Merry Christmas, I Thank You All
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It will be Christmas in the next 13 hours in Toronto, Canada. It looks beautiful outside as I write this blog, kids playing in snow, a band playing on the street, its that time of the year to thank the Lord for all the good things in life.
I just want to take a moment here to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas.
One of the good things in my life is blogging and WebTrafficROI in particular. It’s been up for about six months and when I launched the blog I had no idea what was to come.
6 months, 74 posts and 1104 comments later I can say that the blog and its readers have changed my life.
I thank all the amazing people who have helped me put up the blog, I thank all the people I’ ve meet through the blog, and all my amazing readers who read my posts, commented and interacted on this blog.
I want to thank my wife for being very supportive on this initiative. There have been instances where family time was sacrificed to write a new post on the blog.
The blog has opened up some amazing friendships and business partnerships. It has taught me about entrepreneurship, communication and emerging technologies. It has been responsible to put my thoughts and experiences to my readers to help them build a better online business.
Much of this is a result of yourself and I thank you all for making this happen and being a very integral part of this blog and my life.
I wish you Happy Holidays and a great year ahead.
14 Thoughts Leaders on Social Media in 2009
- “Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology - it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” - David Armano
- “You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” - Rohit Bhargava
- “Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation.” - Pete Blackshaw
- “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” - Chris Brogan
- “The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” - Todd Defren
- “There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” - Jason Falls
- “Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball.” - Ann Handley
- “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” - Joseph Jaffe
- “The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis.” - Charlene Li
- “After a pre-qualifying wrestling match…” - Ben McConnell
- “These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” - Scott Monty
- “The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” - Jeremiah Owyang
- “Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” - Andy Sernovitz
- “Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” - Greg Verdino
My Blogger friend Peter Kim, has complied these thoughts in Downloadable PDF, he has worked and spent time with each one of them personally to exchange ideas and thoughts on the subject.
This is a must read for every blogger and every business owner, it’s time to define the path for your online business in 2009.
How big a part will social media play for your online business in 2009 ?
T3Leads : An Affiliate Network Reviewed
I’ve always been excited by affiliate marketing, its the easiest way to make money without having to own a product. While there are lot of affiliate networks that have some good programs, most of them are not able to keep up the momentum they start off with. A good affiliate company depends on the number of merchants it has in its network and the payout in commissions to its affiliate marketers.
Let’s take a close look at an affiliate network that has been creating a lot of buzz in cyberspace.
Who is T3Leads ?
T3Leads is a specialised affiliate company that focus’ on lead generation or CPA (cost per action ) offer in the financial domain. It means that as an affiliate marketer if you promote T3Leads’ advertisers you ll be paid on a cost per lead basis.
This could be very lucrative if you have an audience that is targeted for the product you market. It has offerings in the following niches: Insurance, Mortgage loans, Foreclosures, Auto Loans, Debts and more. This is a clear indication to its competitors that T3Leads is a player in the financial domain and is aggressively building its way to being the top affiliate network in the financial industry.
Design & Interface:
The home page looks very impressive and easy to navigate. The website has a clean and professional look that gives it a professional approach. The registration process is one of the most simple process I’ ve seen, it took me less than a minute to fill in my details.
The site distinguishes its content into three main buckets:
- Affiliate Solutions
- Merchant Solutions
- Lead Programs
These content buckets are well organised and simple to follow instructions if you are a new merchant
or a new affiliate.
The Offers & Payout :
T3Leads has one of the top offers in the industry and they back it up well by giving their affiliates great tools to market the products.
- Landing pages : Every offer has a relevant landing page that has been tested for conversion , which help affiliates to concentrate more on their marketing efforts and not worry about working on landing page issues.
- Keywords : They have managed to design an application that will help you with a list of keywords for you to target your PPC campaign, this is a great resource to have for any PPC marketer.
T3Leads has one of the top payout offers in the affiliate network industry. An average CPA lead program can make you $ 5 to $ 55 in affiliate commission which is very high and works well if you plan to promote the offer via PPC advertising.
They offer 5 % residual income for affiliates reffered to them. They also have a page dedicated to their pricing structure with guidelines and conversions rate. The payment option are epassporte, Company checks, Bank Wire Transfer, WebMoney and Paypal.
I’ve already started to use this for one of my insurance blogs as I ve found a great fit in the offer and my site audience. I am also planning to start a PPC campaign for auto loans as I ve found the landing page to be very promising.
Sign up with T3Leads and make money
T3Lead Bonus for Affiliates :
As soon as you sign up, you ll see that the company is committed to rewarding it’s top performing affiliates. The bonuses cover Sony Vaio, Bose Sounddoc, Ipod 80 GB and much more. I don’t know about you but I have my eyes on the Sony Vaio.
Sign up with T3Leads and start making money.
How much time have you wasted on Twitter ?
I’ ve been trying to convince my ex boss to use Twitter as a tool for marketing his online products and projecting his site as a voice or an expert in the domain, he is’nt convinced that spending time on Twitter will be beneficial. He thinks Twitter a waste of time.
When he asked me how much time I spent on Twitter and was it worth the time spent, I actually did not have an answer. I begun my search to find out how much time I had spent on Twitter since I started to tweet.
I came across Tweetwasters.com, this is a fun site that tells you the actual time you spent on twittering as well as tells your rank compared to other twitterers. Its also has a plugin that can display your tweetwasters stats on your blog, if you want to display how much time you spend on twitters to your readers.
As per the calculation I’ ve had 325 total tweets and assuming they spent an average of 30 seconds per tweet they’ve spent 9,750 Seconds or 163 Minutes or 2.71 Hours or 0.11 Days using Twitter!
My Tweetwasters rank: #18150
Check out how much time you’ve wasted on Twitter
While this is just a fun application, it has nothing to do with Twitter not being an effective tool to market your products. I highly recommend you to use Twitter and follow me . And no I am not sending this to my boss, unless he happens to see it on the blog.
Do you think Twitter is a waste of time, how much time have you wasted on Twitter ?
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5 Tips to Ensure PPC Landing Page conversions
One of the key success for any PPC ( Pay Per Click ) campaign is based on the relevancy of your landing pages. Landing pages are where the conversions are. These are customized pages where the visitors land when they click on a sponsored link, ad or other online call to action.
I don’t spend any money on PPC till I have a separate landing page and I am satisfied with the conversion of my landing page, while it may take a while to test the conversion of the landing page the excercise is essentail to ensure that you get maximum ROI on your PPC ( Pay Per Click ) spends.
Below are 5 Tips to Ensure Landing Page conversions.
Ensure that every different PPC ad that has a different creative, has a different landing page based on the communication of your PPC ad.
- Use a lot of landing pages :
According to a 2007 report by Marketing Sherpa, 71 % of landing pages are destination from email links, while 68 % are destinations from paid search ads. Landing pages should be created for text ads, news realeases, email blasts and other online communities.
- Maintain relevancy and the theme :
Relevancy is a critical component of the PPC mix and landing pages, ensure that you have the same marketing copy or look as the link that lead to it, otherwise you risk loosing the customer. If someone click yor link on ” Golf ball reviews ” you landing page better say, ” So what do you want to know about Golf balls reviews or give him different option to choose a Golf ball ”
- Test your landing pages and communication :
By sending different users to different landing pages with the same communication will reveal landing page statistics and the conversion elements of each landing page. Ensure that a tracking code is implemented to the landing page. Google Analyics is a good free software that you can use to implement on your landing pages. Based on the results you can tweak your pages to ensure maximum users are clicking on call to action elements. These could be sales oriented or lead generation oriented or maybe just information oriented depending on the goal or objective of the landing page and the campaign.
- Throw some giveaways :
I ve used PPC landing pages to give away educational whitepaper and sample reports. This gives a chance to collect and build a list and ask questions that guage interest in your products.
- Keep it simple and relevant :
Figure out what your one customer goal is, and that should be the centre piece for each of your landing page. Each PPC landing page should include links that go to relevant content on your landing page but should not be replication of your content. Stick to the offer and have one definate call to action.
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