While catching up with launching a slew of new unique content niche web sites, after my long deployment to Iraq, I came across www.TextBroker.com.  All I can say is WOW! After working with numerous other web publishing agencies, freelance web sites and ghost writer services nothing even comes close to the speed, efficiency and professionalism of of TextBroker.com custom articles.

With 100+ domains sitting in my Keyword Discovery account, with anywhere from 500-1000 long tail keywords mined in each, it can be EXTREMELY expensive and time consuming to generate and launch so many quality unique content web sites…without a full time staff of authors.

In the past I would use rentacoder.com and a few others but the the time it took to set up a project, accept a bid and receive the end product often took more time than I was willing to spend. The beauty of TextBroker.com is simply this:

1. You generate individual article marketing projects for each of your domains.
2. You set the article parameters for each individual project which includes: completion time frame, article length; the long tail keywords you want used for each individual article; submit a quick blurb indicating the overall feel of the articles; and choose the professionalism level from 1-5 of the particular project (5 being most professional but a little more expensive).
3. Then you just sit back and let TextBroker.com tell you when an article has been completed by one of their 100’s of authors thus allowing you to focus on more keyword research, marketing, etc.

No more waiting for individual authors to complete your project.  With TextBroker.com you have an army of authors at your disposal to knock out even your most daunting article marketing campaigns.  And, when you find extremely good authors (I’ve found quite a few so far) you can add them as favorites and directly submit them a new project.

If you haven’t tried this ghost writer service yet I highly recommend you give them a try.  Their flat rate fees are:

What Makes Them Even Cooler?

• 100% US Based Authors
• Direct Author/Client Messaging
• Exclusive rights to your content
• Articles reviewed by TextBroker .com staff for quality, grammatical errors, etc.
• Internet copyright-check of articles verified by CopyScape

Go test their service out right now on a small campaign you already know is a profitable niche or just have them write up some fresh articles for your preexisting site(s) to see if you like the results.  After that I’m pretty sure you’ll be hooked. 

Seriously, what would you rather be spending your time on?  Auction sites are great for software, eBooks, applications etc. but for articles I can’t think of a better solution (besides a personal staff on payroll) than www.TextBroker.com.  Cheers!

WOW, look at the e-mail I just received!  (Your spam checker probably saved you.)

Hi,

We’ve seen your website at http://www.top-affiliate.com/blog/ and we love it!
We see that your traffic rank is 191851
and your link popularity is 226.
Also, you have been online since 8/29/2004.

With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website.

If you’re interested, read our terms from this page: http://www.contactthem. com/affiliateLink

Sincerely,

“SPAM TEAM”
The ContactThem Network

So after having a good solid laugh at this e-mail curiosity got the best of me and off I wandered over to ContactThem to see what this nonsense was all about.

Once you get to the pitch page you find out that ContactThem (according to them) is the fastest growing program since Google Adwords.  Get out, surely you jest! But it gets better.  They also claim they are as viral as Hotmail.  Wow, that’s a pretty modest claim.  =)

Blah, blah, blah…blah, blah, blah…Oh wait a minute, what’s this asterisk?  Ahh, those were potential earnings!  You almost tricked me ContactThem!

Basically this spam and scam product is a lead generating software for, yep you guessed it, MULTI LEVEL MARKETING (MLM), which we all know preys on the new opportunity seeker or affiliate marketer.  This software extracts details out of numerous databases and allows you to do a mass mailing with the gleaned personalized information.  Talk about your laser targeted leads, LOL!

Since I really despise MLM I wanted to see who was responsible for this debacle.  Ahh it makes sense now….it’s Stephan Ducharme the notorious FreeAdGuru who’s claim to fame was repackaging free traffic generating methods as “secrets” almost 10 years ago.

Evidently these spam and scam e-mails have been flying around since late February ‘08 when I was over in Iraq so this is probably old news to most.  However, hopefully someone will read this and be saved from the hype and nonsense still flying around this particular “offer” and be more inquisitive on future too-good-to-be-true offers.

Steer clear people and update your spam filters. 

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years…Goowy Media, Inc. develops innovative online products and services that provide simple, intuitive tools for managing your digital life and expressing yourself on the web.  Their most popular products are yourminus.com and goowy webtop

This progressive move by AOL enables web publishers, like you and me, to generate additional revenue from a combination of affiliate, widget and viral marketing.  It will be exciting to see how Platform-A advertisers integrate/syndicate this new capability into their customized widgets for your blog, website, and even your desktop!  Very cool stuff indeed.

For more than a little while now I haven’t had too many good things to say about these blasted Widgets!  They seemed to just take up real advertising space and bleed my hard-earned web traffic.  However, I will gladly test these viral advertiser generated widgets out on my network of blogs/sites so my visitors and customers can snatch them up and redistribute them to the far corners of the Web.  Just think about the applications…MySpace, FaceBook, etc.

Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A states, “This solution combines the best of affiliate and widget advertising in a solution that benefits publishers and advertisers alike.  Publisher revenue potential, brand exposure for the advertiser, and potential conversions grow virally each time the widget is downloaded by a consumer.”

I agree Lynda!  Now this is what we collectively mean by the moniker Web 2.0 people!

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes

In this article I will show affiliate managers the mistakes they should avoid if they want to build a successful affiliate program.

I felt compelled to write this article after seeing the same mistakes made by most of the hundreds of affiliate programs I have joined since I started promoting them in 1997. I have made a nice living from affiliate programs over the years, so I know a thing or two about them. I would dearly love to make more money with affiliate programs, but affiliate managers don’t make it easy for us affiliates. So hopefully this article will do a bit for the cause.

Here are my top five biggest affiliate program mistakes that I find today:

1. Competing With Your Affiliates.

This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.

Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you’re trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.

The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.

So if you’re an affiliate manager reading this article, tell your affiliate director at your next meeting to STOP competing with your affiliates, and support them instead!

2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.

All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren’t much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.

Affiliate managers - please consider providing these useful statistics so that I can market your products effectively:

• Archive of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly statistics and by date range.
• Commission earned, broken down by product or service, and how the customer was referred to the site.
• Daily email update of all affiliate statistics.
• Instant email notification of a new affiliate.
• Instant email notification of a new free trial sign up.
• Instant email notification of a new sale and all relevant statistics. I love getting new sales notification emails!
• Number of free trial downloads or subscriptions.
• Number of returns and all relevant statistics.
• Affiliate links with trackable IDs, so that affiliates can tell exactly which site, or ad campaign is sending the referrals and sales.
• Unique clicks - which refers to the unique number of visitors referred - in addition to raw clicks - which refers to the total number of click throughs.
• A list of top performing affiliate statistics, so that affiliates can compare how they’re doing and which areas they can improve on.
• Include the most important statistics at the top of the email and subject line. There’s nothing worse than having to scroll down to see what the referral purchased or how much commission I have made.

The following only apply if the affiliate program offers more than one level of commissions.

• Commission earned as a result of referrals sent by 2nd-tier affiliates.
• Commission earned, broken down by commission level.
• Number of 2nd-tier affiliates referred.

I’ve been promoting products and services via affiliate programs since 1997 and I have yet to come across an affiliate program that provides anything close to these statistics.

3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.

The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.

Another thing I hate is seeing my commissions go down the drain because someone I had referred signs up to the affiliate program and purchases the product via their affiliate link. It almost feels like I’m being robbed blind! I highly recommend affiliate managers deter this practice by making it harder for affiliates to pocket the commission from their own purchases, at least the initial one.

4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.

Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468×60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.

Affiliate managers - what about these promotional creatives?

• Articles and tips with embedded affiliate links
• Classified ads
• Customer testimonials
• Direct email ads
• Email signatures
• Newsletter ads
• pay per click ads
• Pop-up/under ads
• Product photographs
• Product reviews
• Product screenshots
• Rich-media ads
• Skyscrapers
• Staff interviews

Listen up! Different ads perform better on different sites. And ads generally have a life span of a carton of milk. So offer your affiliates a greater variety of ads, more often.

5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.

This is the 21st century. Don’t make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.

Don’t outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I’m often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can’t give me answers to simple questions.

Well there you have it - my five biggest complaints about affiliate programs today. I hope affiliate managers take note and take strides to better support their affiliates, because if you don’t, affiliates will find other ways to make money on their site.

Affiliate marketers - if you agree with what I’ve said, send this article to your affiliate program managers!

About The Author: Michael Wong is the editor of GoDefy.com - the world’s first online marketing comparison shopping search engine and Mike’s Marketing Tools. Michael is also the author of the leading Search Engine Optimization Guide and numerous marketing tips. Publishing Rights: You may republish this article in your web site, newsletter, or ebook, on the condition that you agree to leave the article, author’s signature and photograph, and all links completely intact. Full instructions on how to copy and upload my photo to your server.

[tags]affiliate marketing, affiliate program managers, affiliate programs, commission, michael wong, affiliate managers, marketing campaign, affiliates[/tags]

Nope, I haven’t died.  I’m currently on temporary duty here at Fort Dix New Jersey for a 6 week long Combat Skills Training before my deployment to Iraq.  I’ll be back by mid Decemeber before I head out to the AOR.  Take care!

[tags]combat skills training[/tags]

Only a few months ago we were all promoting this widget like crazy to our fellow bloggers hoping to get tons of referral bloggers before our competition gobbled them up.  Today, the pulse of BlogRush is faint at best these on the NET.  With exceptionally low CTR’s of the social marketing widget reported by high traffic blogs such as problogger.com, doshdosh.com, etc. and general negative feedback from the marketing community this may be the death of BlogRush as we know it.

You’ll notice I’ve also removed the BlogRush widget from my page.  During the 1.5 months I had it posted, it produced less than a .01 CTR.  You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that blows. 

I placed the widget about halfway down my blog just below the fold…probably like 99% of the rest of BlogRusher’s because revenue ads will always trump widgets.  In this location your CTR will be pretty darn low already and your blog posts, when shown on other relevant blogs, will be competing with five (5) other blog posts thereby reducing your CTR by another 20%. 

Sorry, but if you’ve placed the widget at the top of your blog you’re really just bleeding traffic and revenue.

We’d all like a fancy shmancy widget to magically bring us loads of laser targeted, high quality traffic but in “the real world” widgets are more form/fun then function.  BlogRush, SmartLinks and even MyBlogLog widgets are nothing more than ads that do not benefit the blogger.

[tags]Blogrush, SmartLinks, MyBlogLog, widgets, social marketing, traffic, bloggers[/tags]

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites.  With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

This is slick…So what’s the hold up Facebook?  I bet you buckle like a belt soon under the pressure.  =)

[tags] Orkut, MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, XING, OpenSocial, Facebook, Google, social API, social applications[/tags]

• 95% of brands say affiliate marketing is ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost effective’
• An average of 18 per cent of the online marketing budget is spent in the channel
• Travel companies using affiliate marketing most effectively

The affiliate marketing report is jam packed with some very helpful marketing numbers and figures.  Take a quick minute and check out  the E-consultancy snippet for more information at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/364296/affiliate-marketing-delivers-the-most-cost–effective-customer-acquisition.html. 

The full results of the research will be released at ad:tech where buy.at will have copies of the sample report at stand number 471.

The research report is also available to E-consultancy subscribers, or on a pay-per-view basis, at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/affiliate-marketing-merchants-report-2007/

[tags]affiliate marketing, ad:tech, e-consultancy, affiliate marketing, online marketing, customer acquisition, cost effective[/tags]

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

I’ve been a big fan of SEO elite for quite some time now and use it almost exclusively across my network of sites for search engine optimization.  However, I’m very interested in trying out SEO Spyglass 2.

SEO Spyglass 2, much like SEO Elite, allows you to analyze your competitors success by seeing who links to them, how they’re doing it and most importantly how those links are affecting the search engine rankings.  It also allows you to identify competitors from a keyword research too.

Price?  A meager $87.00.  Compare that to SEO Elites pricetag of $167.00 and it looks like a pretty good deal to me.  It becomes an even better deal when you take into consideration SEO Spyglass 2 also enables you to:

• Receive And Organize Emails From Your Link Partners
• Generate Link Pages That Are Fully Customizable
• Display The Status Of A Link Partner And Manage Statuses
• Update Multiple Link Partners’ Properties At Once
• View Websites And Generated Links Pages With A Built-In Browser
• Find And Autocomple Link Submission Forms (LinkMachine.net, LinksManager.com, AutoLinksPro.com, LinkMetro.com, etc) 
• Customize Your Workspace
• Make Your Links Page Available Online via FTP

Ohh yeah, did I mention there is a FREE version of SEO Spyglass 2 as well?!  I’ll be testing SEO SpyGlass 2 out in the immediate future and will post my feedback on its performance.  

In addition, be on the lookout for another slick little tool that looks like it will rock the online marketing community on 25 Jul 07.  You can find out more about this SECRET WEAPON on Heather Paulsons blog.  VERY COOL STUFF HERE FOLKS for all of you die hard PPC marketers.

Take care and God Bless!

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

[tags]seo elite, seo spyglass 2, seo, search engine rankings, search engine optimization, keyword research, link partners, generated link pages, ppc marketers, ppc, online marketing, secret weapon, marketers, search engine, rankings[/tags]

Did I miss something?  Was there a recent "upgrade" to MyBlogLog?

I didn’t realize they now automatically add you to communities THEY feel you frequent often.  It’s kind of funny because they just added me to THEIR community.  I thought that was a little odd since I’ve probably ony visited their blog twice since I joined. 

Hmmm…are you community spamming me MyBlogLog?  I got my eye on you……

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

[tags]mybloglog[/tags]