in fact, give us tools that I used TODAY!
Bullet Point Review!
- Tool: Google Insights
- Tool: Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (Formerly MSN adCenter Add-in for Excel)
- Watch your bounce rates, because even if keywords rank this is a problem.
- Always check Google Trends for the keywords.
- Evaluate bounce rates daily for each keywords (this catches problems quickly)
- SEER did this for a client and caught a page 1 ranked keyword with a bounce rate sometimes as high as 80%)
- Home page was ranked for the product search instead of a product page.
- Ranking is a big distraction.
- If you are analyzing search engine performance by where you rank you would never have caught the issue – analyze SEO by more than just rankings.
- Tool: Microsoft adCenter Labs Audience Intelligence – remember to search for singular keywords and plurals.
- Affiliates need to know research vs. commercial queries to help convert traffic.
- Marketers need to know what kind of message to put in front of people when searching.
- Plural tends to convert much better, but is not a hard & fast rule.
- Know the flaws before you use any tool so you know how far to trust the data.
- Yahoo Keyword Suggest is better than Google’s because it’s a general phrase match and not a character match.
- A 40 to 60 ratio isn’t enough to suggest a strong patter – go for closer to 30 to 70.
- Look for the queries highly skewed to one side or the other (commercial v. noncommercial) & look for high degrees of confidence from the engines.
- Test against your own data set on keywords that are currently ranking well before using the tool so you knoe how far to trust the data.
- You have to look at things through a marketing lens and not just take the word of the tool’s data.
- Affiliates need to take advantage of hot keywords because they can move much faster than larger corporations.
- Major competitive advantage: big companies move slow. Their inability to act for mid/long tail/hot keywords = opportunities for you.
- Don’t look back too far because trends rapidly change. Look at more current data sets, around 30 days old at most.
- Check out the Rising Searches area towards the bottom in Google Insights to see what trends are on the rise.
- Don’t go back more than a year data-wise, unless you’re looking for seasonal trends.
- How is a product getting hot? How do you rank for it?
- Try moving it up one level in the hierarchy of the site – possibly link from homepage in a hot product section.
- Top 200 products no more than 2 clicks from home page.
- Suits = slow = opportunity for you
- Google’s algorithm seems to be favoring large brands more and more; you’ve got to find ways to compete. Lots of ideas at blogstorm.co.uk
- Link building is about exposure to stimuli.
- You can’t have all the ideas – you need a Spark. Put yourself in a position to have great ideas.
- Install Greasemonkey script in Firefox.
- Install Twitter Search Results on Google for Greasemonkey
- It’s about being exposed to things that will trigger your brain to a link building opportunity.
- Tool: Google Trends Hot Trends
- Paid Tool: SEOmoz Labs – has a graphical representation of links.
- Put plug-ins and stuff at the bottom of the HTML code in case they hang up loading so they don’t stop everything else from loading.
- Wikipedia links help.
- Paid Tool: Hub Finder from SEO Book
- Tool: SeoQuake
- Seed Keywords allows you to find scenarios if you’re having an interal battle over which keywords would work best.
- Google Universal Search’s thumbnail pictures will definitely start to influence clicks in search.
Questions were really peppered in throughout the presentation, and Wil didn’t get to all his slides but promised they’d be made available and any links would be shared through Twitter if asked. It was a terrific session and I learned a ton that I’m ready to go back and start using now! For your benefit, here’s the presentation:
