It’s not as easy as it looks….

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur who feels as if no one respects what you do?  I find it very interesting the numbers of people who are employed that believe simply by virtue of owning your own business, you are somehow on “easy street”.  Or, worse yet, once your business becomes successful, everyone seems to forget all the time and effort it took to make it a success.  They only see the benefits and somehow think that what you did was easy.  I always tell people, if it was that easy everyone would be doing it.  I’ve worked for someone and I’ve worked for myself, and yes working for yourself can be very rewarding, believe me you also work a lot harder.  So the next time someone assumes that being your own boss means that you’ve got it easy, ask them the following questions:

1. Are you willing to give up the security of a regular paycheck?
2. Are you willing to work long hours for an unspecified period of time (sacrificing vacation and family time) to make your business a success?
3. Can you handle the stress of failure? (Because as any entrepreneur can tell you, you WILL fail…more than once I might add, before you succeed)

Now if your friend, family or colleague can answer a definitive yes to these questions, then by all means encourage her to take the plunge, but if not remind them to respect all that you’ve sacrificed, and that whatever rewards you’ve received, you’ve earned.

Child’s Play

My husband has been away on travel for the past week.   During his time away, he cemented two joint ventures, worked on a new product launch, laid the ground work for a new company he’s forming, and spoke at an Internet conference in Atlanta.  As I stated earlier, being an entrepreneur definitely doesn’t mean being a slacker.

So while he’s away generating new business, I remained local making sure that the existing one continued to run smoothly.  It was a challenging week which also included caring for and shuttling two kids back and forth to camp and daycare, but I really enjoyed my “mommy time” with them.  We even celebrated our “last” day together by spending the day at a local petting zoo, grabbing a “few” doughnuts from Krispy Kreme and wrapping it all up with a pizza party at home.

I had a blast with my kids, but I think SOMEBODY owes me a spa day!  LOL.

Local is all the rage….

As many of you have heard or will be hearing soon “local” is the latest and greatest opportunity in the internet marketing space.  Basically, what a lot of very smart affiliate marketers are doing is taking their expertise to the local market and showing small business how to rank in the search engines using SEO and/or PPC strategies.   For those of us in the industry, we often forget how foreign the internet is to the average person.  Very few businesses understand the mechanics of how by typing in a few keywords, your business can get listed on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, but they do know it’s important to be on the first page and they are willing to pay someone for that expertise.

One thing that affiliates are doing is building a site that ranks high in the search engines for a local industry, for example “Washington, DC chiropractor”.  Once that site is ranked, the affiliate then contacts chiropractors in Washington, DC and offers them the site for a specific price….how’s that for an additional stream of income.  Not only can you go the traditional route of making money getting sites ranked for your own campaigns, but now you can transfer that expertise to small businesses.

To your success,

Kim

You’ve got to give it up!

There is nothing for satisfying then the giving of your time.  I know how busy life can get, and you feel like there is no way that you can give any more of yourself than you already are, but I promise you giving of yourself when you have so much, to those who have less can bring you more joy than you can imagine.  Learn to give back.  Not because you have to but to give hope to those who can’t and to grow both mentally and spiritually as an individual.

Just last Thursday, I took a trip to Los Angeles, where I was blessed with the opportunity to volunteer as a mentor for the L.E.A.P. Foundation.  Now before you pat me on the back and think what a wonderful person I am, I have to be honest and say I almost didn’t make it.  There was a huge storm in Washington that morning, therefore my flight was delayed.  Thanks to that delay, I missed my connection in Atlanta.  When I got to Atlanta, every flight to L.A. was sold out until the next morning, and on top of all that, my luggage was missing.  It was at this point that I thought about turning around and going home. After all, by the time I was now scheduled to arrive in L.A., I’d have to turn around and leave the next day, so what would be the point of traveling 3000 miles for a few hours.

Fortunately, I was travelling with my good friend Superwoman Vicki Irvin, who reminded me of my purpose….to be a mentor…..so off we went to our Atlanta hotel, and the mall (since the airline couldn’t tell us where our luggage was) to buy clothes that we could wear the next day.

We arrived at LAX at 10:30AM, found our luggage, ran to our hotel to drop off our bags, and of course since we couldn’t check into our room, freshened up in the lobby bathroom, jumped in a cab and made our way over to UCLA for the event….WHEW!

All I can say is despite the challenges of getting there I have never felt so blessed and honored to be part of such an amazing event.  I met some of truly inspiring high school and college students, and by the end of the day my spirit was soaring.  I know it sounds cliché, but it really is better to give than receive.

Coast to Coast….

Not only did I travel to LA to mentor a youth group, but the very next morning I hopped on a plane and headed to NY to meet my husband and attend Affiliate Summit…coast to coast within 48 hours.  Now I don’t recommend this traveling bi-coastal on a regular basis, but sometimes you’ve got to dig deep to make things happen.  I knew I wanted to give a part of myself to the kids in LA, but I also knew it was important to follow my own dreams and ambitions.  They both just happened to coincide on the same weekend.  The journey towards a worthy goal never comes easy, so the sacrifices I made to give of myself and to grow my business were well worth it.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Affiliate Summit….

I’m just returning from Affiliate Summit East in NYC, and all I can say is it was the best one yet.  I just finished reading The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, and in that book he talks about a phenomenon called momentum, where you begin to see success and results compound rapidly.  Well I’m definitely feeling some momentum.  LOL!

While attending ASE10, I networked and learned from some of the top names in the industry.  I spoke with a number of individuals regarding my quest to bring more women into the industry, and was able to convince one very smart PPV woman affiliate to join my network.  For those of you who weren’t there, if you are serious about becoming an affiliate, you owe it to yourself to attend.

If you are planning on being at the next event, I’d like to give you three quick pointers that will help you as you walk the halls:

1. Don’t be a newbie…even if you are one.  Advertisers are looking for experienced affiliates, so if you are talking to one, the worst thing you can do is say that you are new.
2. Don’t let the advertisers do all the talking.  Flip the script!  Be aggressive and ask questions of them.
3. Do go to www.offervault.com or www.affspy.com to see what types of offers the advertiser has.  If you find that they are not listed under a certain offer type, ask them about it.  This puts you in a position of authority.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 is coming to Las Vegas, January 9 – 11.  Hope to see you there!

To your success,

Kim

Lately there has been a lot of talk about rebranding the affiliate marketing industry to better reflect how it fits into the overall advertising and marketing industry.  Due to the increase in the number of major brand advertisers into the affiliate marketing world, many are saying that the industry has outgrown the term affiliate and prefer the term performance marketers.   In some ways it makes sense.   Most people that I talk to have little to no understanding of what an affiliate does.

According to blogger Scott Medlock,  “Performance marketing is where advertisers, working through an agency place creatives with publishers who accept payment as a result of consumer action on the advertising instead of an arbitrary payment based on possible reader/viewership”.  Interestingly enough, when defined in this way, those who are in the marketing and advertising industry “get it”.

TV stations regularly air infomercials on a performance basis.  So do radio and cable.  Most people understand that business model, but for some reason when it’s applied to the online world, it’s looked upon as a different animal.

Of course there are always two sides to a coin.  There are some who feel that it’s a bad idea to change the brand.  Affiliates have spent a number of years educating online marketers and the public about affiliate marketing, so many feel that changing the brand would result in a negative setback for the industry.

This debate isn’t over, and it will be interesting to see which side wins.  Personally, I like the term performance marketing.  Since the industry is evolving why not evolve the brand.

To your success,

Kim

Direct linking is putting links directly to your advertiser sites rather than creating a landing page to pre-sell the offer.  This is an effective way to generate income because it is fairly easy to do.  You can direct link from article sites, forums, blogs, and message boards.

Of course there are always pros and cons with any method of driving traffic, and direct linking is no different.  First, let’s talk about the pros:

1. It’s easy; it’s fast….no website needed.
2. In offers where the prospect does not need to be pre-sold, such as a car insurance quote, or a loan, direct linking often converts better.
3. For a branded offer, you get to use the advertiser’s URL.  For example, if it’s a Blockbuster offer, when you direct link, the offer will say Blockbuster.

And now the cons:

1. You lose control.  You don’t have control of the landing page, it belongs to the advertiser.
2. The offer can go away.  All CPA offers go away eventually, so if the offer goes away, so does your money.
3. A lot of places to advertise won’t let you direct link (Google will penalize for direct linking by giving you a low quality score).

It takes a while to create and test a landing that converts, so if you’re looking for a quick, easy way to jumpstart your affiliate marketing game, give direct linking a try.

To your success,

Kim

Last week I provided numbers 10 through 6 of my top 10 reasons why people fail at affiliate marketing. I know you’ve been waiting with anticipation to hear the rest, so let’s jump into it:

5. Unrealistic expectations – Rome wasn’t built in a day, so guess what your business won’t be either. I know, I know, you’ve heard all the stories and seen the emails that all you have to do is throw up a landing page and you will become an instant millionaire. But seriously, do you really think that you can work a couple of hours and create a campaign that makes you $2800 per day over the course of a year, if so, you are going to be very disappointed. And if you can do that, please call me because I want to know your secret. LOL!

4. Not testing – Testing, or the lack thereof will officially put the nail in the coffin of any aspiring affiliate. You have to test. One more time….You have to test. Say it again….You have to test. Ok, I think you get the idea. When you are creating your landing page, you don’t know what’s going to work and what isn’t. The only way to find out is through testing, and that means lots of it. The smallest changes can lead to the biggest results….both good and bad. So when you create an ad, you must consider every possibility that might attract a prospect to your page and continue to modify and refine (test) until you get the conversions you are looking for.

3. Not tracking – You can’t expect to be profitable if you’re not tracking the activity of your campaigns. You must monitor every ad’s CPC (cost per click), EPC (earnings per click), and conversion rates on a daily basis. Failure to manage any of the three is a one way ticket to losing money, and I’m sure you don’t want to do that.

I had a great time this weekend speaking about affiliate marketing at Vicki Irvin’s Extreme Women Entrepreneurs Conference in Washington, DC. Check me out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3B1zr70i24

2. Not managing cash flows – As anyone in business will tell you, you have to know not only how much your making, but how much you’re spending. It is very easy to get caught up in how much revenue your campaigns are generating, but not considering what you are spending for your advertising. I know many an affiliate who at the start of their career, would spend all their revenue, and forget that they still had to pay the search engines for advertising, so guess what, when the bill from Google came due, there was no money left to pay. How long do you think that affiliate stayed in business??

You also need to be mindful of managing your money based on your payouts. Every network pays on a different schedule. Some pay as little as once per month, others may pay as much as a couple of times per week. If you are only being paid monthly, and you spend all your advertising dollars in the first two weeks, you’ll have no money to run campaigns and will be forced to suspend them. This of course leads to missed revenue opportunities.

So just like you have a budget with whatever you are doing currently, you also want to have a budget as an affiliate. After all, this is a business and you need to treat it as such.

; And the number one reason people fail in affiliate marketing is (drum roll please)……..

1. Giving up too soon!!! – It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people give up when things aren’t going their way. You’ve probably heard this story before, but it bears repeating….it took Thomas Edison 99 tries before he invented the light bulb. Suppose he had given up at 98, we’d all still be reading by lantern. If you are just starting out in this business, or any business for that matter, things are going to be tough. It’s the nature of starting anything new, but you must persevere. As an affiliate, you never start out knowing what offer is going to convert the best for you, or what landing page is going to attract your prospect, but as long as you continue to tweak and test, you will eventually hit your mark and success will be yours.

To your success,

Kim

www.KimADavis.com