2009’s Biggest Developments That Impacted Affiliate Marketers

This is a very interesting post written by Mark Roth at www.offervault.com/blog that I wanted to share with all of you.

As far as the economy, the year 2009 will be remembered for a gigantic unemployment rate and reduced spending by businesses across a wide swath of industries, and yet at the same time, a stock market that came roaring back with a vengeance. Since the 2009 economy experienced such dire straits, many who lost jobs or simply needed extra income flocked to affiliate marketing. This boost in affiliates caused a lot of information products to sell really well in the early part of 2009, including eBooks, video tutorials, and coaching services from the industries top gurus. The rough economy also helped these same affiliates put their new knowledge to work promoting biz opp offers to the broader pool of biz opp seekers looking for any number of ways to replace lost or reduced incomes. Of course the new influx of affiliates also made for a much more competitive landscape with more and more affiliates vying for their share of the traffic pie.

Social Media Buzz

For many affiliates, 2009 shone a guiding light on Twitter and Facebook. Who doesn’t know the name Twitter? Even grandmothers have heard the term from popular news media outlets embracing the medium. Even Larry King is on it at this point. What more do you need to say. Affiliates found they could take advantage of a large following by plugging the occasional affiliate link, and many put forth more focused efforts, building and monetizing large numbers of followers.
2009 was the year that Facebook exploded almost beyond imagination, breaking past 300 million users. Affiliates have seized the opportunity aggressively, both with Facebook’s paid advertising platform and with creative use of groups and fan pages.

Federal Trade Commission Guidelines

The FTC’s new regulations have affected everyone in the online advertising world including affiliates. Yes, we all need to change the way we use testimonials and yes we need to be sure we are fully disclosing out “material” relationships, but we will adapt and life will move forward, and we will continue to make money online.

State Sales Tax

One of the most disconcerting developments to hammer the affiliate marketing world in 2008 continued to have repercussions in 2009.

Other states have joined New York or are considering it, including California, North Carolina, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. The states have decided that sales tax must be collected for sales in which the affiliate resides in their state. This in turn has caused some major online retailers to ban affiliates who reside in these states. Many industry organizations are hard at work battling the states on this, but the fight is likely to go on for some time to come.

eBay’s Affiliate Debacle

In October of 2009, eBay decided to move their affiliate model from a percentage of the sale to a varied per click value determined each day. As a result, profits from many established affiliates plummeted. Thousands upon thousands of affiliate marketers showcased their disgust for eBay through their blogs, Twitter feeds, and elsewhere on the web. But it changed nothing. eBay’s new affiliate program took shape, and they likely lost a good portion of their loyal affiliates as a result. Somehow it always seems that companies get dumber as they grow larger.

Video

It seems that video reached a critical mass at some point in 2009. Top marketers have embraced the medium on their sales pages and elsewhere as tools to boost conversion as well as to boost rankings and traffic. Video is no longer something extra or nice to find when consumers arrive at your site, it is expected, and, it works.

Mobile

2009 was more of a foundational year for mobile marketing in general and for affiliate mobile marketing in particular. By that I mean that all the necessary pieces came largely together in 2009, to make 2010 the year when we will really start to see things happen in mobile. The components of that foundation include the widespread proliferation of smart phones, particularly the iPhone and more recently, devices powered by Google’s Android OS, and the increase in bandwidth that resulted from the major carriers’ migration to 3G networks. Of course any talk of mobile in 2009 would have to include iPhone (and to a lesser degree Android) Apps. The Apple App store now has somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000 apps. Look for smart affiliate marketers to employee the use of Apps to make money with mobile marketing. With these pieces of the puzzle now in place, 2010 may finally be able to lay claim to that fabled moniker “the year of mobile”.

Google Slaps

For affiliates who rely on Google Adwords as a main source of traffic, 2009 was a pretty rough year. Google slaps continued all year with a relentless regularity that saw many affiliate campaigns wiped out and whole accounts banned all together. While some affiliates were able to hold on and adapt to Google’s new rules, many others lost entire incomes, or fled to find other traffic sources more hospitable to affiliate marketing. The current fever for all things Pay Per View (PPV or CPV) has clearly been come about, at least partially as a result of Google’s still unfinished rampage through the affiliate landscape.

Bing

Few companies have the resources to challenge Google in the search wars, but Microsoft is one of them. 2009 saw the introduction of their new rival, Bing. It has proved to be formidable competitor and many seem to like the features and the search results. By the close of the year, Bing’s market share was at almost 11%. Microsoft continues to strike deals that should help it continue its growth, at the expense of booth Yahoo and Google. For example, they recently struck a deal with Verizon to be the default search engine on all non Android phones. While they are certainly not about to blow Google out of the water, they seem to be providing a viable alternative for some searchers. The uptake for affiliate marketers; don’t pass up on this valuable and increasing source of quality traffic.

Facebook Applications

What is Farmville? Oh, it’s just that extremely addictive Facebook game where users spent hours of their day doing chores and building their farm empire. It’s one of the hot Facebook applications for 2009. How many other online game systems can claim almost 70 million users?
The Facebook application development network also blossomed with many affiliates designing and implementing their own applications to offer tasks as simple as a survey. At the finale of the survey, when the user found out how awesome they were or which 80s star they would be, they were presented with some sort of CPA offer. In what ways will 2010 shape application development?

CPA Networks

Even before 2009 there was no shortage of CPA networks, but in 2009 it seemed that a new CPA network popped up almost daily. Many of these networks where hatched by young successful super affiliates, flush with cash from their campaigns and equally flush with confidence. As pressures mount from all sides, it will be interesting to watch the shakeout that is likely to occur. The networks left standing will no doubt have some unique qualities that help them to stand out from the crowd. Some of the more important factors will be their ability to act in an agency role – maintaining direct relationships with valuable advertisers, specialization in particular niches and verticals, willingness to deal with fraud issues and to devote significant effort to enforcing compliance, and financial stability.

Stay tuned for more as we take a look in future posts at continued issues for 2010 and beyond.

More Backlinks = More Free Traffic

If you are anything like me, then the last thing in the world you want to do is spend your time and energy building “links”.

I mean, Link Building has gotta be most tedious and BORING chore we have as online marketers, but the problem is, it’s arguably the most important if you want to rank your site and get traffic!

Before we go any further, let’s get everyone up to speed on exactly WHAT “Backlinks” are, and why they are so critical to your marketing success…

Backlinks, which are links from one site to another, count as “votes” for your website in the Search Engines.

The higher quality, higher “Page Rank” (a ranking system from 0-10 that Google assigns to websites) the website is that contains YOUR link, the more valuable the ‘vote’ is seen in the Search Engines.

If your site has a good number of these valuable ‘votes’ the Search Engines, especially Google, will put YOUR site higher in its index.

Simple, right?

Ahh – But putting it into action… Not So Much

Watch this video to see how you can automate the link building process all for one measly buck ($1)!!!  Then click the banner below to get started.

4 Power User Traffic Secrets

Ready to make a splash with your new online business?  Try these 4 power user tips first!

1. You can’t play the game without keeping up with current trends.  Social sites are taking the internet by storm, and they are the only way to truly play the game with the big dogs.  Take notice, and start targeting some of your efforts to leverage social sites for a ton of new traffic!  Learn from the best here.

2. Forums!  Although forums are kind a dying breed, they can still bring you quite a bit of traffic.  Even better is the fact that they can bring you highly targeted traffic since you are browsing topics that fit your niche.  Also try searching http://answers.yahoo.com for related niche topics.

3. Blog to build a loyal following.  The more trust you can build with your audience, the more money they spend with you later.  If an audience knows that you give great information, and you do so in an efficient manner, they’ll come back again and again.  Don’t sell – Presell.

4. Submit!  No, I’m not asking you to give up.  I want you to submit articles to directories, submit your blog to directories, and submit your links to other blogs and blog carnivals.  Submission can really bring a ton of traffic.

5 Tips For More Blog Traffic

So you are a new blogger, you have some posts, and you think they are pretty good. How do you get those posts in front of as many people as possible so that you can make the most money from the least amount of work? It’s not as hard as you may think.  Here are five tips for more blog traffic:

1. Provide great information, FOR FREE! - Let’s face it, people like getting something for nothing.  The more value you can give away free, the more inherent value it gives the things that you are trying to sell.  It’s the mindset of, “if they give this much away for free, imagine how much information is in the paid stuff!”.

2. Comment On Other Blogs - Get off your butt and go meet your fellow bloggers. Not only are you building relationships that can be beneficial down the road, you are also leaving a link to your blog when you do it.  This brings traffic, and traffic equals money!

3. Respond to Your Own Comments – If someone takes the time to comment, it’s your responsibility to answer any questions they may have.  Always reply to comments!

4. Write with the Promise of More - Leave them hanging.  The readers love to hate posts that are continued, or that leave them on the edge of their seats.  Like mom always said, “leave ‘em wanting more”!

5. Use Social Bookmarking Sites - I shouldn’t even have to tell you that Digg and Stumpleupon can bring tens of thousands of visitors to your site, every single month.  Why not spend the time?

Simple SEO Makes Your Site A Traffic Powerhouse!

You really want to make money online right?  Then why are you paying hundreds of dollars every month on content, and neglecting things like SEO that really make you money?  It baffles me time and again when I see new bloggers paying for things that don’t help their site earn money.  Themes, fancy plugins, graphic work… none of this helps your business as much as SEO!  Although they are all nice to have, wouldn’t you rather spend money on something that was going to improve your bottom line?

I thought so!

The most overlooked portion of seo is simple work with tags.  Whether it be meta tags, or image tags, these should never be left behind.  Tagging isn’t nearly as effective as it was a few years ago, but every little bit helps, and this only takes a few seconds.

The next thing you are going to want to focus on is on page optimization.  This includes proper use of the h1 tag, making sure that all html is correct, and using a proper sitemap, and robots.txt file.  All of these things are very simple, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on them.  Some of these terms can sound scary, but I can assure you that they aren’t.  Do a simple Google search and you’ll see exactly what I mean.  All of this information is readily available, and it’s super easy to implement it.

Now that we have our page optimized, let’s talk links.  Links are the lifeblood of SEO, and it’s impossible to have great rankings on competitive terms without them.  Links are like units of trust to a search engine.  The more links you have, the more important your site is to the internet (in their eyes).  Unfortunately, this system is easily gamed.  All links aren’t created equal, and SEO guys know this.  Links from high ranking authority sites such as Wikipedia are very valuable, while links from your brothers personal blog probably aren’t.  High ranking sites such as .edu, and .gov sites are absolute gold to the SEO guy.  Get your hands on as many good links as possible and you’ll have some great results.

Build links and optimize, you’ll see traffic sooner rather than later!  To automate this process and turn  40 hours of work into 2, click here.