Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

I am both a consumer and a marketer. I buy frequently online because I hate to shop. Before the advent of the Internet, I bought everything I own through printed catalogs and customer service telephone lines. Ordering online is easier and faster, assuming good site navigation and minimal credit card snags.

I market two books, an e-zine, various free reports, and some affiliate products. Over the past 12 to 18 months, since my first website launched and I dipped a toe into the murky waters of e-commerce, I have encountered the experience of a lifetime.

I have been suckered, lied to, and exploited. I have also met some wonderful, friendly people who gave me value for my money, a wealth of support, and a helping hand. I have received some heart-warming expressions of gratitude for ideas I have introduced and articles I have written. I have been moved by the plight of some readers who dwell in difficult circumstances far from the sunlit uplands where the marketing gurus reside.

I wrote this report after thinking about what I, as a typical Internet customer, really want. I hope that it strikes a chord with you also and that much of what I demand overlaps with your own needs.

I attempted to boil down everything into one or two axioms of online customer service, some rules and structure that would bridge the gap between passive and active, giving and receiving, and buying and selling. This is what I found:

1. Honesty.

Nothing negative can connect to an honest message. We may or may not be interested but we will always deal respectfully with honest and forthright material. We have nothing but admiration for those willing to express an important opinion, no matter who may take offense. Conversely, we are sickened by lies, twisted information, and misleading communications. When a plea for disaster donations involves the purchase of something to make a few extra bucks for a sales guru, we recoil in revulsion. When we are promised the universe and delivered an asteroid, we shrink in spirit and goodwill and all of us are diminished.

Life is too short and our time too precious to waste it on the snake oil salesmen who will eventually choke on the toxicity of their own wares.

2. Creativity and Novelty.

There are those who constantly create, ideas and products streaming from that black pearl of evolution, the human brain. There are those who destroy what they fear, what they cannot understand, what they cannot have, and what they can never appreciate. And then there is the vast majority between the two extremes, those who consume, badly or responsibly, what others have created.

We need a regular flow of creators to expand our lives and hold back the darkness. We need intelligent consumers to spread the creations of the few throughout the world. The best idea or product is meaningless if no one is aware of it. We need to identify where we fit in - perhaps as a creator in one field, occasionally a destroyer in another, and a consumer most of the time.

Problems arise when we get mixed up in our real role. If I don’t create something, then it is not mine. I may market it, sell it, publicize it, but I can’t legitimately take credit for its appearance. That is the basis for copyright laws and legal patents. From music to written material to software and products, the Net has struggled with the concept of ownership and its frequent infringement. The online world is so vast and virtually limitless that we are in desperate need for every genuine creator we can find. We need to nurture their genius rather than co-opting and diluting it through misleading intrusion into the works of others.

3. Respect.

If we truly respect each other, the proverbial con job has no place to rear its ugly little head. There is room for everyone because we all whistle a different tune and choose different road to reach disparate destinations.

Within a framework of mutual respect, we no longer encounter winners and losers. We overcome obstacles, solve problems, and forge new answers by working with each other rather than at cross purposes.

Life is a tremendous game. When we play it in such a manner that all can win, we have beaten the game at last.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

There are three basic rights you should know about when it comes to resale rights marketing.

These are:

resale rights
master resale rights
private label rights

Whenever you purchase a product with resale rights, you will only have the license to sell the said product to other people. When you purchase a product with master resale rights, you will have the license to sell the product to other people, and you will also have the option to sell the resale right for the same product as well.

This means that the people to whom you sell the resale rights of the product whose master resale rights you own will consequently acquire the license to sell the said product to other people. Confusing as this may sound, our focus for this article are private label rights which, of the three rights mentioned above, is undoubtedly the most empowering and the most profitable.

Private label rights are embodied in a license that comes with an information product you may be able to purchase. These rights would allow you to alter, modify, enhance and rearrange the contents of the said product to suit your own needs and wishes. What exactly does this mean? With private label rights, you could divide the chapters of, say, an eBook, and sell them as a series of articles.

The reverse is also true. If you purchased a set of articles with accompanying private label rights, you could compile them into one nifty and seemingly novel eBook or special report. Better yet, you could add any information on the said information product, without having to seek the permission of the original author. You feel that one section is wanting in details? You could freely insert your own additions! But the best part of information products with private label rights is that, in most cases, you could put your name as the author of the work, without having to pay royalties or ghostwriting charges to the original author.

There are many benefits to private label rights. Some are quite apparent. Others only manifest after a deeper scrutiny. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Private label rights would allow you to come up with a variety of new products from the original source. Being empowered to alter the contents to suit your needs, you have the liberty to repackage them as novel offers for different markets.

Private label rights would allow you to improve on a work that you may have found lacking. Tired of purchasing products to sell, when such products do not meet your standards of quality and they are disappointingly unalterable? You won’t have to worry about such with private label rights. You have the freedom to change and improve on what is written as you see fit. Private label rights are perfect for branding yourself and your business. You need to get the word out about your online venture.

Purchasing a number of information products with private label rights and naming them as your own would impress upon the online world that you are an expert in your chosen field, and they would trust you more easily when the need arises to procure your services or avail of your products.

The purchaser is not the only person who stands to earn from private label rights, however. An information product creator can also consider this route if he wishes to make some fast money. The information product creator can offer the private label rights to his works at a substantially higher price, considering all the perks that are attached to it. There has been an age old debate as to whether or not a creator should sell the private label rights for his products.

Though there are many schools of thought on the matter, the following scenario seems to be the most beneficial for the information product creator: he should sell the private label rights for his products only when the same is nearing the end of its market life.

At this point, it is widely believed that the product has already been squeezed dry of its moneymaking potentials, and by allowing other people to alter it in creative ways, the said product might find new life in different markets.

Private label rights are excellent offerings in the world of Internet marketing. When you encounter a hot commodity that would give you the liberty to alter its essence and call it your own, it is very much worth your time to study the profitability of purchasing the same. Offers this good don’t come everyday.

Paul Duxbury runs a number of successful income generating websites. He has recently launched http://www.web-success.co.uk which provides free information on running an online or home based business.

Building a good email list of customers or partners forms is the integral part of doing business in long term. All websites cannot make it to the top of the search results of major search engines. Building a mailing list of interested customers can evade many of the ill effects of not getting to the top of search listings. With a little effort you can collect the email addresses of potential customers. But to build a good mailing list, you need to give something before you get the email addresses. You can offer free tips related to the products you sell or careful advices regarding the service you give. Offering a free e-book with useful information is also a good method of building a business mailing list.

With the stringent laws to fight the big enemy called spam, business houses need to take extreme care that the emails they send out don’t fall to the category of spam mails. You need to implement good measures for careful email list management. With each email you send out, you need to provide an ‘unsubscribe’ or ‘opt out’ option. This is mandatory by the rule of the land.

Managing a business mailing list is always going to be a tough task. Updating, omissions, categorization of the list is necessary. While building an email list or mailing list, the categorization based on location, products and the income stream of the potential customers is important. New enterprises always shall take time to develop a profitable mailing list.

While maintaining a mailing list, it is always necessary to send only targeted mails according to the preferences and interests of the receivers. If you use the mailing list only to promote your products, chances are higher that the receivers will opt out of your business mailing list. Mailing list management is also about sending out useful tips and information that is important for the receiver.

Building a long mailing list from which you can reap profits is a time consuming task. You need to do some search engine optimization works so that your website appears in front of the interested users while they make a search. Give a solid reason for the visitors to sign up for your periodic newsletter. Make the suggestion that you regularly come up with useful suggestions, tips and techniques related to their field of interest.

The spending capacity of the individuals, geographic location, preferences of making online purchases etc need to be assessed to gauge the efficiency of your mailing list.

Giving enough stress to building a strong email list through which you can promote your products or affiliate products somehow minimizes your dependency on costly pay per click advertising to attract traffic to your site. All the receivers may not make a purchase every time you send out an offer. You can also go without a minimum number of sales if you maintain a strong mailing list of qualified customers.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:

Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of
Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information
and recommends Marble Host for reliable Web Hosting.

Every respectable company has a marketing department, responsible for advertising products or services a company proposes. More or less developed, they function to increase the sales level at the market. Those working at such difficult task should be efficient and experienced salesman, for today’s market is very tight and leaders in every industry are pretty much established. To fight and compete against rivals managers are to seek alternative and effective ways to reach their aim and bring popularity to the product or service. This is where companies providing copywriting expert services appear on stage.

It is quite easy to find a company that offers such kind of services. Online you may find various sites advertising copywriting online services of leaders in this business. But finding and explaining what is required is not enough if you want this project to be successful. Steadfast cooperation with representatives of copywriting business will bring success to the whole project. It is extremely important to trace all actions of a copywriter to be informed about every step of the process. A copywriter is a professional that orients on the online market, but you are the one who has every single detail about the product or service. Apart from copywriting skills, successful copywriter should also understand some vital features of effective online marketing. What he should do?! First of all, whether he develops the contact for your web site or juts some logo fro it, he must always remember that your company, unless it is a monopolist, faces fierce competition in the market and thus it must always stay out from your competitors.

Second, in spite of the fact that repetition should be avoided as much as possible it, it might be advisable nevertheless that your design and content remind constantly to the visitor of your web site what business you operate. Third, investigate and compare how the quality of your visual materials, such as graphs, visual materials and texts match current requirements and trends in the industry. Fourth, copywriter should try to keep himself abreast of the latest changes in the content writing industry. He should understand the changes that occur in the industry, why have occurred and what may happen in the nearest future.

Peter Finers is a senior copywriter at Killer-Content.com - Web copywriting services. He has several years of experience in providing copywriting services and has completed several important projects for different companies. He also improving of the process of advertising copywriting.

In the world of ecommerce, millions of sites are fiercely competing with each other to gain new clients. For any ecommerce site to succeed, it must capture the interest and the trust of its visitors. It is not enough that your site is impeccably designed or has the latest in animation or content. You should focus your efforts not only in attracting visitors but also in leading them to make a purchase. There are dozens of marketing strategies you can use to attract more buyers and pump up your sales. One of them is by establishing an excellent and professional reputation for prompt and efficient response.

As more potential customers visit your site, you should expect a flood of inquiries and requests for information. This is an excellent opportunity for you to capture more clients and lead them to buying from your site. Thus, it is important that you carry out an efficient and prompt response to every email you receive. The fastest and most effective way to do this is by utilizing Autoresponder services.

Autoresponder services use a computer program that automatically returns a prewritten message to anyone who sends an email to your site. It is widely used for responding to consumer inquiries and visitor comments and suggestions. Autoresponder services are also used by e-zines in responding to people who subscribe or unsubscribe to their online magazines. Companies, who send out their e-newsletters regularly, also use Autoresponder services.

How can effective Autoresponder services help boost your business? The answer lies in its ability to return a prompt response to any e-mail the site receives. By responding rapidly and efficiently, you create a very good impression on your potential customer. Good Autoresponder services help you get important information back to these customers immediately. An effective Autoresponder service helps you communicate your message promptly, creating a sense of professionalism and efficiency that your clients will definitely appreciate.

Another very important advantage of Autoresponder services is that it saves time with multiple marketing tasks. Certainly, you do not have enough time to personally make and send all correspondence. Autoresponder services allows you to send thank you letters, newsletters, product information, brochures, orders etc. to hundreds of clients almost immediately and simultaneously. Autoresponder services are also indispensable in any email marketing campaign.

Choosing the right Autoresponder services is very important. What then should you look for in an Autoresponder service? First, you should pick an Autoresponder service that is reliable and can give you 24/7 service. You cannot afford to lose a customer because your Autoresponder service failed to answer his query or request for information. The ability to respond promptly is the first thing you must look for in any Autoresponder services.

Another key factor you should consider when choosing Autoresponder services is flexibility. Good Autoresponder services allow you to customize unique responses that will have maximum effect on the customer. You should avoid creating an impression that the customer is communicating with a machine instead of a real human being. Excellent Autoresponder services lets you provide the information that is specifically targeted for what the potential customers are looking for. Because any email from potential customers essentially represent the customer’s intent on getting more information about your product, which can ultimately lead to direct sales, all emails are important. Thus, a top Autoresponder service must fulfill all these duties to help you boost your business.

Dirk Wagner is the CEO of http://www.internetmarketingoasis.com and creator of the #1 IMO Marketing Toolbar with hundreds of secret resources.He is the publisher of the free home business online course at http://www.team4success.biz and also Author of several eBooks like “Cure Myopia Naturally” at http://www.curemyopianaturally.com

Drawing attention and getting opt-in subscribers is
getting more difficult - yet, your success online
depends on getting those subscribers because it is a
basis for sales generation as well as unlimited back-
end sales.

How do you then start an open fireworks that brings
in tons of opt-in subscribers to your ezine?

Here is a quick, totally practicable technique that
works like crazy.

The most important thing is to find out what your
“would-be” opt-in subscriber wants. Get into their
heads and pull it out. Simple to do if you just put
yourself in their shoes, with a little research as
back-up.

Next, get good tools for the job. People get turned
off and won’t subscribe if you do not have good
tools. For example an obviously free autoresponder or
an annoying pop-up will help people run without ever
opting in except of course.. something strong forces
them to stay.

Put up a good sales copy just as if you are advertising a full blown product. This immediately
distinguishes you from the pack because you are
giving benefits up-front. What people really want to
know is “what’s in it for me”; go ahead and tell
them.

Finally, fire up immediate opt-in by giving a bunch
of gold quality downloads for FREE. Make sure it is
something uncommon and totally irresistible.

Once they sign-up, sweeten the pot by sending a
punchy first message and finish up by promising more.
This ensures they won’t unsubscribe in a hurry after
taking all your free downloads.

(c)copyright, 2006.
Oluwafisayo Akinlolu

WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE?

Gaining your customers’ email addresses will:

• Provide an additional channel for reaching your customers
  
• Increase the ROI of your marketing investments
  
• Significantly reduce your customer acquisition and marketing costs
  
• Allow you to easily measure the impact of your marketing campaigns
  
• Increase your customer participation and retention rates

With ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting marketing budgets for many organizations this year, email marketing could become the “silver lining ” for many marketers.   But how do you create a successful email marketing campaign if you do not have a substantial email database?  That question may be one of the largest Internet related challenges facing companies this year.

Research shows that the majority of organizations have email addresses for less than 10% of their postal files.  So how do you level the playing field and start to add quality permission - based email addresses to your database?

Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build your email address database and increase your customer participation and retention rates: 

START TO ASK FOR IT!  

Every communication or touch point with a customer should start or end with a request for an email address.   By utilizing the four points below, you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of your postal file over the course of one year.

1.  Direct Mail Collection

Think about how much time and money you spent for copy and design on your last new direct mail piece.  Most companies have started to ask their customers for their email address information within these mailings.  This is a great step forward. However, companies need to look at one major improvement if they want to increase their email address collection rates. 

To date, most requests for email address information have been pushed, shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains.  It should be no surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.

To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members with a reason to release their email addresses to you.  E-newsletters, purchase confirmations, petitions, and special discounts and offers are but a few of the benefits that will encourage your members to come on board.

2.  Web Page Collection

Many companies have an email address collection function in place via the web.  To improve your sign-up rates, add text below the email request box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits that they will receive (i.e. e-newsletters, purchase confirmations, delivery updates, etc.) upon registering.  You can also utilize a pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits.

Finally, your email address request function should be available on your home page. Don’t make your users go and look for it.  Every click away from your home page reduces the chances of your users taking an action and providing you with their email address information.

3.  Existing Email Database Collection

Don’t forget to ask the members of your existing customer base for email addresses of their friends, family and associates.  Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost effective!  You could ask them either to provide you with additional addresses or simply to pass on your newsletter, email specific offers, or other information to others they feel have similar interests.

4.  Telemarketing Collection

Don’t assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email addresses from potential customers.  Ensure that your agents have an updated script, which outlines the previously described benefits to potential customers of providing their email addresses.

The suggestions above are a great start!  Yet they really should be viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database.  To exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database, please read on!

EMAIL APPENDING  

Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.

Email Appending - is the process of adding an individual’s email address to that individual’s postal record in side your existing database.  This is accomplished by matching the postal database against a third party, permission based database of postal and email address information.

Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Association of Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place that dictate that email appending only be used to append email addresses to your existing opt-in postal record house file.

The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to an email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email address match of your file against its opt-in database of postal and email address records.  Your appending provider will then send these matches a permission-based message prepared by you.  All bounces and opt-out requests will be removed from the list.  At that point a valid permission-based email address file of your customers will be delivered back to you. 

Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!

IN SUMMARY

The first step of any successful email marketing effort is to build a permission-based email address list of your customers.  The simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is through email appending, which will enable you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file.  Secondary efforts of email address collection via focused direct mail, web, viral and telemarketing practices are also important and will enable you to add email addresses for an additional 5% to 10% of your base on an annual basis.

Best of luck in building your email address database.  As many companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be achieved will far exceed your expectations.

Bill Kaplan
CEO
FreshAddress, Inc.

FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email deliverability services to help companies increase their e-commerce revenues.  For more information on how we can help “Build and Update” your email list, visit http://freshaddress.com/biz or email biz@freshaddress.com.

(c) 2003 FRESHADDRESS.COM 

 

Bill Kaplan is the Chief Executive Officier of FreshAddress, Inc.

FreshAddress, Inc. is a privately held company, founded in 1999, helping business and individuals stay connected when email addresses change.

>From Entity to Enterprise in 90 Days

There are many ways to create a profitable online business
ranging from free do-it-yourself instructions to the “business
in a box” solutions. Which ever method you choose, there are
proven methods of increasing the visibility of your company as
well as the amount of income it generates for you.

How do some online businesses go from relative obscurity to
household name in a very short period of time? While the number
one answer might be advertising, it is also the most expensive
method of gaining recognition. It is also extremely important
that every aspect of your business model from administration to
product fulfillment is flawless as you must create credibility
to match that sudden increase in visibility.

The internet is an environment where creative genius is a
suitable substitute for cash when it comes to gaining visibility
for your company. As a matter of fact, there are many
individuals who have quickly become millionaires just by
repeatedly applying one successful business model within
different product markets. Occasionally these individuals will
share the secrets to their success for a fee, so I was
overwhelmed by the time-tested strategies and course material
which I found for absolutely no charge while researching ways to
improve my own online business.

One of the most important strategies discussed is changing your
attitude towards your competitors and viewing your competitors
as potential partners. It is important to have some service or
product that you are willing to cross promote with them, for a
commission of course, but even more importantly for the exposure
to their customer base. Since there is no brick and mortar
presence, your business can only grow by exposure to new
potential clients. It may cost you a small percentage of your
first sale, but a large percentage of satisfied customers will
return. It is a difficult concept for a new online business
owner to grasp, but the majority of your company’s value is
determined by the size of your customer database. The faster you
build your client base, the faster you will catapult your income
to seven figures or more. I would guess that the thing to do
would be to partner with as many companies as possible, as
quickly as possible, and then position your self for total
domination.

Marketing online is so much different than I would ever have
imagined. The whole concept of the more you give, the more you
get, is so foreign in the physical world, but a necessary tactic
of online survival. Another way of increasing your customer base
is through the use of viral marketing. I know that it sounds
like you are spreading a contagion, but that is in fact the
concept. In a nutshell, you create an information product for
whatever your market happens to be. As you are writing it, think
about how much it would be worth if you sold it. Once you are
satisfied that you have created a premium product, make certain
that your name and contact information appear in various
conspicuous places, and give it away. Not only can you literally
trade it for a prospect’s name and email address, but you can
encourage them to pass it on to their friends. Ideally, a file
which requires their name and email to unlock it would be
something to consider.

Hopefully, this information will also help you with increasing
your business. Best of luck to you.

Joseph Napolitano

This barely scratches the surface as to what is available at
… http://www.InternetProfitMentor.com …as well as 12 Hours
of really instructive videos.

“Viral Marketing” is the latest buzzword for the oldest form of
promotion in the world… “Referral” or “Word of Mouth.”

With a click of the “SEND” button, Internet e-mail enables people
to quickly and easily refer things to their friends and families.
These e-mail messages often spread rapidly through the Internet and
to the far-reaching corners of the world.

Many smart marketers have learned to harness the power of viral
marketing with “eBooks,” the Internet’s digital equivalent of the
paper book. Two stand-up comedians from San Diego, California say
they were surprised when they accidentally discovered this powerful
phenomenon.

Steve Roye and Paul Stoecklein were trying to think of ways to
Promote their new web site (killerstandup.com) when one simple
idea caused an unexpected result.

“At first, we didn’t know what we had,” says Roye. “And when it
finally dawned on us, we were shocked to discover that nobody else
was doing it.”

VIRAL MARKETING STRATEGY:

The idea is very simple. Roye and Stoecklein created a second
Website called FreeJokeBooks.com http://www.freejokebooks.com/

FreeJokeBooks.com offers free downloadable joke books and humorous
tales in the form of executable files. Created with the help of a
compiler, the eBooks look like individual web sites. These eBooks
circulate via email and feed traffic back to both web sites through
hyperlinks.

“The embarrassing thing is,” said Stoecklein, “I didn’t really
consider the email part of it at first. I just thought of the books
as freebies to give people and hope they might come back to one of
the sites. End of story. I really didn’t consider the viral effect
these things are having.”

Although the idea seems painfully simple, it appears to be
uncharted territory. Many people circulate jokes over the Internet
as a marketing tool, and many people circulate eBooks, but nobody
seems to be circulating joke eBooks - until now. Stoecklein says
that their eBooks take advantage of the massive appeal of humor,
but he stresses that the hyperlinks in their books are not deleted
by readers like they are in regular email jokes. Therefore, the
potential for subsequent web site traffic is much greater.

RESULTS:

Roye and Stoecklein launched freejokebooks.com on March 3, 2001 by
sending one of their eBooks to just a handful of friends and family
members. Within days, they had recorded over 30,000 hits from
several countries all over the world.

“We hardly did anything!” says Roye. “Within hours, we had people
in Finland reading our books. I don’t know about you, but I don’t
know anybody in Finland… Fresno yes, Finland no.”

While the forecast may look good for freejokebooks.com, the two
comedians admit that everything is far from perfect and that they
are continuously perfecting the concept.

“We’re learning as we go,” Roye says. “We’re comedians, not
Internet experts. Our biggest flaw is that we often ignore the
rules.” And what is their biggest strength?

“We often ignore the rules,” he smiles.

About the Author

Matt Hockin - Interactive Marketing, Inc. matthockin@home.com
For information about the best viral marketing resources
and techniques available on the Internet, send e-mail to:
mailto:matthockin@home.com?&subject=Send%20Viral%20Marketing%20Info

The ad tracker was originally developed to provide a record
of all hits to a site resulting from ad placements. This
article shows a host of different ways to utilise an ad
tracker.

FOR AFFILIATES

1. The Long Url Problem

Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this

http://www/anysite.com/cgi-bin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=123RT&type=102
35&subid=89715

Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?

Probably not.

And that’s probably one lost sale.

And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.

The solution: use a short tracking URL.

2. Losing Your Affiliate Code

As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:

http://www.abc.com/123

Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agent’s commission)

The solution: use a tracking URL - so that your affiliate code number is never seen.

3. Make Your Ad Stand Out

You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.

Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.

4. How Effective Are The Links

You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.

5. Changing Links

If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless. But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.

6. Affiliate Program Discontinued

Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.

7. Better Affiliate Stats

Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors. And if they do are they adequate ?

Compare a basic monthly figure say
- Jan: 39 hits

with a detailed analysis such as

- Jan 12: 10 hits
- Jan 13: 2 hits
- Jan 20: 21 hits
- Jan 21: 6 hits

where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.

Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.

8. Checking Affiliate Stats

Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that you can compare your figures with theirs.

A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or (hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.

An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start, indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is taking too long to load.

FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS

9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports

If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking URLs and Email them the results.

Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your advertising guidelines

- They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for better performance

- If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more inclined to click

- They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their ads until they are happy, before launching with other publishers

10. Use Tracking Report Results

The tracking reports above will provide you with information on your subscribers’ interests, influencing your editorial content and helping you select which potential advertisers to approach.

Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a program and promote it to them.

11. Measure Your Readership

You may know how many subscribers you have but how many actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it attract most attention ?

Here’s how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a tracking URL.

For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but there’s a huge problem. You have given out the URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. There’s no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same but they will redirect to your new page.

13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on the most ?

Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are the most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the same way as for ezine publishers (above).

15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links it’s very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy - because the ad tracking program will record the referring URL.

At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of the directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with the engine’s and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

- newspapers
- magazines
- flyers
- billboards
- press releases
- shop notice boards
- and so on

19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check the progress of your ads, for example

- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?
- has your billboard notice been removed ?
- how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study the response and switch the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.

21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect the reader to other pages of your site by changing the tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and - for reasons of your own - not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name is used in the tracking URL.

About the author:

For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use an ad tracker see Harvey’s free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html

Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL to point to their own rebranded version.