Joomla! site syndication http://affiliatefarm.com Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:29:23 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://affiliatefarm.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://affiliatefarm.com Joomla! site syndication http://affiliatefarm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=54 Affiliate Farm is a private project to understand and organize the information about the affiliate jungle. Hopefully, you will find what you need to start, run and keep yourself updated in the affiliate and marketing world. One of the problems I found when trying to learn about online marketing (without background in marketing) was the excess of information. In certain circumstances the excess of information is as terrible as the lack of it. You can spend your whole life reading and don't learn what you need to go ahead. That thought is scary alone. That is why I decided to create this site with a twofold purpose, the first was to have a place to organize and process the information I receive, the second is to share those steps with others and learn from the interaction. What I have so far to offer: BLOG: there are a couple of interesting Freebies, fresh Articles, my personal impressions, product reviews, info about giveaways and everything written by me. You need to register to grab the frebies and to read part of the content, but don't worry: I will not share your info with anybody. Marketing FAQs: A must have. I broke appart a very interesting PRL ebook to do them. If you are a newbie (or not) interested in Marketing, you want to have a look at them. If you want to have the whole ebook, you can find it as one of the freebies I gave away with my Emails.EMAIL: I don't actually have a Newsletter, sometimes when I have something meaningful to say and a freebie to give away, I send a communication to the users of the site. Those emails are here in case you want to see them. If you are logged in you will also have access to the freebies I give away in each email. Article Directory: If you need back links this is an interesting place to add to your list. It is not the main place where webmasters look for articles (yet), but it is another tool that will help you make a difference.Forum: The forum is thought as a free place to do business and learn from each other. Technorati Profile (http://technorati.com/claim/8ihdi748rh) General - Site Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:54:06 +0100 http://affiliatefarm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=60 I have been reading a couple of ebooks about article marketing lately and the main conflict I found is that they sell article submission as a great marketing tool for your site and at the same time they say that using authored material will not be good for your reputation as an expert in your niche. So… if it is not good for you, why should be good for others? It is not very coherent, is it? Let’s go back to the basics: how do we define an expert? In simple words, and to be able to go on with my own idea for this article, let’s say that an expert is someone who knows enough about something as to have a trustable voice, that is, if he/she tells you something worth your time you give it a try. To recommend something wrote by others does not go against your reputation if the articles are really good and deliver what they promise. The selection of articles in your website should talk with your own voice and provide information you are proud to endorse. If that is the case, to display information written by others is not working against you. On the contrary, it actually works on your favor. A word of caution There is a main drawback about publishing articles written by others: through the infobox you are delivering in silver platter your hard earned visitors to the author as targeted prospects for free. That is no good… The second drawback is that in the mind of that visitor you will be endorsing the products or services the author offers and if there is a problem your reputation as expert will be hit. Looking for solutions always open new doors How we put everything together in a way that works for everybody? Here is what I did in GolferArea.com: 1) Start looking for great articles, 2) Go to the author website and have a look, find out what product he is selling, if it has an affiliate program and if you would be willing to promote it as affiliate. If the answer to all this points is yes, go on, if the answer is no, learn from the article and write your own with the same core information. 3) If the product the author is selling worth the promotion, contact the seller and ask if you can change the link in the infobox by an affiliate link. Most of the times the answer will be a YES in capital letters (print out the emails with full headers and keep them in your records just in case). That is, problem solved… you give him/her what she wants and get your share. The author is happy, you are happy, the customer is happy and you grow your reputation as expert recommending other people expertise with their own promotional articles. Pushing it to the next level This is probably one the best ways to push an affiliate if you have a Newsletter. It is easy and effective. Add the article with the infobox relinked as featured article, let it marinate. In this case you are adding good info and an offer in the package in a way that will not fix you as pushy in the mind of your customers, but as great info provider, with no extra work. Changing the Article Directory rules for your Success Well, after all this is a site by and for affiliates, so in base of this idea I changed the rules of the Article Directory. Every person that submits articles here needs to have an affiliate program and accept that the link to his site will be changed by an affiliate link. Blog - Marketing Sat, 10 Mar 2007 09:53:47 +0100 http://affiliatefarm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=57 There is a wide variety of products to be sold as an affiliate and each one has its own rules. In this article we will focus in two different animals: selling subscriptions or goods on one side, and selling informational products on the other. Selling subscriptions or goods If you sell subscriptions or goods, the appearance and organization of the target website is the principal concern. When I go to a website I look for these signals: Blog - Affiliates Sat, 21 Oct 2006 07:39:30 +0100 http://affiliatefarm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=66 What is an affiliate Network? An Affiliate Network is like a wholesale marketplace for affiliates. So it is clear, they are places where you want to go (most probably you are already working with a bunch of them). Companies that have services or products to advertise connect with them and you can promote their services or products for a profit. The number of affiliate networks is growing, some of them are specialized in an area, some are general. I will create and maintain a list here, it will grow with time so keep checking. Resources - Info Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:05:08 +0100 http://affiliatefarm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=34 With the program Adsense of Google, the www suffered from the unstoppable proliferation of automatic websites (or not so automatic). What was the deal? Put up a site with different pages loaded in keywords and Adsense will do its magic showing related ads. If someone clicks on that ad, you receive a part of the cake of Google. Simple, isn’t it? When google found out, they decided to do something about it and they did it...Now, what to do with all those websites done exclusivelly for Adsense? Is it there a way out? Well, the unswer is Yes. What Google did after realizing that there were guys and gals under the sun making a very good living with those automatic sites, was to launch a new feature that allowed those contracting Google Adwords to choose how much they wanted to pay to the search engine and how much to the adsense websites. Like most Adwords contractors prefer to catch organic surfers, the budget for Adsense was cut drastically and those guys having that good life had to start working for a living again. Now, the big question is: what comes next? Mike Steut came up with an interesting solution and published two revolutionary ebooks (free download), “The death of Adsense” and “Life after Adsense” (more about Steut in the Gurus section, coming up :)). His proposal is clickflipping, I am not going to go into clickflipping right now. He is a very clever guy and he is taking good advantage of the revolution he made. Now is clickflipping the only choice? The other default solution is to move those websites from Adsense to affiliate sites. Now the main problem here is to put by hand affiliate over affiliate...painful. To help with this little problem there are some scripts that allow to put ads from different affiliate Networks by keyword. For Clickbank I found two scripts. The first one is CB Context (https://paydotcom.com/r/6600/anadantra/375112/) and it is a very interesting option for those who went too far in the Adsense system and now have some difficult choices to make. The catch is: of course it is not free, tt costs $97 per license. I contacted Ran Arousi, the developer, to see if there is a group license or resale rights. I am waiting for him to answer.In the same line, but FREE, there is a module for Joomla OS (Open Source content manager): ClickBank Affiliate Advert Module (http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,978/Itemid,35/) . I don't completely like it due to two things: the first one is that it is mined with ads of the writer and the second one is that it pulls the info from the xml given by Clickbank, so what appears in the ad is the pitch given to catch affiliates, not public. Now, like Clickbank doesn't seem to ask for promotional text, that is the best you can get. I am not sure how CB Context solves that problem, the sample page seems to be end user oriented, but I recommend you to check that point carefully, it has 30 days money back. What I do like of the module is that you choose the category and subcategory of the ads displayed so you don't need to spend so much time creating keyword packed content. You can see it working right here under the text for the Category Marketing & Ads and the Subcategory Ezines. Blog - Tech Sun, 15 Oct 2006 08:36:33 +0100