December 1st, 2009
Salesmanship has always been a little bit about hype. Putting a shine on what you’ve got. Painting it in the best possible light. You get the idea. But when it crosses a line, it becomes fooling your customers. Not only is it unethical, but it doesn’t really work very well anymore. The Internet makes it a lot harder to do than it once was, because you don’t have to fool just one customer. You have to fool all of them. Because if anyone figures out your trick, they tell everyone online. So, how good is your magic act?
All this was brought to mind last weekend as my wife looked over our credit card bill. She saw a small charge that just didn’t look right to her and she questioned me and our kids as to what this might be. No one knew.
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November 17th, 2009
There’s a lot of talk around the interwebs about building a business by making passive income. You know — the kind of income that brings sales into your business when you’re sleeping and turns your email box into a cash register — ka-ching, ka-ching! For most people that means they need to become affiliated with another company and promote that company’s products. Online, this is called affiliate marketing and there are tons of people silently creating successful businesses using this model.
One of the most successful is Rosalind Gardner, author of the Super Affiliate Handbook. Ros actually built her business using the affiliate marketing model and then wrote a book about it. She’s what they call a “super” affiliate. And because of her book, countless numbers of small business owners are using this model to find success online. I’ve had my share of success with affiliate marketing and creating passive income streams, so I know it works.
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November 10th, 2009
The $500bn global marketing industry is driven by metrics. TVRs, GRs, OTS, TGI, ABC, BARB, CPC, CPA, PI, CPM, frequency, benchmarking, response, reach, hits – the range of measurement systems has exploded as the complexity of marketing continues to increase. Which has led to a gaming mentality among some parts of the industry, where almost any activity can be shown to be successful. If it looks like a campaign isn’t working it doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. It means you’re standing in the wrong spot.
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October 27th, 2009
Internet marketers can take a leaf out of the movie “Peaceful Warrior” and apply techniques for success to their marketing campaigns.
Based on a book by 1964 World Trampoline Championship winner and co-captain of the 1968 NCAA University of California gymnastics team, Dan Millman, the movie Peaceful Warrior contains a number of success lessons.
Dan Millman’s the author of 14 self-improvement books and has served as director of gymnastics at Stanford University and as assistant professor of physical education at Oberlin College.
Here’re some lessons from the movie:
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October 13th, 2009
The latest IPA/BDO Bellwether survey published today (12th October 2009) indicates that marketing spend in the UK fell for the eighth quarter running in Q3 but with the smallest reduction in budgets in over a year.
The survey showed that online marketing budgets have returned to growth, though all other budget categories are still on a downward trend.
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September 14th, 2009
If ever a cause was near & dear to me, this is definitely one of them. As an affiliate manager, affiliate marketing is my livelihood. Over the last year, several states have introduced legislation defining affiliates as tax nexus for businesses. This means that if a merchant has affiliates in a state with this kind of law, they are required to charge sales tax for all online orders made to customers in that state.
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