Sage-Hearts.com
| Owner: | Rosalind Gardner |
| Launched: | 1998 |
| Revenue: | $30,000 to $50,000 US per month in affiliate commissions with a 40% to 50% profit margin |
| Traffic: | 4,500 unique visitors per day / 135,000 unique visitors per month |
| Target Market: | Adults seeking pen pals, friends, lovers, soul mates or activity partners |
| Product/Services Offered: | Reviews a variety of dating and matchmaking services. Generates 100% of revenue through the affiliate commissions earned recommending these sites and services. Site also includes various dating-related articles, an opt-in newsletter, and book reviews |
Strategies You Can Apply To Your Business:
As a "super-affiliate," Rosalind in generating between $30,000 and $50,000 US per month in affiliate commissions — with a hefty 40% to 50% profit margin. So she obviously knows what she's talking about when it comes to affiliate promotion strategies...
1. Traffic generation strategies:
Rosalind points out that generating a high volume of traffic for your web site is one of the first keys to earning top commissions with affiliate programs. And the #1 strategy she's using to attract over 4,500 unique visitors to her site per day is pay-per-click advertising — with Google AdWords Select as well as with the pay-per-click search engines Overture, FindWhat, and 7Search.com.
Now, obviously not everyone can afford to spend thousands of dollars each month on pay-per-click advertising like Rosalind is doing (at least not right away). And some folks who have dabbled a bit with the pay-per-click search engines will swear up and down that you'll only LOSE money them, which indicates that successfully generating traffic this way takes a bit more effort and strategy than simply placing the ad. So how can Rosalind afford to advertise with pay-per-click search engines? And why is she so successful? Two reasons:
Rosalind has an accurate picture of what a single visitor to her web site is worth. Do you know what a single visitor to your web site is worth? If you don't, you need to figure this out before you EVER pay for any sort of advertising. Because if a single visitor to your site is worth, say, 75 cents, but you're paying 95 cents per visitor with advertising, you're LOSING money! To quit guessing and accurately determine what a single visitor to your web site is worth, click here now to check out an important article that will explain, step-by-step, exactly how to calculate this important figure.
Rosalind carefully tracks the results of her pay-per-click campaigns. It doesn't take her long — only a few hours each week — but it's time well spent. She can drop bids that aren't generating the kind of results she needs, research new keywords, and spot new trends. As Rosalind mentions, both Overture and Google AdWords Select offer automatic bid-managment tools. The bottom line is, successful advertisers like Rosalind base their pay-per-click campaign decisions on exact figures — not vague estimations.
2. Affiliate promotion strategies:
Rosalind agrees that a big part of being successful with affiliate promotions is knowing how to choose affiliate programs that offer a great product AND that are reputable. Through her personal experience, she's put together the following list of points that you should research before joining any affiliate program (review the interview for a more detailed description of each):
Rosalind advises that you can avoid most "cheater programs" by making sure that you read their affiliate agreement in detail before signing up, by doing a few "test" promotions to make sure that you receive your commission checks on time, and by making sure that the program manager is easy to contact. She also points out that her top earning affiliate products are those that she strongly recommends with text links on the homepage of her site. Her testing has shown that banners don't pull nearly the same results as a personal text link.
3. Automation strategies:
Finally, Rosalind discusses a number of valuable automation strategies and resources that she uses to free up her time so that she can concentrate on more lucrative tasks:
In order to spend more time focusing on her pay-per-click advertising campaigns, Rosalind uses search engine submission software to submit her pages to the search engines. She has the software set to run automatically every day.
To automate opt-in subscribers to her newsletters and deliver a follow-up series of articles, Rosalind uses an autoresponder service. She's also using this service to automatically send out one immediate message to new subscribers on sign-up, and send extra messages to her entire list.
She's using an Excel spreadsheet she's designed herself to track the results from the multiple affiliate programs she belongs to.
Rosalind uses PayPal to process credit card transactions when selling her own products. She points out that their system allows her to include a "thank you" letter when a sale completes successfully, along with product download instructions and contact information. She says this has dramatically decreased the refund requests she receives.
She uses Eudora's stationery feature to draft standard replies to common questions in order to reduce the time she spends on customer service.
And finally, she uses WordTracker for trend-spotting. Their free ticker service shows the top 50 search terms for various search engine voyeurs and metacrawlers for the past 24 hours and is updated daily. And their paid service is great for ferreting out keyword permutations people use to search the engines.
Click Here Now: http://www.marketingtips.com/wealthvideos/t/862721
"How to Direct Qualified Buyers STRAIGHT to
Your Product or Service by Getting Listed on the
Shopping Bot Sites!"
Looking for a great source of extra traffic for your web site? Interested in attracting qualified buyers to your product or service? Searching for a cheap (or even free) method of marketing your product or service?
If you're an online business owner, you know that attracting qualified traffic -- people who are already interested in buying your product or service -- is fundamental to your success. That's why I wanted to tell you about an increasingly popular way to get that cheap, qualified traffic you're always after. They're called "shopping bots" and they're becoming more valuable all the time.
1. What Exactly Is a "Shopping Bot?"
Shopping bots are basically like search engines except that, instead of finding information, they are designed to help shoppers find the products or services they are looking for on the Internet. In much the same way as search engines provide searchers with links to web sites, shopping bot sites list specific product information so shoppers can compare features and prices.
And this means that shopping bots can be an excellent way for your potential customers to find out exactly what you have to offer -- and how to get it.
2. What Are the Benefits of Registering with a Shopping Bot Site?
Shopping bots are a cheap (or, in some cases, free) way to gain "extra" exposure for your product. In fact, it is often easier and cheaper to rank at the top of competitive categories in the shopping bots than in the search engines.
Most shopping bot sites will display ads to potential customers in an appealing, easy-to-understand format, making these sites increasingly popular places for savvy consumers to conduct their product research.
If your product or service is competitively priced or offers buyers a unique or compelling benefit, and if you have a well-written ad, standing out from your competition will be a piece of cake.
Best of all, though, shopping bots can be a great place for business owners struggling to stand out in competitive markets to capture the eyeballs of qualified potential customers -- without spending more than you can afford for the more popular pay-per-click ads like Overture and Google AdWords.
3. How Do I Get My Site Registered?
Though one shopping bot site differs slightly from the next, registering your web site and products with most of them is usually pretty easy. Here are the basic rules you need to follow to get your ad placed on a shopping bot site:
| Product URL | ||||
| http://www.fitnessnyou.com/book14.html | ||||
| Prod. Name | Product Description | Category | Price | Avail. |
| Shake it up! | Meal Replacement Drink | Health & Nutrition | $40/ case of 12 | In Stock |
| IMPORTANT NOTE: Larger shopping bot sites share their listings with affiliated sites. So, for example, registering with a shopping bot site like Shopping.com, which is affiliated with DealTime.com and Epinions.com, will get you listed with the affiliated sites as well at NO EXTRA COST! |
4. Once My Product Is Listed, How Do I Get Noticed?
The best way to get your product noticed is to ensure that your ad includes clear, compelling benefits. This can make the difference between having prospective customers find you with ease or letting your ad get lost or pushed down in the search results.
Try to avoid using obscure abbreviations or product codes in your ad. For example, would you be more inclined to click on an ad that says: "Tel. blk. crdlss. 21KF4900-A" ... or an ad that reads: "900 Mhz Black Cordless Telephone" You'd pick the second ad, right? That's because it clearly states what the offer is. Shoppers will be deterred by an obscure ad, so make sure your ad is clear, compelling, and reader-friendly.
5. Where Should I Start? Which Bots Are Best?
We spent some time checking out dozens of the shopping bots on the 'Net. A number of them are good, but not all of them are worth submitting your ads to. Here are our five favourites:
Froogle still needs to work out a few bugs before it can provide shoppers with accurate search results, but it ranks in our top 5 list because it is free and there is no risk for merchants to list their products.
Although Froogle receives a whopping third position the Alexa rankings, this can be largely attributed to the enormous amount of traffic coming through Google.com.
We also found some shopping bot sites that had definite perks to them, but didn't make it into our top 5, including:
6. Final Thoughts
Using shopping bots is definitely a great way to beef up your web site traffic, bringing you qualified (i.e., interested) shoppers without costing you a lot of money.
The most important thing to remember is that not every shopping bot site works in the same way. Choosing the one that suits your product or service will be crucial to the success of your ad.
And while shopping bots are an excellent source of cheap, qualified traffic, be sure you don't limit yourself to this one tool! Used properly, shopping bots can be a great addition to your online ad campaigns and can nicely complement your other marketing efforts.
Technology has been furiously advancing since the first
edition of our Stocks2Watch newsletter -- paving the way for
new and highly effective ways to promote your Internet home
business.
Let's look at some that have had the biggest impact:
* AUDIO AND VIDEO:
The Internet has come a long way since its text-only
roots! Programming languages such as JavaScript and
programs like Macromedia's Flash have allowed for web
video and audio, slide presentations, and other
interactive elements.
Testing has proven that using audio and video as part
of your sales process can now have a dramatic impact on
your bottom line -- if done right. Use short audio and
video clips of you and your customers to personalize your
site and reassure visitors that you are a credible home business.
* BLOGGING:
Blogs are informal web forums that invite feedback
and discussion. They're free to set up and use, and so
simple that they can be created in minutes.
As a result blogging has exploded in popularity over the
last few years.
With a home business blog you can reach a wider audience,
generate better search engine rankings, boost your revenue,
and develop rapport with your customers -- to name just a
few benefits.
And because blogs are updated frequently, search engines
LOVE them. For an in-depth, step-by-step guide to using
blogs to explode your income, check out "Blogging for Dollars " --
a 125-page book plus DVD devoted to this subject.
* PODCASTING:
Podcasting, the delivery of audio files -- typically MP3
files -- via the Internet, is one of the hottest new
technologies to hit the market.
It allows you to publish audio content that interested
listeners can subscribe to via RSS "feeds" -- so they can
automatically receive your audio broadcasts without having
to go to your web site.
Click Here to learn how you can
create your own podcast in three simple steps.
WritingCareer.com (http://www.writingcareer.com), an ebook store for career-minded writers, has launched free RSS feeds spanning a variety of topics, from business, computers and entertainment, to Internet, marketing, and writing.
WritingCareer.com's free RSS feeds are a counterpart to its FREE ARTICLE DATABASE (http://www.writingcareer.com/freearticles.html), which publishes new articles daily and offers webmasters and publishers hundreds of articles to reprint.
WritingCareer.com's free RSS feeds let webmasters add a variety of valuable articles to their website or blog by adding an RSS feed or several RSS feeds by going to http://www.writingcareer.com/freearticles/rssfeeds.html
Why add an RSS feed? An RSS feed has these advantages:
*Content automatically appears on your website or blog. Just add the RSS feed and -- presto! -- content magically appears before your eyes and your readers' eyes.
* Content is automatically updated in real-time. When WritingCareer.com publishes a new article its listing automatically appears on your website or blog.
*You can add one RSS feed or several RSS feeds at a time to cover specific subjects.
* You can add an RSS feed to an RSS reader or MyYahoo and content is automatically updated on your screen.
WritingCareer.com also offers seven different features that webmasters can add to their websites by adding a snippet of Java Code; these special features include Working Writers Newsletter, FreelanceWriting.com DAILY WRITING BLOG, author interviews, and writing-related reports. These special features are available at http://www.writingcareer.com/freecontent.shtml
WritingCareer.com also offers free syndication services to publishers who seek a no cost way to distribute their content on web sites worldwide. For more information, see: http://www.writingcareer.com/syndication.shtml
WritingCareer.com is an online ebook store that sells ebooks on writing, freelancing, publishing, screenwriting, marketing, and home business. WritingCareer.com always welcomes authors to add their ebook or ebooks to its online store; for details please go to http://www.writingcareer.com/ebookcommerce.shtml.
You can have fresh content daily on your web sites for FREE! Look after your audience/customer by adding value. Be a resource.
And you can have your information on other people's web site for FREE! If you want to write interesting stuff.
Check it out and let us know what happens.
This will not only increase the number of sites linking to your
website and increasing your link popularity, it will also increase
the RSS feeds profile. A number of RSS search engines and RSS
directories exist that allow you to freely submit RSS feeds.
Feeds are generally categorized and grouped together by subject.
Web surfers looking for RSS feeds about a specific subject will
often search the RSS directories, to locate a feed that matches
their specific criteria. Topic specific RSS feed and podcasting
directories are also emerging. Choose a web feed's category
carefully and only submit relevant feeds to topic specific directories.
A large list of directories is located here
Bravenet.com