Sylvie Fortin here, and I have a bone to pick with Google.

On September 23, 2009, Google launched a new, free service that purports to be the next big thing in social communities. It gives everyday people the ability to provide their own comments on ANY web page they visit, in a frame that resides right next to the page they are viewing.

(This is exactly as if Google installed a gigantic graffiti wall in front of your storefront, handed out paint cans, and invited passers-by to write all over the wall, without giving YOU the ability to erase anything. Ummm. Are they serious? Do they actually believe that only honest people would ever use the wall?)

At first glance, one might think this is a great idea, after all, it isn’t like Google has done anything particularly innovative. Diigo, Stickis and Fleck are all services that allow the general public to annotate the web and share their comments about websites they happen to be visiting.

But there are a few things that make Sidewiki dramatically different from all the rest of the web annotation applications, things that all website owners … Click to continue »

This post is not meant to be a commentary about Google Sidewiki, but rather serves as an updated list of the most recent tools and applications that have been built to attempt to block Sidewiki from appearing next to your website if you don’t want it to.

Michel and I will be keeping a very close eye on this story, and will update this list as new tools and applications are built to put the control back in the hands of website owners.

We will be posting our own commentary very soon on Sidewiki and how it may effect your your online business. But in the meantime, please refer to this list of available tools, which will be updated as they come available.

UPDATE: We’ve now posted our own commentary on the Google Sidewiki controversy, and welcome your comments and thoughts on the subject.

We encourage all comments to take place on our own public real estate space, using our own commenting functionality. We’ve spent a great deal of time and money on building an open community, and we feel that to use Sidewiki to voice … Click to continue »

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

The best favor you can do for yourself and your business is to always focus on one task at a time, and always finish what you start.

How the heck do you do that on the internet, when there are distractions everywhere you look, and in affiliate marketing… when there are new offers every day ripe for you to promote?

The answer is: if you’re going to promote a new affiliate offer, write all your emails and blog posts in one sitting, before you get bored or distracted with another offer.

Sounds intimidating? It doesn’t have to be.

Remember that when you promote someone else’s offer, they tend to give you at least one cut-and-paste email. Schedule it as a future broadcast and paste it in as-is, because time is limited!

If the email they provide is more than a page long, I’ll split it up into two parts and schedule the second email to go out a week later.

Once … Click to continue »

I know your time is valuable so I’ll get right to the point.

Product owners and affiliates for the last couple years have lived a happy co-dependent existence. In the beginning, affiliates had limited choices. Today, it’s an ocean of opportunity.

The reason I’m writing you today is because I feel the industry needs a wake up call.

Here are the problems…

1. Affiliate marketers are becoming less dependent on product owners
2. Affiliates have more choices then ever before
3. Affiliates have evolved with the times but product owners have not
4. Product owners are relying too heavily on affiliates

Affiliates Don’t Need You Anymore

In the old days, an affiliate could simply link to a product owner and that was enough.

Then over time, more and more affiliate marketers were created by the product owners — so many new affiliates that, in order to start making sales, you had to offer some sort of bonus or incentive that no one else was offering.

Now in 2009, you need to go even further than just bonuses, because almost everyone’s doing bonuses at this point.

To compete with the massive amounts of affiliates, you now have to capture leads from your traffic, offer a … Click to continue »

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

No product vendor likes potential affiliates to ask for free “review copies.” It reeks of inexperience and penny-pinching. If you want to promote a product and need to see what it looks like on the inside, just bite the bullet and pay for it like everyone else.

As an affiliate, you have two relationships to work: with your buyers, and with the product originator. When you try to go the cheap route, you burn too many bridges early on.

Let’s also remember that whenever you pay for something, you’re more likely to take action with it. Just imagine you’ve work and saved your entire life for your dream car. Once you buy it, you’re going to actually use it and take extra care of it, right?

Then imagine somebody gives you the car outright. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t work for it, and didn’t pay anything for it. You still might cherish the car but you aren’t … Click to continue »

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

Affiliate marketing is not a “push button solution”… it’s just a different type of selling than product launch marketing or AdSense marketing.

You are not going to be able to just sign up as an affiliate to some program and expect to make money… you have to DO something with that link!

The big formula for internet marketing is:

List + Traffic = Offers.

When you sign up for something as an affiliate, that affiliate product or service is your offer. Once you have that offer, you need a list and you need traffic if you ever expect that offer to convert.

You’d be surprised at how many people forget this step!

For this reason, I don’t recommend promoting affiliate offers right out of the gate in internet marketing. Build up a list first, even if it’s built from a small $7 report or a free ethical bribe.

Join list building giveaways, place your signature link at the bottom of your forum … Click to continue »

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

As someone who runs affiliate programs for over 50 of my own products, I can tell you 99% of affiliates are worthless.

They’ll signup and send no traffic, or send traffic and only bring in a couple of sales. What’s the common thread behind all these affiliate failures I see again and again? It comes in two parts: not making an effort, and not bridging their mailing list to your offer.

I would be thrilled if an affiliate came to me and said:

“I want to interview you for 20 minutes about (a topic directly related to both our products and skills). My list contains (size of list) subscribers, and the last offer I promoted converted at (this percentage) and brought in (this amount of sales). I’ll record the interview, convert it into downloadable form and get it out to my subscribers within 24 hours, with a link back to your offer with me as the affiliate, at … Click to continue »

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

Stop being so lazy with affiliate marketing!

An affiliate program is where you can link to someone else’s offer with your special ID and get paid commission every sale you make. This process “seems” really hands-off and easy because there’s no product creation or customer support involved… just send traffic to a proven offer!

Here’s the problem.

Most marketers are lazy and don’t realize that affiliate marketing has its own disadvantages. It’s tougher to build a list using affiliate marketing, tough to convert and split test, and you have to devote most of your effort to pre-selling and marketing that affiliate product.

What the heck do you need to know about affiliate marketing in order to pull in decent results?

If you’re serious about affiliate marketing, setup a squeeze page that gets people on a mailing list first and redirects to the affiliate offer. Send traffic to that page using forum posts and articles.

Even if they don’t buy right … Click to continue »

It ticks me off when people spend too much time on headshots, graphics, and other name recognition devices when they should be focusing more on web sites that actually make money!

Branding is one of the last things you should worry about — so if you really want to get to the point where you’re working on branding to get that extra 5 percent boost in sales, get through these steps first…

The big formula is: List + Traffic = Offers.

Step 1: Choose Your Niche and Skill Level.

A niche is an area of expertise like copywriting, stress relief, PHP, article writing, etc., and a skill level is how you will turn that expertise into a shippable product. A skill level might mean freelance projects, affiliate marketing, or site building.

Before you do anything you need to know what your area of expertise is. Everybody has one, because everybody has read books, had a favorite job, had a favorite subject in school, subscribe to certain niches of magazines.

If this is your first time choosing a niche, make it a skill you can prove. If you haven’t made any … Click to continue »

Yesterday, Ed Dale posted an article to his blog that kind of struck me. In it, Ed submits that hard-sell marketing is better than soft-sell, even when people are jaded and annoyed with such aggressive approaches.

If you think I’m saying this because I prefer soft-sell approaches, think again.

The reason it struck me is that, and with all due respect to Ed, his post may be a tad misleading.

I agree with the fact that people today are annoyed, jaded, and even frustrated when buying products online — specifically, products in the Internet marketing industry. But I don’t think people are annoyed with hard-sell marketing at all.

They’re annoyed with something else entirely.

Before I dive in, please understand that Ed Dale and I are friends.

In fact, when Ed posted about his recent decision to dump all his friends on Facebook and promote a “fan page” instead, not only was I one of the first ones to agree with him and applaud him, but also I followed in his footsteps.

My comments here have nothing to do with Ed Dale as a person or even as a marketer. They are … Click to continue »