Small Business Information

If you’re involved in affiliate marketing and you have the misfortune to live in New York State then this post that outlines the message sent out to merchants from LinkConnector is definitely worth reading.

If you’re an affiliate marketer and you don’t live in New York State then I don’t think you have any cause to feel smug. Once one state makes a grab for extra revenue by imposing a tax on Internet sales then every state … and every country for that matter … will want join in.

There’s an interesting article on geotargeting over on ClickZ today where the author claims that Geotargeting has come of age in e-commerce. Well maybe it has in the United States but if you’re marketing to places outside of the US then don’t believe the hype it’s not very accurate just yet.

Here in Australia a geotargeted ad can be so wrong that it can make you laugh instead of buy. Not only can a geotargeted ad be out by hundreds of kilometres but, because of the way our system is set up here, locality names can be used that are basically meaningless to consumers.

One day things might change but we’re not there yet.

Christmas can be a very busy time if you’re selling online and, while Christmas is just about over for this year, it’s never too late to get some great tips that will help improve your sales next Christmas.

You’ll find 50 of them here and now is the perfect time to start preparing for next Christmas.

It’s been a rather hectic couple of weeks as we deal with an increasing workload and a move to new premises but finally there’s a few minutes to do a brain doodle here.

During these last few weeks we were approached by one of our clients who had us previously employed us top build their website for them. If you’re interested you can see it at Aquavue - the best cafe in Hervey Bay.

They wanted to know what we thought of an offer they had received from a company that wanted to enlist them as affiliates.

For a start our client sells his products on his site so he’s hardly going to use it as a vehicle to market someone else’s product but we decided to take a closer look at the company making the offer anyway.

Here is what we found:

1. They didn’t show you the terms of service until you had already signed up and gained access to the affiliates area
2. They paid 10% commission - but buried further down in the terms was a note that they only paid 8% if their product was purchased using a credit card (how else could anyone pay online for what they were selling you may well ask)
3. Every time they sent you a cheque they deducted a further $2.00 for the cost of issuing the cheque and posting it to you.
4. The title of your page had to include their name - a nice little branding exercise that was sure to work for them and make them look as though they owned our client’s website.

Would you trust a merchant like that?

You can probably guess what our recommendation was.

There are a lot of affiliates who are involved in marketing mortgage products so there should be a lot of very nervous people watching what’s happening in the States right now.

But what’s happening over there isn’t just affecting the sale of mortgage products, there’s a flow-on effect that’s affecting people in all sorts of jobs and eventually that is going to impact on all affiliate marketers. Of course there are those who are suggesting that the sub-prime meltdown isn’t going to bother the online advertising industry all that much and you can read one of those boosters here but somehow I think that this is not a whole lot more than wishful thinking.

Even today, here in Australia, our stock markets are down because there have been more jitters in the United States over the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Unfortunately I think that this is something that’s not going to go get better any time soon but the affect on countries like Australia may not be as bad things look right now.

One of our leading industrial giants is focusing its attention on China and even  though that’s a hard market for affiliates to sell into it might be something that’s worth looking at.

So many people come into the online affiliate industry thinking that they can make a fortune simply by throwing up a few banners. Sadly there are some major sponsors out there who seem to think the same thing.

If only they would understand that most surfers are blind to banners and there are better ways of advertising their products than by using banners. Perhaps we should all be pointing our sponsors to the latest report by Jakob Nielsen; you can find it here and it should make you think twice about using banners in future.

You’ll also find an interesting little gem tucked away in that article about navigation too

What do you do when you find that one of your merchants - or a range of products that you might be selling online - starts getting a lot of bad press?

Do you temporarily pull your - or is that just a waste of time? Do you run away from the product or merchant and never touch them again? Do you do nothing and hope that it all goes away?

Over the weekend boat licences has become a rather hot topic here in the part of Australia where I live and that occurred just at the same time that one of our clients was starting to promote that aspect of their business. So I wrote to the company that our client is the local agent for and asked what they intended to do so that we didn’t step on their toes at a local level and got this reply.

I’ve been in this business for 13 years and seen similar incidents. President Bush arrives today for APEC, so by tonight everyone will have completely forgotten the accident.

Completely ignore it and go along as planned. Todays news is tomorrow’s chips paper

I think that there’s a lot of wisdom there and I think it certainly applies in this instance … but I don’t think it will apply to every instance that affiliates are going to face. Developing the skills to know which form of damage control should be applied when problems do arise is very important for affilaites and something that is really up to the individual.

Targeting Nostalgic Consumers is an interesting post over on Small Business Trends. While the post is mostly aimed at small business people who might be likely to produce or retail nostalgic items there’s no reason why it isn’t something that affiliate marketers should be targeting too.

Sometimes Bloglines really annoys me when it can’t seem to remember what I’ve read and what I haven’t but then other times I love it because it holds on to old stuff that I haven’t read and some of those old entries are absolute gems.

Here’s one I found buried in my reader today. If you live or die by affiliate marketing then you really need to read How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution

If you’re involved in affiliate marketing then you will always be interested in reading what experts may suggest is the future for your profession. Now someone with some idea of what’s ahead has been interviewed and you’ll find what he has to say in Future Trends in Affiliate Marketing and the Web