101Phones Not Paying Me My Commission
Posted by Mitch on Feb 19, 2010
Once again, I have to “out” one of my affiliate programs for not processing my commission on a product I’ve marketed for them.
At the end of my post about the Six-Figure Blueprint book, I posted an affiliate product from 101Phones, a 2-line phone with two portable extensions, which in essence gives you 3 phones to put in different rooms. About two weeks ago I had someone purchase that phone; I know that because I was informed of the purchase. I got the numbers I needed to verify it, just in case I never got credit for it.
This is another company through Commission Junction, so I went to the CJ site and found the affiliate information for these people and sent them an email with all the information. By the way, I waited a week to see if my commission was going to show. I waited 3 days, and didn’t hear a thing. I then sent a second follow up email, and I included another email address I found for the company, as well as an email address I had for CJ, which I’d had to use at one point last year when I initially had problems getting credit for another sale. Here it is, 4 days after that one, and once again I’ve not heard anything.
In the second email, I told them if I didn’t hear from them I was going public with my complaint; this is it. Now, why am I doing this? One, I think two weeks is long enough to wait for notification of my commission, especially since CJ says it should only take a week at best. Two, I don’t want anyone else getting cheated if these folks are scam artists. Three, I know they’re on Twitter, and since my posts show up on Twitter when they see the headline, if they care about their business, they’ll head over here and see what I’ve written and I’ll get some kind of action. It worked that way when I had issues with both Panda and Football Fanatics in the past.
It’s hard enough to make money online without feeling as though you’re being cheated. This time around, though, I have to admit that I’m surprised I haven’t heard from Commission Junction either. After all, they’re the initial folks helping to support these companies, and it has to make them look bad when they’re affiliates aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.
If it takes another 4 or 5 days to get some action, I’ll be removing any advertisements for their products, sending them an even sterner email, then probably dropping them forever. I kind of like their stuff, and the product was delivered very fast, but if this is how they treat their affiliates I don’t want to have anything to do with them.
Yeah, this is how I take a stand; I hope y’all don’t just sit by and let someone treat you badly, especially when it’s money that’s concerned.
Marketing Or Advertising Your Business
Posted by Mitch on Feb 13, 2010
Yesterday I gave a presentation on the above topic to a consultant’s group I belong to, The Professional Consultant’s Association of Central New York. I’m also on the board, write the monthly newsletter, and I’m the webmaster of their website.
Anyway, it was interesting talking to these folks, most of whom are older than I am (scary since I’m 50), and though I got through it all, it seems they all got hung up initially on social media and just what its purpose was. One guy kept asking the question “did you get any business out of it”, to which I could answer to each one “yes”. He didn’t ask if I got a lot of business out of it, but he was missing the point.
The idea of doing things online isn’t always to immediately get a return on your investment (ROI). Yeah, that would be pleasurable, but the truth is that unless you’re already well known, or fill a need that the market has nowhere else to turn to, it will take some time before you really start making money. Sometimes it takes years, but I digress.
The basic thing about marketing a small business as opposed to a large business is that you probably don’t have a budget set for advertising. Oh yeah, let’s get the definitions of the two terms out of the way, just to be clear. Marketing is planning for how you want others to learn about your business and products. Advertising is money spent on producing materials to help you market your business and products.
Small businesses usually start out doing the same thing because it’s the only thing we know. We buy a lot of business cards, which isn’t so bad except often we haven’t fully defined ourselves before we buy the first batch. We either buy or make brochures, which means we spend a lot of money buying supplies or paying someone else to design and copy these suckers. We buy a lot of paper and envelopes to attack things that way. And we try to make endless calls (well, those who have the mettle to do it; I don’t) trying to talk to people who won’t return phone calls. It’s a tough life sometimes.
What we all eventually find out is that, through some kind of networking, we finally have a chance to make some money and do some business with others. It can be a long struggle for some of us, whereas others find success pretty quickly. There is no one way that it happens for everyone.
It’s the same with marketing online. We have read some of the stories of marketers who seemed to hit the ground running into success with internet marketing, and that’s good for those folks. But that’s not the norm. Even Darren Rowse didn’t make money initially, and it probably took him a couple of years to really ramp up his empire, so to speak. And here’s the next part; almost none of these guys continued making money the way they started out making money.
Don’t believe me? Joel Comm started out making money through Adsense; he’s moved on from there. So has Darren Rowse, who actually makes his money through many other services rather than just blogging. Lynn Terry and David Risley make most of their money in other ways than blogging, and John Chow has always said he makes more money from other sources than just blogging. Everyone has to be ready to diversify in some fashion to keep making money; you can only prime this particular pump so many times before the effect wears off. Think about 10 big name internet marketers from 6 years ago, then think of how many of them you still see on a regular basis, unless you’ve stayed on their mailing list forever. If you need to, check out Gurudaq, which I wrote about back in October 2008.
Enough of that. I figure that some might be interested in my outline for the presentation, and at the risk of someone stealing it, well, I really don’t care this time around, although it seems some of my content has been stolen by a site calling itself Lua Cheia (they stole an entire article from my business blog; I wrote them and they said it’s a version of Digg & Stumble Upon, only I got no attribution; here’s the link to it if you want to see it, but I’m not making it an active link: http://luacheia.soup.io/post/44468305/When-Protecting-Your-Reputation-Isn-t-Worth). Anyway, here’s the outline; enjoy, and do NOT ask me where I got the statistics from, as I just took the first stat I found on each of these from wherever I could find it.
Traditional Marketing Ideas
1. Mail
A. Letters
B. Flyers
C. Postcards
2. Printed Materials
A. Flyers
B. Brochures
C. Business Cards
3. Networking
A. Join Groups
B. Get On Committees
C. Work on getting people to know you
4. Hire someone to market you
A. Agency
B. Sales people
5. Phone calls
6. Media
A. Magazines/Newspaper
B. Radio
C. Television
New Ways Of Marketing
1. Email
2. Websites
3. Blogs
4. Social Networking
5. Speaking/presenting
Costs of Advertising
1. Printed materials can cost a lot of money
2. Cost of postage
3. Costs of joining groups
4. Costs of labor in hiring others
5. Websites can be expensive to create, but are easy to change
6. Blogs are inexpensive to create and maintain, but still need to “advertise” in another way
7. Social media is free, but can be time consuming
8. Email is free, but some people don’t respond well to it
Effectiveness/ROI
1. Mailings only convert at an average of around 1%, and only if you submit in high volume
2. Business cards only convert at an average of around 2%, but once again, volume drives the figures
3. Websites have a 2.5% conversion rate, based on high traffic
4. Blogs can help conversion rates go up by 3% if you have a niche market
5. Email converts at less than 1% for people you don’t know, around 25% for people you do know
6. Phone calls convert around 2 to 3% for product based companies, less for service based companies
7. Speaking engagements convert around 1% initially, but can increase to 5% over time for some
8. Networking converts at around 1% short term, but can increase to 5% over time for some
9. Advertising on media depends on product & location; products always do better than services
10.No figures on social networking yet, but people have gotten business from it
What Personally Affects How / What We Do
1. Comfort level
2. Finances
A. What can we afford to spend on stuff
B. How much in need are we of making money “now”
3. Control
4. Knowing our market too well / too little
5. Trying too hard / giving up
Big Question – What do you do in marketing/advertising & how does it work for you? Are you missing ways that might be beneficial to you long term?
Cleavage; Yeah, I’m Going There!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 29, 2010
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You see that image there to the left? Every time I’m on Facebook and I go to play this game called Lexulous, that is the first image that pops up when I go to play a game. It’s an ad for a dating service, which proves to me and everyone else that Facebook really isn’t targeting ads to anyone in particular sinse my Facebook profile shows that I married. However, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the image more than that ad. What’s the first thing you notice in the ad? Cleavage!
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Yep, I’m about to tackle the subject of cleavage. I figure we might as well talk about it, because it’s everywhere we go. Guys, we’re just inundated with it pretty much 24/7. It doesn’t even take a lot of cleavage to pull our eyes over there. I don’t think that this makes any of us perverts by any means whatsoever. My wife even says it’s just pretty much “eye candy”, and she would be someone who knows. Let’s just say that my wife could give most of these women a run for their money, but instead has decided to always wear clothes that cover up her cleavage as much as possible.
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I put it that way because in reality there is no hiding what she’s got. Over the years, I have taken to following my wife by a few steps as we walked through malls and places where there are a lot of people. I do that because I love watching people, but I also love watching the reaction that people have when they see my wife. She’s one of those people who makes you smile all the time, but when it’s warm and she’s only wearing a shirt or sweater, even women will take a look at her chest. I have seen women frown and get this look on their face as though she’d done something wrong, then notice I’m looking at them and suddenly turn their heads away. Women get really strange when they see other women’s cleavage, as if it’s something that’s evil.
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Not us guys though. We try not to acknowledge it, but the truth is if it’s out there we’re going to take a look. It’s not that we go out of our way most of the time, but it’s there. I’ll tell you this truth, though you may not believe me. I didn’t notice my wife’s chest when I met her because she kept it covered up. It probably wasn’t until two weeks later when I went to a party and she was dressed a little bit differently that I noticed it was there. I am not someone who’s predisposed to look at women’s chests, instead preferring to look at women’s eyes. However, when it’s blatantly out there and thrown in my face (so to speak), I’m probably going to look. I’m not going to stare, but I’m definitely going to look.
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When it comes to cleavage, we guys are not necessarily discriminating. Most of my friends are women, and for the most part I never pay attention or notice what they’re chest look like. And yet, every once in a while you catch your female friends wearing something that’s either low-cut enough so you see cleavage, or loose enough so that when they bend over you can’t help but notice the cleavage. That’s not our fault either, and I’m not saying it’s the women’s fault, I’m just saying that suddenly your eyes are drawn to it and you have to look. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of cleavage either; we guys will pretty much look at anything.
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I really think we’ve been conditioned to this kind of thing over time. When you think about it, throughout history bodices have always been highlighted by high society. When women used to wear corsets, the basic idea was to make the waste as tiny as possible so that the cleavage stood up. Bodices were cut low to help cleavage pop out of the top. These days, we have a lot of entertainers who are showing a lot of cleavage, whether they have a lot of talent or not. I think we can look at pop icons such as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson and debate about whether we pay as much attention to them as we do because of their voices or because of how they look. And it’s obviously not just singers, especially if you take a look at this picture of Selma Hayek. I mean, homegirl’s got it going on, and as pretty as she is I think we would all notice her anyway. But wearing something like what she’s got on here, it’s just hard to take your eyes off of that.
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For you ladies who are reading this, I’m wondering how honest you will be with us on this topic of cleavage. Let me preface this by saying that most of my life my friends have been women. I have been privy to some inside information that most guys don’t ever get to hear. I have had some of my women friends tell me that they know the effect that they have on men based on some of the clothes that they wear. They’ve often said to me “I wouldn’t be wearing this if I didn’t want anyone to look at me.” I’ve also heard that there is a rule that says, for the most part, that it’s okay for women to show cleavage as long as they’re holding back on showing everything else. Personally, I think it’s a very strange rule, and I’m not sure I’m buying it all that often, but in general I’m going to let it go because I’m probably going to look anyway.
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A part of this goes back to the old question “does sex sell?” I think it depends on what is being sold. Obviously sex appeal sells a heck of a lot of records. I don’t know if sex appeal sells movies all that well. I don’t know any guy who’s thinking about a woman whose body they think is outstanding that says “I’m going to see this movie because so-and-so’s got an incredible body.” When it comes to television, I’m not so sure. I don’t know a single guy who initially said “I’m going to watch Ghost Whisperer because it looks like an interesting show.” But I know a lot of guys who watch it after the fact, and I’m betting what got them to watch it in the first place was the fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt has one of those bodies and is often showing off some of that cleavage.
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I’m going to say this in closing. America, good or bad, has a thing about women’s bodies. Even those who decry the fact that women might be dressing too sexily are watching them. There’s no getting away from cleavage, and frankly I’m not even going to try. My general thought is that women can wear anything they want to, as long as they retain a little bit of reality about it. Some of my women friends have said to me that they want guys to look at them, but not all guys. My response has always been you don’t get to make that decision. That’s just the way it is; if you’re out and about and you’re dressed in that fashion and people look at you, deal with it and move on.
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And that’s what I’m going to do with this post about cleavage. I think it’s time to move on and see what some of you have to say about it, and I’m betting that Sire is really going to enjoy this post, if only for the pictures. Is this post salacious? It might or might not be depending on your reaction to it. For me, it’s just another topic to talk about as we head into the weekend. And, like I said, I’m not mad at anybody. 
Why I Show Products At The End Of Posts
Posted by Mitch on Jan 20, 2010
Here’s the questions. How often do you go to the store and end up buying things you didn’t initially go there for? How many times have you been looking through a catalog or advertisement, saw something that interested you, then decided to check it out and saw something else you liked instead?
I belong to a lot of affiliate marketing programs and advertisers. Most of you know that I’m a member of Commission Junction. They have almost 3,000 different advertisers that you can choose from, some big names, some not so big. Every time you see an individual post on this blog, at the top you see a Commission Junction banner, via one of their rotating banners programs. I’m also running one of their little applets on the left side.
Many of the advertisers allow you to post their products on your websites as well. The template you see below is their template, which I kind of use for other things, such as my book and webinar there at the top left. That’s just standard HTML, which I already knew, but their version was just so clean I’ve co-opted it. Some of the advertisers don’t have specific products you can purchase, but have services instead. So, when you see a banner, those are usually companies that offer services.
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But not always. I also participate in the Linkshare affiliate program, which also has some advertisers like Commission Junction, just not as many. The same goes for ShareASale, but I’ve only hooked up with a couple of those. Most of the pictures you see on this site in a post are actually images you can purchase in some form from them. I also always have at least one image to the left side. I could do it more often, but I don’t always think images fit my posts, though some people swear by them.
And many other affiliate programs I’m associated with also don’t have products I can specifically hawk, but I still want you to know about them. So, I’ll throw those banners on here every once in awhile as well. Just so you know, I didn’t join all those programs because of this blog, but since I still belong to them, it makes sense for me to cycle them in here from time to time.
Here’s the thing. If I highlight something like the rowing machine below, what I’m showing is a sample of the types of things you can find at that particular site, which in this case is called BigFitness. Now, you can go directly to the site and purchase it and cut out the middleman, but if you’re nice ( ) and want to help a brotha out, you’ll buy it from me. But maybe you’ll go to the site and see something else you like instead. No matter what you buy, if you buy something from the site, I’ll get credit for it. And suddenly it’s just like the flat screen TV you saw in the Sunday flyer that got you to the store, and instead you walked out with a GPS unit. The store only hopes you bought something; kind of what I’m hoping as well.
There you go. And sometimes, if you find something on another site that you want, if you come back and ask me about it I might have a coupon that will get you a discount of some kind, even if it’s only free shipping. Hey, saving money never hurts either, right? If that’s what happens, just go to my contact link above, see my email address there and write me.
It’s a very passive form of marketing, I know. Does it work? Well, in two years I think I’ve made two sales for CJ stuff and a couple for other products. So yes, I’ve made some sales. Not a lot, but that’s okay. You make no sales for any products you don’t try to market, right? 
I’ve been asked often over the years why I have any products on my site that aren’t just making money things; that’s why. And that’s why I never beat up on anyone who’s marketing anything on their site. Sometimes I even take a quick look at it. Never hurts to look.
December Income Report – Something To Build On For 2010
Posted by Mitch on Jan 1, 2010
At least I can say that December was better than November. Actually, my December income was higher than October also, so maybe I should just shut up. But I really have to drastically increase these numbers in 2010, and I need to get it done quickly, though not necessarily through this blog. But this blog should be generating something, I figure, so some changes will be made.
First, the income numbers:
Adsense – $60.04
Commission Junction – $5.17
Infolinks – $14.84
Firetrust – $14.97
Voxant – $.01
Grand Total – $95.03
So, I made just under $100, which means I was under average for the year. This doesn’t bode well for my 2010 goals, but so be it; we all have to start somewhere, right?
First, you’re probably wondering where the income is from the book I helped promote, Beyond Blogging. I got one person who signed up under me as an affiliate, but that’s as far as it went. I don’t even know if anyone clicked on any of the links, to tell you the truth. All I know is that I didn’t make any sales, though I said I’d consider my part as being successful if there were even 3 sales. No problem; I’m still going to list the book over there on the side for awhile.
Second, I think it’s time for some physical changes to this blog on how I’m advertising things. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do, but I do know that some of the affiliate ads you see now will be removed. There will still be a product or link of some kind at the end of each post, with more products than in the past, and more links to products within a post if something fits. Unfortunately, products don’t always have anything to do with the post, and I’m not going to try to be conscious enough to do that because, well, that just ain’t me. I also want to concentrate on finding more ways of driving traffic to my products, which you see here, but I know that I’m going to have to change up those sales pages to draw more visitors from search engines as well.
Third, I know I’m going to do something with both my Reviews of Everything and Services & Stuff sites, where I’m going to create more sales pages within both of those. My Reviews site will have reviews of some of the affiliate programs I have, since I know something about many of them, and when I review a product, I’m going to make sure to only advertise that product on a page. That will make a lot more sense than what I’ve previously done.
Fourth, my medical billing site is still my biggest Adsense producer, while my anti-smoking site has generated almost nothing, but my medical billing site used to generate way more money than it is now. I’m not sure if Infolinks has taken away from that, but one would hope that the two together would at least equal what I was making before.
No matter. I have big financial goals for my online activities this year, and I figure that my January report has to show at least an increase of 50% over this month to even make me think I have a chance on increasing finances. What you can still believe in, though, is that I still won’t be writing any paid posts, that I won’t be recommending anything I haven’t checked out first, and that I’ll be telling y’all what the heck I’m doing while trying to move forward.
And with that, onward and upward!
Everyone’s Got An Opinion
Posted by Mitch on Nov 5, 2009
Yesterday I was going through some of the forums with my little bit of advertising on my writing services. When I’m posting those articles, I always include a link to some article samples so people can see that I can write different ways on different topics. None of them are overly long, as it’s only supposed to be a sample.
I ended up getting a response from one guy on one of those forums. He wasn’t looking for a writer; he was looking to basically be a jerk. He wrote that he didn’t like my presentation and that no one would ever hire me as a writer if that’s all I could do.
What did I do? I went back to that forum and thanked him for his comment, and moved on. I figured there was no reason to get into a back and forth with the guy because, after all, what would it have solved? My articles are what they are, on my website that I really market the writing services from, and that’s that.
Now, what he could have been griping about is my website, and if that’s the case, well, then that’s only one person’s opinion of what they expect certain websites to look like. Now don’t get me wrong, because something I’m known to do is look at websites and judge them on how well I think they look. However, what I look for is more balance and readability than whether I overly like something or not.
There are things that put off many people, and one of those things is a lack of balance from page to page. Another is multiple fonts on a webpage, and images that suddenly show up without any rhyme or reason. Or content with lots of spelling mistakes. Or a lot of flash or too little flash or, or, or… you decide it.
The truth is there are many different websites, over 120 million at this juncture if we include blogs. Many that look the same are template websites, and many of us hate those because, well, they’re template websites. There are also websites on free platforms, although many of those are starting to go away. There are people who put a website together using programs like MS Publisher, which isn’t really a website tool, and, well, you get what you get. Usually those people haven’t studied some of the nuances of what might make a good website, but still, it assaults your senses.
With that being said, not every webpage is going to be pleasant for everyone. And not every style is supposed to be the same either. My SEO website looks like it does because I wanted it to look that way. Every page is outlined the same, and the menu is in the same place on each page. I marked a couple of my products on each page also; that’s fair, since they’re my products.
No, I’m not asking people whether they like that page or not. I probably should, since it’s supposed to be a business website, but I’m not. It is what it is, just as your site is what it is, and your blog is what it is. I like it, it’s doing okay, and until I get sick of it, that’s just how it’s going to look.
Because, in the end, everyone has an opinion; how often are we supposed to bend to everyone else’s opinions?
Let’s Learn Affiliate Marketing Together
Posted by Mitch on Jan 19, 2009
Check out my Big RSS Subscriber Contest after reading this article.
As many of you know, our buddy Yan wrote a post early in the new year called 2009 Is The Year Of Internet Marketing. As I read that article, I was thinking how, for me, last year was supposed to be my year of internet marketing, and I can’t say it turned out all that well. Sure, I made some money, probably my best year ever, and yet, when it’s all said and done, I don’t really think I learned much this year to push me to the next level.
And I’m not alone. Let’s face this fact; there’s a lot of us out here who are trying to learn this internet marketing thing better. We buy the books and manuals and CDs and videos, and, well, we probably don’t get to most of it. I know I got to just under half of it, and, oddly enough, the one thing I really worked at, that I read deeply, was Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets, and my income did drastically increase from it, though not on the blog, but from my other sites.
This proves that sometimes this literature and stuff we decide to invest in does work. And yet, it doesn’t take care of everything, does it? Let’s take a look at this affiliate marketing thing. Last year, when I started this blog, I decided to add some affiliate banners and products to my blog. I put either a link or product at the end of every post; I didn’t make a single sale from any of that in 2008, so obviously it takes more than that. Well, I did more than that a few times; I actually wrote entire posts about some of the items I was advertising because they were things I was using and I liked, and the only one I know about that a few people actually clicked on and signed up for was Tweet My Blog, and yet I never earned a dime from them (maybe I don’t understand how they’re supposed to pay, but I know at least 3 people went ahead and downloaded the product based on my recommendation) through Clickbank; sigh,…
Enough of that. Time to stop whining, and time to start learning. Obviously I don’t know it all, but I’ve learned a bunch of things, and y’all have learned a bunch of things, but we’re still missing it. So, here’s the challenge. Let’s put together our list of questions, things we want to learn as it pertains to this thing called affiliate, or internet, marketing. I have met some big time internet gurus in the last year, and if we can put together a package of questions, I will contact one of them and ask them if they can answer our specific questions. How does that sound?
I’ll start with mine:
1. Is the list really the most important thing to making consistent sales, or any real sales?
2. With Clickbank, do we write our own squeeze page to then send someone to the squeeze page of the product, or is there a way to work around that?
3. What is the best way to sell our own products?
4. Going back to the list, is it really ethical to always gather email addresses when giving out free items, then bombarding people with sales offers?
5. How does one really go about asking for the sale, especially on a blog?
And there you go; my questions. What are yours? Or, if you can answer those above, what are those answers? Let’s all learn and grow together.
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy! ;)
