Amazon Affiliate Program Blows
November 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Yes, it really does.
Here’s the problem – Amazon in the US converts very well, they also have pretty much products for every niche and sub-niche imaginable.
The commissions are low, they start at 4% and increase based on what you are selling. 4% is terrible. Most of the affiliate programs I joined give at least 10%.
In the UK commissions are capped. That’s right, just sold a product for 4,000£ ? You get 7£….
Also, in europe the brand is not nearly as strong as it is in the US, plus it doesn’t exist in every land, so it’s not always an option for your niche websites
Third, their report system is terrible! It’s not real-time, it’s generated daily, there’s not as much data as I’d personally like to see.
And last, their payment schedule is even worse. Each land pays on a different schedule, sometimes up to 90! days after you’ve gotten a commission.
My advice is to use different Affiliate Networks, search for local networks, even if you need to Google Translate your way to commissions, you’ll often get local brands and products, as well as better commissions. And so far I haven’t had problems communicating with staff in languages I’ve never even heard of. A bit of English + auto translate does wonders…. Seriously.
Besides it’s always a wise choice to put your eggs in different baskets. You’ll make sure that even if one company is not as serious or goes broke, your cashflow won’t be terribly hurt by it.
Internet Marketing
November 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As the Internet grows and consequently takes more space in Society, so does its relevance as Marketing channel.
Internet marketing is growing and taking bigger chunks from traditional marketing channels.
The fact that internet available around the clock, and with a never-ending stream of new things makes it much a much tougher medium than the others. The stream of information is never-ending, and the struggle for attention is brutal. With media streaming no longer being a technological problem, and wide stream adoption of broadband, massive campaigns are created just for the internet, video, audio, visual or just copy.
Each campaign can be measured as much as you want, statistics about bounce rate, heat maps, lead profiling, everything can be combined and analyzed, numbers are crunched and success is often decided and measured down to the tenths of a percent. Campaigns can be customized all the way down to ethnical groups, religious faction, education, gender and more. Add that with the power of social media, and viral recommendations and can understand the power of having a successful campaign, and the disastrous consequences of a poorly executed one.
Great Internet Marketing is a sum of all of the above and much more. It’s not only about showing the user what he wants to see, but making sure you do that at the right time, and that it generates a positive (re)action.
Showing your campaign to people is just a fraction of the process. Good Internet Marketers know that they must constantly optimize and search for better ways to deliver their message.
Has Google EMD update hit your site ?
November 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Google updates are coming more and more regularly, which isn’t unexpected – Their results have been getting “worse”, and they want to improve their user’s experience as much as possible.
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Although the efficacy of their updates is debatable at best, with some even wondering if their “Don’t Be Evil” motto still stands, or if they just decided to totally jack up the results in order to make an extra buck or two with AdWords.
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Now the thing is, Google’s business is to deliver the best results possible to the end users, and untill their search engine is perfect (which will never happen of course) their updates will come more and more often. This is a reality that we SEOs must understand.
With all the fanfare and madness around every single update Google does, my position still stands.
If you are waking up every day dreading the fact that might just have lost all your rankings, you’re most likely doing SEO wrong. At the same time if you are one of those guys that goes around in forums & blogs spamming that SEO is dead, well then it might just be better if you quit SEO altogether.
First, SEO is bigger than Google, albeit Google is undoubtably the largest organic traffic source, it’s not the only one. It shouldn’t at least.
There are so many sources of traffic, so many engines that give out traffic, even if in smaller quantities. At the same time, if you _only_ get traffic from Search Engines, you’re also doing SEO wrong. SEO has grown to be much more than just Search Engines. In a way it’s strange, since its called Search Engine Optimization, but the truth is that Social Marketing and SEO are so intertwined nowadays, that a full separation of the two is nearly impossible.
Anyways – Exact Match Domain updates. Most of the targeted sites were low quality EMDs, or sites that merely ranked for something based on their domain strength alone, not on their content. As we all know these are 99.9% owned by Affiliate Marketers that decided to earn some easy cash with theses domains, so it’s no surprise that Google targets (yet again) IM’ers.
The Good news is that EMD’s still rank, and they still rank easily, just stop outsourcing your content at 0.02$ a word to third world countries and you’ll be fine for the most of it.
If you’ve already been hit, and you’re wondering if you can come back, the answer is maybe.
The usual rules apply:
- Remove poor quality content from your site
- Add more and fresher content
- Remove all the nasty spamlinks
These 3 simple steps should take you a long way into recovering your lost positions on Google.
What have you done in order to recover your rankings after this last update ? Any tips or advice ?
