Affiliate Magazine » October 2009 Issue

Affiliate Marketers Give Back Takes on the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer – By Missy Ward

FeedFront Staff — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:00:02 +0000

For the third year in a row, Team Affiliate Marketers Give Back took to the streets with their feet to do their part to fight breast cancer; this time during the 39 mile Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Los Angeles.

This year’s team consisted of Brook Schaaf of Schaaf Consulting, Chris Pearson of DIYThemes, Melissa Salas of Buy.com, Kevin Strawbridge of DealTaker.com, Lynette LaPlante a 1-year survivor and Team Captain, Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit and Founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com.

After months of fun and sometimes whacky fund raising activities, Team Affiliate Marketers Give Back blew past their goal and raised nearly $53,000, earning as them the #5 highest fundraising team spot overall.
Day 1 started at 5:30am for team as they geared up and headed on the bus for the Opening Ceremony. After some stretching and motivational words, we set forth on our 26.2 mile walk for the day which would take us through panoramic waterfronts, charming neighborhoods, Pacific Coast Highway and the tree-lined parks of Long Beach and Seal Beach.

We loaded up on healthy snacks and hydrated roughly every two miles at the welcoming rest stops. We were doing great until the blisters started setting in and spent lunch wrapping all injured toes with mole skin.
Miles 20-26 were the roughest. All of the hours of walking were finally taking their toll. But watching some of the women at the cheering stations that were currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer along with survivors encouraging us on gave us the motivation to keep on trucking.

The first day ended at Wellness Village, located in El Dorado Park, where many of the 1,800 walkers had dinner and snuggled up in their tents. Our team however, went directly out for a victory dinner at the Grill Restaurant in the Westin Hotel, sans showers. (That could have been the reason why they kept us away from the other diners.)

After sitting down for an hour or so for dinner, it was very difficult to get back up. We clearly provided entertainment value to the employees as they laughed at our stiff waddling leaving the restaurant.

All of us were out cold before 9pm as we knew that 13 more miles were ahead of us in the morning.

Day 2 started out rough for us. All of our muscles were hurting and blisters were oozing, but we knew that the day was only half as long as the Day 1 and we were determined to finish.

We blew past a number of rest-stops out of fear that if we sat for even just one minute, we’d never get going again. With the Queen Mary in sight, our finish line, we drummed up the final burst of energy to make it to the end. Amazingly, even with stopping for a relaxing lunch and a couple of pit-stops, we finished up today’s half-marathon in less than five hours.

We were all excited to learn that the walk that we participated in this weekend raised a total of 4.6 million dollars to support five areas of the breast cancer cause, including: awareness and education; screening and diagnosis, access to treatment; support services and scientific research.

I am proud of my team and I thank them so much for volunteering their time. I’m also very grateful to all of our sponsors and supporters who helped us reach our fundraising goal.

To view our exciting journey or find out more about participating in the 2010 walk, please visit www.AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com

Missy Ward is the Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine and Founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 8 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/20220412/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-8
FeedFront issue 8 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/10

The Infotainer.com – By Shawn Collins

FeedFront Staff — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:00:14 +0000

I came across a video this past spring with a guy named Joel Bauer talking about his business card. It was an oddly compelling couple of minutes on personal brands that I’ve re-watched dozens of times.
And I’m not alone. The video, “Your Business Card is Crap”, has been viewed about 750,000 times on YouTube.

So I had to find out more about the man behind the business card. It turns out Joel Bauer is a best-selling author, and he has been a professional performer since he was 7 years old.

Also, Joel spent a couple decades creating and producing Infotainment presentations and road-shows internationally for the likes of IBM, Nortel, Dresser Wayne, Polaroid, and ITT, as well as creating systems on personal marketing, branding, passion, Infotainment, speaking, and closing from the platform.

All that is great, but what about the business card video?

The Most Famous Business Card

Shawn Collins: So, the first place I came across you was your business card video.

Joel Bauer: Oh that thing. [laughs] I didn’t put that out there, let me tell you. I think that was someone trying to do damage. It actually didn’t do damage, but stimulated a lot of activity out there, in the form of a bunch of television shows and other stuff. It’s still ongoing.

Shawn: Yeah. I guess the place that actually was brought to my attention was on the show “Red Eye” on Fox News.

Joel: Yeah. Yeah, that was fun. It was kind of weird sitting in a room, staring into a camera while you are watching a monitor with a six second delay from New York.

Shawn: Yeah. One thing I was curious about there is, I guess, you were saying that you thought someone was trying to do damage to you. And, you mentioned on Red Eye that you were sort of playing a character there. So, was that you just sort of hamming it up for that?

Joel: Well, I mean, I’m on the phone with you right now. And you tell me, was I playing a character or not? I mean, obviously; the entire film, called “The Pitch, Poker & the Public”, is where it was extracted from.

The documentary which was made by a guy by the name of Chris Zubryd, who actually published an apology about how someone had taken this small 25 second or 35 second excerpt from the film, out of context.

Because if you watch the film, it has me with my children. It has Joel light, Joel family man.

And then when they asked me to go into the pitch mode, I went into what was a trade show-style pitch mode because that’s what I was doing then. I was a trade show performer. And I was going into that very intense mode… what you would use on a floor.

I’m sure you’ve been to MacWorld, or Comdex, or some major trade show, and you’ve noticed that the only people who are noticed there are those that are intense.

Shawn: Yeah. Absolutely.

Joel: And they’re loud and they’re kind of carnie. So that personality was very polarizing and very edgy and obviously very effective from a viral stand point because here you have a man talking about a business card, without taking his clothes off; and generating as many hits as usually the sites that do that kind of nonsense.

So that was kind of interesting. It’s been fascinating. I don’t think there’s any predictable formula behind viral other than using the word dog or cat. [laughs] Or Megan Fox or one of those things that tends to get people to click on the video. Your Business Card is Crap is not exactly a positive title.

And I do know who put it up there originally. And they did try to do damage and it kind of backfired. I think you fight the fire. They want you to start a fire. They want you to respond. And I don’t respond, because it doesn’t matter. The people that study with me and follow me, they know that what I do has integrity.

Joel on Social Media

Shawn: I was looking to see your real identity on Twitter, and saw there’s one, @TheJoelBauer, that has your picture and your Web sites and everything, so they are certainly trying to give the impression. But is there any reason why you don’t bother to go in there yourself?

Joel: The absolute, with clarity, revelation here, is that I am so consumed doing what I do for my students. Right now I am sitting here in front of an hour training that is going out to 74 recent students. I train professional speakers. People that want to do what I do. I am on platforms two, three, four times a month, training people in our marketing systems. And as a result of that, I do what most other speakers don’t do and that is I actually take care of them.

I’m so busy doing this stuff. Traveling. I’ve got three kids. I don’t have time. Really, if you want to be effective on Twitter or Facebook, you need to do it every day. And it needs to become very personal. That’s my belief. You need to participate.

And I am so busy servicing those who are quite frankly spending a fortune on my attentions. I coach. I coach a very small group. And I’m out there doing it. And I don’t talk the talk. I walk it. So if you hear me teaching, they know that I’m actually doing it. Because then that’s how they met me or that’s how they saw me. The stuff that I reveal actually works.

Joel on Affiliate Marketing

Shawn: I saw that you had some affiliate links to Amazon for your books. Do you do much with affiliate marketing at all, or is that pretty much the extent of it?

Joel: No. Really what we’re doing is I have a group building all that. And it will be done. The only affiliate marketing I will do is with people I actually believe in. Where I’ve actually used their system extensively for significant periods of time and had massive results.

For example, there’s a link on my blog right now that says, “Cancer free.” And I don’t make any money on it, and it’s not affiliate marketing. But I do make some recommendations. And obviously with the following I have, if I wanted to make money on people I could just have JV (joint venture) links everywhere. People would click all day.

And you might say, well, why don’t you do that? It’s because, quite frankly, I’m not looking for every dime. And the marketers who are doing that aren’t transparent. We all know what’s being done.

When it has Shawn’s last name at the end, forward slash Shawn. Well, we kind of get it. Shawn’s making money. I always tell people where I’m making money, and when I’m not. So when I’m doing a training, I say, “Here’s my contact for printing. Here’s my contact and my resource for audio. Here’s my contact.”
And I tell them, “By the way, I don’t make money on any of these resources. You’re actually paying direct what they would charge normally. There’s no markup. There’s no kickback. There’s no motivation for me. I don’t have anyone’s hand in my back pocket.”

And they appreciate that. They’re paying a considerable amount of money to train with me. See Shawn, the difference is when people train with me, they’re spending 10, 15 grand to be in a room with me for seven days. That’s not a lot of money, but it’s a lot to them. And they’re blown away. They’re absolutely blown away by the training. Again, I’ve never had a refund, a cancellation, or anyone upset with these live trainings. Anyone. Because I over deliver; I give them too much.

So my process is more of an offline process, in terms of what I’m teaching. I’m showing them how to speak on a platform, and generate massive dollars right there, right then, doing what it is they believe in, and communicating from their heart. Their area of expertise. An area they can empower others through.

And that’s very different than the Internet model. The Internet model complements it. I also believe that without the Internet you’re leaving at least 50 percent of your money on the table, and you’re leaving your forced continuity. You’re leaving that element of your business that would have enabled you to do it once and never have to do it again. And have an automated, replicatable, duplicatable, transferable process that generates income beyond your years. I believe in the Internet. No question about it.

Four Suggestions for Your Site

Joel: I’d love to close with four simple comments that would probably take us two minutes. I would just like to label them. I constantly see Internet marketers, with Web sites, not talking about your guys. I don’t know who your guys are exactly. I have an idea but there are four things they’re not doing and they wonder why their Web sites aren’t making money.

The first is, when you arrive, there’s no live video. There’s no warm, ingratiating call to action video that inspires someone emotionally. That has specifically you’re mission statement and benefit to them and why they would want to come to the other side. The video is generally missing and it’s not auto-play. That’s a mistake. It should auto-play.

Second component missing on those sites is an opt-in. They’re not even asking for name, email address. They don’t ask, they don’t get. Most sites you can go there check out the site and leave. It’s a massive error.

I don’t believe in sites where you just check them out and leave. I believe in sites that inspire a call to action with a video and have an opt-in that requires really only the email address. A double opt-in, of course, using an AWeber, iContact, or whatever service they decide to use.

If they ask for only the email address they’re going to have a much higher conversion level or opt-in level than they would asking for more information at that point. We don’t have trust, we don’t have rapport. We have nothing.

The email address is the safest thing to request, but double opt-in ensures that if they’re going to put “screw you Johnny” or whatever it is, they’re putting some stupid entry in there, that obviously you’re never see it. It will get kicked. It will never be confirmed in the system.

Opt in, video. Third component. At the end of the video, which is very short, 15 seconds, call to action. There should be social proof. A stream of 10 to 15 seconds of people raving about what it is you do. They should be monetized.

“As a result of Shawn, we generated 30 grand in the first three weeks. We couldn’t believe it. His writing style has enabled us to write more effective copy that has motivated people from the heart to invest in our products. We never thought it was possible.”

Then it goes on. “Before John, 30 pounds overweight. After John, his simple guidance and steps…” See, a monetizable testimonial is anything that shows the before and the after the transformation.

The fourth component missing from Web sites is the call to action. If there is no specific call to action, none will be taken. I would venture to say that in your group, we could go through a list together. We’re not going to. I’m just saying we could, and we could find 20 or 30 percent of them that aren’t doing those four things. They may know about them, Shawn. What I’m indicating here is, beyond knowledge, transcending knowledge is application. Are they applying it? Most of them aren’t.

Dan Kennedy, one of the top marketers on the planet, one of the most brilliant men in marketing, has finally embraced video marketing, and won’t argue the fact that it’s more effective than copywriting.

If you had an audience, and they had to make a choice between sitting and listening to a video, and reading 50 pages of copy, right now they’ll choose the video. Now if you do both, video and transcription, you’re going to optimize very effectively. That’s really effective, new, relevant data for positioning on the engines.
Absolutely the video of the call to action is what most are now using, some of the most effective marketers. I’m sure you could name names, because you’ve seen it done. That’s a massive change that’s taken place in the last two years.

Video now dominates. It’s huge. Copywriting is also very effective. I’m not putting it down. There are people that love to read copy, but the majority would rather be sitting and entertained initially, and then read the copy. I think both should be there, but on a different layer. I’d rather have video on the first layer, as it’s relatively non invasive and it’s an entertainment.

Anyway, I just wanted to make that comment. Very simple four principles. Auto-responder sequencing, the silent salesman. I’m amazed how many Web sites you go there, you opt in.

So those are the principles I discuss in detail prior to going to a live event, even though I don’t teach Internet at those events. I teach something very different, branding and differentiation, and yet I’ll talk about those four Internet principles because most people have a site, and it’s not generating any money.
They build it, and no one came. They’re not Kevin Costner. It’s not a field of dreams for most people.

They’re still dreaming about why it’s not working. I would start with those four repairs right there.

I would like to ask you something right now. Would you agree that if those components are missing, they’ve got a problem from the get go?

Shawn: Yeah. The one thing I would question is for me, as a user, I can’t stand auto-play video, and I’ve talked to a lot of people that don’t like it. So I use video a lot, but I always have the user having to take the action to play it.

Joel: No, that’s fine by the way. I would agree with your assessment, in terms of having interviewed audiences, but in terms of conversion level, our testing produced a very different result. If we want to strictly go according to the numbers, I would say everyone should ignore Joel Bauer, ignore Shawn, ignore everyone, and do their own test.

Shawn is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine.

Affiliate Summit East 2009 Recap – By Shawn Collins

FeedFront Staff — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:00:42 +0000

Affiliate Summit East 2009 (ASE09), the biggest of any Affiliate Summit East with 3,076 attendees, kicked off in New York City on August 9, 2009.

The previous peak attendance for an Affiliate Summit East show was 2,341 in Boston last year.
Day one of ASE09 featured a series of educational sessions and the Affiliate Meet Market, where six hours of networking took place.

After we experienced some long lines this past January at Affiliate Summit West 2009, a number of things were changed to alleviate the time for picking up badges and registration materials, and lines were low throughout the day.

The second day started with the keynote address from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the New York Times bestselling book, “Trust Agents”.

The capacity crowd was engaged as the keynote ran beyond the end time with the entertaining banter between Smith and Brogan.

After the keynote, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith signed copies of Trust Agents for a line of Affiliate Summit attendees.

The day also marked the opening of the exhibit hall, which spanned two floors and was crowded until closing.
There were also a series of packed educational sessions on the second day.

Towards the end of the day, there was a progression of roundtables hosted by a dozen experts on various topics related to affiliate marketing.

Day two wound up with a four-hour session of networking and karaoke at TechKaraoke, where a long list of folks in the industry sang their hearts out.

The final day of Affiliate Summit started with a keynote address from Peter Shankman, who had the crowd laughing and thinking with his talk.

The day also featured a series of educational sessions and the final day of the exhibit hall.

The final session was GeekCast.fm Live, where podcast hosts answered questions from the audience on podcasting and a host of other issues.

Finally, ASE09 wound up with the Affiliate Triathlon, where participants contributed $100 each to Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City for the chance to win a booth or five Platinum passes at Affiliate Summit West 2010.

The three sports in the competition were toilet racers (motorized toilets on wheels), Skee-ball, and Whack-a-Mole.

As things drew to a close, I was chatting with a number of people about the syndrome that hits attendees as they leave an Affiliate Summit (or any other conference).

After several days of networking, we strengthen our bonds, and there is a sense of emptiness when everybody goes their separate ways.

But it doesn’t have to be that way – we’ve got YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, the Affiliate Summit Social Network, and other venues to stay together.

Then again, there is no replacing Affiliate Summit West 2010, taking place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas. We look forward to seeing everybody again next January.

Shawn is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine.

Taking the Leap Across the Pond – By Jodi Rieger

FeedFront Staff — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:00:01 +0000

Expanding your US business into Europe can be a great opportunity to open a new revenue stream and increase your brand internationally. Last year, eMarketer estimated there were 136.1 million Europeans online in the five largest European Union countries – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Advertisers spent $7.5 billion to reach all Western Europeans, up 25% from $6.0 billion in the previous year. European online retail activity rose “a staggering 58%” in 2007, with a similar increase witnessed in 2008 (see the Forrester Research report ‘Robust European Online Shopping Growth to Continue’ 2008).
Which markets?

German based InnoGames (www.innogames.de) is a developer and distributor of browser-based games. It runs affiliate programs for its most successful title Tribal Wars across Germany, Spain, Sweden, UK Netherlands, Portugal and Romania.

Julian Bock, Product Manager, believes that the question of which markets to enter first is not simply a case of launching in the biggest markets. “Tribal Wars was a huge hit and we used customer information & the existing user base to give us an idea of which countries to go into.”

A key understanding of your customer and market data will give you the initial insight you need to make good planning decisions.

Opening your US business in the UK, where there is a shared language, is the obvious first choice. YesAsia.com, a leading Asian online entertainment retailer, sells Chinese, Japanese and Korean products including CDs, videos, books and games.

Stefan Janssens, Internet Marketing Manager for YesAsia.com and YesStyle.com, explains that language was the key reason they launched first in the UK. “We started in the UK, for the simple reason that our site is in English. We then also started programs in France and Germany, because they are the largest markets outside the UK.”

The Right Partner is Key
Launching an e-commerce operation into a new market can be high risk. Which markets should you expand to, when and how? Is there sufficient customer demand for your products and services? How will you handle shipping and distribution in another country? Will you need to consider language and translation issues? Are there legal or tax issues?

Even if you have done all the primary research, it may be easier with a local partner who can advise you of local best practices. The right affiliate network can help by:

• Providing a bi-lingual point of contact for you and your affiliate partners
• Understanding local market conditions
• Knowing local affiliates who can best promote your program
• Understanding the local competitive landscape and advising on USPs, commission structures and affiliate benefits you’ll need to stay competitive
• Advising on localized website language, design and presentation

Merchants in the United States that are entering new international markets should consider affiliate networks with an established presence to help them roll out their business. With careful planning, running a European affiliate program should become a springboard to greater things.

Jodi has ten years of experience in e-commerce and performance marketing and is currently an Account Manager for Webgains USA where she is working with many of Webgains’ international publishers and advertisers.

Serious Content: The Key To Serious Traffic – By Dylan McDanniel

FeedFront Staff — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:00:52 +0000

In this fast-paced world, people have little patience for options that don’t generate results. Yet too often, publishers of affiliate sites mistakenly assume that if they flood their domain with the right keywords, but pay lip service to content quality, site visitors and, by extension, their advertisers, will be happy nonetheless. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Online advertisers, more than anything else, seek quality referrals. Think about it: do merchants want “window shoppers”, or people who are serious about buying? It only makes sense that to attract serious prospects, you need to provide serious information.

Hence your need for serious, high-quality content. Not only will higher search rankings result, but you’ll also attract visitors who are closely targeted to your advertiser’s key audience—and primed to purchase.

So what defines serious content, and how do you generate it? First let’s look at the traits all strong publishing content has in common:

• It satisfies a niche. Web sites don’t have to satisfy all aspects of a subject to be useful. In fact, the more completely you cover a subset of a topic, the more value you’re likely to be to those interested in your subject area.
• It’s original. This is the golden rule. Nothing draws and holds site visitors like fresh, useful material. Newsfeeds and syndicated copy are valuable content sources, but they won’t score traffic.
• It’s to the point. Obviously your content must contain critical keywords, but just as importantly it needs to focus on the subject matter. It’s remarkable how many publishers fail this test with long home page introductions or bait and switch text.
• It contains no flowery language. To hold your visitor’s attention, avoid needless adjectives, polysyllabic mumbo-jumbo and self-important technical jargon (unless, of course, keywords are in play). And if you can say something in five words instead of ten, do it.
• It’s updated regularly. Active Web sites score higher in searches. You don’t have to rework your entire site every week, but make sure you’re adding content regularly.

While there’s no shortcut to creating a high quality, content driven site, the payoff more than offsets the investment required.

If funds are tight, you can save by writing the content yourself, as long as you have expertise in the subject matter or can research it adequately. But don’t be afraid to hire a professional writer; freelancers are affordable.

Don’t forget that original videos, site-specific applets, graphics and animation all count as fresh content. What’s more, free online services such as DM-2.com enable you to easily organize your content using attractive page templates, and even host your site at no cost.

Strong, unique content is your key to success as an affiliate site. Chances are your core audience will return frequently, bookmark you, even refer you to others.

Sites with serious content are also naturals for community pages and forums that count as original material. Pay close attention to the content you furnish, and you’ll create a destination that benefits—and profits—both you and your advertisers.

Dylan McDanniel is COO and Co-Founder of Epicenter Network (www.epicenternetwork.com) , an integrated affiliate marketing network and provider of affiliate publishing software.

$150k a Day on PPC: Lessons Learned – By Scott Richter

FeedFront Staff — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:00:13 +0000

Many affiliates boast inflated earnings, and then spread misinformation, perhaps intentionally, to mislead everyone else. Their “secrets” no longer work and are therefore safe to release.

And then there are folks who hawk their ultra expensive Pay Per Click (PPC) training courses and software. Not saying these aren’t useful. Just saying it’s hard to get a real education on PPC. What forums should you read, what software, whose blog, and so forth?

A few years ago, I decided to give the PPC game a try. What did I know as a “high volume email deployer,” guy running an affiliate network (affiliate.com), and new to PPC?

Well, I started running dating and ringtones ads and within a few days was killing it. Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish.com, was doing the same and was teaching his father, girlfriend, and other people who had no clue about Internet marketing about PPC.

And they were making a few hundred bucks a day. I decided to teach my boy’s Granddad how to do PPC on PerfSpot.com, and soon he was doing $1k a day. You can learn to do successful PPC from scratch too!

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Focus on international traffic. US traffic is too expensive. If you have a friend that can speak another language, ask them to translate your ads and landing pages.
• The two schools of thought are brute force and prototyping. Brute force is about massive keyword lists and automated programs that cull out the garbage. Prototyping is hand-building campaigns to find trends and clever ad copy. You can get the best of both worlds by prototyping first and then getting an engineer friend to scale for you based on rules.
• Rent A Coder and oDesk are best for submitting your engineering. The services are cheap and reliable.
• Run content network and weed out the bad sites. Try demo targeting. You’ll be surprised how differently combos for age, gender, geography, and time of day affect conversion.
• Rotate between direct linking and your landing page to see which converts better.
• Work closely with your reps from the advertiser, affiliate network, and publishers. Your relationships will give you the head start on what’s hot, plus give you sustainable profits.
• Every ad group should have just two or three ads, not just one and not ten. This allows you to choose winners quickly.
• When you start a new account, you want to build great account history, or else your ads will go under review if there are too many disapprovals.
• MSN converts better than Google, but it has lower volume.
• Always run the same offer via two networks: your primary (that makes the most money for you) and a backup (just to keep your primary honest with payouts and scrubbing).
• Learn Google AdWords Editor and Google Analytics. They’re free and most affiliates don’t understand that you can tie these together to create awesome reporting.

Scott Richter has had huge success in affiliate marketing and shares his experience in building and optimizing successful campaigns at scott-richter.com.

Choosing the Right Email Service Provider – By Andrew Paul

FeedFront Staff — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:00:37 +0000

Email marketing is NOT a science. There is no such thing as 100% deliverability or some magic “Pixie Dust” that can be sprinkled on your servers to help you deliver your email creative into the recipient’s inbox.
There are only “best practices”, which you can follow to help you get the best possible results.

So, the question is, what makes some email get delivered, some go into the spam/junk folder and other email get lost in space? The answer is pretty simple, reputation.

The reputation of your IP addresses will determine, with 95% surety, if, when and how the email you are sending will be handled by an ISP. You may ask, how do I manage the reputation of my IP addresses and where do I start? My answer would be, “Find the right Email Service Provider (ESP)”.

Choosing an ESP with an intelligent, knowledgeable and educated staff is the first place to start. An ESP that works on a flat rate or monthly fee, versus on the amount of email you send is the way to go.

Working with a company that will provide free technical support, monitor and manage your IP reputation, help clean and validate your email data, give you advice on setting up and sending out your campaigns is very important.

There are many companies who will sell you a service and get you setup, but you will find that you are on your own after your check has cleared.

Once you have made it through the process of choosing the right ESP, here is where most will drop the ball. Many do not realize how important it is to put a competent person in the role of the email marketing system administrator.

This role is the key to the success of any email marketing system and whether you make money or not. Many times I have seen this job left to an intern or a receptionist, who hasn’t had experience, training or grasps the type of performance required and thus the program fails.

This is tantamount to letting a monkey with a wiffle bat rebuild the transmission in your car or manage your 401k. You can have the best email marketing system, with white listed IP’s, great deliverable data and the best converting offers on the planet, but if you don’t have the right person running the program, there is no chance to make money.

Think of your email marketing strategy as if you were baking a cake. Each ingredient in the recipe is important to the success of the cake as a whole. If you omit one ingredient like sugar or flour, your cake will not be the success you thought it would be.

Likewise if you skip one of the important steps in your email marketing strategy, you will not get the deliverability, results or ROI you expected. If you do your homework, you’ll be mailing into the world’s inboxes while munching on the best chocolate cake you have ever had and getting paid for it.

Andrew Paul is the CEO and Managing Director of Boca Networks, an ESP and email marketing publisher.

Affiliate Marketing in the Regulators’ Cross-Hairs – By Thomas A. Cohn

FeedFront Staff — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:00:04 +0000

Advertising claims by merchants have long attracted the attention of state Attorneys General (AG) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but recently these regulators have signaled a willingness to pursue advertising cases against a new target: online affiliate marketers.

Until recently, affiliates have operated anonymously and attracted little scrutiny, because they do not sell the goods/services featured in their published content. But affiliate-published pages have always been vulnerable: if they contain misleading claims about a product, or fail to disclose connections with sellers, the affiliate may face liability for deceptively driving online sales.

Recently, the FTC and AGs have stepped up scrutiny of online claims. Regulators have attacked a variety of questionable practices, from misleading product claims, to deceptive trial offers with unauthorized charges, to falsely implied celebrity/expert endorsements and fake consumer blogs.

Affiliate-created blogs, review sites and other pages have proliferated, filled with claims that drive traffic to merchants. When this content contains suspect claims or fails to disclose connections with sellers, there may be liability for deceptively inducing sales.

It is no surprise that the FTC shows increased interest in affiliates. It has long held that it is not just advertisers who are liable for deceptive advertising. Anyone who plays a promotional role, be it ad agencies or shopping channels, is liable for its role in allegedly deceptive advertising.

Now the FTC may apply this expanded liability principle to affiliates. It is revising its Endorsement Guides to clarify that both advertisers and endorsers could be liable for the endorsers’ false advertising claims, and for failing to disclose material connections between advertisers and endorsers. But it has not confronted this issue – until recently.

In May, the FTC sued affiliates who pretended to operate “MakingHomeAffordable.gov,” the official Web site of a federal program providing free mortgage assistance. The defendants purchased links on results pages when consumers searched for “making home affordable.” A sponsored link displaying the official site’s full URL appeared in the search engines’ results.

Consumers clicking on the ads were directed to sites that sell paid loan modification services. Although the FTC did not sue those Web sites, it alleged the affiliates were attempting to defraud homeowners by falsely implying through search results that visitors were being sent to the government’s Web site.

Also, state AGs have cited the role of affiliates in their latest actions against online promotions, and these may be followed by other AG and/or FTC actions against merchants, affiliates, and/or networks that either engage in deceptive advertising, or knowingly assist and facilitate it.

In addition, affiliates’ unauthorized use of celebrity and news images and marks is subjecting them (and the merchants they link) to charges of trademark infringement, false endorsement and related allegations, under state and federal law.

Now that the FTC and AGs have brought cases, affiliates should consider themselves on notice: any affiliate who engages in or assists with fraud might end up in the crosshairs of law enforcement. Affiliates must be careful to publish truthful content that is not deceptive and contains the proper disclaimers and disclosures.

Mr. Cohn, of counsel with Venable LLP in New York, advises clients on the legal and practical aspects of compliance with state and federal consumer protection regulations and industry self-regulation programs, and represents clients during investigations and enforcement actions; he can be reached at tacohn@venable.com.

Lessons from North Carolina’s Affiliate Tax Fight – By Matt Enders

FeedFront Staff — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:26:10 +0000

Over the years many events, technologies, and companies have changed the face of affiliate marketing. The current battle against the Affiliate Tax (Advertising Tax, Amazon Tax) is one of the most important events to happen in our young industry.

The Advertising Tax has the power to both reform and injure our entire industry. To date New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina have all passed the tax. Other states have seen the damage these laws do to small businesses and have shot down similar legislation.

Being headquartered in North Carolina, mgecom took a leading role in the fight against the Advertising Tax. In this fight, we learned many things which could be of great value should you find yourself in a state considering the implementation of the Advertising Tax. My best advice is this:

- Start an online petition and gather as many signatures as possible. The volume of signatures is important, but more from your state equals more relevance to lawmakers.
- Gather short, personal stories from every affiliate you can reach whose business will be negatively impacted. Print and bind these, and hand deliver them to your legislators.
- Use Twitter to get the message out and gain new supporters. Create a hash tag (we used #ncaffiliatetax) and include it in every Twitter update you write.
- Talk to the Performance Marketing Alliance and leverage their experience, data, and reach.
- Utilize the enormous power and community of ABW (ABestWeb.com) and other affiliate marketing forums.
- Organize face to face meetings with anyone in your state who has an interest in seeing the law shot down. Use these meetings to plan your group strategy.
- Don’t wait to start the fight. Make yourself heard as soon as the legislation appears. Even better, be preemptive and start educating your legislators on our industry.
- Visit your legislators in person. Meeting with lawmakers from your county is very important, but talk to anyone who will listen, particularly if they are on your State Finance Committee.
- Call your legislators multiple times. Don’t settle for speaking to an aide.
- Be persistent.

In North Carolina, we were unfortunately fighting against the perception of “fairness” in the eyes of lawmakers.

Many were focused on ensuring that Amazon.com and local book retailers were both subject to the same taxes and removing what was seen as an unfair competitive advantage.

North Carolina being in a significant budget deficit certainly did not help our chances. To lawmakers, the Affiliate Tax seemed like a way to both close the budget gap and keep local retailers happy.

We found that personal stories from affiliates and getting legislators to see how the Affiliate Tax laws negatively affect small businesses and individuals was much more effective than speaking to them about their misconceptions of fairness and new tax revenue streams. In the end we lost the fight, but we did make headway with key legislators. Now, we will work towards repeal of the Affiliate Tax.

Matt Enders is the CEO and Founder of mgecom, inc., an Outsourced Affiliate Program Management firm.

Productivity Upgrade: The Dash – By Aaron Dragushan

FeedFront Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:06:23 +0000

The Problem: No matter what you do for a living, success involves getting things done. Unfortunately reality often involves a lot of trying to get yourself to get things done.

Procrastination isn’t rational. Even when we know we’re procrastinating, and we want to be working, getting back on track can be difficult. Instead we check our email, or our traffic numbers, or see what’s happening on Twitter today.

Luckily there are a few tricks and tips that can jump-start you. This one is called, “The Dash”.

The Secret: Getting started is the real challenge, not getting the project done.

The Trick: A “dash” is a quick burst of effort on whatever you’re avoiding. The idea is to start small; ridiculously small if necessary.

Example: “I’m going to clean this room for 1 minute” or “I’m going to open the project and write one sentence.”

How it works: The longer you avoid doing something the bigger it gets inside your mind. Any progress that gets you started wipes away that feeling and gives you a fresh start, and from there it’s easier to keep moving once you’ve got a little momentum.

Aaron Dragushan is the founder of UpgradeMe.org, a site dedicated to helping entrepreneurs move faster.