Twitter is an amazing tool for building your message, and an exciting platform for efficient conversation and marketing.

Success on Twitter comes with connections and meeting new people, building your network and being part of an incredible, ongoing conversation.

Here are a few ways I recommend using Twitter to build your message:

Build a Solid Profile

The profile on Twitter has six parts: Name, Location, Web, Bio and your Following/Followers count. Use your “Web” slot to link to your personal or business blog. If someone likes your Tweets, they need to be able to quickly find out who you are and how to learn more. Your link should add value to the experience rather than be a direct link to a sales site. The “Bio” section is a quick description of you- choose keywords that show personality.

Build Targeted Networks

Twitter is about relationships. I’ve heard Twitter described as being at a cocktail party or a soccer stadium where you can hear what everyone is saying. One benefit of being able to see what so many other people are saying is that you already know what they are into, what they support, what they talk about.
Use the “Find People” function on the menu to search for people in your field or with similar interests. Follow them and see who they talk to with @ messages, or ask them who else they are connected to. Your network is a great resource to answer questions and pass on leads. It is also a way to extend your audience. When you ReTweet someone else’s Tweet, they notice.

A great way to extend your reach is to find ReTweet partners where you ReTweet their messages and they ReTweet yours.

Start Targeted Conversations

Start a conversation and then guide it. Whether directly contacting individuals or Tweeting general questions, starting a conversation makes you visible. You can tailor questions to bring up an issue where you are an expert, and use the conversation as the basis for a blog post, or use it as a vehicle to test out new ideas.

One of the keys to being relevant on Twitter is to add value, and by guiding a conversation around your cause, you are guaranteed to do so.

Twitter Competitions

Twitter competitions get people involved, bottom line. Competitions can require people to follow you, ReTweet a message, post something to their Facebook status, or read a recent blog entry and comment or find specific information in the post.

All of these strategies are strong because they engage people with your product or website and get your message out to potentially thousands of people. Twitter competitions build awareness, promote engagement and make your network more visible.

Murray Newlands is a Green Online Marketing Specialist & blogger in affiliate management / affiliate marketing in the UK & US.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

While every affiliate marketer coming into the industry has aspirations to be like one of the top affiliates, it isn’t exactly a walk in the park for many. Informal research shows that a large proportion of new affiliates enter the industry expecting that success will fall into their lap, only to discover that reality is vastly out of synch with the picture of success they see themselves in.

Fact #1: Drop the dream and focus on affiliate marketing as a real business.

You might have read blog posts about affiliates buying a new house off the efforts of their Christmas campaign, or going for vacations funded by their marketing efforts every other month.

While it’s true that this is their lifestyle now, you will discover that many of these affiliates have been working at this for some time, and they have paid their dues along the way.

It pays to talk to an active affiliate at an event like Affiliate Summit and hear how they got started and their lessons learned along the way. Other resources include podcasts on the GeekCast.fm network or even my Friday Podcast series (WhoIsAndrewWee.com/podcasts).

You’ll often learn that any aspiring affiliate will face a variety of challenges and obstacles as they build their business. Dealing with and overcoming these challenges are an important part of becoming successful.
Often, it helps to think of yourself as a business owner, rather than an affiliate, who might be focused on shorter term, arbitrage-style marketing campaigns.

Fact #2: Build expertise; but more importantly, be an active affiliate.

It’s strange that some affiliates will use paid promotion methods like Pay-Per-Click or Pay-Per-View advertising without having read the documentation or guides that reside in the respective systems’ training area.

Relying on secondhand information on blogs or forums can create a world of pain, especially if the campaign goes south. It’s important to be informed and understand your promotion method, especially if you’re investing time and resources into it.

On the other hand, learning and mastering a new promotion method can be quite intimidating, especially since there seem to be multiple tips, tricks and strategies you can use to make each method work. This can paralyze affiliates and result in their avoiding PPC or other forms of marketing because it seems “too complex”.

However, the only way to get over this hurdle is to actually do it; investing time to set up a campaign, allocating a budget and measuring the results.

In many cases, you can expect your first couple of campaigns to be in the red. Achieving the break-even point on your commissions vs. marketing spend should be your first target.

One unhealthy way to look at your marketing spend is as a loss or even “throwing money into the gutter”. Take broader perspective and see that you are paying to collect market data, which you can use to refine and optimize your campaign into a profitable one, and you are taking steps to build a concrete business.

Andrew Wee focuses on blogging, affiliate marketing and social traffic generation and blogs at http://WhoIsAndrewWee.com.

An Excerpt from Chapter 1: Golden Rule #1 – There are No Rules
When I sat down with Shari McConahay at Annie’s Costumes for our first business meeting, she confessed to me that she was a little confused by Internet marketing.

“We tried banner advertising and we got some sales, but we’re not sure how well it worked,” she said. “We want to try email marketing and I keep hearing that search engine marketing is the only way to go. Another expert told me that affiliate marketing is the only strategy for us. I just don’t know what the answer is.”

I explained, that in my experience with Internet marketing, there is no perfect answer for any one website, and sometimes, one strategy that works well for six months may start to slip after a couple of months. This is the genesis for Golden Rule #1 – There are no rules.

I told Shari that traditional offline advertisers follow a set of “rules” or conventions. They do research to determine consumer wants and needs. Sometimes they even show consumers ideas for ads in focus groups, and ask them how they would react to the ads if they saw them on TV. Then they take the consumer feedback, modify the strategies and the creative and produce the ads. On the internet it is fast and inexpensive to test different ads, different offers and different types of advertising.

In 2002, I joined an aspiring dot-com company called eDiets, following my experience marketing big brand websites, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Sprint. eDiets didn’t sell any physical products. When a customer signed up for an eDiets diet, they received online meal plans, menus, shopping lists and
expert advice through the computer.

At the time, the eDiets sign-up was six pages long. We tested a short three page sign up with current, fashionable feminine colors. We ran what is called an A:B Test for about one week: half of the people who came to eDiets saw the existing six-page sign up (version A) and half of the visitors were presented with the new softer colors and resulting three-page sign up (version B). I asked Shari which version she thought ‘won’ in the test, that is which version signed up a higher percentage of visitors as customers. She said “The shorter, three page test with more feminine colors won, didn’t it?”

I explained, “Much to my surprise, my three-page test didn’t deliver more sales, in fact, the old six page, darker colored sign-up process was about 10 percent more effective than the new test.” However, one page on the new three-page sign up was very effective in convincing people to sign up for our free eNewsletter. Our next step was to develop a new version of the six step sign-up process with a revised eNewsletter sign-up page. The new version generated more sales and more eNewsletter sign ups.

Jay Berkowitz is an author, keynote speaker, blogger, podcaster and the founder of an Internet marketing agency. You can find links to all his stuff at www.TenGoldenRules.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has taken action in the recent months to target advertisers in the nutraceutical market for advertising deemed misleading. I couldn’t be more thrilled.

This is something that is long overdue and unfortunately, even with the changes that have been made by those who are FTC compliant; the acceptance by most advertisers is slow at best.

The FTC has come down on some continuity program offers for statements claimed in their advertising and have offered guidance to those willing to make the changes on their own.

The advertisers that are in it for the long run have adhered to the requests from the FTC, whereas those that are in it for the short term are making it very difficult to compete.

The company where I work has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on compliance lawyers and has made the required changes to our landing pages and creative. Unfortunately, we are seeing traffic by some long standing partners and networks redirected to non-compliant offers which continue to convert higher on the front end.

With enough complaints to the FTC from consumers, eventually the non-compliant offers will have their merchant accounts pulled, close shop and reopen within days, peddling a new offer. It’s frustrating to be among those trying to run an honest campaign with a legitimate offer.

It is a never-ending battle to compete with this ongoing problem and until the non-compliant advertisers feel the repercussions of remaining non-compliant, things will not change.

Even though there are no strict laws published at this time regarding compliance, if the networks and publishers are all on the same page with the recent guidelines the FTC disseminated, it would be much easier to rise to the top.

This industry needs a clean, fresh start on how we promote products. As advertisers, we have become accustomed to sky-rocketing CPA’s and higher re-bills on products.

The last thing we need is for a handful of non-compliant advertisers to ruin it for the rest. We, as an industry need to come together and set realistic limits for all to follow.

There’s enough of a market for everyone to have a piece.

Stacey Sicard is the Director of Marketing and Advertising at E4 Media and the founder of TheAffiliateCore.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

Affiliate Summit East 2009 is taking place August 9-11 in New York City. The agenda is packed with three days of educational sessions. Here are some of the speakers and their sessions you can look forward to attending.

SEO Tools You Can Use Today
Wil Reynolds
SEER Interactive
Associate
Twitter @wilreynolds

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
We’ll review the pros and cons of some of my favorite (and many unknown) web tools. Expect to learn how to use YouTube to build links, along with advanced tactics strategies like using no-follows and other tactics to help maximize your internal link power to the pages that need it most.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?
If you’ve ever seen a competitor outranking you for some of your key terms this session will give you the tools and strategies to put up a good fight. The people, I look forward to interacting with and learning from are all of you guys!

Getting Noticed FAST
Lisa Picarille
LisaPicarille.com
Consultant
Twitter @lisap

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
How a handful of savvy online marketers have leveraged the latest social networking tools, – along with good old -fashioned networking, – to go from virtually unknown newbies to instantly recognizable (and well-respected) names in the affiliate marketing space in just one year. Attendees will learn the tips, tricks and proven techniques that made these personal branding efforts highly successful.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?
Affiliate Summit is always the perfect combination of education and networking that enables me to take away practical advice, expert opinions and real- world lessons that move my business forward. Plus, the show always manages to incorporate some fun implementation of cutting- edge technology that ends up being critical to me down the road.

Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Optimization
Tim Ash
SiteTuners.com
President & CEO
Twitter @tim_ash

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
How a few simple fixes to common problems can skyrocket your conversion rate.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?
Power networking and hanging out with positive enthusiastic people.

Organic Site Review Panel
Scott Polk
Bruce Clay, Inc
Sr. SEO Analyst / Evangelist
Twitter @scottpolk

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
Real- world SEO recommendations on how to improve their organic listings in Google, Yahoo and MSN Live search engines. Attendees will have the opportunity to have their websites reviewed in real-time by a panel of experts in the SEO field.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?
I am definitely looking forward to the Nnetworking opportunities, – both professional and personal that always occurs at Affiliate Summit. Also, new business opportunities and partnerships with some of the smartest people in internet marketing.

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates

Brent Csutoras
Brent Csutoras, Inc.
Social Media Consultant
Twitter @brentcsutoras

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
A comprehensive understanding of the benefits to marketing within the top social media aggregation sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Through the many examples and tips the panel will provide, attendees will learn how to use these social sites as a brand, visibility, and link building tools. Basically if you want to know what social media marketing is really all about, this is the panel for you.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?
This being my first time at Affiliate Summit, I am really looking forward to meeting and networking with the attendees.

Web 2010 – Ten Trends Defining Your Future

Jay Berkowitz
www.TenGoldenRules.com
CEO
Twitter @JayBerkowitz

What will attendees learn if they attend your session?
The ten leading trends that will allow businesses, individuals and affiliates to succeed online in 2010 and beyond.

What are you looking forward to during Affiliate Summit East 2009?

I am looking forward to the affiliate marketing community taking on the Big Apple and shaking it up!

Register at www.AffiliateSummit.com – passes are expected to sell out within a couple weeks of Affiliate Summit East 2009.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

There is probably nothing more insulting or demeaning for a successful person to hear than “I wish I was rich like you!” Unfortunately, there are some people that neither realize, nor appreciate the amount of effort it takes to get to where many successful people are today.

How many times have you heard or even said, “I wish I was rich as Bill Gates”, “I wish I could play golf like Tiger Woods“, yet have never took the initiative to start your own business, or even sign up for a golf lesson. While many are sitting back wishing, the successful people are DOING!

With that said, here are a few motivation quotes from people over the years that have experienced success and failure.

“To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish; then resolve to pay the price to get it.” –Bunker Hunt (Former billionaire that lost his fortune)

If your work is becoming uninteresting, so are you. Work is an inanimate thing and can be made lively and interesting only by injecting yourself into it. Your job is only as big as you are.”- George C. Hubbs

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” – Peter Drucker (Author known for predicting many of the major developments of the late 20th century)

To have success, you must put forth an investment. That investment can be almost anything, ranging from time, training, and work to just reading or listening. Your success starts with you.

If you are afraid of failure and the possibility of losing money by trying to start your own business, you most likely won’t succeed. Look at how many people have spent $100,000+ to go to college for 4 years (or more), and end up with a job they hate, or no job at all.

In the end, this was still an investment of time and money, putting many on the path to the career they were looking for. Why are so many people so scared of spending a few dollars to test their ideas, but so ready to pour everything they have into attending college?

It takes a different type of mindset to be your own boss, but that is your decision to make. Not everyone has what it takes to make the plunge, that’s why so many people are “wishing” instead of “doing“.
No big success was accomplished in one day; today is the day for you to start working towards your goals.

Zac Johnson is the President and CEO of MoneyReign, Inc. You can read his blog at ZacJohnson.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

Affiliate marketing is an industry based on trust. We, as affiliates, need to trust that advertisers and affiliate networks are treating us fairly. My advice to you is to trust no one. Make all of your decisions based on hard data.

All too often, affiliates start to suspect that something is wrong with the offer they are promoting. Conversion rates start at 20%, then after a week fall to 5%. Why would that be? Is it scrubbing, shaving or is the offer not tracking properly?

Forums such as WickedFire are littered with these types of threads.

If you contact the network to complain about the drop in conversion rate they will often say “the offer is tracking fine.” And that’s it.

There is a simple test that you can perform to see if you’re getting ripped off. Collect the leads YOURSELF!

Let’s say you are running a lead generation offer:

1) Take a screenshot of the advertiser’s landing page.
2) Pop a form on it that looks like the advertisers original form.
3) Turn your traffic on and collect any leads that come through.
4) Compare conversions against the stats you have collected on the affiliate network.

Is there a huge discrepancy between the conversion rate of the offer and the conversion rate of the identical page you control? If so, then it’s time to contact the affiliate network and show some proof.

The affiliate network may or may not care; it depends whom you’re dealing with. If you can’t get an amicable resolution or answer as to the discrepancy in conversion rates, you can collect the information yourself and monetize it privately.

If affiliates are willing to test ads, landing pages, offers and more, we should also be performing tests to make sure that the advertiser or network is not blatantly stealing from us. We, as affiliates, should no longer accept any form of shaving or stealing our leads.

For an industry based on trust, there are an awful lot of untrustworthy companies operating in it.

Ad Hustler has been advertising online for more than 7 years, and you can read his case studies at www.adhustler.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

These days, it seems as though there are more places to host your content for free, than there are paid hosts. Between the free sites and social networks where you can have a profile, a page or even a blog, there are many people questioning whether there is any benefit to hosting content on their own domain versus driving their visitors to a site that they do not own.

If you’re a marketer, the right answer is to use your own hosted website as a home base and utilize all those “other places” as traffic cops to direct the traffic safely to your home.

That being said, should you decide to explore the free hosting route, it is important to review their Terms of Service beforehand for potential pitfalls.

For instance, Blogger, Typepad and the hosted version of WordPress all have clauses allowing them to remove any content they deem in appropriate.

Additionally, WordPress controls whether you can advertise on your blog or not. And while Blogger provides the ability to publish from their site to your own domain, they also can remove your content from your domain as well.

GeoCities is another example of a place where people hosted for free for years and years and thought they would never have to worry. Yahoo is shutting it down. Several other “free” hosting services through the years have done the same, some vanishing into the night without warning.

HyperMart changed from free to paid accounts. If you didn’t upgrade, *poof* your content was gone.
While free sites have their place, and social networks are certainly great places to have a presence, it is important that your social marketing efforts be used to drive traffic to a place that is under your control; a domain you have purchased on hosting you pay for. Additionally, be sure you keep a local backup so that if your host goes down, you can move that content to a new host without worry, and quickly.

Anyone remember NBCi/Xoom.com? More recently, Podango? Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Flickr, YouTube and a myriad of other sites are wonderful for creating a presence and connecting with people.

But don’t use your Facebook page as your presence on the Web. Use it as a funnel to send people to your space where you control the content and the ads.

Anytime you rely on another company or their business model to host your content, you are playing with fire.

Deborah Carney (TeamLoxly.com) is an Affiliate Manager and Consultant that also hosts a podcast on Geekcast.fm to teach affiliates the ABCs of getting started (AffiliateABCs).

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

Below are 15 things that I look for in an affiliate program.

1. Show me the money. Let’s be honest, although being able to help people by pointing them to a quality product is the icing on the cake, the main reason we are marketing is to make money. So the question is “How much will I make per visitor I send?” You have to take into account BOTH earnings per sale and conversion.

2. Will my list love me or hate me for promoting this? If you’re sending them to quality free content, they will love you for it. If you are sending them to a sleazy sales letter, it will cost you brownie points.

3. I want my money back. A high return rate can do more harm than just to your commissions.

4. Reciprocity. Are you able to get them to promote your product?

5. Continuity. I love the thought of continuing to earn monthly for every sale.

6. Upsell, downsell, crosssell. Does the program offer an upsell? What about a limited version to scoop up some extras… or a crosssell? More importantly, do the affiliates get a percentage of these sales?

7. Advertising materials and copy. Call me lazy, but I have enough to do without having to write copy for other people’s campaigns. I like to have them say “cut here, and paste, click send, collect the money”.

8. Support /Contactability. Is the staff available through, Skype, phone, email, AIM, Twitter, Facebook, or all of the above? Are they easy to reach? Do they speak your language?

9. 2nd tier program. A great way to make a little extra on a campaign is by contacting other affiliates you have a relationship with, showing them a product or service they might want to promote as well.

10. Does the product or service provide value for its price? This point was originally going to be about the quality of the product, but let’s face it; you can’t expect the same quality product for $27 as $2700. So, is the value for money there?

11. Have all the materials been field tested? Ideally, split–tests should have been done on the campaign to ensure the highest conversion possible.

12. Cookie duration. How long does the cookie last? Obviously, the longer, the better.

13. Click and sales tracking. Do you have real-time, instant-access to click and sale reports?

14. Competitions and prizes. I admit it, I am a little competitive. While it’s not exactly a make or break factor, I like affiliate programs with competitions and cool prizes.

15. The last (but not the least) Minimum payment, payment method, payment frequency.
While it is difficult to find programs that include all of these features, the more the program offers, the better.

Dan Leman is CEO of TheBossBuster. More information can be found at affiliate.thebossbuster.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

“The greater the number and quality of Wikipedia articles, the greater the number of people will link to us, and therefore the higher the rankings (and numbers of listings) we’ll have on Google.” – Wikipedia.com

In January 2001, a feeder project to Nupedia with the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, and the supporting technology choice of using a wiki, gave birth to Wikipedia. By the end of 2001, with roughly 20,000 articles, Wikipedia overshadowed all but three websites in terms of SERP visibility.

Indeed, collaborative writing does create vast amounts of information, which, in turn, enhances visibility. However, Wikipedia’s organic search success is due to more than just content.

Platform and Automation

Highly search engine-optimized pages, navigation, technical readability, and linking structure are all vital. Two hundred and fifty million internally optimized links help Wikipedia’s SEO efforts tremendously. Search optimized internal links across related and high-quality pages make a world of difference, but manual coding is not an option to execute deep links consistently over time. Additional flexibility is needed because websites and lead generation mini-sites are not geared towards being know-it-all encyclopedias.

The good news is that search engines like when content is segmented across a number of domains (links spread across root domains is a sign of quality). Platforms that scale efforts across multiple domains work best. Wikipedia uses MediaWiki. What do you use?

Quality is Key

Content should at least be equal to that of sites one wishes to beat in SERPs. This requires ongoing thinking in the absence of hundreds of thousands of Wikipedians. Utilizing interns or offshore writers might be good sources to cost-effectively meet the quality threshold.

Volume Matters

Thirteen million articles filled with original and relevant content provide a good level of visibility. Wikipedia counts 165 million inbound links.

However, what is less known is that pages start with a nominal value, in terms of page rank. As a result, the more pages there are, the more page rank is created which can be passed throughout a network of pages and websites.

Manage Link Equity

Wikipedia works as a vortex that sucks out inbound link equity (a.k.a. Google Juice) from outside the network and never sends it back. This is due to the systemic implementation of the infamous rel=”nofollow” tag. Links should be followed within one’s corpus of websites as well as contextual outbound links to authoritative websites. “No follow” tags should be used for others. Most of this can be automated.

A technical framework built to scale should be selected and exceptions to the rules, managed. And, like Wikipedia, “the rich (will) get richer.”

Michel Leconte is the CEO of SEO Samba (www.seosamba.com), an automation platform that agencies, marketers and affiliates rely on to scale search rankings across an unlimited number of websites.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06