If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This is a guest post by Melanie Tan.

Since Thomas covered the “L” word, it inspired me to discuss the “O” word… outsourcing.

By now, you’ve probably already realized that one of the things that set Super Affiliates apart is that they don’t do EVERY little thing by themselves. They zero in on their BEST ability/qualification and outsource the rest. Yes, there are pitfalls so here’s a few things you need to keep in mind.

One: Service providers are not mind-readers. YOU should know what you want done even before you start looking for providers. If you need a website done, you should at least have an idea of what you want it to look like! If you want an application done, you should be clear on what it should do in the first place. If you want content written, you should know what you intend to do with them (website content? article marketing? compiled later into a report? etc.)

If you’re not 100% sure of what you want, the best thing to do is provide examples. Choose five websites and tell your provider this is the ‘look’ you’re aiming for. Show links to a few articles online and say this is the ‘tone’ and writing style you want. This simple step will save you and your provider time, money and headaches.

Also, the clearer you are about your requirements, the better you are at selecting which service provider you should go with. Speaking of selection…

Two: Don’t always go for the cheap provider! Yes, you WILL get what you pay for. So how do you know you’re hooking up with the right provider?

• Single person vs. company. I started out as a one-woman provider so I’d be the last person to say don’t trust one-man firms but take note of deliveries. The disadvantage of single person entities is they’re prone to not deliver on said dates due to illness, etc. If it was a firm, then there’s at least a bit of redundancy and your project SHOULD still be delivered on time regardless of who got sick or not. On the other hand, most single person providers do provide that personal touch.
  

• Check their portfolios. Most online marketplaces show the portfolios of providers so take a few minutes to view them and see which ones suit your project best. If you’re still not convinced, ask for a PAID sample. For instance, in my company, first-time clients can pay for ONE article and we write the article based on their exact specs. When they get their articles, they can see if we meet their expectations to a T or not.
  

What about bigger projects? I hear you. This is a bit harder for copywriting projects as they are more costly. But this is how I’ve solved that. You can commission for a part of the copy to be written first. For example, pay $100 for headline samples and bullet point samples. You may think this is a big amount for a sample but don’t forget that the provider is already spending time on your material. So you’re not just paying for the headlines and bullet samples here. You’re paying for the time and effort already being extended on your project.

• Set up a call. Touch base with your provider before the project begins to make sure he/she understands what you want done.

Three: Lastly, if you’re outsourcing something, don’t just let go. You MUST still have the BIG picture in your head. Oftentimes, when I’m called in, hundreds of articles are already online for a client. When asked where these articles are, their keyword density, do they have meta tags, etc., etc., clients often don’t know. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve outsourced that part so it’s getting done, and that’s it. Hmmm… that’s like throwing money against the wind if you ask me. So what do you do?

You ask for reports. You verify where the articles are once in a while. In short, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth!

Online marketplaces I recommend:
Elance.com
GetAFreelancer.com
RentACoder.com
oDesk.com

Good luck! And if you’ve got outsourcing nightmares, share it on the Comments section

Melanie Tan heads an online content provision company that provides SEO articles and other e-content annually. She is also a professional copywriter who specializes in affiliate marketing landing pages.

Last week I was going over some items on my “to do” list that for some reason or another, I never got around to in 2007.

As I scanned over my chicken scratched notepad, I came across an entry that read “check SEO skills - SEO test/seomoz”. I remember reading about this test somewhere online so I jotted it down real quick and thought “I’ll have to comeback and see how bad I suck at SEO.”

As a PPC marketer, it’s easy to get wrapped up in “your baby” for the week. You tend to spend most your time analyzing a new market your excited about, you start building landing pages, structuring keywords, uploading campaigns etc. while envisioning how great you’ll look on the cover of TIME magazine as “Brilliant Marketer of the Year”. No Google fridge or 2 GB pocket drives for you buddy, this is the big time

Unfortunately, thats not enough.

With the convergence of PPC and SEO, you have to think long term. Gone are the days of 1 cent bids and direct-to-merchant affiliate linking while you sit at home and wallpaper your living room with hundred dollar bills. Nowadays, you need your own freakin Wiki about “the past, present and future of boy bands” if you want to continue bidding on “backstreet boy fanny pack”.

Don’t think thin affiliate sites and fast offers - think big, content-rich SEO’d super sites! This should be your goal in 2008 and beyond - if it’s not already.

Case in point: Being lazy will eventually kill you in this business. Build a visitor worthy site, not crap.

Ok, back to the quiz…

So the other night, I went over to the SEOmoz and took the SEO Quiz. To my surprise, I was considered a “Dark Lord” of SEO. I don’t know exactly what that means, (you trying to tell me I’m a black hat or what?) but my score was 93%.

I was REALLY surprised. I expected my score to be lower because it’s difficult to keep up in the ever-changing worlds of PPC, SEO and Boy Band Reunion Tours for my Wiki.

No doubt the test is fun, but to be honest, there were a couple questions that I thought were debatable and there were two or so I wasn’t 100% sure about but I made a best guess stab at em.

I recommend that you take the quiz, you will learn a few NEW things about SEO while you brush up on your current skills - (it’s a mix of SEO techniques everyone should know, the SEO industry, and some PPC).

I’m interested in what you think about it so please feel free to comment with your thoughts and scores if you take it.

Amit will be returning from India and be back to his regular postings soon. I hope you all have a great and prosperous 2008 and look forward to meeting some of you at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas this year.

-Thomas

In part III of this thread I’m going to blog about my conversation with uber affiliate Jeremy Palmer in a interview I did with him for PPC Classroom. As I did with Felix I want talk about how to be prepared for Affiliate Marketing 3.0, the future of affiliate marketing, next year, and beyond!

Here’s basically what Jeremy and I concluded…

DIVERSIFY YOUR AFFILIATE OFFERS

I’m sure you’ve all read about Google’s new quality score hit list: data collection sites, comparison shopping sites, travels, sites, ‘get rich quick’ sites, etc, etc.

I can tell you this is just the beginning, your niche might be next on their hit list, and honestly there’s no telling who they’ll go after next.

The best way to protect yourself is by making a solid income stream for 4-5 DIFFERENT niches.

Think about it, let’s say you’re making money in the follow 5 niches : ringtones, dog training, diet pills, education leads, & spyware removers.

Now let say next year Google decided to put diet pills, and ringtones on their hit list.

You’re okay-you still have 3 strong affiliate offers going.

DIVERSIFY PPC SEARCH ENGINES

Jeremy told me that he actually spent more on Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter last year, than he did on Adwords!

If you ask me this is a REALLY smart move, especially considering Google is really putting the squeeze on affiliates, with increasingly stringent Quality Score requirements, and as mentioned above, a growing hit list of business models they plan to slap out of existence.

Going back to the above example with the 5 different niches, if your diet pill and ringtone offers are wiped out by Google next year, you still have campaigns for those offers running on MSN and Yahoo.

If you take time to properly setup your campaigns on Yahoo+MSN, you can expect up to half your sales (or more!) to come from there!

And if you didn’t know yet, conversions on Yahoo and MSN ROCK!?!

THINK ONE STEP AHEAD OF GOOGLE

Let face it Google always has new trick up its bag, ready to pull the rug from under your business when you least suspect it.

However, if you try to see things from Google perspective you can get an idea of what you might be in store for for in future Quality Score updates.

Okay we know that Google wants the following from your site to get a good quality score (and therefor low min bids on your keywords):

1. Landing pages and adcopy that are tightly targeted to the keyword
2. Substantial unique content on your site, including outbound links to relevant high trust sites
3. Privacy policy, terms of service (trust factor)
4. Compelling content that keeps visitors on your site (Google looks at the bounce rates)

So Google wants you to have a real legitimate trustworthy (in their eyes) website which leads visitors to a landing page that highly relevant to what they’re searching and has compelling content that keeps them on the site.

But wait, isn’t that the goal of Google’s natural search algorithm?!?

So it doesn’t take a PhD in Physics to figure out that Google quality score algo is moving more and more towards their natural search algorithm.

This is BIG: We’re seeing the convergence of paid search and natural search.

So what’s up next? Here’s a good guess at what Google’s QS (Quality Score) will factor in next:

1. Freshness of your content, and how often it’s updated
2. Your PageRank!

It’s not enough to just do PPC, you must optimize your site for natural search if you want to dominate paid search in the future. Not only will you get a good QS this way, but you’ll also get free traffic!

How many of you have had a successful ppc campaign running where the profits dried up and you had to pause it? I’m guessing a lot of you.

It’s certainly happened to me many times!

Even if you follow all my advice and develop a really solid ppc affiliate marketing campaign, and continually update and improve your site & your affiliate promotions, chances are your net profit & profit margins will still go down over the course of several years, definitely 5 years. Just think about it, the competition on Adwords is increasing in every market, bid prices are going up, and more savvy competition is entering the marketplace.

So the question is how do you develop a site that becomes a powerhouse, that is, it produces more and more profit every year, with increasing profit margins??

Here’s the trick: Build a content site around your affiliate domain.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “You’ve gotta be kidding me, content sites take FOREVER to get any real traffic. Besides you have to spend $1000s to have content written for your site.”

You’re interested in LONG TERM profits right?

Think of it this way, your content site is your long term insurance policy; while you get your ppc campaigns running right away and start making a profit, you quietly build a massive content site in the background that will receive an avalanche of traffic one year, two years, or even 5 years down the road.

The money you make off of ppc can feed the cost of building your content site. Now you want a content site that’s white hat and that has 1000s of articles that target long tail keywords. You don’t have to build it overnight, you can have your writers write 50 articles a month for your content site, and in 5 years you’ll have 3000 articles.

Let’s say this is your affiliate domain:

affiliatesite.com

You want this to be the hompage for your content site. As for your ppc landing pages, have them in this directory here:

affiliatesite.com/ppc/

Now make sure your affiliate landing pages are linked to your main content site and vis-versa. Now your ppc landing pages are connected to a large content site, Google will give you a GREAT landing page quality score + you’ll get free traffic in the long run.

What more could you ask for?

One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site is to issue an online press release. Within minutes of being published, there is buzz around your product/service and people are flocking to your site! Is it THAT easy? Ah… no.

As in all things, there is a technique to this. But it DOES work. Remember the Alex Tew phenomenon of MillionDollarHomePage.com?

Alex issued an online press release about his newly conceived pixel site in September 2005. THREE days later, his online PR was picked up and featured on Digg and soon enough, it was the talk of the online community! His site was featured on BBC, CNN, and just about every major media channel. In January 2006, Alex auctioned off his last batch of 1,000 pixels up on eBay for a whopping $38,100. Alex Tew was a millionaire in five months.

Ok, you’re thinking “Alex had a unique product idea. An online press release will not work for my diet ebook.” Mindset people, MINDSET! Don’t undermine your business and how you can make online press releases work for you!

“I don’t have anything at all to talk about.”

Really? Here are a few ideas for you.

• launch of your affiliate site
•  launch of a new product or service
• release of new version of the product you’re selling
• business tie-ups or JVs
• launch of a marketing campaign / special promotions / online club
• receipt of an award
• announce winner of a contest you set up
• release of data gathering, survey results, research, etc.

Now, as in all things, online stuff is always slightly different than print stuff so here’s a quick rundown of web press release DO’s.

• Ensure the online PR has a catchy headline! Something worthy of a second look.
• Think online audience so short sentences, short paragraphs.
• The Internet is a highly visual medium so to increase the visibility of your press release – and its chances of being picked up by the media – attach an image to the release. This can be a photo of your product, a graphical representation of the data you are presenting, or even a screenshot of your website.
• Use anchor text that link back to specific pages in your site.
• Follow distribution guidelines. Online press release distribution channels such as PRWeb, PRLeap, BusinessWire, and others, have a reputation to keep so they will never issue a press release that is sloppy. Ensure your online press release is free from any spelling and grammar mistakes, and that it is written in the suggested length of the PR publisher.
• Press releases are expected to convey NEWS, not hype. Online PR distribution channels will outright reject your press release if it’s not newsworthy so stay away from any marketing hype.

Want to see an online press release in action? Check this out -> SAM Press Release.

As a copywriter, it shocks me sometimes how webcopy is often the LAST thing on many of my clients’ minds when they build their affiliate sites. I have even heard it said that “it’s not the copy that makes the sale but the product”. And to this… I reply… DUH!

This is not to say that a lousy product will do as well. No. A product that delivers what the copy promises is of course the best. A great product means you don’t get refunds and that you increase the chances of your customers coming back and trusting your opinion of what they should buy.

HOWEVER, for that crucial first sale, you must CONVINCE that site visitor. You must PERSUADE him/her that what you are offering is THE best he/she can get. It is mute to try other sites. This is it folks. The best deal is in front of your eyes. BUY NOW.

Think about it. Many of us go to the mall with a fairly good idea of what we want to buy; but do we just go to a store, point at something and pull out our credit cards? No. We search for the saleslady/man. We want information about the product… we want to be convinced that the purchase we are going to make is the right one.

This mindset is the same for all online buyers - with a twist - you only have about 5-8 seconds to make an impact on the site visitor.

So what IS the formula to writing killer copy? I wish there was ONE formula, but there isn’t. Webcopy that sells is webcopy that takes everything into account: the product, its price, the target market, target buyer location, buyer mindset when he/she reaches your affiliate site, search engine optimization, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), and yes, MORE.

You may have heard most of these factors already but neurolinguistic programming?

NLP is the process of tapping into your visitors’ way of thinking (neuro), how they communicate verbally and non-verbally (linguistic), and how these affect the way they communicate and behave (programming).

By understanding or ‘getting into the head’ of site visitors, a great copywriter can use just the right words or use exactly the right language (at the right places!) to connect to the reader. The effect – convincing copy that connects exactly to the needs of the site visitor. The results – more sales of course

NLP is not something to play with. Use it incorrectly and you turn on all the WRONG responses. However, use it correctly and… CHA-CHING!

If you want to be a super affiliate, don’t just focus on the product/service you’re selling and your site design. Remember that your buyers are just like you – humans – and they need that ‘extra push’ to be convinced that what you’re selling is worth their hard-earned dollars. And in the realm of affiliate marketing, that extra push is often killer webcopy.

I just finished printing out my boarding pass for my first class flight from Boston to Austin Texas. I’m leaving for Austin tomorrow and will be returning on the 24th of April, next Tuesday.

I’m meeting up with, Jeff, a good friend, business partner, and very successful affiliate in his own right. We’re actually scoping out some real estate properties to invest in the downtown Austin area.

We hope to purchase 2-4 hot properties through our limited partnership. Although you’ll never get the type of return with real estate as you can with affiliate marketing, it’s a great conservative long term investment.

This will also be a great opportunity for me to take a much needed vacation from the world of internet marketing! I’m having two of my business partners, Tom & Melanie, step in as guest writers until next Wednesday, where I’ll resume the daily post.

Tom is an SEO & social media expert, he’s also a world class web designer who has worked with the Who’s Who out of Silicon Valley. Melanie, owns a highly successfully writing company, she’s an absolute pro at writing copy and an SEO expert. She worked with several big name internet marketers and is privy to their techniques and secrets.

Tom and Melanie are really the secret to my success, I want you to read every post that they write the next couple days, I promise that you’ll be blown away by their insight and expertise. I have learned a TON from them, and I know you will too.