Shops at 24Seven Affiliate Blog

The Free Micro Niche Finder Tutorial

2009-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

It's been quite awhile since I've blogged, but I promise this will be worth your read.

You hear a lot from internet marketing gurus about creating niche websites. For example, it's better to create a website focused on baby blankets than it is on baby bedding in general. Mostly the reason this is suggested is because it's going to be very difficult for your website to rank on the search engines for baby bedding, but easier for baby blankets.

However, I know too many people who have dabbled with affiliate marketing only to give up because they didn't make any money. Yes, for a lot of them, they believed all the earnings lies you get in your inbox or read on those annoying pop-ups. Any affiliate worth their salt knows it's hard work. But for most of them, it's because they throw up their first website and while it's niche-based, it's still too broad. Beginner affiliates NEED to start out small. Micro-niche. I've been doing affiliate marketing on the side for years and I still go micro-niche.

I'm an Internet Marketing Manager by day, but I do have a sizable supplemental income from my personal affiliate marketing efforts by night. So, believe me, there is no get-rich-quick formula.

Let's take a look at Corner Stork Baby Gifts and the products it sells. You could look at any of our categories and make a niche website from them. But rather than create a website where it's focus is baby blankets, these micro-niche ideas would be even better.

Pink Baby Blankets
Blue Baby Blankets
Chenille Baby Blankets
Animal Baby Blankets
Fleece Baby Blankets

Let's say that you created 5 different websites for the above 5 ideas. If you did your homework, worked hard and were able to do enough SEO (it wouldn't take much) to get all 5 of these websites to rank on the first page of Google. I know it would generate sales. No, not thousands per month, probably not even a hundred bucks per month. But, something. Enough to keep you motivated. Enough to where you've learned HOW to do it. You worked hard and now your seeing some of the payoff.

Now, here is why going smaller FIRST gives you a BIGGER advantage later. You've done the above and now you want to go after something more competitive. Since your a pro in the baby blanket industry now, why not build a site targeting the keyword 'baby blankets' or 'baby boy gifts'? No, that's not the BIG advantage. It's this. You now own 5 websites that you can instantly link to your new BIGGER website. All 5 websites are "trusted and relevant" in your niche. Google loves links from relevant websites...and you have control of 5 of them!

Don't miss my point. I share this with you to teach you how to think, not give you the perfect idea on which micro-niche to target. This strategy can work in almost any niche.

How to find your next micro-niche
There are all sorts of software you can buy to help you with this. Market Samurai is one. But, honestly, I don't use anything. I don't think it's that difficult. In closing, this is how I do it.

Go to a website you love or have an interest in referring their products
Pick a category from that website (they are usually along the left navigation)
Now study that category, and break a group of those products down into another level (color, size, price point, brand, model, common features).
That's it...build your website.

This is an example of how this looks on paper.

I picked TigerDirect.com.

Now I need to pick a category: Let's see...Camcorders!

Now, what should I use for my micro-niche website? Hmm...how can I group some of these products together? Ah, High Definition Canon Camcorders! Sweet!

I didn't even click through and view all of their camcorders. I know they have more than 3 HD camcorders and will also be releasing more. It's really that simple. Don't waste money on software.

50 Free Icon Sets You MUST Know About

2009-05-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, I'm addicted to icons. And I know many of you are as well or you have a blog/website where linking over to twitter or your youtube videos just makes sense. So, I couldn't help but pass on this great post I read this morning.

These 50 free icon sets have all the top social media logos embedded on chocolate hearts, 3-D cubes, soda cans, test tubes and everything in between. Enjoy them here.

And if you looking hosted Twitter buttons, go here.

Corner Stork Launches 4 New Baby Gifts

2009-05-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

Affiliates - Corner Stork Baby Gifts launched 4 new baby gifts that I'm confident will convert as well as our other gifts. Of all The Shops at 24Seven, Corner Stork continues to convert at high levels and I'm convinced it because of the uniqueness of our gifts. Here are some pictures of the new ones, be sure to pick up the product links in your networks.

Plush "Monkey Magoo and Blankie Too!"

“Big Dreamzzz” Baby MD

“Big Dreamzzz” Camo Baby

“Big Dreamzzz” Baby Ballerina

When was the last time you cleaned up your reciprocal links?

2009-04-08T08:01:00.001-07:00

I'm not going to get into if reciprocal linking still works and if there is any value in it. My opinion is that it can, if your very selective and work only with reputable websites whose link pages are actually indexed by Google.

Most of us already have a links page tucked down in our bottom navigation from when we first launched the site years ago. Back then we knew reciprocal linking worked. So, you just keep it down there and ignore it out of fear of losing the external links from those partners.

My Strategy

This week I was spending time looking over the sites we link to from these pages and cleaning them up. I'm noticing many of the sites no longer exist, so I kill those. Then a good amount you can tell have not been touched in years, more link brutality. I Google the links pages where are links show up to see if they are indexed. If not, kill them. What's the point of linking to them if Google never has found the link back to you?

Lastly, I killed some simply because I'm not comfortable with linking out to them. Call me paranoid but if Google views links as a recommendation, we need to be careful who we are recommending. I don't want to get labeled as a bad neighborhood. In high school, if you hung out with the wrong crowd, it was because you WERE the wrong crowd. That's my reciprocal link logic. So, spend some time in the next few weeks reviewing who you are recommending.

Don't Tweat at Work - Just Ask Charlie Villanueva

2009-03-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, Twitter is the next big web toy that will explode. It was just announced recently that the number of signups for the month of February was a 1,300% increase of the same month last year.

However, Charlie Villanueva, the NBA forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, was reprimanded by his coach Scott Skiles for tweating during halftime. Here is the tweat that got Villanueava in trouble. It says,:

In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.

Charlie later informed his followers of the incident. Probably wasn't the best idea, but fans love it cause it's getting us closer to the game. Shaq uses Twitter and has 336k followers. I'm still at 41 strong.

Villanueva's coach may not have liked it, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day the NBA encourages it. Seriously, it's a struggling league and needs all the extra buzz and widgets it can get.

From a business perspective, something we can take away from this. Twitter is growing. Your business needs to be using it. If you want to stay with the times, you need to use the communication tools of the day. One reason Obama was able to make up so much ground with the Internet community is because he was very visible on both Twitter and Facebook. John McCain was nowhere to be found. People love to be communicated to. They want to know what is going on.

3 New Baby Gifts

2009-02-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

We recently launched 3 new baby gifts from Baby Aspen. These are some really unique gifts, so wanted to pass this on. You should be able to link directly to these from within the networks (CJ, SAS).


"Sweet Dreamzzz" A Pint of PJ's Two-Piece Sleep-Time Gift Set	"The Cow Jumped Over the Moon" Lovie Gift Set	"Welcome Home Baby!" 3-Piece Layette Set in Keepsake Gift Box (Pink)

Seth Godin - 7 Tips for a Startup in a Recession

2009-02-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Mashable, which I love to read, posted a video where Seth Godin gives some great advice on tips for growing your business in a recession. The basis for his advice is that with companies struggling right now, it leaves more room for entrepeneurs to fill in those gaps.

View the video below or click here.

Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

2009-02-02T13:01:00.001-08:00

As we all know, the Super Bowl commercials are just as entertaining as the game itself. As marketers we are wise to watch these and take notes. These are the companies who are putting all of their marketing eggs in a basket for their one 3o second spot...at $2.4 million (not counting the cost to make the commercial). These commercials are the best of the best, or are at least supposed to be.

These were my two favorites. They both made me laugh out loud and remember the company's name.

My Favorite

Runner-Up

Krispy Kreme and Spring Wedding Favors

2009-01-22T08:22:00.001-08:00

I'm a big fan of the donut, so when I hear "Hot Now", I immediately think of Krispy Kreme. Well, with wedding season starting to pick up, our Spring Wedding Favors are the hot items affiliates need to be promoting.

Using the Google Keyword Tool, we know that January and the beginning of February are the hot seasons that people are searching for spring wedding favors (see chart below).

Further, the search data on our own site, MyWeddingFavors.com, shows that people are searching for the word 'spring' twice as much as any other word right now. So, affiliates, this is the area to promote or if your not already, join us today.

Hubpages

2009-01-14T06:45:00.001-08:00

I've mentioned Hubpages here before, but wanted to stress to make it part of your business plan. Last week the Google Pagerank for Hubpages went up to a 6, which means Google will like your site more if it has a link to it from Hubpages.

If you're not familiar yet, Hubpages allows you to create a hub about any topic. So if your website is about planning a baby shower, you will want to create a hub about that topic. Most importantly, be sure to link back to your website on your hub. I suggest only linking back to your site once per hub as doing it excessively will probably get you banned by Hubpages.

LeechBlock - FireFox Plugin to Keep You On Task

2008-12-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

In a post from a few months ago titled, Start Working...Stop Checking Your Stats I talked about 7 time wasters that keep us from staying focused on growing our affiliate business. Most of the time it's our web surfing that keeps us off task.

If you use Firefox, I recently discovered a Plugin called LeechBlock. I'll let them explain what it is:

LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

Bottom line, if your one who is always wondering away from your work, you need this.

Frustrated with Affiliate Marketing?

2008-12-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

Josh at ScrappyBusiness.com had a great post last week about being frustrated with affiliate marketing. I like his punch in the gut approach. To summarize in 2 words...work hard. I'm tired of the "get rich quick" lies around the web marketing world.

Josh outlines 11 princples to approach your affiliate marketing plan. I'll quickly summarize, but it'd be better to head over there and read it for yourself.

Write out your financial goals.
Write out a game plan.
Figure out what your good at and love to talk about.
Know what your plans of action are.
Know what your offers are.
Get your butt to work.
Manage your time properly.
Fail.
Set a goal with deadlines.
Optimize like crazy.
Keep educating yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-26T07:12:00.000-08:00

Affiliates - Wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! I've got 12 family members sleeping at the house, plus our 5 for a total of 18 people. It's fun, but gets a little crazy at times.

Real quick, I've setup a 1-Day coupon code for Cyber Monday. For CornerStorkBabyGifts.com affiliates, promote the code CYBER and your users will save 15% off anything in the store. We've never had a coupon this low and IT WILL expire come Tuesday.

Lastly, wanted to quickly pass on some helpful info for you all that I came across. The Freebie Blogger has a nice list of some free Black Friday stuff.

- Jason

Facebook vs. MySpace

2008-10-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

Using Google Trends you can see that Facebook (blue) continues to grow, leaving MySpace (red) in it's dust.

From an Internet Marketers perspective there are two things I want to share from this.

Did you know you can advertise on Facebook? I've heard some marketers that have had some nice success with it too. Since all the ads are behind a login and Facebook users basically share all kinds of information about themselves, you can create campaigns targeting by gender, age and location.
The constant growth of Facebook shows just how social the web has become. Is your website adjusting to this change? I discovered a great tool last week that allows your visitors to leave reviews (comments and ratings) for any page/product on you website. It's called JS-Kit and the best part is that it's completely free! I've tested it and love it. It adds a whole new social element to your site, giving your visitors a reason to come back.

The Art of a Targeted Click

2008-10-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

A visitor to your site should be handled with care. Your visitors are busy people and they’ve trusted your site with their precious time. Ultimately, in our affiliate minds, we hope that visitor translates into either some sort of commission for you or becomes a repeat visitor. There is a wrong way and right way to handle your visitors.

When your visitors click on your affiliate link you want it to be as targeted and of the highest quality (best position to convert). Don’t make the mistake of quickly sending your visitors off to another site in hopes they convert. That’s the equivalent of crossing your fingers, hoping your business succeeds. I understand that many affiliates have the mentality of "if I can just get them to click on my affiliate links as much as possible, the sales will come." That is the wrong approach.

It is best to keep your visitors on your site if they are not going to convert. Why give away free clicks to a merchant so they can brand their sites name into the head of YOUR visitor? Foolishness! Your great content (which you do have, right?) is better used by branding that visitor with your site. You want visitors to return to your site in the future and if you just send them quickly off to an affiliate offer, your site is just a blur in their experience.

Are we clear? Now, here is want you want to do. On your product or money pages you want to qualify that click before sending them off. How is this done?

One of our affiliates, favorideas.com, is a pro at this. Take a look at this product page for one of our wedding favors.

http://www.favorideas.com/shopping/prod/BRLeaves.htm

See the button she uses? It says Buy Now. Not click here for more information, not shop now. She is telling the customer what to do. Want to buy this now? If so, this is what you need to click. They know the price and have seen the product. The obvious next step is to buy it. If the user is just browsing then they won’t click and will stay on her site. Again, you don’t want YOUR visitor browsing someone else’s site. Browsers don’t buy. Browsers build up ideas in their heads. If they find a good one, you want them to remember YOUR site so that they return later to buy it through you.

One last thing FavorIdeas.com does. When you click the Buy Now button is opens the site in a new window. This is also a great strategy because if the visitor doesn’t like what they see after the click, her site is still viewable. Yet, the affiliate cookie is still set so even if they do go back to the merchant's site, she will still get the commission.

Now go...and make your business better.

Top 10 Wedding Favors for Fall Season

2008-09-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

MyWeddingFavors.com - With fall in the air, brides are planning their fall weddings and ordering their fall wedding favors. Here has been our top 10 best selling products for the month of September.

Baby Shower Favors Video

2008-09-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

We've just finished up with our latest video dedicated to baby shower favors. Our affiliates can now feature these videos as ad units and earn commissons on any sales. Below is the video you can feature as either a My Wedding Favors affiliate or a Corner Stork Baby Gifts affiliate.

For the affiliate network ID you'll put in your CJ PID.

GET YOUR CODE:

MyWeddingFavors (Commission Junction)

CornerStorkBabyGifts(Commission Junction)

New Winter Wedding Favors

2008-09-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

MyWeddingFavors.com - We recently launched 3 new winter wedding favors. With winter weddings being planned now, brides will be looking for these unique favors.

"Snowflake" Bookmark with Silver Finish and Elegant Ice-Blue Tassel	"Embossed Elegance" Snowflake Favor Box (Set of 24)
"Snow Flurry" Flocked Glass Ornament Place Card/Photo Holder

These winter wedding favors are also available on Favor Affair and can promoted as winter party favors or Christmas party favors.

Desktop Computer for $229

2008-09-09T06:20:00.001-07:00

I've never pushed products on here as that is not the reason for this blog. However, I do care about the businesses of our affiliates and so I pass on this great deal I found this morning. I'm a big fan of Tiger Direct. This morning I received one of their e-mails and it was promoting a desktop computer for $229. I immediately picked one up for myself and wanted to share the deal with our affiliates. I don't think I've ever seen a computer that cheap with that many features.

This system comes with an Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 dual-core 1.8GHz 64-bit processor, 1GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, a DVDRW burner with Lightscribe, and 250 watt power supply. All running on Windows Vista Home Premium.

Here is the offer page (no, that is not an affiliate link). The system is refurbished, but that's never bothered me. Many times those guys that refurbish things put it together better than the manufacturer.

Using Your Keywords In Your Pagenames

2008-08-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

While at Affiliate Summit, one of the better sessions was by Wil Reynolds. Wil is an SEO guru and openly provides tips to better your search engine ranking. I HIGHLY recommend you watch his videos on YouTube. I've included a short one below where Wil talks about a strategy of naming your pages with the keywords you are trying to target.

We use this technique alot here. If you look at our domain names, our top keywords are in our domains.

MyWeddingFavors.com
CornerStorkBabyGifts.com

We do the same thing with our category pages. You'll see what our targeted keywords are for these pages.

myweddingfavors.com/bridal-shower-favors.html
cornerstorkbabygifts.com/baby-gift-baskets.aspx

Here is Wil's opinion on this technique.

Meet With Me at Affiliate Summit East

2008-08-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend I will be in Boston at Affiliate Summit East. Any Shops at 24Seven affiliate that will be at the conference and would like to meet up, I'd love to sit down and share some ideas and internet marketing advice with you. E-mail me by Friday afternoon and I can schedule something with you.

-Jason Forthofer

Start Working...Stop Checking Your Stats

2008-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

This post was inspired by Zac Johnson who wrote a great post today on a similiar topic. To often we spend to much of our time logging into CJ, ShareASale and LinkShare seeing if we got any sales. Then you see that your balance went up and you check out where the sale came from. Now, off to see what other merchants generated a click yesterday. And we do this for all the affiliate networks we promote. Whew! An hour has gone by...

Now, don't get me wrong, reporting and analysis is critical in affiliate marketing, but...

too often we are wasting too much of our time logged into the network and not enough time working on projects.

Now, these next set of rules may seem a little hardcore for some, but I guarantee you, that if followed, you will get more work done and more commissions earned.

No TV watching. The biggest no-no in affiliate marketing. You will get distracted.
Turn off your IM. When your focused on a project, this is nothing but a distraction.
In line with #2, no replying to emails, especially that one from mom. Get to work, this isn't social hour!
No Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other social time-waster. No matter how much you've convinced yourself that your "networking", they are called social tools for a reason. If you must be social go Digg, Stumble, Reddit, Mixx and Propel your money pages.
Close iTunes or at least start your play list and minimize it for the next few hours. I'll admit, I can throw on some tunes and get into a great work groove.
No Googling...unless it's essential to your project. Googling only leads to surfing unrelated to your project.
No phone calls. You have an answering machine right? You'll be OK, they can wait.

Don't get me wrong, some of the above activities are business related. But when your focused on getting a project done, they ARE distractions. You'll be amazed by how much you can get done in a few hours by minimizing distractions and focusing completely on your goal.

Favor Affair Re-Design Launched

2008-07-23T07:35:00.001-07:00

FavorAffair.com - Yesterday we launched our new design for Favor Affair. Our designers did a great job, a vast improvement over the previous look. We wanted to give the site more of a party feel and I think we accomplished that. Check it out and let us know what you think.

We expect the new design to improve our conversion rates, which of course, means more commissions for our affiliates!

What Is EPC?

2008-07-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

When evaluating an affiliate program it is always important to look at the merchants EPC. EPC in a nutshell is Earnings Per 100 Clicks. Here’s an example of what your EPC would be if you earned $150 in commissions off of 767 clicks.

EPC = (Commissions/Clicks) x 100

EPC = ($150/767) x 100

EPC = $19.56

What does an EPC of $20 tell you? Well, on average, affiliates earn $20 in commissions for every 100 clicks they send that merchant. If you divide this $20 EPC by 100 you’ll see that comes out to $.20 per click. This is a very helpful indicator to use when deciding whether to promote an affiliate program or run Google Adsense. Interestingly, many website owners think they are earning the most they can by just using Google Adsense. However, if they were to actually test Adsense next to a strong converting affiliate program, they would earn more by promoting the affiliate program.

I’ve found the main reason website owners like Google Adsense is because they make at least a little money every day, even if it’s $0.20. They tell me, they can count on it. Maybe so, but they are losing money. They can’t stomach not seeing any commissions for 10 days or sometimes more. We have one affiliate that was hesitant about promoting our program. They were using Adsense but agreed to test out one of our links also. For a month or so they didn’t see any sales come in. But they didn’t give up. Just a few weeks ago they generated a $632 sale for a commission of $102!

Why wouldn’t I just promote the programs with the highest EPC?

Great question. Too many times affiliates make the mistake of just promoting the programs with high EPCs. A high EPC usually means, the merchant pays well, but in a very competitive industry. The cost to promote their products is much higher than the programs with a lower EPC. Most of the programs with EPCs above $80 in Commission Junction fall into 2 categories. Web hosting and Insurance. Very competitive markets, very expensive to promote.

30-Day EPC vs. 7-Day EPC

What does this mean? It’s pretty simple. The 30-Day EPC is what affiliates average EPC is in the last 30 days. Therefore, the 7-Day EPC is what they average within the last week. Currently, in ShareASale the My Wedding Favors programs has a 30-Day EPC of $34.11 and 7-Day EPC of $38.55. Why the difference? It’s not always easy to say, but last week wedding season began its peak season.

EPCs Can Be Misleading

While an EPC is a good indication of a program, it is not a great indication. In some cases an EPC can be a skewed number. Here are some reasons:

A program can have an EPC of $5 (not too great). However, it could be low only because one of their affiliates is sending a bunch of garbage traffic to them. They could be launching that merchants site as a popunder. Those clicks would still be calculated in the overall EPC, even though all their other affiliates have an EPC around $15. But you’ll never see the $15 EPC, only the $5 EPC.
An EPC can also be inflated. A merchant can have a great affiliate who drives 80% of that merchants business. That particular affiliate could have an EPC of $50, while all the other affiliates are more in the range of $12. However, since most of the clicks are coming from this large affiliate, their EPC will be closer to $40.
Lastly, an EPC can be inaccurate, typically lower, only because they do not yet have many affiliates promoting them. And the ones that do, are not very good at it.

To Conclude

It’s always better to test for yourself. What converts on your site may not convert as well for someone else. EPC should only be used to eliminate a really weak candidate. If you want to promote wedding favors and the My Wedding Favors EPC is $14.72, while another WeddingFavorXYZ has an EPC of $1.50, that’s a no-brainer!

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes I Still Make

2008-07-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Paul Bourque at UberAffiliate had a good post recently titled, Affiliate Marketing Mistakes I Still Make that is worth the read and reminders. Paul has quickly become a young super affiliate at age 19! I suggest reading the full post, but here is a quick summary.

Getting distracted
Focusing on too many campaigns at once
Laziness
Not using Yahoo/MSN for PPC
Not split-testing