Importance of Social Media in Affiliate Marketing

Web 2.0 has seen an emergence of a plethora of affiliates and social media websites. With the people understanding the nuances of affiliate marketing programs, the importance of social media is quite a big consideration.

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Promoting your affiliate system

The obvious question for affiliates marketers is – how do we promote our affiliate programs to generate more revenue? The answer lays in Social Media circles. Social Media has outgrown almost every possible source of digital advertising and promotion in today’s world. The fact that has helped social media experts is that consumers have turned a blind eye towards traditional forms of advertising.

Social media helps in creating the much required monetizing buzz for the affiliates to be successful. Successful affiliates have been implementing social media strategies from the initial days when the term was not even coined. It is the ability to create a buzz about a new product or a service in the market by a commission generating option that competes for one’s time, money and attention. Affiliates have used social media in its traditional forms such as the news groups, bulletin boards and emails. With the new trends such as PPC, SMO, etc. the chances of generating significant revenues have grown leaps and bounds.

Selecting the correct strategy

The key consideration lies in selecting the right social media strategy to boost your affiliate websites. It is thus advisable to select and implement the right strategy which sounds more significant to your work instead of playing trial and error with everything that can be implemented. Affiliates should thus focus more on the trusted channels of social media such as blogging, social bookmarking and social networks. The outreach can be extended to locating the niche audience in forums, communities, facebook pages and groups, etc.

Few reasons why affiliates should use social media for promotion include;

  • The monopoly of merchants and their restrictions to discontinue using certain sites and advertising channels compels one to look for social media to do the job in a better and cheaper way.
  • With a plethora of affiliates in the same competitive arena which focus more on the traditional means, it is always a smart option to choose social media as it brings in an added freshness in the approach.
  • Google is playing the spoil-sport by introducing PPC and SEO squeezes which has various restrictions and are not in the interest of affiliate marketing community. Social media herein comes handy and acts as an answer to the strict laws and regulations being laid down by Google.
  • The traditional methods have started sounding suspecting because of its monotonous nature. Consumers always look out for something new and Social Media has the potential to deliver and come up to the customer’s expectations. Today people spend a lo of time on Facebook, Twitter and other similar networks. Tapping them at places where they love to be would fetch better results.
  • Social media is dirt cheap to dirty your hands with. With time, one can learn the basics of the game. The simplicity of social media measures such as blogging, tweeting and creating fan pages allows you to get get going within minutes.
  • Social media doesn’t need you to be a journalist or a big shot in the internet space. Efficient practices can help you do wonders with your affiliate programmes.

Innovation is the key in social media strategies. If the innovation is right and it strikes the right chord, the affiliate rewards are more than one’s expectations.

Image credits: Gary Hayes and sean dreilinger

Affinity of Affiliate Marketing

Internet has emerged as one of the biggest revenue generation source in the past few years. It has surpassed other traditional mediums of advertising and revenue generation. The major credit goes to Affiliate Marketing programmes.

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Photo Credit: Affiliate Bob

For affiliate marketing programs to be successful, it is important to increase the brand loyalty of internet users to your website. Building up user loyalty and creating a positive outlook towards your blog is one of the stepping stones to make big bucks online. Here comes the role of Affinity Targeting which aims at creating an affinity towards your website and the affiliate programs running on it.

The sense of affinity is a great medium to increase the traffic onto your website and hence increasing the conversion ratio. This is only possible when a website can command a competitive advantage over its competing websites by implementing pay per clicks, SEO to increase affiliates and creating a positive attitude towards online advertising enabling a wider audience reach.

Few steps to create affinity towards your affiliate marketing programs include;

  • Building up visitor trust by publishing unique content and showcasing its benefits.
  • Regular posting and increasing the site’s visibility on the web are the harbingers of sustained user loyalty.
  • Usability should be the main focus as a site which is easily navigable and not at all cluttered builds up an enjoying experience for the user.
    It is also significantly important for a brand/site to command loyalty and have the potential to emerge as one of the best names on the web. Professionals are hence on a lookout for innovative techniques to boost up their affiliate sales. Therefore, it is important to create Brand Affinity and work in tandem with your partners or affiliates to enhance the customer value.

Marketing Service Talk explains this further by mentioning four ways to work with brands;

  1. Brand Affinity – working with other brands to change perception and generate awareness for your brand;
  2. Partnership Marketing – tactical short term marketing initiatives, consisting of promotional or third party tie-ups;
  3. Affinity Marketing – Adding value to your brand via a complementary service from another brand e.g affinity credit cards;
  4. Affiliate Marketing – white labeling your product or service to others to sell for commissions such as Moneysupermarket, U Switch.

In the early days of affiliate marketing, it was looked upon as an unprofitable source of income. But with newer business models coming in, such as pay per performance and other affiliate business models by creating an online partnership with firms and thus determining their revenue sharing allotments, the internet marketing environment has evolved. Websites such as PepperJam have become one of the best in the business. Alanna Richter, VP – Marketing of NY based Bluefly says,

Affiliate marketing is one of the company’s least expensive acquisition tools and we are always on the lookout for high-traffic sites touting visitors with relevant demographics and psychographics”.

For websites to increase online revenue generation, it is good to know that affiliate marketing is here to stay and grow. The key lies in understanding the nuances involved and implementing them successfully. For an affiliate marketing program to be successful, it is important to know the advantages and disadvantages of the same.

Few advantages;

  • Brand Images can be changed and new perceptions formed.
  • Affiliates help launch new products and services often exploring into new target audiences with the help of Affinity Targeting.
  • Online partnerships with relevant partners/sites increase the visibility helping more money to come in.
  • Marketing costs are shared and profits increase.

Few disadvantages;

  • It is difficult to find good online partners to indulge into online advertising.
  • Profit sharing and responsibility sharing in various deals is always a debatable issue.
  • Control over the communiqué is one of the major decision factors.

Affinity towards affiliate marketing programs is here to stay big time and its potential and profitability is still unleashed.

How to Lose Your Subscribers

As a blogger, keeping up with the subscriber count is one’s great desire. Good traffic, large number of RSS and email subscribers and a lower bounce rate is what a pro-blogger needs to run a great show. But, there are instances wherein blogs begin to lose their subscribers for some reason or the other.

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Bloggers: Are your subscribers moving away?

Today, we take on a few reasons to give you an understanding on how does a blog lose its subscribers willingly or unwillingly;

  • Many bloggers lose their subscribers because of the Feedburner widget they install on their blog. There have been many reasons of losing your subscribers with Feedburner, the main being false plug-ins and unsupported upgradations. Cases such as that of Tom Raftery are actually hard to explain, but the end result is the loss of subscribers.
  • There have been instances when a site has been sold a number of times in a very short duration. That is, the ownership of a site has changed. Putting up a sigh on the site such as “For Sale” results in the loss of reader’s confidence. Consequently, the subscribers tend to lessen making a famous blog into an infamous one.
  • Irregular schedule of posting. Subscribers always have a particular expectation in mind about the number of posts in a day or week. Playing with this frequency results in loss of subscribers.
  • If the content that gets published on your site is old, plagiarized and shabby, it does not take much time to lose subscribers.
  • Falsifying facts and figures to gain false popularity is another way of breaking people’s trust for what you write.
  • Writing about topics which are no where close to what your site is all about often confuses subscribers. For example, if an affiliate marketing site starts writing about women health and beauty, it won’t make sense to subscribers resulting in a loss of numbers.
  • If you provide content to subscribers which they don’t value, chances are that you would soon lose your credibility and the subscribers too. Remember, greatest bloggers write content which is of value to readers and thus the word of mouth spreads. Content is the king!
  • Putting up a feed which focuses too much on advertisements makes your regular subscribers lose interest, unless you’re blog is all about rocket science!
  • Writing about topics or people which is not in the true spirit of blogging makes a dent in the number of your subscribers. For example, a true blogger is one who is able to publicize or promote his blog by not calling others’ work bad. One shall follow the Internet etiquettes.

The web is full of thousands of reasons for losing your subscribers but these are a few largely observed reasons.

Dear Bloggers and webmaster, remember that it does not take much time to lose your subscribers. Put in some sincere efforts to keep the number of subscribers of your site increasing day by day and try not losing them. Keep blogging!

Image Credits: katrinasagemuller

Banner Ad Management for Two Great Themes

Two of our free themes, namely the Simple Red Theme and the True Blue Theme, haven been updated with a brilliant new feature. Now, you can easily add, edit and remove 125×125 pixel banners ads within the theme options page itself.

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Just select an image from your computer and upload, or specify a URL to the banner image. It’s pretty simple.

No need for additional plugins, so even less headaches for you. These two themes are suitable for almost any type of blog.

Install WordPress Themes Automatically

New in WordPress 2.8 – you can now search, review and install WordPress themes automatically.

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First, select your search criteria. You can find themes by your favourite color, number of columns, and other criteria.

You can then preview the theme first. If you like how it really looks, you can easily install the theme to your WordPress blog.

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Then just enter your FTP details (not your blog details) and the theme will be downloaded, unzipped and installed automatically. You can then choose to activate it or leave it in your personal collection of themes.

So by now, you can install both themes and plugins automatically. WordPress is getting easier and easier to use, and I’m sure a lot of newbies will find this new feature very appealing.

“Drag-n-Drop” WordPress Widgets Make A Dashing Comeback

Last seen in WordPress version 2.3, the drag-n-drop widget is back in style with the new WordPress version 2.8. This is the one feature most bloggers missed when version 2.5 came out. Removing the drag-n-drop function made it seem like a step back and actually made the process of moving widgets much harder.

Well its back now, and it has never looked this good.

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There is now three different sections – available widgets, active widgets that appear on your blog, and also inactive widgets that you have used before but have since removed it. Plus, you can actually move a widget from the “Available” section to the “Inactive” section, edit it there, and then move it to the active section. You can also easily expand / collapse individual sidebars and widgets to manage your screen easily.

Widgets are back, YAHOO!

Why Financial Freedom Isn’t Possible For Some

I got this email from a blog reader:

Hi Gobala,

I am trying to understand more on making money online as currently I am unemployed. I have tried to course around for opportunity and found your site. I know most of your information is in your books but currently I am really really budget tight and desperately looking for cheaper method to earn some money. Can you please help me in this? I want to be financially free just like you. Can you provide me with advice to do it?

Thank you so very much.

Dxxxxx

And my carefully crafted reply:

Hi Dxxxxx,

Yes I recommend the book, you can get it at MPH at just RM39. It’s an extremely low investment to achieve financial freedom. I haven’t come across any cheaper way.

You can’t achieve financial freedom if everything you know till now has led you away from it. A J.O.B mentality of spending nothing and getting paid doesn’t apply in the pursuit of financial freedom. RM39 is too “expensive” for some, yet I’m sure they spend twice the amount on entertainment every week.

You can’t achieve financial freedom if you don’t make sacrifices. I lived without TV for 3 years, spent thousands on books and learning materials over the years.

You especially can’t achieve financial freedom is you’re no willing in your most powerful asset, knowledge.

What got you here, won’t get you there.