Selling Other People's Stuff - The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply selling other people's stuff online for a commission.  The "stuff" could be digital such as an e-book or a training course or it could be physical products like lawn mowers and televisions. 

Becoming an affiliate marketer is often a great way to earn a little (or a lot) of money.  You can sprinkle it in to what you are already doing online or if you aren't doing something online already,  it is a simple way to get started.  If you are currently selling products or services online, you will want to consider adding your own affiliate program as a form marketing.  

Your tasks as an affiliate marketer will be to drum up traffic to your affiliate links.  When your specially coded affiliate link is clicked and in turn a customer buys--you get a commission.  It is that simple.

There are many things you can promote as an affiliate. On Amazon.com or ShareASale.com, for instance, you can promote anything tangible (and a few digital download to boot).  If you want to be in the paintball niche, you can sell specific paintball guns, paintballs, and clothing.

You can go to sites like e-junkie.com or ClickBank.com and get a unique affiliate ID to promote an endless supply of information products (digital download). They house everything from scrapbooking to lifting weights.

You can even become an affiliate promoting actions.  There are many Internet marketers who focus their business on getting a steady stream of traffic to take an action, such as filling out a survey online.

Another form of action affiliate marketing is getting paid per click for someone to click a banner advertisement on the site.  The commissions are lower but you get paid for them clicking for more information rather than having to close a sale.  Popular pay per click providers are Google Adsense and Chitka.

            How much can an affiliate marketer earn? There are no limits.

You can market multiple niches and work as much or as little as you want to generate targeted traffic through your links.  Super affiliates earn six figures or more, but even a beginner affiliate can earn enough to pay the bills each month – with some change to spare!  Not bad for just sharing special links to other people's stuff or allowing others to sell your stuff for a commission.

Oh....and yes!   The links in this blog post are affiliate links!

Adam Siler

PS - Here are 15 Surefire Ways to Help Your Affiliate Income in an Affiliate Training Guide just for you.   Click here to get you complimentary guide today. 

SMM Metrics

       

         Social Media is forever evolving and continues to attract more and more users daily. Fully aware of this growth, companies have taken advantage of this medium as an opportunity to reach consumers and market their product. Some companies have boasted great success, while others have suffered obvious failures. The problem with both reports, success and failure, is how these companies make the determination that their effort achieved those results.

          The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to increase profit through making consumers aware of their product. In SMM there are several metrics used to gauge whether a consumer is aware of your brand; but, do these same metrics gauge whether or not these same consumers are buying your product (ROI). For example, is an extremely high click through rate really increasing profit margins by a relative percentage? Most companies do not release their marketing spending amounts; this makes it difficult for third parties to challenge the true effectiveness of SMM campaigns.

                         (http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-metrics-ceos-cares-about)

           Overall profits are important when claiming success through SMM; sure, 1 million shared posts or your product is great achievement; but, doesn’t amount to much if you didn’t make a substantial gain. Tracking comments is a better way of receiving and measuring consumer feedback, but a company must take into consideration the number of people who are “closet commenters”. Those are the people who comment from the shield of the internet but who would never publicly say the same thing or buy the same product. Both of these metrics can also be inflated and difficult to truly measure; using paid visitors or ‘bots’ to increase your likes can through off your own figures.

         SMM metrics are forever evolving and marketers will continue to create new metrics to find success in any part of their campaign. This factor can also lead to inaccuracy when attempting to validate success through real numbers. A suggested simple metric would be to make a direct factual relationship of your Social Media presence to your profit; you have 1,000 site visits, you sold 1,000 products.

 –Chris Moses ,25 Jun 2014

Small Business Success Stories

                Social media marketing is a battleground. In this grand arena, the playing field is fairly leveled. A small business is able to create a Twitter account and a Facebook page just as easily as a monolithic corporation. Even the paid advertising services of both media outlets are a fraction of the cost of a televised or print ad. There are many success stories of small business using social media to explode their business, but what is it makes them successful?

               Emerson Salon out of Seattle was created in 2008 by some savvy entrepreneurs that decided to use the internet as part of their business model By 2010, 75% of their business could be attributed to Facebook, Twitter, and a public blog. According to co-owner Matt Buchan, “it's rare for even a walk-in customer to come in and not have read our blog or seen our tweets.” Their website promotes their Facebook and Twitter pages, and upon successfully booking an appointment(emersonsalon.com), a user can share the details of said appointment on their own Facebook page. According to Mashable.com, “Since introducing social media into the mix, traffic to their (Emerson Salon) website has more than tripled.” Their Facebook page is a bit defunct now, but looking at their previous posts, they were involved in the community and posted good content.

                The organic dessert company Coconut Bliss is another example of using Twitter to engage fans.  This Eugene, Oregon business has about 14k followers (up from 7,200 in 2012 when the article I was reading was written), and they provide a ton of content on Twitter. They also hold a lot of contests, and partner up with other companies. According to the socialmediaexaminer.com, the 3 key steps that Coconut Bliss did that made them successful were:

           “1. Invest in a decent camera and learn how to take captivating pictures.

            2. Integrate photos across all of your social platforms.

            3. Make strategic use of contests and partnerships to grow your fan base.”

They also provide unique content for each social media platform. I checked out the Facebook (19k likes) and Twitter pages and I'm not surprised customers flock to them. They use great photos, and interact with the public very well.
There are many companies with fascinating success stories. It's inspiring, it makes me want to create a business just to see how I could market it using social media.



Josh Eldridge 6/23/2014
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/9-small-business-social-media-success-stories/

http://mashable.com/2010/06/02/small-business-social-media-success-stories/

Likeable Social Media | Book Review

The author is the co-founder, along with his wife Carrie, of Likeable Media. Likeable Media is a social media marketing firm based in New York City. The book is an easy read. 256 pages broken down in 18 chapters. Each chapter title quickly states instructions of how to create likeable social media and further reading teaches how to produce successful social media strategies. This book also gives examples different companies took and the success and failures they experienced in social media.

Basically, the general theme of this book is to listen your fan base and customers, to get an idea of what their interests are and what they are looking for, and basically doing the things that will make you likable.

So far I’ve enjoyed reading this book. I’ve found it does a good job providing the basics that has helped me get a better understanding of social media. I also enjoy how the author talks about how to deal with negative comments. There is a whole section on handling negative comments instead of ignoring or deleting them as some other company’s do. The author does a good job allowing the reader to view social media through the eye of the consumer.

-- Scott Ingle

Found It

Who hates losing things? I know I do, especially where you are in a hurry trying to get out the door and you can’t seem to find your keys, and you know that they’re just within feet of you, but you just can’t seem to find them. You start wishing you had some sort of super-hero power and that you are able to see that they have fallen down between the pillows of the couch cushions. Well, Nick Evans and Mike Farley may have found a solution, and no, it’s not the ‘secretes’ for getting super-hero vision or knowledge, but they have come up a product that has a tag line of “the world’s largest lost and found”, they call it Tile™.   It is a very small device about the size of a silver dollar, but square. It can be attached to items that you might lose, and use the Tile™ iOS application to be found. Tile™ uses Bluetooth radio connection and the app discovers it, and use the service to update the location of that Tile™. So, if your laptop is misplaced, and it has a Tile™ attached to it, you open the iOS app and it will show where it is at. It tells you are getting warmer, and Tile™ even has a built in speaker to sound off a ring tone for an easier find. The disadvantage is that the Bluetooth only works in a range of 100 feet. BUT WAIT! There is a solution for that. As each person becomes a member of Tile™, they become part of the Tile™ community. Then whenever they are in range of a missing Tile™, it will send an anonymous update of that Tile’s location into the system, forwarding the information to the Tile’s owner. They call this the “Community Find” feature.  As the community grows and more people become members, the easier things will be to find.  Tile™ the world’s largest lost and found.

 http://www.theTile™   app.com/#this-is-Tile™    

by-Jason Kennedy

Don't 'poke' me

Social media is killing us. Just kidding. But it is completely changing the way we socially interact with others. Friends on Facebook are completely different from friends in real life. An article from Forbes talks about authenticity vs superficiality, and on Facebook, everything is superficial. This however is a trade off for speed and efficiency. With this in mind it bears the question “how does social media interaction really differ from conventional interaction?”

There is something about talking to someone online that just feels so impersonal. What it boils down to is simple: body language. According to the Forbes article “A whopping 93% (of interaction) is based on nonverbal body language .“ Sarcasm for example, doesn't translate very well onto the online forum. Emotions and attitudes in general are masked by online interaction. What we are left with is the illusion of whatever the writer wishes to be seen.

I have probably 80 to 100 friends on Facebook at any given moment. I consider a friend anyone you could spend time with, whether it be having a cup of coffee, eating a meal together, or just hanging out. In the social media realm, I rarely directly communicate with others. Online, I am mostly a spectator or 'lurker.' So out of those 80-ish friends, I will probably only see 5 or so on a regular basis. The rest could be considered acquaintances. Interacting with these people isn't even as complex as saying “hello” in passing. Now to get someones attention you simply have to “poke” them. Even birthdays have become saturated by social media. Facebook actually sends you a reminder of your friends birthdays and offers to send an e-card on your behalf. This kind of interaction really takes the human out of humanity.

Don't have time to call everyone on your friends list when throwing a party? No problem, on Facebook it's as easy as creating the event and selecting all of your friends. Done. But honestly, when I'm invited to anything on Facebook, I normally don't even read the invite. I feel like if the event was important enough, I'd get a phone call. Honestly, I'd be ok with a text message. Often times, I go for weeks without reading Facebook invites only to find out most of the events have already happened.

Walk into any public place where people have to wait for a few minutes. Most of them will be buried on their mobile devices. In these times, striking up a conversation with a stranger is just weird behavior to most younger people. I read a social experiment that a guy did about talking to strangers in public. He found most people would ignore his greetings and bury themselves deeper into their phones. Out of all of the people he spoke to, only the elderly and one lone gentleman would actually carry on a conversation with him.

To say social media hasn't changed the way we interact would be a lie. Most of the people who read this will remember the pre-internet days and know small talk with strangers happened everyday. Whether you were buying groceries, renting a movie, or waiting in line at the bank, it wasn't uncommon to speak to someone about their day. Now, thoughts have been relegated to 140 characters or less and personal interaction is dead.

-Josh Eldridge

6-10-14

Social media marketing for the first time

Are you an aspiring small business owner looking to expand your reach into the unknown realm of social media? Do you not know what social media is and how it can be applied to help your small business to bring in more revenue and build your customer base? These are some of the questions I hope to answer.

Most small business owners are not of the younger generations that the social media phenomenon started in. Most small business owners from my experiences are between the ages of 30 to 50 years of age and may not know anything about social media or at least enough about it to start becoming interactive in it. This is something that you should not be worried about, it should be something that you should be excited about. We will try to lay out a few of the major social media avenues that you can take and how to get started in them. Before we begin laying out how everything works, you need to understand that if you do decided to go down this avenue, do not get discouraged and quit. You will need to stay proactive and be interactive with your followers. We will be using Facebook as our example.

·         Getting started

o    The first steps you will need to take is to figure out which of the social media websites you will be working with. Facebook and Twitter are one the biggest social media websites around. They are easy to setup and get started with.

·         Setting up

o    Your next step will be to create an account in each one of these websites. After you get the initial account information set up, you will need to dive into your page and add content. This content will consist of getting your logo, company description and any other relevant information added to your page.

·         Getting customers to your page

o    After you have everything set up, what is next? Your next setup will be to draw people to you page. This can be down in quite a few different ways. Put your page on your business cards, advertisements and your webpage. In addition you can also offer customer discounts if they “like” your page. Offer your customers a 5% discount or something free, if they like your page. A 5% discount is nothing if you can attract more customers. Facebook is amazing in the sense that friends of friends will be able to see your page, if you make regular postings and keep on top of it.

·         Replying

o    Replying to everything is a good practice to get into. Regardless of positive or negative comments, you need to reply to it. A negative comment that is unanswered is worse than the negative comment itself. If you show to your customers that you recognized the problem and are trying to resolve it they will respect you more for it. When it comes to the positives comments, you also need to respond to these. With both negative and positive comments, thank the poster for submitting a post of your page.

·         Allocating time to your page

o    If you feel as the business owner you do not have time to keep on top of your social media page, you need to assign someone to it. This will ensure your page is getting regular updates, comments are being replied to and probably the most important thing being that your page will grow with regular updates.

·         It will take time

o    Your social media presence will take time. That is probably one of the most important things you need to understand. Your social media page will not be an overnight success, but with time and dedication it can be as big as you can imagine it to be.

·         Expanding

o    Once you become familiar with how social media works, look to expand. Do not only look at the most popular social media sites, but try to expand your reach to the lesser known social media sites. These lesser known sites might climb in popularity and you will be there when it does.

As a final thought, make sure to make customers aware of your social media presence. Give your customers incentives for joining your page through discounts or any other means you see fit. Reply to all sorts of feedback regardless of it being positive or negative. Stay on top of your page, do not let it go into the ground by not keeping up with it. Allocate time to your page by either maintaining it yourself, assigning some to maintain it or bringing in an outside source to keep it maintained. As a general note it is normally better to keep the maintenance of your social media pages in house so that you have full control over it. Your social media page will take time, be patient.

-Travis Sloneker

Video Marketing Going Viral

There is an ongoing, global obsession with recording and posting videos in this decade. The speeds at which a video can go viral are phenomenal. The trend of using YouTube and vines does not seem to be losing much momentum at all. Seizing this opportunity, with every trend the masses embrace, large companies embrace: to slide in some advertising and marketing. The same factors that compel individuals also compel the industry giants to utilize this medium. The possibility of overnight stardom, fame and wealth are motivation enough for anyone to post videos at will; including big companies.

I was recently on Twitter for part of a class project and I went to Coca Cola’s home page. I really was not expecting to see how heavy Coca Cola is involved in their social media marketing. One of the most surprising things to see was the Coca Cola vines. My initial response to seeing them was “really?”, but I have never been a huge vines fan, other than what Tosh.o covers.

Coca Cola is just one example of a company using the video marketing bandwagon to ultimately boost sales. My question remains; is video marketing success measurable? The answer maybe “sure it is!” if you ask the company that is marketing their product through that medium. The number of views, likes or comments doesn’t always mean those same people are buying the product. The appeal of a video that causes it to go viral may be difficult for most companies to successfully duplicate. This is due to the uniqueness of a video posted by an individual or amateur versus the TV commercial resemblance a big company may have in their attempt to go viral.

Advancements in the internet and technology have allowed the viewing public to wield one great power: the power to skip commercials. This works to the disadvantage of large companies, because, if people are skipping commercials on TV, what would make them search for one on YouTube? I suppose if a company has someone get kicked in the head by a train conductor while holding their product, well that may go viral. The point I’m trying to address is; if I wasn’t working on a class project, I would’ve never went to Cokes twitter page, let alone watch one of their vine videos. Viral videos and video marketing may have given fame for a few individuals; however, the commercial feel may be a limiting factor for large companies to indulge in the same success.

Christopher Moses

twitter: @cmoses15