| LED Digest 1812: Using Affiliate Sales Reps |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ June 1, 2004 Issue #1812 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Affiliate Sales Reps ==-- ~ Martha Retallick "I'd like some advice on how to deal with my affiliates." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Third Tier PPC Providers - Worth It? ==-- ~ David Yancey "I found myself having to reconsider the long-term effectiveness of the PPC advertising model." --== Credible SEOs and SEMs ==-- ~ John Smart "If we write our sites for the search engines, they won't be very nice for the humans." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Searchclimbers ==-- ~ William Ernest Waites --== Outbound Links Increasing Rankings ==-- ~ Jim Gatton ~ Muhammad Shabeer Ali --== Opt-in Lists - Building Your Own ==-- ~ Kathy Wilson Anderson ======= NEW ===================================== From: Martha Retallick Subject: Using independent sales representatives Like just about every other person with an online store, I offered an affiliate program. However, I found that only two of my 50-plus affiliates made any sales. Most of the rest just signed up to get the discount on my postcard marketing e-book, then sat back and did nothing. So, at the end of last year, I shut down the affiliate program, paid the two guys who'd made sales, and that was that. Or so I thought. In the latter half of May, I was approached by two people, both of whom run very successful online stores and have large followings. You could even call them the "gurus" in their respective fields. They were asking about the affiliate program, so I opened it back up again. This time, I decided that my affiliate program will be a by-invitation-only program. I learned my lesson about the (lack of) wisdom in offering something that any Tom, Dick or Harriet could sign up for. I'd like some advice on how to deal with my affiliates. I'd like to treat them as independent sales representatives, and need help with the following: 1. What sort of legal contract I should have with them 2. How to train them. 3. How to monitor their performance 4. How to help them become better sellers 5. How to screen applicants Martha Retallick, "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: David Yancey Subject: 3rd-tier PPC > One of the biggest problems seems to concern the PPC's > relationship with the contract sites that use their technology. > Some of these, it seems to me, must find it profitable to dummy > click on their own engine when times are slow (for which they > receive part of the revenue). - Sandy Galvin, LED 1809 Hi, Adam, and all the great LED contributors and readers: I've been MIA on this thread, having been back in Japan for meetings with my partners and friends the past few weeks. While there, I had to explain to several groups what the paid-search phenomenon is all about, as part of presenting our new www.vivante.com premium-focused consumer search site. In explaining how PPC and PFI work -- or *fail* to work, in too many instances -- I found myself having to reconsider the long-term effectiveness of the PPC advertising model. Piggy-backing on the popularity of search is a good idea, but PPC raises too many questions in my mind. Many of those doubts have been eloquently stated again in this excellent LED thread, including: - The general lack of quality of click-throughs from so-called PPC "partner" sites - The susceptibility of the PPC model to fraudulent clicks - The general lack of activity among hundreds (by now, maybe thousands, for all I know) of cookie-cutter "search engines" - - the great majority of which are simply false-fronts for a back end PPC platform services company like FindWhat or one of the others. These concerns simply add to even more serious (in my opinion) issues with PPC, namely: - Where does the bidding stop? What prevents search from simply becoming another media channel for big-budget advertisers, who are determined before all else to be perceived as the "leader", namely, at the top of any list or page? - Specifically, how is a smaller site or one with a low per-visitor acquisition budget able to use PPC productively, when the per-lead clickthrough costs are essentially uncapped over time? - How to cope with the hassles and hidden costs of PPC, such as bids management, consulting fees, and selecting from the huge array of potential search sites - - extra costs that can kill a smaller company's budget, or simply suck up the scarce work time of the website owner. - Most problematically, what happens to search in general, as the results are more and more influenced by paying advertisers? If "search" comes to be perceived by the users as tainted, then there goes the audience, and with it, the potential usefulness of paid-search as a traffic pulling channel. Like many of the website owners, publishers, and e-commerce companies who are frustrated with PPC and SEM in general, I feel strongly about the negatives of PPC -- so much so that In designing www.vivante.com and laying out its business model, we have avoided the conventional PPC model, seeking instead a more effective alternative for the site owners, while at the same time keeping the "paid" portion of search results in better balance with the others. I'd like to say that Vivante is "it" for all the sites who seek a more cost-effective SEM alternative. But our solution is designed expressly only for sites or services and products targeted at affluent consumers and owners of smaller businesses, so we won't be a useful traffic source for many LED readers. Also, many of the user and advertiser innovations we have slated for "Phase Two" won't be available for months, since we are necessarily on a pay-as-we-go development basis. And of course, being new, our search user volume is still small. But even if we were a perfect fit, I would still recommend that site owners look for *all* the alternatives that can generate useful traffic. You should examine Google's new AdSense alternatives, as well as the many PPC candidates. See Kevin Lee's update on AdSense at: http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/strat/article.php/3350001 And be sure that the whole area of pay-per-lead online advertising is going to continue to change and evolve rapidly. Further, I am optimistic that many of the innovations-to-come will both lower per-lead costs and improve average lead quality, leading to more better conversion rates and improved ROI for your traffic-generation budget. David Yancey http://www.vivante.com "Web searching *your* way" ------- new post - new topic ------- From: John Smart Subject: Credible SEOs > I figured I've been in the minority for the following > statements. I feel Web designers and copywriters > need to understand search and incorporate those > skills as a standard service. - Shari Thurow, LED 1810 Martha Retallick's comment about learning what we don't know is a very valid point. We at InternetDesign.com are a small and focused team, specializing in design and e-commerce. Plus databases PHP (My field -- but boy, it is a BIG field!) HTML (HTML tables are my personal field of HTML expertise). Of course, we do sometimes use JavaScript And that client wants us to update her ASP script Another wants top ranking on Google (yeah, okay, they ALL want that!) Another wants me to network his office Another wants to know what meta tags are best for Yahoo, I don't need to go on. I have been studying the table command lately. Do you know how much you can do with the simple table command? hsides, borders, padding and spacing. It is a very versatile command. We cannot know it all. If we had the staff to cover all of the few things listed here to the level of excellence that we run at, we would need a lot of staff! It isn't viable. So we don't. We research what we need to know, and outsource what we cannot do. Is SEO to be taken into account on page design? Yes. And no. If we write our sites for the search engines, they won't be very nice for the humans. If we write it solely for the humans, we may not get all we need to into the search engines. What to do? And finally, we live in an industry that is full of "experts" some of them are wonderful -- talented beyond description, fantastic in their field (and probably just as good in their office). Some of them are not so good, even though they think they are (I fear I may be in that list). An example? I wrote a shopping cart program -- the cart is dynamic -- so pages such as "/index.php?category=21" are not uncommon. I found a way to create static appearing pages (/products/widget.html) that had dynamic content. I asked on a couple of boards if it would be worth doing that for the search engines. I had people whose job it was to know the answer to this tell me, clearly and definitively that it was well worth doing this. Others who were equally as qualified informed me it was a complete waste of time. Who was correct? I don't know. I do know that Googlebot looks at the static pages a lot, but I don"t have an A-B comparison to run, so I don"t know. I apologize for this posting being so disjointed -- as a business owner, being a letter-writer is another hat I am supposed to wear. Sometimes those hats just don't fit! John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World" ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: William Ernest Waites Subject: Searchclimbers Individually and as agent for another site, I have been approached by a company called "searchclimbers." They offer a pop-up of your web site's home page when certain keywords are entered in the search engines. You pay an annual fee per keyword. But first, the searcher must have installed their software in order to get the pop-up. At the time they first contacted me, they claimed to have 16 million installations of their software, meaning I guess that there are 16 million web searchers who are willing to install it. Thereafter, anytime one of those searchers searches a keyword that has been "purchased" by one of searchclimbers customers, they will get the home page (not just a link) of the Web site at the top of the results page, above the search results. They call this Rocket Position. I tried it but was uncomfortable. I fear that installing their software could implant spyware. So after my short trial, I uninstalled it. I also don't understand what incentive there would be for someone to install their software unless they also had a Web site to promote and wanted to buy the service. Finally, what are Google and Yahoo and others doing or going to do about this? Has anyone else been approached, tried, tested or resolved whether or not this is a good idea? Thanks. William Ernest Waites, Eyewriter ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Jim Gatton Subject: Outbound links > I've also seen that reciprocal links are better than outbound > links. But this new result tells us that when we do a link > campaign, now we don't have to be so quick to remove > those links that are not reciprocated - they're helping too! > And we can be confident of a boost in results as soon as > we put a few hundred links onto a site. - Dave Roberts, LED 1808 That's an interesting fact, Dave, and one technique I've been using for the last six months but based more on minimal evidence and lots of faith. It's nice to know there's demonstrable fact behind this. I'm driven to comment on a related fact by my PageRank observation from many months ago which also was dismissed by my fellow webmasters when I reported it in a forum. With your mention of "...a few hundred links onto a site" I have the opportunity to toss out a red flag to those very few that may misunderstand what you said there. There is a vast different between adding a few hundred links to a *site* versus adding a few hundred outbound links to *a page*. Somewhere in Google's webmaster guidelines is a warning about having more than 100 outbound links on a page. My advice is to take that point very seriously. Back when displaying PR was more immediate, a co-worker who - thank God - was very innocent of the internet and didn't know the following was "impossible", called me over to her desk to see something that was confusing her and we spent the next few minutes adding 1 outbound link and then watching the PR for that page go down one point upon refreshing. Remove the link, do a refresh, and the PR went back to 4. We did it so many times that there was no doubt in our mind that we were seeing definite evidence of a decrease in PR for that page based on having one link too many. Undoubtedly that page was exactly a toolbar 4 so that the very minimal decrease in page value was enough to drop the page to a toolbar 3. If the page had been in the mid-4 range (whatever that really means) we probably wouldn't have noticed any difference at all. For me, one white crow proves that not all crows are black even if no one else has ever seen a white crow. Using the same principle proves, at least to us here in this one office, that 101 outbound links on a page (don't forget to count navigation links in the total) may lead to an immediate decrease in absolute PageRank even if it's not demonstrated in the toolbar. Jim Gatton www.castleblade.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Muhammad Shabeer Ali Subject: Outbound links > It's no surprise that [Dave Roberts] got "heartily poo-pooed > by the experts". As someone who does link management > work full-time, and has done it for years, I stay out of those > forums ... - Dirk Johnson, LED 1811 No offense to you Dirk, but I am more wary of people who have to 'gain' from the 'advice' offered. You obviously have a stake in proving Dave right ... > The "experts" have never seen the phenomenon of outbound > links helping a site because they are too concerned about gaming > Google with their linking efforts ... Perhaps you draw out of your own experience since Dave hasn't mentioned his site. Well, I am no expert, but I like to use my own judgement before accepting something as evident. Can you show me *some proof* that outbound links contribute to pagerank. I can prove that inbound links contribute to pagerank by showing you a site having only inbound lnks to prove my point. My thinking is, if outbound links contribute to pagerank, than a site with NO inbound links and ONLY outbound links *should* show some pagerank. > ... As you observed correctly, they can actually help. > Google seems to reward sites for being genuine > resources to their visitors Lets think about what you are implying. Google considers pagerank as a measure of importance. Since it's all a question of pagerank, lets hear what Google says about them : ------------------------- "... Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results ..." ------------------------- You can read more about Google's technology overview at : http://snipurl.com/gprled [google.com] Common sense tells us that what Google has mentioned can indeed be considered to be true - it maybe right to assume that if site A links to site B, site A 'thinks' that site B is 'useful'. Hence, Google considers site B as more important. So it is safe to assume that inbound links increase pagerank. If pagerank is in fact a measure of importance of a site or page, let us now try to figure out how outbound links can contribute to the 'importance' of a site. It is your assumption that 'Google seems to reward sites for being genuine resources to their visitors'. That seems to be a good assumption. The question is, can links to other sites be considered as 'resources'? And how is Google to know if the links are 'genuine resources'? The fact that link farms are considered as spam by Google is telling of how even Google is debating on how to identify 'genuine link resources'. Assuming your theory was correct, than all web directories should have a pagerank of 10 since most of them have 10's of thousands of outbound links. I am not against your theory per se of 'rewards for outbound links'. I just need some proof to believe it. By the way, I do agree with you that it is stupid to assue that Google 'punishes' a site if it has outbound lnks. > Myth 3: "One-way" backward links count > more than reciprocal links. I am inclined to believe this. There is obviously something amiss if every site I link to, co-incidentally links back to me! Also, if you consider what Google said about pagerank, common sense tells me that if both site A and site B have links to each other, than it becomes harder to figure out which is more 'important'. Afterall, pagerank is all about calculating the 'importance' of a site or page. > If you want a link strategy that works well... Just set out > to link as if your site traffic depended on it, and that Google > did not exist ... Request links from as many sites as you > can ... Don't ever threaten to remove links if you don't get a > reciprocal ... That was the best part of your post with which I whole heartily agree. > Yes, it's more interesting to over-analyze something, > but it is all quite misguided. LOL. If it weren't for people like us who 'over analyse' something, there would be a lot more 'tried and trusted' theories floating around. :) Regards, Shabeer White Mark Media Design -------- new post - new topic ------- From: Kathy Wilson Anderson Subject: Opt-in lists > What are the best companies to get targeted lists from (or are > there any)? Is there a better way to build a list from scratch > fast? - Greg Thibodeaux, LED 1811 If you build your own opt-in mailing list, it will result in higher quality, spot-on target marketing, and your ROI will be much greater. Plus, you won't be walking in the shadow of potential and probable spamming. Here are a few suggestions on how to get people to sign up for your email list: 1. Install a simple 2 line form on every page of the client's website in which a visitor can insert their name and email address. Invite the visitor to do this with an attractive incentive, such as receiving valuable information and articles, news of specials, new products and/or services, etc. 2. Advertise on other people's ezines. Alexandra Brown, The Ezine Queen ( www.ezinequeen.com ), offers ads for only $10 per edition of her ezine, and she has an email base of thousands. 3. Have your client write an article about some facet of their business and offer it to other ezines of like/kind. Often the authors of these ezines welcome guest authors, as it saves them hours of having to come up with yet another article. 4. If your client does any of the Mind Body Spirit expos or other shows of this type, have them put a sign-up form on their table with LOTS of pens around it. 5. Install a "tell a friend about this ezine" form in the website. If it's not an HTML ezine, put the form on the website and link to it from the ezine. Have fun! Love, Kathy Wilson Anderson http://www.under-one-roof.net ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was." - Richard L. Evans |
