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There’s no
denying that social media is getting all of us hooked, and fast. It’s addictive
and irresistible, like candy is for children.

But what
happens when children eat too much candy? A sugar high of course, and
eventually over time it can result in tooth decay.

Are we doing
the same thing as we rush to jump on the social media bandwagon, quickly adding
it into every aspect of our business because it’s fresh, exciting and the cool
thing to do – only for it to one day dawn on us that we’ve done it all wrong?

Sometimes, yes.
If you introduce social media sharing to your website and marketing campaigns
but don’t first fully consider what is right for your business specifically, or
consider the ‘what next’ consequences of doing so, then you’re probably doing
yourself more harm than good.

Let’s look at
a specific scenario: replacing ‘forward to a friend’ with ‘share to social’ in
your email marketing campaign.

Now at first
take, this sounds like a no-brainer – and under the right circumstances, it is.

4 good reasons why Share To Social trumps Forward To A
Friend

1. It is much easier for a user to
share by simply clicking a link (rather than manually entering a friend’s email
address).

2. Sharing to a social media
channel gives far greater exposure to
tens if not hundreds of people, much faster, than by forwarding to one friend.

3. The act of sharing increases
user involvement and brand awareness. Positive interactions such as these build
a greater relationship between your customers or prospects and your business.

4. There is less perceived risk at
sharing content through a social media channel. Some subscribers worry that
websites will spam their friends if they use their forward to a friend web
forms.

Share to
Social isn’t something you want to miss out on if it’s right for you, so let’s
address some basic questions before you jump into this:

Q: Will people
want to share my content with their greater social circle?

A: lot of this
comes down to common sense. If you’re in an affiliate marketing niche such as
yeast infection, save my marriage or even attract women – it seems fairly
unlikely people will be wanting to share your content on Facebook with their
friends. These are situations where sticking with a forward to a friend option
would make more sense.

Q: Is my
target market using social media and which channels?

One day, this
question will probably be redundant. But for now, there are still plenty of
pockets of people who simply don’t use social media, know how to, nor have any
desire to.

The only way
to really be sure on this one is to ask. Collect this data as part of a quick
survey to those on your email list, you might be surprised with the results.
What would be the point of adding a tweet link to your email if only 2% of
subscribers use Twitter?

Once you’ve
done this background work and are ready to implement share to social, the next
question you need to look at is – is it worth your time and effort?

Does content
sharing by your subscribers provide the greatest ROI? Are there alternative
measures you could be spending your time on that would give you a greater
return?

If people are
re-tweeting your content left, right and centre that’s great but does it mean
you need extra resources to accommodate your increased presence on Twitter? Is
it worth it?

What if you enabled share to social on your
content and it got everyone talking about you, but for all the wrong reasons?

These are just
some of the questions you need to consider and monitor carefully when you make
the leap into the social media wonderland. As the reigns of your marketing
campaign are shifted more into the hands of your subscribers, it pays to keep
one thing in mind before you make any radical changes:

You and your
users are at the mercy of the owners of social media sites, whereas email is
not owned by anyone. Sure, passing the bat to your subscribers to maintain your
marketing presence looks like a very tempting candy… but do you know how long
that sweetness will last?

How much
control do you want to have?

Put your hand
up if you’re not a fan of long sales copy…

Now keep your
hand up if you have purchased a product after reading its long sales copy.

That’s what I
thought.

No matter how
much some of us just don’t like long
sales copy, we can’t escape the truth that good long copy actually works – and
it works well.

So how do you
take this seemingly conflicting knowledge and apply it rationally when choosing
affiliate programs to promote?

Gravity
ratings can be excellent indicators, but they’re only one  of many metrics that determine a program’s
potential and there are times when they don’t come in handy – such as new
product launches.

Or you may
find yourself promoting products that you have no personal need or desire to
purchase. For example, if you are an affiliate looking at promoting a golf
product with no interest and minimal knowledge of the niche, you’ll likely find
it hard to relate with the market. This makes it much harder to gauge the
effectiveness of the sales copy, because you can’t simply test it on yourself.

In order to
quickly gain an informed perception of a sales page’s ability to convert, here
are the top five questions you should be asking:

1) Do the headlines, bolded, and highlighted text paint
a cohesive story on their own?

Are you able
to understand what the product is, and why anyone should feel compelled to buy
it by simply skim reading the eye-catching headlines and copy?

Value is key
here – you should be able to instantly identify the product’s value and see how
it justifies the price point.

2) Does the copy provide enough detail to thoroughly
explain what benefits the buyer will receive from this product?

This is
important – the copy needs to thoroughly describe the product but this
description must be benefit-focused, NOT feature-focused.

Example
feature description:

“This product can do XYZ, which makes it go whiz-bang,
really fast!”

This may be
impressive to the product creator, but why should the reader care that it can
go whiz-bang really fast?

Example
benefit description:

“This product can do XYZ, so you can cut your research
time in half and instead spend more time doing the things you love.”

This is, of
course, a very general benefit description – better copy would identify the
‘things’ the reader loves, and capture their attention with those. This brings
us to the third question you should ask yourself…

3) Does the copy correctly identify the buyer market
and speak directly to them?

Take a closer
look at the benefits stated – are these appealing to those who the product is
intended for?

If the copy
fails to engage the reader, they will stop reading and not purchase – simple as
that.

4) Does the copy create a sense of trust?

No matter how
legitimate and well-intending the merchant is, if they are unable to establish
a relationship of genuineness and trustworthiness, you can bet your bottom
dollar the sales page won’t convert.

Trustworthy
copy will be scattered with testimonials – from short in-text references to
case studies. These should be a mixture of success stories and endorsements
from other, relevant businesses. Testimonials from high profile businesses
bring extra credibility because readers can easily identify with them.

Be sure to
consider the claims made by the copy too. Alarm bells should go off at
hyperbole. Are the claims believable?

While
impressive, it would be an extremely tough job to convince me that you
drastically improved your golf handicap so much that you went from worst player
to best player at your club in less than 24 hours… would you be convinced?

5) Does the copy create a sense of urgency?

If it fails to
give explicit reasons why the reader needs to purchase the product right now, then they won’t purchase it immediately.

They may be
close to being sold on the product, but without a sense of urgency they’re
likely to leave the page and have a think about it, and probably purchase a
more convincing product in the meantime.

If you can
answer yes to these five questions when assessing sales copy, then you’re
looking at a sales page that has the ability to convert well.

What do you
look for when assessing a merchant’s sales page? Share your tips with us in the
comments below.

It’s that time of year again! 2010 sure has
gone fast.

It’s been busy at Affilorama over the past
12 months – we’ve welcomed many new members to our community, launched
AffiloJetpack, and taken pleasure in helping our members over the hurdles and
towards success with their affiliate marketing businesses.

Here are some highlights of the last 12
months from the Affilorama blog…

January

Chris talks about
the changing demands of marketing brought on by the ‘global age’, in his post “Cultural
conflict – Do we need to start thinking globally in our marketing?”

February

Mark imparts
some pearls of wisdom picked up from his visit to
the Affiliate Summit this year.

March

A guest post from internet marketing expert
Matt Carter reminds us about the classic
online marketing mistake of becoming “A Jack of all trades but a master of
none”.

April

Grace takes us through how to
use Affilorama’s new website ping tool, and why affiliate marketers should use
it.

May

Mark announced that he is now a proud
father! His son, Benjamin Logan Ling, was born on April 22^nd and
there was an overwhelming number of well-wishes from the Affilorama community. Now
8 months old, Benjamin is a happy, healthy, gorgeous growing baby about to have
his first visit from Santa! Here’s a recent photo of him:

June

Aletta writes her last witty blog post
before leaving, outlining the theory she had developed of “The
30% Brain” and why it’s bad to assume your visitors are smart.

July

Mark gives us some top tips on how to
rank highly in MSN’s Bing.

August

I detail the what,
where, who, when, how and why of rewriting articles for all of our new
AffiloJetpack members who were busy doing exactly that!

September

On 4^th September at 4.35am, an earthquake
measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hit Christchurch (Affilorama’s
headquarters) at a depth of just 11km. We’ve now had over 4000 aftershocks in
the region, check out this quake-map
visualization for an idea of just how much it has been shaking here!

October

We introduce
the Affilorama YO Blog, a place for Affilorama members to share their
knowledge with the Affilorama community through blogging. There have been some
top-notch posts so far, check them out
or submit one yourself!

November

Haden provides some great pointers for optimizing your
blog post to make the most of traffic from the search engines.

December

I ask the question, what
does Christmas mean for Affiliate Marketers? This post explores some ways
you can make the most of the Christmas demand with your affiliate marketing
business.

And with little more than a week left in
the year, it’s time for the team at Affilorama to wish all of our members a
very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Here’s to 2011 – bring it on!

Last
Christmas online sales grew a whopping 15.5% over the previous year. Compare
that with a 3.6% increase for retail sales over the same period and it is
undeniable that the online marketplace is red hot for Christmas. So just how
much of this pie do affiliate marketer’s get a share of?

Well, the
short answer is – it depends. It depends on many things, but specifically – how
much effort you put into marketing to the Christmas demand, and the products
you’re currently promoting…

Christmas for Affiliate Marketers
of Digital Products

In Mark Ling’s
experience, he has found that sales for products under $50 often increase. However
for many digital products with a higher price point, sales are often lower than
usual over the Christmas period.

Don’t
interpret this as ‘bad news’ though. Affiliate marketers are not dependent on a
revenue surge at Christmas time – there are many seasonal trends that provide
opportunities for digital products to thrive. For example, many niches may only
need to wait one more week after Christmas for the enthusiasm of New Year’s
resolutions to result in an increase in sales (hello, weight loss product
affiliates!).

What’s more,
merchants of digital products will often do a Christmas promotion that can give
buyers that extra incentive needed to purchase – making your job easier. A good
example of this is SaleHoo.com, who are offering their 2011 webinar training series for free to
buyers who purchase membership in December.

Christmas for Affiliate Marketers
of gifts and physical products

Affiliate
Marketers of gifts and physical products, as you might expect, reap the benefits
of the Christmas season the most:

• Now is
  probably the best time of year to be an affiliate of Amazon.com – just one lead
  could result in multiple sales if they buy more items than you bargained for!
• Mark Ling’s Jamorama.com site usually doubles their sales every
  December, as their guitar lessons are a digital product that is popular as a
  gift.

So how
gift-worthy are the products you promote? Some niches will always be no-go
areas for Christmas gifts, but you’ll be surprised at how many aren’t when you
put your mind to it.

Take some of
the AffiloJetpack niches for example: the dog training, golf,
green energy and learn to sing niches all hold potential to convert sales as
Christmas gifts – if you market the products that way of course. If you haven’t
already, get started on this now!

How else can you make the most of
Christmas?

Set up a
mini site! It doesn’t take a SEO expert to recognise that there is a ton more
traffic coming through on all Christmas-related search terms at this time of
year. You may simply use Google Adsense on your site, but there are also plenty
of Christmas products to promote – a quick search in Clickbank’s marketplace
for ‘Christmas’ affiliate programs returned 341 results. What’s more, Christmas
is a niche familiar to most of us – so it shouldn’t be too difficult getting
content for your site.

I would love
to hear how Christmas affects your affiliate marketing business and what
strategies (if any) you use for this time of year, please share with us below.

Happy
holiday season!

As you might
be aware, October 2010 is the month we’re talking about all things social media
here on Affilorama.

This ‘web 2.0’
stuff can be pretty baffling to many of us because it is simply so new, and
it’s growing at such a fast rate it can out pace even the most savvy of us!

How are we
ever supposed to keep up? Do you even bother trying to figure it all out? Well
if you’re an affiliate marketer, you definitely should.

Not to worry,
we have a ton of resources on Affilorama that can help you get up to speed.

With lessons
and blogs on social media buried amongst other stuff, we’ve put a list together
for you here that links to everything from the one place! We’ll keep this
updated, so it’s a good idea to bookmark this post now so you can easily refer
back to it.

Internet 101:Especially useful for those who don’t know
a tweet from a text

If you’re a
complete newbie, you might like to check out our social media section
of our Internet 101 course.

This begins by
answering the question: What is social media?

It also
addresses other key areas, so you’ve got a solid foundation of knowledge before
diving into things a little more deeply:

• What is a blog and
  how do I use one?
• What is a social
  network?
• What is a media
  sharing site?
• What other
  kinds of social media sites are there?

Free Video Lessons

Next, we’ve
got a whole bunch of free video lessons in our Web 2.0 Marketing Ideas
section.  Following are a selection of
what you will find there:

• How
  to use Twitter for Affiliate Marketing
• Affiliate
  Marketing on Facebook
• Four bonus Web 2.0 tips
• The Web 2.0
  Backlink Method
• Introduction to
  Squidoo
• How to create a
  Squidoo Lens
• The
  Best of the Social Bookmarking Sites

A trip down memory lane: The Affilorama Blog

You can also
take a trip down memory lane and browse our social media musings, tips and
tricks that we’ve covered along the way:

The web is a
twitter… Microblogging for affiliate marketers

A
New Frontier: Affiliate Marketing through Facebook Ads

How
to harness the power of social media video sites for your affiliate marketing
campaigns

Top
Social Media Consultancy hit by Twitter Porn Spam!

Shut up and listen! –
The other side of Social Media

4
ways to increase your twitter popularity – with people that count!

How to
make money on Twitter

Have
you developed a case of “nofollow” tunnel vision?

The
dangers of using social media to promote my business

The
affiliate marketer’s super simple guide to Twitter: Your daily plan

Share
and share alike – 4 fantastic reasons to leverage social bookmarking

Want more?

Mark spends an
entire week covering Web 2.0 for linkbuilding in his AffiloBlueprint course. So
if you want a truly step by step instructional guide to social media for
affiliate marketing, then this is the place for you.

Affilorama Premium members also
reap the benefits of access to our very handy social snoop tool,
and in depth coverage of social media in our monthly magazine.

Don’t forget
about our forum either, our Marketing
Ideas and Social Media section is just the place for discussing social
media with fellow affiliate marketers.

Remember to
bookmark this post for future reference (right click, select ‘bookmark this
page’) and keep your eyes peeled for next week, where we’ll be taking a close
look at Facebook’s Advertising platform.

Twitter
marketing receives a lot of attention these days, yet many affiliate marketers
still struggle with how to make it work as an effective affiliate marketing
tool. In fact, quite a few people I’ve spoken to recently aren’t sure if
Twitter is even worth the effort.

Although
Twitter doesn’t make affiliate marketers money in the literal way that a
newsletter series or article marketing does, it’s still a very powerful weapon
in your arsenal because it gives you a way to build relationships with people.

Last week I
talked about why building relationships is so essential to email marketing, and
addressed those that are skeptical about any ‘relationship building’ channel
because the results aren’t immediately obvious to them. This concept also
applies to social media marketing and you should read
the full post here if you haven’t already.

 In a nutshell: People buy things from people
they trust, so putting effort into establishing your credibility through online
relationship building can win you loyal customers for life.

Now that we’re
on the same page about why it is beneficial to build relationships using Twitter,
let’s take a look at how to go about doing it.

Just to be
clear, the goal of your Twitter profile is NOT:

a) To get the
most followers you can. Twitter shouldn’t be used as a popularity contest. Not
every follower is of equal value to you; you want to focus on the ones that are
of most value.

b) To post a
continuous stream of content or affiliate links at your followers until they
block you.

The goal of
your twitter profile is to build meaningful relationships that will in turn
help you sell, and to do that you have to talk to your followers as friends.

Okay, so where
do you start?

1. First up, you need a Twitter
account. Go to Twitter and set one up (it’s
easy!).

2. Secondly, I advise you put a
call to action on your website for people to follow you on Twitter, and setup a
retweet button on your blog. This is a good starting point for building your
network of relevant ‘followers’ of your twitter account.

3. Thirdly, seek out and follow the
Twitter profiles of key people and organizations in your niche, and any other
people regularly posting great content that’s relevant.

Now, you’re ready to start tweeting. You’ll receive your free daily Twitter plan via direct message (DM) that
you can use as a guide to getting started simply by sharing the link below on your Twitter feed and following @Affilorama on Twitter:

Click here to share and get your FREE Daily Twitter Plan

(Note: As I
have just demonstrated, a good way to increase your followers is by offering an
incentive for them to follow you )

Must-Have Tools to Streamline Your Tweets

You might be
thinking that this Twitter business sounds like a time consuming, logistical
nightmare – but it doesn’t need to be. There are scores of Twitter applications
and services out there that can help you streamline your Twitter experience. A
really useful one is SocialOomph.
SocialOomph allows you to schedule your tweets to be posted ahead of time, and
setup an automated DM for new followers – truly a ‘set and forget’ service.

The one thing
you can’t do with SocialOomph is schedule @replies to people. And rightly so in
my opinion. If you automate everything then you drastically reduce the
opportunity to build effective relationships with people.

Another handy
application is Echofon. You can install
this on your Firefox status bar, making it easy for you to quickly read your
own Twitter feed, see if you have any mentions (when people include @yourname
in their tweets), post updates and @replies/mentions to people.

Now, there is also
quite a bit of Twitter lingo and fancy pants tricks you can do but I don’t want
to overwhelm you with all of this when you’re just starting out. Twitter has a
user-friendly help center where you can find answers to anything unusual you’re
wondering about. Their glossary
and Twitter
basics are particularly useful.

Thinking this blog post seems a bit light on the juicy
details? You’ll find them in our daily twitter plan for affiliate marketers
that you’ll receive via DM when you follow Affilorama on twitter and share the link below. This will
tell you exactly what you should be posting on Twitter to be most effective at
relationship building and why. Go on, go
and get it now.

I’ve got a bee
in my bonnet and I hope you’re not part of the group that’s causing it.
The subset of
affiliate marketers I’m talking about are characterized by the following:
They want
short cuts, things done fast, and reward with no effort.
Wouldn’t we
all! But what really irks me is when they sniff at the thought of developing a
relationship with subscribers to their email list or social media groups and
ask:
“Can I actually sell through this channel, or is it
for relationship building only?”
That question
isn’t valid!
I extend an invitation
to anyone who thinks they can successfully and repeatedly sell without first
forming some kind of relationship with the buyer to please enlighten us on how
they do this.
Let me clarify
again why you must put effort into relationship building for all those who
disregard such practices as a mere waste of time

When you’re in the process of creating a newsletter
series for your list, all sorts of niggling questions, trivial or significant,
are bound to pop into your head. I know as well as you do that when it’s
hard to find the answer to something right away, it’s easy to lose interest,
and progress can get delayed. We don’t want that happening! That’s why I’ve collated answers to many of
your common questions about setting up a newsletter series from various places around
the Affilorama website. I’ve put the information right here in front of your
noses so that there really is no excuse to be side-tracking that large but
crucial task of creating your newsletter series.
What
should the ratio of promotional to informative content in my newsletter series
be? There is no hard and fast rule for this
one, but you do have to be careful to get a balance. The purpose of your
newsletter se