Web Promotion Newsletter: March 2006

Web Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, LInk Exchange, and more.

The Leyline Web Promotion and Gregory Cox presents...
Newsletter - March 2006

1. What's News?

26 Feb. - Internet life speeding up in small-town America

Rural Americans are getting in the fast lane to the Internet more and more, but they still trail their city-dwelling counterparts by a sizable gap, according to new data. Around 24 percent of rural Americans were using high-speed connections to the Internet in their homes by the end of 2005. Keep reading to find out more >>

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2. Services Spotlight: Affiliate Marketing

Is Affiliate Marketing a bad or good thing?

And more importantly, is it going to make you money?

Basically, affiliate marketing is a referral system. Someone else promotes you, and you give them a cut. You could call it a referral system.

Affiliate Marketing is defined in wikipedia.org as "a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per Sale), or any combination."

Viral marketing explained

The diagram above illustrates some major points about affiliate marketing.

website 0 is your website
website 1 is a website that refers your website
website 2 is a website that refers website 1
compensation is based upon three things; visitor, lead, and sale
percentages are taken at every tier
browsers (blue man) can go to any website above

Affiliate marketing can create a strong presence online because it gets your name out there fast. It creates a network of ads that all point to you. You don't pay until a person actually visits your site, so websites that have a strong message and excellent sales pitch can make affiliate marketing work for them.

Of course, affiliate programs (APs) that generate sales are better than leads, are better than visitors.

Dangers of Affiliate Marketing

However, affiliate marketing can also be expensive on your bottom line; percentages are often taken at every step. Let's say you start with one dollar that is about to be spent on your product or service. A browser starts at website 2, clicks to website 1 (incurring a 20% referral cost) and then clicks through to website 0 (your site) taking another 20% referral cost if the sale is made. That means your revenue is going to be 60% (or sometimes 64%) of a browser that alternately goes directly to your website. If your markup is 50%, that's not a lot of profit. That profit has been diluted from 50% to a whopping 10%.

Sure, it might not cost you something up front, but it WILL cost you. You just have to weight the potential profit knock.

Here's another BIG issue. What type of ads are they running for you? Since Google has updated some of their algorithms, many AP systems were banned. That's because they use underhanded tactics to generate leads or visitors, visitor traffic that is of no quality. Anyone can get traffic to a website, but at what price? AND will Google then ban YOUR website due to 'spamming'?

Things to keep in mind

most affiliate programs (APs) are tier 1
most APs are 15-20% referral fee
most APs are for referrals (visitors) NOT leads or sales

The bottom line. Affiliate Marketing is a gambit. You just have to try it out to see if it works for you. Leyline puts more emphasis on Organic SEO and content creation than Affiliate Marketing.

What About Google AdWords?

There is debate as to whether Google AdWords is really a tier 1 Affiliate Marketing system, but one thing's for sure: Google likes it when you use it. You certainly don't have to worry about Google banning your website for using Google AdWords. Google also allows you to run various ads against each other for the purpose of seeing which ad is more effective. They also take a straight penny price for each clickthrough instead of a revenue bite.

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3. Marketing Tips Online;
ADD CREDIBILITY TO YOUR WEBSITE.

We can't say it enough: credible websites are successful websites, and successful websites make money.

Stanford University compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research and on several studies about that topic.

The 10 Guidelines

Information on site should be cited and referenced. If you have information that pertains to what you are writing about, refer to it!
Show you're a brick-and-mortar. Put an address on there and make your site real!
Make sure that the experts on your team are discussed
Post bios and pictures of your team
Create a contact page with email, phone number and physical address
Create a visually appealing site - people pay attention to it more than you think
Make your website easy to use and navigate
Update site content and keep it fresh - this is easy if you have a newsletter!
Tone down the promotional content to just visible - don't BLARE ADVERTISEMENTS at people. Allow them to absorb your special offers without you smacking them in the face with it - heck, avoid ads altogether if you can manage it
Make sure your site is accurate with information - especially typographical errors - nothing tanks a browser's experience like misspelled words - spell check carefully!

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4. Book Review;
LOVE IS THE KILLER APP by Tim Sanders

Gregory's Note: I avoided reading this book (referred to me by my girlfriend) because it seemed to 'mushy' for business. After I read it, I realized the power of love in the businessplace.

Sounds corny, but it's not. After all, isn't that what we are shooting for? Great relationships both in work and personal life?

Tim Sanders explains why love is an important component of business relationships. It shifts your thinking away from profit and into the 'lovecat' zone. OK, I know what you're thinking. LOVECAT? Yes, lovecat. It's remarkably practical advice...

amass knowledge
amass contacts
share knowledge with contacts...
...with Love

Why? Because it works better than being a shark. It also leads to a happier life. He says that a mindset of compassion is a way to do business, because it creates compassion and a warm network of people that will pay you back with money, advice, and contacts. The catch? You gotta mean it!

It's a cheap book, too. You can find used ones for about $10 everywhere. Someone giving you the 'professional shoulder' or trying to find compassion in your business practices? Give them this book

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5. Website of The Month;
www.wikipedia.org

Gregory's Note: What the heck is wikipedia?

Wikipedia (pronounced /?w?ki'pi?di.?/ or /?wiki-/) is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It exists as a wiki, written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an Internet connection. The project began on January 15, 2001, as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia has more than 3,500,000 articles, including more than 1,010,000 in the English-language version. Since its inception, Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity,[1] and its success has spawned several sister projects. There has, however, been controversy over its reliability.

Gregory, however, loves it. Great place to start when you are confused about a particular topic. Although I can't use it, the multilanguage concept is absolutely amazing.

If you have suggestions as to content, layout, or relevance of material above, don't hesitate to email Gregory at gregory@leyline.net.

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Sincerely, Gregory Cox, 805-258-3112

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