Wordtracker Kick Ass Keyword Strategies eBook - worth checking out
Aug 27, 2008 Natural Search
I am sure there will be some CAM Blog fans that won’t appreciate the title, but I think the resource is worth checking out. Aaron Wall is an SEO guru that knows his stuff and he has worked with Wordtracker to put out an ebook called 50 Kick Ass Keyword Strategies
They are selling it for $27 during the month of August and I recommend that you check it out. I think that the tips you pick up (if applied) should be more than made up for with traffic you can add to your site. Here’s what they claim you will learn:
- How to use keywords as you’ve never used them before.
- The secret strategies that your competitors will never have thought of.
- How to impress your clients as you let loose a cannon of sure fire ways to boost their traffic.
Happy selling and God Bless!
Wade
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Resources, Search Engine Tips, SEO
Zig Ziglar live at Get Motivated Conference
Aug 25, 2008 Motivation and Success
Zig spoke in an interview format with his daughter live in Seattle at the “Get Motivated” conference. He’s the reason I came as I grew up the son of a sales guy driving from sales call to sales call listening to Zig tapes.
Zig is 81 now and after a fall last year is a bit limited in his physical presence. He’s got some vertigo issues now and some short term memory issues that make it wasier for him to present seated and interviewed. His mind is still sharp as ever and his wit is dead on.
Zig spoke on importance of a strong “home court advantage” meaning love your kids, love your mate and love your neighbors. He also spoke on the importance of Integrity in life and business.
He spoke of his interaction with a woman as a kid (Sister Jessie) who entered their home who came into their house talking about Christ and left 3 days later still talking about Christ who impacted him greatly - impressing on him Integrity and the need to do the right thing all the time.
He talked a bit about making sure that we wake up our kids and put them down with love and positivity.
He encouraged sales people to avoid procrastination and over-preparation. Great story.
His action items:
- Act with integrity
- Be a Constant Student
Of course, he also encouraged us with “we’ll see you not just at the top… but over the top”
A really cool part of the event today was that event Organizer and Speaker Tamara Lowe gave her testimony and and altar call that probably 100 + folks in the satellite location I am at responded to. One of the gifts they got was Zig’s testimony and his tips to living a Christian life.
CAMA Cruise wrap up
Aug 19, 2008 Affiliate Summit East
We had an awesome time at Affiliate Summit and especially on the CAMA Cruise. There were a lot of reallycool folks that we met for the first time and some old friends who joined us again as well. In all 75 people joined us, shattering our previous attendee count record of 55 set at Affiliate Summit in Vegas last year.
We gave away a mess ( a Southern technical term) of free t shirts from 1M4JC and C28.com as well as some gift certificates. All attendees also recieved a sample pack and program invite from MemoryCross as well.
We had an awesome time cruising around Boston Harbor, enjoying a really tasty buffet (the Quiche rocked) I think God was definitely hooking us up on that one as the afternoon featured a thunderstorm that dropped raindrops so big I could see them hitting the water individually from the convention hall 50 feet up.
The really awesome thing is that for the balance of Summit, we were bumping into a ton of people who were asking us about the event and how it went and how they could get involved next time.
Planning is starting soon on a CAMA event for Affiliate Summit in mid January in Las Vegas - might put up for a vote whether we hit the Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues again or do something a little different.
Thanks to Angie Seaman of Paulson Management Group for the pictures. You can see more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulsonmanagementgroup/page2/
More to come!
Thanks again to sponsors oneNetworkDirect.com, IBSDirect.com, Andy Rodriguez Consulting, GTO Management, 1M4JC and MemoryCross.
God Bless,
Wade
Tags: Affiliate Summit, boston, cama, cama cruise, cama cruise boston, christian cruise
Christian Bloggers of the World Unite!
Aug 7, 2008 Christian Marketing Events
My next big project after the CAMA Cruise wraps up is a really exciting one: GodBlogCon 2008 and it’s affiliate marketing effort.
What is GodBlogCon? It is a gathering of Christian new media pioneers: bloggers, podcasters, video casters, social network operators, etc who are all making a stand for Christ on the web. GodBlogCon is the event that is looking to pull a large number of these “Godbloggers” together to share fellowship with each other and learn from each other how we can me more effective in our online outreach ministries.
This year’s GodBlogCon is being held in Las Vegas, NV (God Blogging in Sin City?) on September 20-21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in conjunction with the BlogWorld New Media Expo. This gives Christian bloggers a great to both learn from other Christians, but also to be exposed to the secular New Media tools and techniques that we should be putting to work for maximum impact for Him.
I attended last year and loved it. I met awesome bloggers from a lot of the major Evangelical ministries like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council and I was so impressed with the experience that I am speaking this year and heading up the affiliate marketing effort as well.
Please join me at GodBlogCon 2008 and most importantly, please assist me in getting the word out through the GodBlogCon affiliate program through Shareasale. We’re sharing 10% of any revenues that you drive our way for either GodBlogCon or BlogWorld packages registered through our tracking links.
Please sign up now to promote GodBlogCon 2008
Tags: blogworld expo, christian affiliate offer, christian affiliate program, christian blog, christian blogger, god blog, godblogcon
The CAMA Cruise at Affiliate Summit is sold out!
Aug 7, 2008 Affiliate Summit East
I am super excited to announce that this Sunday’s 2008 CAMA Cruise at Affiliate Summit is sold out. All 75 slots are filled and I just wanted to give a “Praise God!”
If you didn’t get in and would like to be contacted if someone can’t make it, please email me through the site form.
God Bless,
Wade
Tags: Affiliate Summit, cama at affiliate summit, cama cruise, cama events
Are you bidding on misspelled keywords?
Aug 7, 2008 Paid Search
I just got my latest newsletter from the fine folks at Practical eCommerce and they featured a great ecommerce tip from Greg Laptevsky:
Did you know that 587 people search for “googles” instead of “goggles” each day? If you don’t mind attracting customers who are not spelling gurus, consider adding misspellings to your search marketing campaigns. Microsoft’s adCenter Labs has an excellent tool to research misspellings. Don’t expect to get thousands of clicks from misspellings however they are often a great way to get some cheap traffic.
I wanted to throw some caveats on this:
Merchants - you should definitely look into pricing on your misspells and see if it’s economically viable to bid on them yourself. If you have savvy competitors, they may already be either buying these words or looking into it. Not being there yourself to capitalize on your brand would be a mistake if the pricing is reasonable. People “fat finger” search queries all the time and who would you rather have them find - you or your competition?
If you are protective of your trademark, you will want to take this into consideration on your affiliate terms as well and not only restrict affiliates from bidding on, or outbidding you for your properly spelled trademarked keywords, but also the common misspells.
Affiliates - before you go thinking that you have uncovered a potential goldmine here, make sure that you read and understand the terms and conditions when it comes to trademark bidding with any merchants you promote. Some allow it and encourage it, and some (like my client C28.com) are very protective. If you have any questions - ask the merchant. I think it’s the right thing to do and it can save you some nasty cease and desist letters.
General terms and ideas are usually okay to bid on unless the merchant over reaches and trys to restrict thouse as well - but please honor any restrictions on trademarked keywords or their misspells and iterations if a merchant requests it.
God Bless,
Wade
Tags: bidding on misspelled keywords, google, Paid Search, paid search marketing, trademark management
Affiliate Network Overview - The Big 3
Aug 1, 2008 Tips for Merchants
I get asked this question from time to time and the answer can really vary depending on the circumstances. I ask the merchant a few questions to help make this decision:
What is your budget for start up?
What is your affiliate recruiting and management effort going to be like?
Are you looking for rapid growth? Or more gradual and controlled growth?
Is your offer a retail or lead offer?
For well funded merchants looking for rapid growth that have money to hire a full time affiliate manager, I still recommend one of the Big 3 Networks: Linkshare, CJ or Google (was Performics) They have the big affiliate counts, and the big affiliates themselves in the networks. They also tend to have bigger price tags for set up (from $1000) and monthly charges (from $500 + a percentage of sales or affiliate payout)
Here are some notes on each solution.
Linkshare - the most expensive solution in terms of set up and monthly cost, when last I checked, they were looking for $5k + on set up and $2k per month or 3% of sales (whichever is bigger) Linkshare is a great network if you are well branded, and if you have decided that you would only like to play with one network. They are really big on merchants being exclusive to their network and their Agreement reinforces this. Their integration is the most challenging technically involving a batch process that reports sales daily as well as a pixel if you want to have “return days” in place for your offers.
Commission Junction - CJ claims to have more of the “Top 500 Internet Retailers” than anyone on their network. They have a lot of affiliates, and a lot of good ones, especially on the high end with loyalty and shopping sites, as well as quite a few of the big paid search affiliates. Their cost runs $3000 ish on set up (+ a $3000 escrow account that goes to affiliate and CJ fee payments) and $500 per month or 30% of affiliate payout. Many affiliates, especially the ABestWeb crowd are not fans and don’t trust CJ much because of past issues with spyware/adware affiliates that CJ/ValueClick is currently in the process of settling. That said, CJ programs with good payouts and good name recognition and conversion can grow really quickly. Several programs we run have seen growth from 0 to 1000+ affiliate applications within a month or so.
My one drawback with CJ is that I love to have ability to contact affiliates directly and CJ doesn’t give it.
Google Affiliate Network- Until last month or so, this was known as Performics. When Google bought the parent company of Performics, they made a big change in strategy. Performics had been known since it’s inception as a bit of a “brand snob” company that really cherry picked the big names and signed them to big monthly deals in the $5k - $10k per month range that included full affiliate management and sometimes paid search management services. Google came in and changed things a lot, deciding to aggressively impact the market by offering the “Affiliate Direct” service that starts at $1000 for set up with a $1000 deposit. They charge $500 or 25% of affiliate payout monthly.
Their new pricing is pretty attractive and their merchant count has been growing rapidly since they did this. I like their tool set as well although their interface is a bit clunky. They have 2 things that I really like about their system. They provide affiliate contact information so you can email your affiliates using external mailing tools (as well as load into your own CRM) and they also have just opened up a “Recruit” function that allows you do some searching among affiliates who have “opted in” for inclusion. It has it’s limitations, but it’s good stuff and the other biggies don’t offer this in their base packages.
The program that I run in Google has seen a number of high quality affiliates come in in the last 2.5 months since launch so I have been impressed there.
Many in the industry have real concerns about Google being involved in the affiliate space, especially the major paid search affiliates (and merchants who aren’t on the Google network) with concerns on whether Google’s natural and paid search divisions will remain neutral in judging the value of affiliate links, and how they will value the rankings of the affiliates of non Google aligned programs since Google controls so much of the web’s traffic. We’ll see.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about some of the Tier 2 networks that are up and coming - and I consider in many cases to be a great value for Christian merchants launching affiliate programs. Included in the discussion will be Shareasale, AvantLink, Link Connector, BuyAt, and ShareResults.
Tags: affiliate network, affiliate networks, choosing an affiliate network, christian affiliate program
The CAMA Cruise is nearly sold out!
Aug 1, 2008 Affiliate Summit East
Praise the Lord!
Ticket sales lately have been fast and furious for the CAMA Cruise 2008 with people from all walks of the affiliate industry signing up to come and break bread and kick off Affiliate Summit in fellowship. As of 3:45 on Friday August 1st, there are 8 tickets left for the CAMA Cruise.
If you would like to get in on this awesome fellowship and networking opportunity, please click the button below to sign up.
God Bless and see you in Boston!
Tags: affiliate networking, Affiliate Summit, affiliate summit boston, cama, cama cruise, christian affiliate marketing association
