Save Yourself Some Grief, when Applying to Affiliate Programs

Lets face it, there are thousands of affiliate programs out there, and despite your freakish skills as an affiliate marketer, quite a few of them will be non-performing duds.
Either you aren't going to make a penny off them, or the time and money invested will only return a pittance, not worth the trouble.

Time to do a few pre-signup checks.

*Look around for negative customer input on the web.
Check epinions and other similar sites. A merchant who rips off their customers won't treat you much better. Plus they may be on the way down, headed towards bankruptcy, etc.

*Are their commissions too good to be true? Recently I came across a gaming merchant offering $100 payouts on a $25 signup? Not surprisingly , there are affiliate complaints about the merchant. (even the old poker sites I affiliated with didn't offer terms like that.)

*What do other affiliates say about the merchant? Check the popular affiliate forums (like abestweb.com) to get a feel for the program. What are their complaints? Do the programs keep changing networks like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower? Probably not a good sign.

* Finally, scope out possible merchant problems using google-trends. This can give you a quick overview on possible problems with a merchant, or at least their website.

NY Affiliates getting the boot.

NY residents who are promoting merchants as affiliates have been getting termination notices over the past week. This is based on a recent NY interpretation of a 1992 supreme court decision which held that a retailer must have a "physical presence" within the state in order to be responsible for collecting sales taxes.

Under the new regulations, if a retailer brings in at least $10,000 of annual revenue from New York based affiliates, it is determined to have a 'nexus' in NY & is responsible for collecting the sales taxes.

Despite a suit by amazon.com challenging the decision,this has led to a number of well-known affiliate programs dumping affiliates such as Overstock, Ritz Interactive, REI, and almost 2 dozen other merchants.

Read More:
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3744476/Amazon+Sues+New+York+Over+Internet+Tax.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/ecommerce/3654714.htm
http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=105393&page=1&pp=25

Ebay Affiliate Program leaving CJ.

Noticed today that the eBay affiliate program will be leaving commission junction starting April 1 and going in-house.

Not a big suprise, considering eBay already uses a lot of their own technology in their affiliate marketing efforts/ and the eBay name is also a household name, (not needing the army of CJ affiliates to spread the word..)

EBay is offering an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 for certain countries.

Would have been nice to have a little more notice though...

Making a Quality 'About Us' Page

Providing Details in the “About Us” Section of a Web Site
By Angela Baca

The “About Us” section of your web site says something important about your company as portrayed by your digital presence. Depending on the perspective of the site visitor, this information should be mildly helpful, extremely informative, or somewhere in between. This tutorial explores why you should put careful thought into the details of the “About Us” page on your site.

When some people click on the “About Us” section of a site, they are deciding if they want to purchase from that company. These people benefit from details about the person or organization that operates the web site. Details might include: company location, business philosophy, years of experience, other qualifications, and why a person should buy from that site.

The company location usually rests in the “Contact Us” section of the web site. However, in “About Us,” you can give a location like “Dallas, Texas” as a simple point of reference. The business philosophy helps the user to understand how the owner or company perceives the business and the clientele. If the philosophy is agreeable, it can be a major selling point. If the philosophy is disagreeable, it can hurt the customer’s perception of the business.

Years of experience and other qualifications can also be helpful for visitors seeking a service that requires certain skills. Some viewers also know that qualifications can be exaggerated or completely fabricated. Some businesses use customer testimonials instead of qualifications.

Why a person should buy from your site may be viewed as a business philosophy or a set of qualifications. There are many possible combinations of company details. In other instances, providing this detail is your opportunity to describe exactly and concisely why your business offers a better product or service than competitors. You are making a case for why customers should choose you. Your business plan may be helpful in constructing this blurb.

If the rest of the site is expertly designed, be sure to pay attention to the details and style of the “About Us” section. Otherwise, a haphazard blurb could reflect the wrong image of the company.

Here is an example of a helpful blurb:

“Cinnamon Electronics is a Virginia-based company that specializes in quality appliances for your business. We offer personalized service and strong warranties to back our products.”

Here is an example of a weaker blurb:

“Discover Cinnamon Electronics. Check out our cheap prices.”

Whether you are operating a casual web site that does not get too bogged down in details or a major site with serious ambitions, every site owner needs to think about what they put out there in the virtual realm. The “About Us” section will show up in Internet searches of the company name. Don’t put anything in this section or anywhere else on your site that you don’t want the public to know.

Depending on the goals for a site, the “About Us” section can be an important way to communicate information about a company with an Internet presence.

SEO Booster PRO can help your search rankings.

Display Rss Feeds on your Wordpress Blog

I've tried several plug-ins lately designed to display Rss Feed information on Wordpress Blogs. They have seemed to be either, buggy, not compatible with other plug-ins, or incapable of displaying the entire feed.

The folks at Carp have developed Rss applications which I've used for several years now and always seem to work, so was interested when I heard of a Carp powered plug-in for WP. You can find it HERE.
If I can find time, will do a review.

Button Maker

Know those little RSS Feed buttons (aka badges) you see on blogs? There's an easy way to make your own. Just go to Graphics Guru.

Keyword Rankings Tool

Found a nifty little free tool for checking your rankings on google, msn, or yahoo.

http://www.geoseo.com/
The tool is online only, so there's nothing to download to your computer (a definite plus in my book).

Unlike other online tools I have used, you can run multiple keyword checks at one time. Since it's 'geo seo' you can check your ranks for other countries as well. And by registering for free, store your searches for comparison later.

Bugs:

1) Navigation is either not working or not totally set-up yet.
2) Searches seemed slow using IE7. Using Firefox, searches went faster, but some of the msn results weren't displaying.

All in all,worth a look IMO.

Search Engine Rankings

Free Feeds Directory search rankings remain strong.

Google

Term: RSS Feeds Directory
Rank: 5/25,000,000

Term: Free RSS Feeds
Rank: 7/75,100,000

Term: Free RSS Directory
Rank: 3/15,600,000

Term: Feeds Directory
Rank: 10/12,100,00

Term: RSS Directory
Rank: 10/62,000,000

Yahoo

Term: Free RSS Directory
Rank: 5/242,000,000

MSN

Term: Feeds Directory
Rank: 6/40,000,000

NewsGator RSS client apps now free.

NewsGator announced today that their award-winning lineup of newsreaders, including NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, and NewsGator Go for mobile is now free. You can find more info, and the free downloads here.

Keyword Research for free

Keyword Research is a valuable weapon in the arsenal of every SEO and affiliate marketer. I've used several keyword tools over the years with results ranging from quite beneficial (keyword elite) to unsatisfactory (keycompete), and others in-between.

A relatively new player in the field is WordZe. They have an offer of a free trial for 30days. But they do require a credit card # and you have to sign up before January 14th.

Link to Trial Offer.

Social Bookmarking

Wow! Social Bookmarking sites really are the next big bubble (er, wave) on the internet. Still, these link farms, er... Web 2.0 sites offer a way to increase your web presence and garner a few backlinks - Here's just a few...

backflip.com
bibsonomy.org
blinklist.com
care.com/news
citeulike.org
clipclip.org
connotea.org
corank.com
del.icio.us
digg.com
diigo.com
dropjack.com
folkd.com
furl.net
kaboodle.com
kinja.com
ma.gnolia.com
memotoo.com
mister-wong.com
linkagogo.com
newsvine.com
propeller.com
reddit.com
searchles.com
shoutwire.com
simpy.com
sphinn.com
spotback.com
spurl.net
stumbleupon.com
squidoo.com
technorati.com
uvouch.com
sitebar.org
taggly.com
buddymarks.com
mylinkvault.com
stylehive.com
hyperlinkomatic.com
plime.com
lilisto.com
sk-rt.com
markaboo.com
xilinus.com
startaid.com
thoof.com
myhq.com
mybookmarks.com
hanzoweb.com
favoor.com
socialdanger.com
murl.com mobleo.net
plugim.com zurpy.com
tagfacts.com oyax.com
lifelogger.com
complore.com
connectedy.com
sitejot.com
pixelgroovy.com
cloudytags.com
blurpalicious.com
bookmark-manager.com
myvmarks.com contentpop.com
bmaccess.net
memfrag.com
bookmarktracker.com
mysitevote.com
freelink.org
urlex.info
rambhai.com
easybm.com
zlitt.com
chipmark.com
thinkpocket.com
mywebdesktop.net
philoi.com
bookkit.com
bookmax.net
votelists.com
whitelinks.com
tedigo.net
mixx.com
marktd.com
tagza.com
wirefan.com
blogbookmark.com
bukmark.net
getboo.com
fungow.com
syncone.net
linksnarf.com
ezu.net
listerlister.com
xlmark.com
totalpad.com
barksbookmarks.com
blipoo.com
bookmarkall.com
yattle.com
wetogether.info
vuju.com
newsweight.com
voteboat.com
freezilla.co.uk
faves.com
socialogs.com
crowdfound.com
quickieclick.com

I wonder how many of these will still be around after a couple of years...

Feeds&SEO

Feeds and Seo is a blog about everything related to RSS feeds, search engine optimization, and other things web-related.