Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Email Marketing... The Way to Go

If you are thinking of  upping your affiliate sales , try Email Marketing. It is an extremely cost effective and cheap  way of communicating with your prospects and customers. Email Marketing is so flexible that  no matter what kind of business you are in, you can use email marketing to ratchet up your cash register.  To get started with email marketing, you subscribe to an email autoresponder service, and through this marketing service you connect with prospects who sign up to your newsletter on your affiliate site.Now What is it that makes Email Marketing the way to go?


Increase of Affiliate Sales
 The beauty of email marketing is in the increase of Affiliate sales.It is said that the average person has to hear about your product 7 times before he  buys your product. Not with email marketing. Once you get your prospect to sign up for your newsletter, you send them email messages or broadcasts, through your email autoresponder service,  educating them about your products Once you win their trust, selling becomes less painful. Even better, they'll come yearning for more information which should make your wallet very happy. 


Email Marketing is also a great way to to sell promotional products. Very much so, especially when you are coming out with new products All you have to do is to put an email essage to all your subscribers.


Generation of Repeat Business
Probably the best part of email marketing is the generation of repeat business. Imagine I  am customer buying from you over and over again for the rest of your natural life. That's what you get from email marketing. If a person likes what you are selling he'll come knocking on your door repeatedly. And as some of you might know, it costs  as much more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.the best strategy of generating repeat sales is to keep in touch with the your old customers. Offer  them special deals on products similar to those thy've bought from you. Say you sell electroni goods and a customer has already bought a laptop from you. You could send him an email about a promotion you are doing on laptop accesories. He'll probably thank you for it.


Generation of Repeat Business
One startling revelation that most industries have experienced in  is a sharp increase of average order value. Email Marketing could increase your average order value to as much as 30% if done properly. Again, let's say you promote laptop goods, you could also tell your customers about other services such as laptop repair You save them the headache of shopping around for laptop repairers and make some money in the process.


Honest Valuable Feedback
To gain honest , valuable, feedback, all you have to do is ask for your customers opinion about your service. s.And since email marketing is faceless in nature, subscribers will be more inclined to be honest with you. If you send an email  asking for feedback from subscribers on how to improve on your product, expect valuable input from these people.


Well, there you have it on 'Email Marketing The Way To Go."  email marketing is perfect for generating affiliate sales. When used properly, it  could increase your sales several fold. So use email marketing as if your life depended on it.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Factors to Consider When Choosing A Web Hosting Company for Your Affiliate Marketing Site.

You've just chosen the domain for your affiliate site. Now it is time to search for your web hosting company. Finding a place to host your affiliate site is absolutely crucial if you want visitors(or customers to access your site. Do you need to speak Geek to be able to host your affiliate site? The good news is no! Web Hosting folks have made web hosting so user-friendly that it makes setting up hosting for affiliate site a a breeze. but you are bound to run into geek-like terminology so it pays to know how to deal with it. Let me show you  a few factors to consider when choosing a web hosting company for your affiliate Marketing site.

Reliable Uptime
First of all, let's define what I mean by Uptime.  Uptime is a figure that tells you where your hosting company is able to keep their servers up and going. So  naturally, reliable uptime is when your hosting company's servers are able to run consistently without going down. Most hosts' servers are able to stay up 99.98% of the time. If your host company's uptime isn't included on their website, make sure you give them a call to find out ab that.

Solid Customer Support.
Ideally, you expect your site to be up 100% of the time. But we both know it's not  like that in the real world. Once in a while you are going to hit  a wall with your hosting service and this where you need solid customer support from your hosting company. It really helps if  the hosting company has live chat support as you can quickly lodge your complaint with them without any hassle. Their phone line must be on 24/7 such that you can give them a call from whichever corner of the world you're hiding in. Most importantly you want to test whether the hosting company's customer support crew know what they are doing.


Amount of storage
One issue you want to get out of the way while searching for your web host is the amount of storage. By amount of storage mean the amount of data you can  upload to your affiliate site. Some hosting companies are a bit ambiguous as to how much storage you are allowed so make sure your hosting company is clear in its terms of reference as to how much storage you are allowed.


Amount of Bandwidth
The amount of bandwidth is a major  bone of contention with a lot of  hosting companies. For those who don't know what bandwidth means, bandwidth is the amount of data your hosting company will allow you and your viewers to download. You may not realize this, but downloading of media such as videos, pics, PDF files chew up considerable bandwidth. Your hosting company could charge you extra if you go over your bandwidth allocation. You need to keep this in consideration especially if your website is very popular. Find out from your host what their bandwidth limit so you don't stray from it.

Types of Hosting Present
Two  types of web hosting must be present in every web hosting company that you research.  For the sake of newbies who might wet around the tears I am going to explain the three types of hosting


Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is where you have your domain name hosted on a server with numerous websites. Shared Hosting offers solutions such as email, and other editing options. This type of hosting is perfect for affiliate marketers starting out for the first time and it is also the cheapest.


Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting  is the complete opposite of dedicated hosting. Here, you don't share a website with anybody. Instead, your website is hosted on a dedicated server-just you your website, and yourself. You only choose this option if your website is huge and draws in a lot of traffic. Also, be ready to cough up a lot of cash as it is quite expensive.


Permission To Have Multiple Domains
Although you have one site running, at some point you'll feel this burning edge to put up another site and another and another. The last thing you want is to host your sites with different hosting companies which can be a royal pain sometimes. So make sure the hosting company that you choose gives you permission to have multiple domains. Makes for easy and painless monitoring  of your sites.


To close out, these are the  factors to consider when choosing a  web hosting company for your affiliate marketing site. There are so many other factors to look out for but  these are what I think are the  features that really stand out as far as choosing a hosting company is concerned. So while doing your search, keep the above features in mind. 


So if you are looking for a web hosting company that has all the above features. Try three highly recommended hosting companies: GoDaddy.com,  HostGator, and Lonex.


Cheers!




Thursday, March 08, 2012

Does My Choice of Domain Name Really Matter?

One day you are talking to a friend of yours about getting into Affiliate marketing  so you become your own boss. Your friend is like "Well, sound like a great idea. But you do need to get a domain name for your business and get it registered at a good domain company." You then respond "Does my choice of domain really matter?" Then your friends go like " yeah, of course it does matter." You see your domain is like your street address. Imagine a customer trying to guess where the physical office of your company is- or at least they think the know where it. Only for them to find out with, derision of course, that your office cant be found. Same situation with your domain. domain name should be such that browsers should be able to find it online. Here are a few ideas to consider when choosing a domain name.

Make It Short and Easy to Spell
Choose  a short and easy name and it sticks in everybody's head. Choose a domain as long as the English alphabet and everybody will be scratching their heads trying to remember it . This, of course will be detrimental to your online business.

Make Your Company Name Your URL
This is a no brainer.   Your URL is what most people try first when looking for your business. Your business being part of your email makes it  a lot easier for browsers to find your business. You might want to broaden your horizons further by registering your product and your service names .  You could create mini sites dedicated to promoting your products and your services. Thinking Landing Page? Or you point your product URL to a section of your website which features your product.

Select Strong Keywords
The keywords you select in your content should be solid and industry-specific.  The keywords must be common words or short phrases that browsers are likely to type in a browser address field or search engine. Do this, and the value of the domains will go through the roof.  using easy-to -remember keywords wouldn't hurt your bank account at all.

Make It Personal
If you are a consultant, or any other professional it will make sense to you use your first and last name as your URL. Here you have a few mouthwatering options. You can use your personal name as your domain or you can point your personal name URL in the direction of your company website. Either way, your customers will come looking for you.

Go Mobile
This is no joking matter! Mobile devices are becoming very popular due to their portability. The mobile world  could be the next frontier as far as branding goes.So join the big boys and register your your domain as a .mobi site. You wont be sorry.

Keep Your Domain For as Long as Possible.
If you don't want your domain to expire, register it for as long as possible. You will be better off going for a 10 year deal. Expect to see pre-expiration reminders from your domain company or possibly sign up  on your behalf. This surely takes some of the pressure off you. If you happen to be looking for  quality places to register your domain(s),  I suggest GoDaddy , and HostGator.  These two have solid reps in the online world and their online support is first class.


So anytime you ask the question "Does My Choice of Domain Really Matter?", just remember what I've just outlined in the first paragraph. It sure does matter. your domain name is your online street address and if you want people to find you, you have to make it as uncomplicated as possible. Or else you will be pulling your hair out for years to come.