How Do You Market Short Sales Products?
Posted by Mitch on Jun 23, 2010
I’m actually putting a real question out to the masses (yup, y’all get to be the masses today) because I honestly don’t know what I could possibly do with this particular situation.
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Most of you know that I’m hooked up with Commission Junction. The ads at the top and on the left side are CJ ads, and they rotate the banners each time someone stops by. And when you see products at the bottom of each post, most of them come from CJ as well.
One thing about some of the affiliate programs I participate with is that they send out regular emails talking about some of their promotions. Those that have a one month promotion are easy to deal with, because I have that sales page you see to the right with me holding the parrot that I update every couple of weeks with those types of things as they come. Those are fairly easy to handle.
The ones I’m having an issue with, and that I’m asking y’all how you’d handle them, are the advertisers that have sales that last anywhere from 24 to 72 hours only. These things come fast and furious, and sometimes the deals are pretty sweet. However, I do have other things to do, and having to go through all those emails every day, set up the code on the site, then go back and remove it during the same time period is overly cumbersome.
I had thought about popping those things onto this blog quickly, but my mind says that would degrade the quality of the blog, as who’d really want to see a post with only sales ads in it? I don’t think I’d want those things popping up in my reader all the time, even with big sales, because I doubt I’d be interested in every one of those products. I know some people might be, but I’m thinking that’s a bad way of handling things.
So, my issue is what to do with those things. Do I just ignore them and move on with my life? Do I create a blog where I can just pop those links in and go about my business? Do I try to find an hour every day to either pop new links in or remove old ones? How would you handle it?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Is Your Blog Successful? My Version
Posted by Mitch on Apr 2, 2010
I’ve often said that you can get inspiration for writing blog posts from anywhere. In this case, I got the inspiration for this post from a blog called One Cool Site Blogging Tips (not to be confused with Sire’s blog tracking site Cool Blog Links, and this post titled Is Your Blog A Failure Or A Success? The conversation on that post wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be based on the title, yet it made me want to throw the question out to everyone else, so it did its job.
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How does one decide to measure success? I think that’s the most important question for everyone to answer for themselves. It all depends on the reason you continue to write your blog. I say that because I started this blog for a much different reason than why I write it now, and as those parameters have changed, so have my expectations for it.
My original reason for creating this blog was so I could say whatever I wanted to say without worrying about being filtered or worried about how it might impact my business. I also had high hopes that I would make some money from it. So, when I first started writing it, half of the posts were geared towards talking about something that I thought I’d make money from, and the other half talking about some things that were on my mind, though not necessarily personal.
At some point, the blog focus changed to talking about affiliate programs, blogging, and writing for the most part. That was fun to a degree, but there wasn’t anything personal in it. Well, I have my writing style, so I guess that was personal, but I almost never talked about anything I was feeling, never taking a real stand on anything, just doing reviews. The thing is, to do a legitimate review takes some time to investigate, and, well, like everyone else I needed to make money, thus I was draining the bank account while doing a lot of that stuff.
Then in September, I changed once more. I decided I was going to start talking about a few more personal issues, more of my beliefs and the like, while still keeping up with some of what I’d talked about in the past. Though I’d still like to make money with this blog, the focus definitely moved from that direction a long time ago. I still put up products and the like, just in case someone has an interest, but mainly I just like to write, share my thoughts, and see how others respond.
So, based on all of that, how successful do I view this blog, which certainly can’t be called a niche blog? Overall I think it’s a fairly successful blog for what it is. I’m certainly not at guru status when it comes to internet sales, but I think I have a nice loyal group of folks I get to interact with here and there. And it’s changed a lot; the people I was talking to a lot between the middle of 2008 through the middle of 2009 has drastically changed. Many of those folks either stopped blogging or their priorities changed.
New folks have come along, in higher numbers yet, and that’s pretty neat. And I know when people comment here, they’re not doing it just to get a link onto a popular blog that offers them nothing except an opportunity to maybe steer people to their blogs by kissing up to the owner of the blog, who most of the time doesn’t even see their responses. Oops, let’s not get into that discussion again! 
Yes, I think this blog is a success, and I’m happy with it. What say you about your blog?
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.
10 Affiliates I’ve Talked About Before
Posted by Mitch on Oct 4, 2009
I thought this would be somewhat interesting, for two reasons. I’m going to mention and link to posts where I’ve talked about affiliate programs or products that I’m trying to make money from. One reason is that some of these posts were pretty early, and didn’t get seen by a lot of people, and I’d like to reintroduce them to the masses. The second reason is that I’d like to do some internal linking, something I’ve talked about from time to time here that others should think about doing with their blogs and websites, as it’s an important part of getting the most out of your blogs and websites. I hope you visit the posts and the links throughout these posts, just to see what I’ve done, but it’s also to show you that, every once in awhile, there’s nothing wrong with marketing yourself, something else I’ve talked about often around here.
The first affiliate product I ever talked about on this blog concerned Ultra Diamonds. It’s interesting because I ended up having to write a follow up post months later because, like most things, there were a few people who didn’t like Ultra Diamonds and thought I was a bad person for helping to market them. Hey, no one’s perfect, but their stuff looks really neat. I’m marketing it off my Services and Stuff site, along with most of the other products and services I’ll mention here, and if you go to the original post, it’ll show you the link to the actual page so you can see what I’m trying to do with some of these things.
The second thing I wrote about was the Harry Potter series, and on that post I decided to market a water globe rather than what was, at the time, the upcoming 7-book series or the first 5 movies; missed the boat on that one.
The third thing I advertised was this affiliate of mine called Things You Never Knew Existed, which is, well, an amalgamation of strange and wonderful stuff that you just can’t get everywhere. It seems I made a sale from the page that I’ve linked to from here last week, which is great. If you check out the page on my S&S site, as well as the page from my Ultra Diamonds site, you’ll see that I just picked a few things, but if people click on any of those things they can search the actual websites for other things, and if they purchase I earn. Nothing wrong with that. By the way, those 3 things all came in the first month I had this blog, which was created in December 2007.
The fourth thing I introduced was something called X10 Home Security, a fairly nothing post that explains why no one wanted to bother with it, but one that you’ll see has been updated so that I at least said something about it. This post was written in February 2008.
The fifth thing I wrote about was Excalibur Gifts, which is a pretty neat site that markets a lot of knives and cutlery, which is pretty neat. It wasn’t all that long of a post, but at least it was accurate.
The sixth thing I wrote about was the Rich Jerk program. This was actually the first thing I ever bought, then started to market, through Clickbank. Right now, I think it’s one of the few things I still market on Clickbank, mainly because of this blog. I’m not marketing anything new through them because I just started feeling, last April, that I just wasn’t sure that I’ve been treated fairly by them as it pertains to sales. I could be wrong; let me know by maybe buying Rich Jerk’s $10 book. It’s actually very good.
The seventh thing I wrote about was my own product, called Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool. It was my first ebook, and, though I haven’t made a lot of sales, it’s still a product that I created, that’s at the top left of this blog. That, and I’ve written about it lots of times on this blog; hey, if I can’t talk about myself, who else will talk about me, right? This post and the previous two were originally written in April 2008.
The eighth thing I wrote about was a follow up product to The Secret that is also a Clickbank product. It was short but sweet, called Laws of Attraction Booster, and I have it and thought it was pretty good.
The ninth thing I wrote about was FreeCreditReport.com, a product I use and actually wrote a pretty good post about, if you ask me. And I’ve made money off this product, though I’m not sure if it’s because of this blog or another place where I wrote about it.
The tenth product I wrote about is my last Clickbank product, Error Doctor, and it was another pretty good post because I talked about a lot of different things, and there’s even pictures! I don’t do a lot of pictures, though some people say that you’ll attract more folks to your site with pictures.
And that’s that. There’s 10 products of mine that most of you have never heard about (though I’m betting many of you have heard of Rich Jerk and FreeCreditReport.com), and I got some internal linking in also; yeah! (update; the programs for Excalibur Cutlery & FreeCreditReport have expired, which is why there are no links)
PokerStars
Posted by Mitch on Sep 14, 2009
They say one should attempt to market only things they’re really familiar with. Well, I don’t quite fall into that belief, but I can honestly say that this is one site that I actually do participate with.
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I think I’ve been on PokerStars at least 4 years now, possibly five. I believe I signed on in 2004, as it was one of the first poker websites out there that I’d ever heard of. Two of their celebrity representatives at time had won the World Series of Poker championships in consecutive years, Chris Moneymaker and then Greg Raymer, and in 2005, another one of their representatives, Joe Hachem, won it all. These guys won entry into the tournament by winning one of PokerStars online tournaments; imagine, winning an entry into a $10,000 poker tournament by playing the game online.
I love this site, although I’ll admit I’m not always happy with how the game goes when I’m playing it. Let’s take these in order.
The site is easy to sign up for. You go in and start with the demographic stuff. Then you come up with the name you want to be displayed every time you play. You can also select an image, but think carefully about this one because you might never be able to change it again. It’s probably best not to select in image immediately; you can always go back later to do it.
Once you’ve created your account, you get a window that looks something like this:
As you can see, there are multiple choices of games, including types of games, dollar amount of games, free games, number of players you want to go against, etc. Some are mini-tournaments, both free and some you’d have to pay for. There’s literally hundreds of different types of games you can play. There are also some free tournaments you can get into where, if you can place high enough, you have a shot at winning real money. And, if you choose, you can alter the look of the game board you’re playing on, so instead of seeing this:
You can see something like this:
The main thing I want to convey here is that you don’t have to pay to play if you don’t want to. However, if you do, there’s a minimum deposit of $10, but the site often has bonus money they’ll pony up if you decide to buy into the site whenever they’re running a promotion. These are the ways you can pay:
• Moneybookers
• NETeller
• VISA / VISA Delta / VISA Electron / Gift and Prepaid VISA†
• MasterCard / Gift and Prepaid†
• Diners Club International
• Solo / Maestro
• Cashier’s Check / Money Order / Bank Draft – minimum deposit $100
• Local Bank Transfer
• ELV
• Online Bank (selected countries)
• paysafecard
• eChecks
Truthfully, I have never paid for it. Actually, we’re not supposed to be able to play online poker, the paid version, from the United States, but obviously some of these ways are used anyhow. And there’s a group calling itself the Poker Players Alliance, who have helping to lead the charge former NY senator Alfonse D’Amato and a host of other celebrities and former politicians, and there’s a very strong possibility that ordinance will be overturned. It needs to be, since it was sneaked into an act that was passed to protect the waterfront borders of the United States; that’s just sneaky politics, as those trying to regulate online poker beforehand kept getting rejected.
And, depending on the level your stomach can handle there are games that start at a penny, all the way up to buy-in games around $8,000; ouch! But in games where you pay some money, every once in awhile you encounter a professional player; there are even special events where that player is announced to be a part of it. So, if you like poker and know some of the names, you can take your shot against a pro.
As I said, I love this site and this game. So, what’s the problem? Understanding that, with an online site there are lots and lots of games going on, way more than at a casino, you sometimes see some things going on that your mind says “that’s not supposed to happen this often.” There’s a ton of what’s known as “bad beats,” which are hands that lose when they were way ahead because some final cards hit that just seemed to come out of nowhere. I’ve experienced quite a few of those over the years, and sometimes it’s frustrating. The balance, though, is that it also happens in your favor, and it doesn’t seem as prevalent once you change games.
And there are a bunch of different games: Texas Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Hi- Lo, Five Card Draw, 2-7 Triple Draw, Razz, HORSE, HOSE. Those last two are kind of tournament styles where different types of games are alternated while playing, which really tests your overall poker acumen.
And PokerStars has an affiliate program, and I’m now a new affiliate. If you don’t belong and love to play poker, check it out, whether you want to play the free game or get your money into the mix. You won’t even have to tell them that Mitch sent you; they’ll already know.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Who Are The Affiliate Programs On Your Blog For?
Posted by Mitch on Jul 29, 2009
Yesterday I stated in my post on who is your blog for, I stated that there was going to be a second part to that post; this is it.
And you see what the question is; who are the affiliate programs on your blog for? It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, as I’ve discussed marketing and advertising and blogging.
I think it’s a fascinating topic because I’ve talked about the ads I put on this blog often enough, even as I go through and change them from time to time. I’ve said enough times that I don’t expect to make money from this blog. And yet, there I go, having ads on the blog because I’m really the eternal optimist, hoping that something will strike a cord in someone’s head sometimes and have them say “hey, I need to check that out,”, or “that looks like an interesting product; maybe I’ll buy that.”
So, I did some thinking about this blog and who the visitors are. It kind of ties in with the purpose of this blog. If you remember, I did this post where I reviewed my visitors, and posted that 64% of the people that come to this blog are totally brand new visitors. Based on Analytics, most people are coming here for the book writing tips, which is pretty neat since it’s the term I rank best for with this blog. Yet, when they get here, they tend to like reading the more personal stuff, the stuff that has nothing to do with anything except me, or my thoughts on things here and there.
I find that interesting. In a way, it’s what my original purpose was with this blog, so I’ve actually achieved what I initially set out to do. So then what about the affiliate programs on this blog? Who are they actually geared for? It seems that they’re geared towards those new visitors, the ones who come for one thing and then switch to the other things. Those are the folks I’m hoping will find something intriguing in some fashion, and might decide to check it out. Those folks aren’t coming here to purchase hosting packages or domain names or most of the computer stuff I have on this blog. They’re here for personal reasons, and I like that.
Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to change the ads I have on the sides all that much, if at all. But I may change them up in some fashion. But the things I add at the bottom of these posts,… well, that’s already kind of changed a bit. I’m still going to have affiliate links from time to time, especially since some of the affiliates I promote here don’t have specific products I can list individually. And I’m going to start looking for product links that I can add as text links within my posts here and there, as it seems some of the top internet marketers, such as Lynn Terry (who mentioned it on her live webinar Tuesday) says they seem to work best for her, and we’ll see where that goes. Matter of fact, I just tried it the other day for the first time; takes a little longer to post if I do that too often. But if it has the potential to possibly make sales on the back end,… well, who am I to argue with successful people?
So, there’s the question above; what say you?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Linkshare
Posted by Mitch on Apr 27, 2009
Linkshare is another affiliate marketing program that’s a lot like Commission Junction and Google Affiliate Networks in that you have the opportunity to market companies and products of either big name or actual businesses that many people know about. For instance, when I first registered, I immediately was accepted for TigerDirect and Fujitsu, but I also got to apply to Ace Hardware, PBS Shop, HBO Store and Nutri Systems.
Signing up was a little more difficult than I care to imagine, though it’s probably because my eyes are getting older. They require you to use the same name that you use to submit your taxes with, which makes me question whether foreign companies would be allowed to market them. Then, after you fill everything out, they use a captcha, which you know I hate, as the final piece, and I ended up having to do that seven times because I had difficulty seeing it. That, plus every time it says you messed up, you have to remember to type in the username and password you created, and click the two boxes below saying you agree to their terms and whatever the other box said, as I don’t remember right now. Oh yeah, for your password, you have to have at least two numbers in it, which is a first for me.
After it finally approves you, then you can go in and select companies you want to market. I probably picked 20 out of the lists, and, as I said, I was approved for only 3 immediately, one of those being an affiliate marketer for Linkshare themselves, hence the banner ad below.
This site also looks like, if you decide you want to market specific products, you can create your own links to those products, something that you know I sometimes like to do on this blog and on some of my websites. You also get a choice of different sized banner ads, and of course they also have some text ads you can use if that’s your game.
It looks like a pretty nice affiliate program, but of course we’ll see how well it performs in comparison with the others. Then again, right now, since I’m not making serious bank with any of them, it’ll probably fit in nicely. Oh, by the way, I know I’ve never mentioned this before, but I hope that, when most of you add your affiliate links and the like, that you’re making sure that, if it’s not already included, you’re adding as part of your “href” code the part “target=”_blank” (don’t forget to add the quotation marks) to the end. By adding that, it means that if anyone clicks on it, it’ll take them to another window or tab while leaving your post still sitting there. I’ve noticed only recently that not all banner or text links add that, which means when people click on your stuff, like Adsense, they’re gone, though hopefully not for good. Unfortunately, you can’t add that to javascript, from what I’ve seen, but if anyone has any extra insight on this, I’d appreciate hearing it.
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