Enkay
Posts by Enkay
Making Money with Affiliate Marketing
Nov 8th
Before I begin speaking about how you can make money with affiliate marketing I wanted to let you know about the contest. Ive gotten a few entries into the contest so Im going to try to put up a leader board every so often to keep you updated about the contest results. If you haven’t entered the contest yet, go here for more details.
Now lets talk about Affiliate Marketing. Here are a few tips to help you out
1) Finding The Right Marketing - There are many ways you can market the offers that you select to promote. You can use Facebook, Myspace, Google Adwords, etc. among many others. The idea is that some promotional methods may be better than others. You could have a really well established email list that you could use or choose between the advertising mediums I’ve mentioned. Its all about picking the right method.
2) Picking The Right Offers – Some people get caught up in CPA but instead pick the offers that you think will work the best or will sell the best based on the target demographic or your email list. You need to pick offers that will sell the best so, for example, if you are advertising on Facebook you have to realize that the biggest demographic is between ages 16-25 and so you would have to pick offers to sell to that demographic so you would pick offers like student loans over offers for better insurance.
3) Dont Be Skeptical/Afraid – The reason why most people dont really take to affiliate marketing that quickly is because theres a financial input required and some people are not ready to take on that risk. There will be a post tomorrow about how you can get some free credits to try out different publishing networks such as Facebook, Adwords, etc. For those of you who want to give it a try or are unsure of how it works and just want to get some hands on experience then experiment with a small amount of money just to get a feel of things. Its sort of like investing your money, you win some and you can lose some but one you know the formula then all you’ll be doing is winning, so dont be afraid to spend a little.
So hopefully this post gives you a little help regarding affiliate marketing. I’ll have a post tomorrow about different coupons for ad publishing networks so that you can get a head start on your affiliate marketing career. Anyway, hope you guys have a good weekend and I’ll post for you tomorrow!
The Importance of the Affiliate / Affiliate Manager Relationship
Nov 6th
This is a guest post made by my affiliate manager at Market Leverage, Mike Kelly. If you haven’t signed up for Market Leverage yet, then do so now and enter the contest to win some great prizes.
Having worked for MarketLeverage for nearly three years as an Affiliate Manager, I have experienced many different types of relationships with my affiliates. I think these relationships are best categorized as follows: little to no communication, small to medium amounts of communication, and those that keep constant communication. I have found that having frequent, relevant communication with my affiliates has contributed greatly to both their success as an Affiliate Marketer and my success as an Affiliate Manager. There are several reasons why I think it can be very beneficial for you, an affiliate, to maintain open, honest, and frequent communication with your Affiliate Managers.
Ultimately, your goal should be to form a true partnership with your Affiliate Manager. I think it’s helpful when a mutual sharing of goals, direction, and ongoing achievements takes place. Remember, Affiliate Managers only make money when you do, so they are there to help you! As you may already know, email and IM typically comprise the primary means of communication in our industry. While nothing beats these tools in terms of raw efficiency, I don’t like the ‘disconnect’ that sometimes results from an email only exchange. Try using the phone! Hopping on the phone not only provides an additional medium to communicate, but it also opens up a whole new side to your relationship. You can feel the emotion, you can hear it, and you don’t have to try to interpret the emotion like you do in typed conversation.
Talking to your Affiliate Manager gives you a real sense of where he or she is coming from, and in return, you can give them a real sense of where you want to go with the relationship. I recommend setting up a weekly or semi-monthly call with them to touch base, find out which offers are hot, or just to check in on the offers coming down the pipeline. You don’t have to make a thirty-minute call out of it. Even a quick call to check in has proven to be extremely beneficial.
Keeping constant communication with your Affiliate manager helps in many ways. You can get the inside scoop on offers and find out which are the hottest niches on the network. You can also gain on offers from the network’s vantage and find out which creative combinations are working the best! If these benefits haven’t convinced you to be in regular contact, what about the possibility of getting the first shot at new offers, sometimes before they even go live on the network? You get the competitive advantage, all because you know your Affiliate Manager! If anything ever comes up where you need their help, you know how to get a hold of them. You may need their help in getting something approved, or ideas on a new site to promote, or new keywords to bid on, and they’ll be there for you!
I know that we are all busy but I highly recommend taking the time to build a strong working relationship with your Affiliate Managers. Maintain efficient, but constant communication with them, and they will help your bottom line in return. After all, that’s what it’s all about, right? Oh yeah, and don’t be afraid to pick up those phones!
Enkay’s BIG ML Birthday Bash Contest!
Nov 3rd
Thats right guys, the time is here. I am hosting another contest thanks to Market Leverage and specially Rebecca Mercurio for being so helpful in getting all this setup and organized. I turn 21 tomorrow (Nov. 4th) and so I figured that it might as well be called the BIG ML Birthday Bash Contest. Anyway, Lets start off with the prizes before I tell you how this contest will be held.
1st – First Place : Acer Aspire One Laptop – This is the laptop that I currently use and its a netbook meaning that its perfect for travel and blogging. It weighs close to 2 lbs and it has a 9 inch screen with Windows XP, 1 GB of RAM and 120 Gigs of Hard drive space. Its one of the hottest netbooks out there and I will be giving one of these away!
2nd – Second Place : $75 American Express Rewards Card
3rd – Third Place : $50 American Express Rewards Card
Thats a total of $500 worth of prizes and cash!! Now that you know what the prizes are, let me tell you how this contest will be run. This, unlike my other contests, will be based on how well you are able to make money using Market Leverage.
The idea is that you can either sign up if you don’t have an account already or if you already have an account (even if its not under me) you can still take part in this contest. Either way, send me an email with your publisher id so that I can make sure that you’re being tracked by Rebecca.
All you have to do is earn money by promoting Market Leverage offers and if you are one of the top 3 highest earners at the end of the month, November 30th, and you could win some really amazing prizes, all thanks to Market Leverage!!
Its just that simple! Hope you guys like the contest and I’ll be sure to make sure to keep looking for new and unique prizes. Lets see those earnings guys because this is one contest where you control if you win or not. You not only walk away with your earnings but a sweet prize to go with it! Hope you guys have a great rest of the week!
Weekly Update – November 2nd
Nov 2nd
Okay, so I decided to do a weekly update to let you guys know what to expect and what was going on. I usually don’t write posts on Sundays but I haven’t been to active this past week due to exams and stuff. I still have an exam coming up and I have to sit for my GMAT which is an exam you take to get into an MBA or Masters program so I have to study quite a bit for that. So, now that you know why I’ve been slacking in blogging and commenting, lets take a look at what is in store and some updates.
Top 100 Female Blogger List
I have been desperately searching for a script that allows me to pull the Technorati, Alexa and Page Ranks in order to compile this list because with close to 250 blogs now, it means that I’ll have to manually update 1000 numbers every so often and its quite a time intensive process. In order to allow the list to grow I’m going to need a script like Mark from 45n5.com to make the list but I really can’t seem to get my hands on it. Either way, I’d like to get some suggestions as to how I can make this work and I’ve already played around with TopSites scripts and all that so maybe you guys have some suggestions for me.
Contest Coming Soon
Okay, so this is the big surprise and I’m spilling the beans a little about this contest. What this contest entails will not be disclosed until later however it is going to be held in conjunction with Market Leverage and we’re currently deciding on giving away a Wii or an Acer Aspire One laptop, so whichever way we decide, it will all benefit you guys in the end. So, now that you know what the surprise is, I hope you’re looking forward to it!
Top Commentator – October
Okay, so September was a month that I didn’t pick a top commentator because there was a major issue with a little comment spamming but as I had mentioned before thats a very small issue to me so I just didn’t want to make it a big issue and call out some people so I just penalized them by not picking a winner. This time around though, there was no comment spamming and I monitored the comments to make sure they were legitimate and with Nick from RomanDock Dot Com returning to blogging, he made sure he came up at #1 on the list closely followed by Normal Joe from ImWithJoe.com whose comments are always insightful and inspiring.
So since I’ve already reviewed Nick, I will be giving him a 125×125 ad spot for the month. Congrats Nick. For those of you who want a little free advertising, all you have to do is contribute. Please don’t disqualify yourself by writing 20+ comments on the last day of the month on every single post. It start to get pretty obvious! Anyway, lets see if anyone can take Nick off his throne for this month.
The Wrap Up
So, that was my weekly update. Let me know how things are going for you. I’ll try to have the contest up and running ASAP although it will end at the end of November so that should be something you’d like to get involved in. Hope you guys have a great week ahead. See you on the flip side of the new week!
PepperJam Store Builder
Oct 31st
This review was requested by Pepperjam to showcase their new Pepperjam Store Builder. They requested a mini-review so its just a brief snapshot of this new store and will allow you to get a glimpse at it without a long detailed review as I usually do. The Pepperjam Store builder lets you manipulate the Pepperjam Network product feeds in real-time to build product storefronts for your website.
Basically, you will now be able to go through a system that will create a professional e-store for your products and its easy to use and won’t take much time at all. You can access millions of products from hundreds of Pepperjam’s advertisers to display in your store. You can pick from products, categories, keywords and merchants.
The Store Builder also lets you pick certain products or group of products by searching through the lists. For example, you want costumes for Halloween time, then you can specifically search for “Halloween costumes” to find the products that you’d want to display.
The best part has to be the Live Demo. Meaning, that you can see a live demo of what you’ve created, as you are creating it! You can create a storefront within 30 seconds and that means that you save more time and get the job done, faster! Below is a visual representation:
So if you’re interested in the Store Builder then don’t wait till later. Jump on the bandwagon now and experience the PepperJam Store Builder. Stay tuned for a new post coming really soon!
