Lifestyle Entrepreneur and Online Marketing Success Blog - Internet Riches - e-Riches 2.0 by Scott Fox

Customized Landing Pages for Affiliate Offers

If you are serious about making money from an affiliate program offer, you should create a customized landing page on your web site to promote it.

This page should detail the benefits of the product and how it will solve problems or improve the life of the customer. Pretty pictures and testimonials specific to that affiliate offer's product are a good idea, too.

2 landing page strategies that will increase affiliate marketing customer conversion are minimizing distractions and meeting the expectations of the customer.

If a potential customer clicks on your PPC ad that promotes a new weight-loss product, make sure that the page she lands on focuses on that weight-loss product. The landing page should not promote anything else that might distract her from focus on your offer.

Ideally, you can create a landing page that does not even have a navigational menu or sidebars with other distracting links. And it certainly should not show ads for any other products.

Deliver what the customer expects, help her on her way to making the purchase you are promoting.

By clicking on your link or ad to reach that page, the customer has already demonstrated an interest in the product. Don’t distract her from that!

You should deliver what she is expecting and support her already demonstrated intention to learn more about the product you are promoting.

The more you do, the more likely that she’ll take the next step – the all-important click-through to the affiliate merchant’s web site for purchase.

--> Learn more about Affiliate Marketing from my Special Report “How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing.” It’s now available for purchase in my online shop.

--> You can also get my personal review of your web site's SEO, design and conversion strategies here (at a very affordable price).

Your Nominations?

What would you like to learn more about?  It's time already for the first-ever round of your reader requests for Instant Internet Business Secrets!

Only subscribers to my exclusive monthly Special Report series will get to vote, but topic nominations are open to all.  Let me and my team know what's on your mind.  What areas of online product development, web site production, or online marketing are you most interested in?

Here are some suggestions:  Should next month's Instant Internet Business Secrets package be about:

* Search Engine Optimization
* How to Build a Profitable Blog
* Web Site Design for Enhanced Customer Conversion
* E-Mail Newsletter Production, Distribution, and Monetization
* Video Promotions and Distribution Strategies
* Podcasting and Tele-Seminars Business Opportunities
* Instant Store Providers Like Zlio, Etsy, And Café Press

OR what are YOUR suggestions?  OR should we do even more on Affiliate Marketing (last month's topic) OR maybe "chef's choice" where I pick the best topic?

Let me know by emailing us at "iibs @ scottfox.com"!

[If you don't know what I'm talking about - please visit InstantInternetBusinessSecrets.com now to learn more! 

IIBS is the first program of its kind - subscribers like YOU get to request the topics for each month's exclusive report series! 

Our first month was all about Affiliate Marketing.  Subscribers received a 100+ page report "How to Make Money with Affiliate Programs", plus a downloadable MP3 of an interview with a top Affiliate Marketing expert, a special resources links list, and a soon-to-be-scheduled live teleconference with me, Scott Fox, to ask their questions about affiliate money-making strategies.  The subscription is an unbelievable deal at only $19.95/month.  Check it out now (before the price goes up again!)]

Scott Fox says...

"You're ALREADY the boss.  It's just up to you to decide if you are going to act like it."

- Scott Fox, Author of Internet Riches

A quotation from the 365SuccessQuotes.com collection.
Subscribe for a fre-e daily dose of inspiration delivered directly to your email inbox!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you!

I hope that you and yours have a wonderful holiday and that 2009 is even better than you could hope for.

Thanks for following me here on ScottFox.com this year.  I appreciate your support and the opportunity to work with you.

Much more to come in 2009!

Fr-ee Affiliate Summit Conference Discount

Affiliate Summit West 2009 is taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas.

This is a top affiliate marketing event - one that you should consider attending if you want to quickly advance your understanding of (and profits from) affiliate marketing online.

It's being held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. 

As a special for my readers, here is a promotional code that is good for a 10% discount off any type of Affiliate Summit conference pass: ASW09SCOTTFOX10

Conference attendance costs from $349 to $1749, so this discount code can save you a bundle!

http://www.affiliatesummit.com

Thanks to conference organizer Shawn Collins for the discount.  You can listen to my recent interview with Shawn about affiliate marketing here.

7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam

Determining the legitimacy of an affiliate program can be challenging.  Typical big business credibility indicators like a listing with Dun & Bradstreet or the Better Business Bureau may not apply to a small software company, online retailer, or ebook publisher.

Here are some other ways to “check out” a company to determine if you believe they’ll be a good affiliate program partner.

1. The company must have a professional looking website. It should include contact information and likely also offer special contact details for affiliates who need support.

2. Determining the registration date of a company’s web site domain name can be one clue to the longevity of the business. You can check the age of any current domain registration by visiting http://whois.net. You can also use the “Wayback Machine” http://www.archive.org to view previous versions of the web site to see if any of them are incongruous with the company’s current pitch.

3. Google the company and the product and the names of any of the principal officers. Try combining the company or officer’s names with words like “fraud” or “convicted”, too. It’s amazing what search engines can turn up these days. 10 minutes of online research can save you thousands of dollars.

4. Examine the “terms and conditions” of the affiliate program (usually posted online). You can review this document carefully in 3 ways before joining the program:

a) Read it closely to make sure that you are comfortable with the obligations it imposes upon you. Also consider the remedies it specifies if you become unhappy with your new partner’s performance as the sponsor of the affiliate offers.

b) Look at the document to judge whether it looks professional. Does it read well and make sense in professional-sounding English? Or does it look copied and pasted from another web site. Does the business name listed match the company name you were expecting to see?

c) Does the document include real contact information? Locate the address on Google Maps to check if it looks like a real office building. Try calling the phone number or emailing the contact email address included to see what responses you get.

You can generally skip steps like this if you work with a major provider of affiliate programs like Commission Junction or Link Share, or directly with brand name companies like Amazon.com or Buy.com, but even then it can’t hurt to be careful...

As an entrepreneur your most valuable resource is your time. You want to invest that time only where you can reasonably expect a good return. Carefully examining your potential affiliate program partners BEFORE you enroll with them is a good way to improve your returns from affiliate marketing.

Visit my previous post on this topic "Avoiding Affiliate Market Scams" here.

 

EXCERPT:  This blog post is an excerpt from my new Special Report “Making Money with Affiliate Programs”. This 100+ page downloadable report is full of detailed advice, strategies, and screenshots that can help you quickly learn to make money online from affiliate programs. This Special Report is currently only available to subscribers of the Instant Internet Business Secrets program.

You can join now and download this expert report right away!  Click to learn more…

Morpheus says...

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who must walk through it."

- Morpheus, The Matrix

A quotation from the 365SuccessQuotes.com collection.
Subscribe for a fre-e daily dose of inspiration delivered directly to your email inbox!

My Christmas Present for Detroit's Laid Off Auto Workers

Have you recently been laid off from the auto industry in Michigan?  It's clear that Detroit's ailing automakers have failed many loyal, hard-working people this Christmas. 

If you are an unemployed auto worker, I'd like to help by sending you a completely FREE copy of my latest guide to e-commerce entrepreneurship. 

Please FAX proof of your unemployment status and Michigan address to us at 815-846-0723 by 12/31.  

You must include an email address where we can reach you.

 

If you do, we'd be happy to email you a FREE copy of my recent Special Report: "Making Money with Online Affiliate Programs". 

This report was written exclusively for the subscribers of my Instant Internet Business Secrets training program. It now retails for $65.00.

My "Making Money with Affiliate Programs" report is the clearest, most detailed guide I know of to learning how to start your own business in affiliate marketing. 

As the report explains in detail, affiliate marketing is a new form of online advertising that can enable you to make money by promoting major brand name goods without any investment, any inventory, any shipping, or any customer service. 

I know it might sound too good to be true, but Affiliate Marketing really is an exciting growth industry.  It's also a great chance for you to learn more about how e-commerce might be able to improve your financial future.

My goal?  I'd like to help more Detroiters make the transition from "Unemployed to Self-Employed." 

The catch?  None.

 

The e-business revolution deserves to be shared.  So that's exactly what I'm doing.

Happy holidays!

Scott Fox

Fun Snowflake Maker Viral Promotion

When you live in Southern California like I do, snow is exotic.

So I particularly enjoyed this online "Snowflake Creator".  It's a very nice deployment of flash advertising by a Minneapolis-based digital agency (whatever that means) called Popular Front.  You can create, cut up, and post messages on your own paper snowflakes, plus see snowflakes submitted by others from around the world.  The game was clocking 40-50 new snowflakes per minute when I played with it earlier today!

If you've got a few minutes to play, and miss the snow, go ahead take a short "Snow Day" break while still staying warm indoors.

File this under "clever seasonal online promotions".  This deployment is obviously going viral very successfully.  See other examples of viral marketing here.

Tips to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Scams!

Affiliate marketing is a perfectly legitimate, modern industry.  That means it attracts scam artists, too.

So if you are new to affiliate programs, you should approach it sensibly, like any other business venture.  This will help you to avoid the many affiliate marketing scams and rip-offs that this successful new industry attracts.  Take Jennie's example here:

Here are some tips for avoiding Affiliate Marketing scams:

• Don't Pay for Membership: Affiliate programs are fr-ee. Any company that tries to charge you a fee for joining an affiliate program is not really an affiliate program. It is more likely a multilevel marketing company that has adopted the trendy “affiliate marketing” label to attract Internet curious newbies. You should not have to pay anything for the privilege of working to promote someone else’s products on commission, should you?
  
• Too Good to Be True: Just as in other fields, offers that sound “too good to be true” usually are. In the affiliate marketing space, the most common scams offer you guaranteed or unexpectedly high returns for little investment. Often this is a promise of tremendous traffic for a small price, inclusion in a “network” that claims to deliver such traffic for a fee, or a package of "turnkey" web sites or software that will "automatically" make money for you online. Don’t let your unfamiliarity with affiliate marketing cloud your good judgment. If something smells funny, it probably is.
  
• Fly-by-Night Merchants: You may also encounter companies that operate an affiliate program unethically. They might have professional looking websites and well-reviewed products available for you to promote, but when it comes time to cut you a check for the commissions you’ve earned, they are suddenly less available. You only want to promote products from companies that you are confident will pay you. Just as you would not go to work unless there was a paycheck coming, you don’t want to just “trust” a shady company to pay you. There many well-established and reputable affiliate programs in which you can participate.
  
• Pyramid Schemes: If a company’s only product is that you can make money by investing money and recruiting additional members, it may be a pyramid scheme. These scams take the fees or investments from new members to provide falsely inflated returns to earlier members or customers without any substance to the underlying business. This kind of activity is illegal in the United States. (Hello, Bernard Madoff??)  A “real” affiliate program sells real products (and/or services), not just the opportunity to make money by recruiting new members.
  
• Improper Partnerships: Affiliate programs are generally based on standardized legal terms that set rules for promotion of a clear set of products. If the “affiliate program” company wants too much information about you or to engage you in more customized “joint venture” strategies, be wary.  And if those strategies require you to invest real money, it is likely a con game. (It is okay, however, to disclose your social security number or other tax identification to a legitimate affiliate program operator. They really do need it in order to stay in compliance with federal tax law when paying you.)

Please stay tuned to this blog for next week's follow-up article:  "7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam".

EXCERPT:  This blog post is an excerpt from my new Special Report “Making Money with Affiliate Programs”. This 100+ page downloadable report is full of detailed advice, strategies, and screenshots that can help you quickly learn to make money online from affiliate programs. This Special Report is currently only available to subscribers of the Instant Internet Business Secrets program.

You can join now and download this expert report right away!  Click to learn more…

Les Brown says...

"People don't fail because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit."

- Les Brown (1945 - )

A quotation from the 365SuccessQuotes.com collection.
Subscribe for a fre-e daily dose of inspiration delivered directly to your email inbox!

"People don't fail because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit."

- Les Brown (1945 - )

What does it take to Succeed?

Excellent post on the lifestyle design of entrepreneurship from Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch.

Succeeding as an entrepreneur can take all you’ve got, and then some. Work/life balance is often an unsustainable luxury when “the other guy” is willing to outwork you.

Read this post about US vs. European work attitudes – you can decide whether to pity or praise what he deems the French approach – but be sure to consider this issue when formulating your startup business plans (and evaluating your competition).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/13/joie-de-vivre-the-europeans-are-out-to-lunch

And the Comments debate after the post is as interesting as the post itself…