Google's Froogle? Can you get your affiliate products or services there?

Google's Froogle? Can you get your affiliate products or services there?

As An Affiliate program participant, the first question you need to ask yourself is: "Where do customers shop?"

• Customers shop at a place that s familiar
• Customers shop at a place they trust
• Customers shop at a place with good prices
• Customers shop at a place that s well promoted
• Customers shop at a place they ve shopped at before.

So what does knowing where customers shop have to do with Google's Froogle? Well simply put; many people are familiar with Google's Foogle and they trust Google because they've been there before, it's well promoted, and as always it is convenient. While Google's Froogle doesn't establish pricing on any items listed in their comparison shopping engine themself, they do allow shoppers to search for good prices. Froogle has hit the consumer's nail right on its head.

It's one of the rare exceptions to the old expression, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". At Froogle, if you're trying to get into a comparison shopping engine, lunch is on them. It's as easy as 1-2-3.

Let's start with a few facts about Froogle and then the 'feed' steps for listing your products or services in Froogle.

Froogle Info

Froogle is on the Google home page.
Millions of people come to Google each day, and many are actively looking for the products you're selling. Froogle connects shoppers with merchants.

At Froogle you control your product information.
Simply upload a new product feed at any time to ensure Froogle displays the most accurate descriptions and promotions for your products.

Froogle provides store ratings and product reviews.
Google's technology scours the web to identify relevant information about listed stores and products. This information is in the form of review 'snippets' from independent ratings sites.

Froogle is forever free to merchants who wish to participate.
Upload your product info (data feed) and you'll be listed overnight. The entire system is supported by 'Sponsored Links' which are paid advertisements Froogle displays along side the regular Froogle listings.

You represent affiliate products or services. Do you know how they can be added to Froogle.

What follows are some important instructions toward getting your affiliate products or services added in Froogle using their data feed system:

1. Sign in to the Froogle Merchant Center
   Create or use your existing Google Account to enter the Froogle Merchant Center.
   
2. Create an FTP account
   Set up your FTP account, which you'll later use to upload your 'product info' feeds to us.
   
3. Specify your feed's settings
   Set your feed's filename and other parameters.
   
4. Create and upload your feed
   Create a feed according to Froogle's instructions and upload it to them. Be sure to name your feed using the filename you chose in Step 3 (above).
   
5. Final content review
   We will review your feed to ensure that its content is consistent with our program policies.

Until next week, happy internet campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | Froogle | Dan Hollings | affiliate products
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Mompreneurs and Marketing Affiliate Programs?

Mompreneurs and Marketing Affiliate Programs?

Source: DSA.org

Have you been looking around you? Moms, moms everywhere! Yes, according to figures available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are female. Any way you look at it the men total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and customers we seek) are current or future moms. Just when we thought the dictionary had all the words we needed a new term has entered our vocabulary... Mompreneurism.

Books by Mompreneur: Ellen H. Parlapiano Yes, you're reading it right. According to authors Patricia Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, who trademarked the term "mompreneurs" and were recently featured in Time magazine and various other programs like Good Morning America; their mompreneurs online web site (www.mompreneursonline.com) draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll enjoy reading that they've interviewed hundreds of work at home moms. Their interviews revealed that these work at home women share certain secrets for cyber-success. Of the many things mentioned, below is a sampling of why and how mom-owned businesses are surviving and thriving on the web according to Ellen H. Parlapiano and Patricia Cobe:

• Team Work. Mompreneurs® forge powerful alliances--both online and off! Together they harness technology to build an instant network of personal and professional support through online communities and marketing cooperatives.
• The Control Factor. Moms start home businesses for family flexibility, so they grow their enterprises slowly and steadily to retain control over their work/family time. The 24/7 availability of the Internet lets them work when THEY want to.
• Web Wisdom. Work-at-home moms understand that a dot.com name alone is not enough to power success. But the Internet can be a very valuable tool when used in conjunction with more traditional business strategies.

Maybe you think Affiliate programs is a great place for moms? Maybe you're hoping to attract work at home moms to your site, blog, product or business? Or, maybe you already have lots of moms and a true mompreneurial spirit?

Whatever the case, moms running their own business from home are an important niche and your internet marketing can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be admired and respected.

Think optimistically that your affiliate products or services will be just the thing these mompreneurs are desiring? Now, let's continue (below) with more tips in our series on pay per click strategies for gaining highly targeted traffic. Maybe you can get some moms clicking!

Tips, Tips, Tips... They just keep on coming!

• On the subject of ad copy (the words which will comprise your numerous different listing titles and descriptions) we can sum it up briefly: RELATE your listing to the keyword the searcher has typed, SPARK curiosity in their minds to encourage a visit, be TRUTHFUL, be BRIEF, be CLEAR, don't HYPE, and FILTER out bad clicks.
• FILTER OUT BAD CLICKS? Yes, if your product is NOT for certain searchers, be clear upfront before they click. Example: If you bid on the keyword 'herbal shampoo' because your product is an herbal dog shampoo, make sure your ad copy reads: for dogs, pets, or animals. If you only fulfill orders in Canada, state this upfront in your listing ad copy. There is no need to pay for a visitor click if you cannot service a particular customer's needs. Use words to filter out bad clicks.
• There are many good resources to help you with ad copy, writing, and knowing what to say about your product. We recommend the eBook by Kim Klaver, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It". Click here for a complimentary 'Mini-edition' of this eBook.

How to Appeal to Mompreneurs

Here's one way you can be very appealing in reaching out to work at home moms:

STORIES FROM THE HEART: Mompreneurs provide great stories to share in your advertising and promotional campaigns. Millions of moms dream of starting a business or turning their hobbies into profits. By showing successful mompreneurs who are thriving both at home and in business, you can tap into a powerful desire.

Over 50 tips have been published in this ongoing PPC tips series; please check our archived posts for many more helpful marketing recommendations. OK?



For additional internet strategies visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Affiliate programs

Until next week, happy pay per click campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | mompreneur | mompreneurs | mompreneurism | entrepreneur | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Dan Hollings | affiliate products
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You represent affiliate products or services. Do you know how they can be sold online via Yahoo or Google pay per click

You represent affiliate products or services. Do you know how they can be sold online via Yahoo or Google pay per click

As an Affiliate marketer or someone that partners with other sites and services to refer customers, you may offer many products or services. People perhaps come to your site for other reasons; like to read content, articles, news or information. Or perhaps you provide entertainment. Whatever the focus, people will find your affiliate links more appealing the more they are matched to your site's focus. You won't sell cookbooks to people reading articles about car repair and few will click an affiliate link for DVDs, movies or games unless your site content is somehow related.

As An Affiliate program participant you know your product and you've set your goals. Your web page, site, or blog is up and you're pondering methods to get visitors to your site.

Can your affiliate products or services be sold via Yahoo or Google pay per click or not? That's question #1, right? But equally important, can you figure out a strategy that produces more measurable results than lost money?

Encouraging news, the answer is: "definitely yes."

PPC Tips:

• Sometimes people type in web addresses in those search boxes! So bid on those if the search engine allows it: 'www.website.com', 'website.com', 'http://website.com' and every combination full or partial you think a searcher might actually type.
• Match up keywords with words in your ad copy. Even though a 'spa', a 'hot tub', and a 'whirlpool' might mean the same thing in your mind, if a searcher types in 'hot tub' and your listing says: "Relax and save in your new Spa", you will miss out on many interested customers.
• Think negative... yes, people search for herbs that can kill, plastic surgery pitfalls, mlm scams and sundry other peculiar things. Invite them to explore your related listing. Do you offer cosmetics or skin car as an alternative to plastic surgery? Is you mlm a beacon of light in a sea of seemingly dubious scams?
• Get creative with interest spikes in the news. 'Mad Cow' might be a great keyword for your all vegetarian product line. The 'SARS' outbreak might have generated millions of searches that your 'immunity booster' could have benefited from (just don't make any false claims). And where were all the bra ads when a gazillion people typed in 'Janet Jackson' after the 2004 Super Bowl surprise?

Until next week, happy pay per click campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords | affiliate products

Yahoo and Google Ad Tutorials (in Flash) for Affiliate programs.

Yahoo and Google Ad Tutorials (in Flash) for Affiliate programs.

There are many PPC search engines, with some being better than others. The top two are Yahoo Sponsored Search and Google AdWords. It's a good idea to start your PPC campaign with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

There's no better way to begin than by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. Check below for a few examples, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Pay-per-click Yahoo Search: Overview
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Flash presentation explains Yahoo sponsored search.

Bidding and Ranking with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/bpr/bpr.html
Improve your AdWord position and control your costs.

Local Targeting with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/adw_loc_target/adw_loc_target.html
Reach new prospects in specific regional or local areas.

Next, We'll Review How Google and Yahoo Deal With Your Bids...

Sponsored ads at Yahoo

• Yahoo places your bid at 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

Google Ad Bidding Policy

• Believe it or not, Google never reveals what you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google's maximum bid is $100.00
• Google's minimum bid is $0.05

New Google AdWords keyword status changes: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.

NEW: Google announced in early August 2005 that they will simplify their keyword status system and introduce quality-based minimum bids, giving us more control to run all keywords we find important.

Understanding Google's New Quality Score

Each keyword will now be assigned a minimum bid that is based on the quality (also called Quality Score) of your keyword in your account. If your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active and trigger ads. If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads.

Previosly, keyword statuses were called normal, in trial, on hold, and disabled. Under the new rules, this will be replaced with active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). No more slowed or disabled keywords if no do not have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold.

Search engine marketing strategies:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Affiliate program participant continue below:

• When thinking up keywords, use examples of specific things your product is used for: 'clean floors', clean countertops', 'wash floors', 'mop floors', 'polish stove top', 'remove grime', 'shine appliances', 'disinfect bacteria', 'hide furniture flaws' etc.
• Explore variations: 'soy milk', 'soymilk', 'soy-milk'
• Add plurals: 'protein bar' and 'protein bars'
• Use abbreviations and acronyms
• Use US and UK spellings
• Keyword phrases may be questions: 'how to repair bad credit', 'when should I diet', 'how do I lose weight', 'where are discount cosmetics', etc.

Looking for more search marketing tips? Check my posts from previous weeks for more ideas and strategies.


Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | Sponsored Ads | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Affiliate programs? Ever wonder what people really think about it?

Affiliate programs? Ever wonder what people really think about it?

Have you ever thought about the public's perception of what you do?

Affiliate programs

As an Affiliate marketer or someone that partners with other sites and services to refer customers, you may offer many products or services. People perhaps come to your site for other reasons; like to read content, articles, news or information. Or perhaps you provide entertainment. Whatever the focus, people will find your affiliate links more appealing the more they are matched to your site's focus. You won't sell cookbooks to people reading articles about car repair and few will click an affiliate link for DVDs, movies or games unless your site content is somehow related.

Do you truly believe that people reading your ads already know this about Affiliate programs?

That's a mystery-factor in any search engine marketing campaign; you might best think through this issue at the outset (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'have perceived' about you and the affiliate products or services you offer. In most cases you are best to assume they've never heard of you. That's always the safe bet.

If you're selling iPODs or something very well known, you can approach things much differently. Less time explain 'what' you've got and more time explain 'why' they should buy from you.

If your selling something that has become a common commodity (vitamins, shoes, cosmetics, telephone services, etc), then you must differentiate your product from the other seemingly similar things consumers might associate you with.

Much of these consumer 'mindset' conflicts should be handled on your landing page, that is, the page where they land after clicking your ad; so before you start any marketing push, stop and think for a moment about what your potential customer might perceive as they arrive at your landing page.

PPC Tips:

Ready or not, here they come. This weeks PPC tips to make you rich and famous (well perhaps that's stretching it a bit):

• If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
• Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
  
  Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
• Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.

In earlier blog posts you'll find several installments of my PPC tips.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | PPC | pay per click | Google | Network Marketing | mlm | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Depending on who's in those FadSense jeans, I might follow that kind of Google ad all night long!

Depending on who's in those FadSense jeans, I might follow that kind of Google ad all night long!

Jessica Alba? Jessica Simpson? Who would you click pick, whatever. My mind started thinking about the future of contextual ads and now we have FadSense. It really gets you thinking; and the technology is literally in our hands.

Check out the site: Google FadSense™

As An Affiliate program participant, you might be wondering why I'm talking about a futuristic contextual AdSense (AdWord) program like FadSense. It's partially because it's funny, but more importantly, it's because I feel the type of advertising we have been discussing here at my "Internet Marketing Tips for Affiliate programs" blog, is critical to your future. What I'm hoping to teach you are skills and tips that will not only work for Google today, but for any similar type advertising in the future. Google FadSense, real or not!

Much of it boils down to learning a few key things:

• How to determine "tags" that help categorize your content.
• How to track your traffic, results, and advertising ROI (return on investment).
• How to create a destination or landing page that works.
• How to write effective ads.
• How to manage your advertising budget.
• How to create eye catching headlines for your ads.
• How to use the internet effectively in any marketing campaign.

My Continuing Tips To Help You With Affiliate programs...

In my last few blog posts we have hammered away with dozens of valuable tips. This week we continue.

• Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
• Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
• "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

Last week I posted the another round of search engine marketing tips and yet more in the weeks before that. Check there for more ideas.


To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.


Technorati:
Affiliate programs | PPC | pay per click | Google | FadSense | AdSense | Sneakers | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Fashion | Contextual Ads | AdWords

On this date... Google Inc. Closed Its Doors, After 118 Years Searching for Answers.

On this date... Google Inc. Closed Its Doors, After 118 Years Searching for Answers.

What started as a search engine using a unique approach to link analysis (initially called BackRub) and grew to become the "five-and-dime" of pay-per-click search engines, pulled the plug on the last server on this date in Mountain View, California. It's a story of a future time that could be soon, or beyond our horizon.

If anyone back in the late 1800's or early 1900's had been thinking ahead to the future of Woolworth Corp., it's unlikely they would have ever predicted that the famous five-and-dime would be a line item on a "Today in History" script published to millions of readers across this thing we call the internet.

Yet today, has I opened my RSS News Reader, there it was. I can recall shopping at the five-and-dime as a kid. It was the "best" store in town. Just like Google; the best. Now, its history. Perhaps the best is not good enough?

As Google co-founder Larry Page puts it, "Never settle for the best, the perfect search engine, would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want."

Today in History...

By 1997, only a little over 400 Woolworth stores remained in the U. S. (and a few hundred more overseas). It was announced that the stores would be closed and the remaining 9,200 employees terminated. That was on this day.

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that has Bill Gates riled. Google has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first. It's an eye opening article from Fortune magazine: GATES VS. GOOGLE. For now however, it's all fantasy thinking as the titans of search (Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft) battle it out in cyberspace.

Global search advertising revenue, which was $369 million in 2001, is expected to hit $7.9 billion this year, according to research from Piper Jaffray & Co. Those who work in and cover the industry see further expansion as paid search grows overseas and is embraced by ever- larger companies following audiences to the Web. (Source: Reuters 2005)

Good news for the Affiliate program participant

The Cost Per Lead using Pay-per-click is Cheap Compared To Other Ads

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know where to spend your advertising dollars... $8.50 for search, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Those are the average cost-per-customer numbers based on research by Piper Jaffray.

"It's a marketer's dream tool because we can monitor it in so many different ways and watch the effectiveness of it," said Jeff Saville, a consumer direct marketing manager at Deckers Outdoor Corp. (Nasdaq:DECK - news)

Are there dangers or flaws in search advertising?

• Certain campaigns fail because they are ill-conceived or unsuited to the medium.
• Some worry that new advertisers are rushing blindly into paid search and inflating key word prices -- a concern underscored by WebTrends data.
• According to WebTrends the data suggests that 60 percent of marketers do not measure sales, leads or key actions resulting from campaigns. [This is a dangerous number because that means you are competing with people who don't know what things are truly costing them. You need to be extra analytical when going head to head with this guy.]

Adding all this up, we come to two conclusions: 1) It pays to get good at pay-per-click advertising if you plan to do business online and 2) we may only have 118 years left with Google :-)

Pay per click tips for this week:

• When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
• Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
• Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.

Looking for more search marketing tips? Check my posts from previous weeks for more ideas and strategies.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


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Affiliate programs | PPC | pay per click | Google | marketing tips | search | Woolworth | Today in history | online advertising