You Can Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

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Now is a good time to make money with affiliate marketing. With the economy in the tank and jobs getting harder and harder to find lots of people are turning to working for themselves. The Internet has opened the door for many entrepreneurs to start online businesses and affiliate marketing is a good jump in point. More and more people everyday are joining the affiliate marketing bandwagon.

So why does this way of starting an online business look so attractive to so many people? For one thing it can be started with little or no overhead. You can actually start this business without having your own website so you dont have to pay for web hosting or domain registry. You can use FREE web 2.0 properties like Squidoo or Weebly to start building your online presence.

Another thing is you dont have to stock merchandise to make money with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate you merrily showcase products from the company you are an affiliate for and when you sell a product that company will do the shipping. You never have to see or handle the merchandise at all. Isnt that a nice way to earn some money?

For those who are unfamiliar with what affiliate marketing is, let me briefly explain. It is when you join an online merchants affiliate program and receive an affiliate ID. You can then use that ID to sell that merchants products and receive a commission when you make a sell.

Generally this happens when a visitor to your online property clicks a link containing your affiliate ID leading to the merchants site and buys a product.

As you can see this is a fairly easy process, but like with all businesses you have to put in some hard work. You have to choose the right products to sell, you have to create and promote your web properties in order to get people to them and you have to pay attention to what works and what dont work.

However, one of the best things about this business model is if the hard work is put in right at the beginning the less work you will have to do later on because your properties will do the work for you.

All in all you dont have to be a computer genius to make money with affiliate marketing, you just have to put in the work and you will find affiliate marketing success.

Film Marketing How Independent Film Makers Can Promote a Film Costing $15,000 or less!

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Online Film Marketing – and insiders guide!

First of all there are 2 main elements to the marketing of your movie:

1. Offline – major premieres, a film festival, electronic press kits, any real world publicity

2. Online – viral marketing via: email/social networking sites/PR newswires/newsletters/social bookmarking – anything that is an -internet’ based opportunity. Let’s examine how we can use social bookmarking and web2.0 to maximise these opportunities.

Introduction

It goes without saying that different films, types and genres require a different level of approach, however there are some general rules that you can follow to generate high traffic levels on the internet.

Where’s the best place to drive all this traffic? I would suggest perhaps your own movie website is the best place to start, but equally it could be a blog (especially during the early stages of your production and you don’t yet have any imagery) or a Facebook Page, or another website which I’ll talk about later.

Your Movie Website

A domain can be purchased relatively cheaply and it is worth building a site that fits the style of the movie – a horror – clearly must have a different style to a romantic comedy. When building your site you must optimize for search engines and there are some basic rules to remember – and your site must be optimized for what are known as -On-page factors’:

1. Put some written content on the page – Google and other search engines focus heavily on text based content so on your opening page make sure that this is there and available for google to see – it should not be image based, and if you do use images make sure you place your keywords in them! i.e. instead of 1234.jpg call it HorrorMovie.jpg. In this way it is visible to search engines.

2. Keywords – keywords drive traffic to your site and therefore your main keywords should be included in your: title, H1, H2, tags, meta description, (and if you can URL) – use different keywords for each page of your site. Use the keywords early in the description.

3. Do your keyword research – it is no use entering keywords that have a massive amount of competition since it is unlikely that unless you have a huge PR budget and lots of high quality sites linking to you that you will ever really be competitive for these keywords. It is best to use what are known as -long-tail keywords’. Typically this means instead of -Romatic Comedy’ as your keyword, you might choose -Action Flick for Girls’.Targeted and more likely to peak an interest.

4. The order of your keywords matters, make sure you are consistent.

Now these on-page elements, which you are able to control, account for a probably 1/3 of the traffic that will be driven to your site. The rest comes from ‘Off-Page’ elements and these are absolutely crucial to how to drive traffic to your website.

What are off-page factors? Off-page factors are things that are effectively beyond your control. Backlinks – i.e. links from other websites and pages which link directly to your website. Certain websites will have more -authority’ than others and therefore command greater respect from Google and backlinks from these sites will push you up the rankings. However there are ways of doing this yourself and having -influence’ over the search engines.

Here’s what I am going to suggest you do. It will be a pain, and take some time but believe me the benefits are really worth it. We should create accounts on the following websites and then aim to link through to your blog or website:

1. Digg

2. Propeller.com

3. Del.icio.us

4. Mister-wong.com

5. Hubpages – write articles about your film, what is involved in the making of the movie etc.

6. Squidoo – create a -lens’ to talk about your project

7. You Tube – use video to promote your film and drive traffic to your site

8. StumbleUpon

9. Mixx.com

There are of course, some sites which have been left off the list, quite deliberately, and these sites should be used to provide a major source of traffic and promotion to your production:

1. Facebook – the obvious choice since it is easy to invite your friends and get them onboard to follow you, as well as keep them updated with the latest developments on your movie project.

2. Twitter – an awesome way to generate interest in your film to thousands!

(For both of the above see the brilliant Mashable.com for great ways to effectively build a fan base on this platform and it would be impossible for me to add to it – its that good!)

3. One Fat Cigar – a new website for professional and up-and-coming film makers specifically to help them market and promote their productions. It’s good because as soon as you have the idea/script for your project you are able to really promote it from day one, and begin the marketing there and then so that by the time you are finished the production you already have a following. There’s a great networking tool too and it is also possible to cast and crew your project through the site.

So what can you do to build more followers and fans?

1. Content is king – without having a significant amount of high quality content no one will become a fan, and once you have people as fans, they need to be continually updated with new, and more importantly interesting content to keep them engaged.

2. What types of content work?-

a) You’re a film maker – use film content!!! Film the ‘makings of’ as it happens, conduct video blogs of your crew, interview the cast and crew (p.s. release forms!), where are you filming? why? what’s difficult about the next stunt you’re going to pull?

b) Stills photographs – very important! imagery and styling always help promote the movie and give the audience an insight into the production

3. Frequency – Updates 2 or 3 times a week are perfect, it could just be a piece to camera discussing where you are with the production and status updates can be done whenever there is something interesting to say, perhaps 2/3 times per day.

4. Interact – why not get involved with your fan base? ask them questions, talk to them and let them feel like they have direct access to you, the film maker. In this way the tie is an emotional one.

5. Share – recommend other high quality film projects you have been following – your fans will thank you for bringing another exciting production to their attention, which present you as a -cool’ authority and generates trust with your fan base.

6. Be Interesting – do things that are fun, and show the more interesting side of film making – the characters, the challenges, the difficulties in achieving certain shots.

Once you have a fan base you can then drive the fans to do what you want them to – buy your DVD, watch your film in the cinema, check it out at a festival, or even petition a distributor!

(In terms of One Fat Cigar, fans can sign up for free to the site, but you’ll need premium membership to be able to create projects but the membership charge isn’t significant and there are discount opportunities for launch to fans of their Facebook page and 500 free 1 year premium membership available. We think it will certainly be worth a punt!)

What to do once you have set-up your One Fat Cigar Project/Facebook Page/Website

While it is likely that you’re going to pick up a fair few fans by simply having your project up on the site, it is also important to promote your project to the search engines.

1. Use a number of the high authority sites (Digg.com/StumbleUpon etc.) listed above to link to your project on One Fat Cigar, Facebook and Website

2. Use Ping-o-matic.com to ping the address for your particular project

3. Link to your project through Twitter/Facebook and then do status updates every time you post something new on the One Fat Cigar site

4. Use anchor text which focuses on your keywords to link through to your page – i.e. if your keyword is -Psychological Thriller’ use this text to link through to your project page on the One Fat Cigar site, and not the name of your film or the One Fat Cigar site. This makes it easier for your keywords to appear in the search engine listings.

5.Put your One Fat Cigar link, links to your Facebook/Twitter and website out on any press releases you may have – that way the press have access to your material online for viewing.

6. Keep adding content – and don’t forget that your fans will immediately have the opportunity transfer over to your next project and so you’ll begin promotion of your second movie from a running start!

Conclusion

So hopefully that provides a solid basic introduction to film marketing and promoting your film online and will begin to generate interest about your project.So hopefully that provides a solid basic introduction to film marketing and promoting your film online and will begin to generate interest about your project.

Don’t forget you won’t get high in the Google rankings overnight, and you will need to track your progress. You’re not looking for the name of your movie, but you are looking for your competitive keywords. There are various rank tracking tools available to do this.

To search for the best keywords Google provides its own tool to help get you started:

http://www.google.com/sktool/#

Susie Tulllett (former head of DDA’s PR unit in Cannes for over 10 years) guide to Film PR can be found on the One Fat Cigar blog.

Ross Grayle Jones is co-founder of One Fat Cigar.com a movie website for people who love film.

Pieces Of Marketing Materials To Look For In An Affiliate Product

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Promoting affiliate products is not without its hassles, but if youre dedicated and have a strong plan you can make money month in and month out.

Selecting the right affiliate products is key in getting results from affiliate marketing. With the wrong product, you wont be able to make money no matter how much traffic you send through your affiliate link.

One of the hallmarks of a good affiliate program is the marketing materials that the publisher includes with their promotion package. If youre searching for an affiliate product to promote, look for the following marketing materials on their affiliates page. The more they offer, the better.

1.Product graphics

One of the best ways to show your market what youre promoting is to include a picture of the product on your website or on a pre-selling landing page. Product graphics help increase the perceived value of the affiliate product and will increase your conversion rates.

Look for an affiliate product that offers several different sizes of product graphics.

2.Banner ads

Although banner ads are less effective than they used to be in the first days of online marketing, they can still be an effective promotional tool.

Why create your own banners when you can use premade ones provided by the product creator? Banner ads from product creators are generally professional produced and are of high quality.

3.Block ads

Just like banner ads, block ads can be very helpful in your promotional efforts. This size is useful to display in the sidebars of your blog and in areas where you need a smaller size of ad than a banner ad.

4.Articles

Pre-written articles can be hit or miss. Make sure you read through the articles completely before using them. Give preference to products that offer articles that you can adjust to suit your needs.

This way you can get a base version of the article and make it unique so you can submit it to directories for backlinks. Even better are affiliate marketing programs that give you monthly articles that you can use in your promotions.

5.Email marketing messages

Although youll generally want to edit your email marketing messages so that they are unique and fit your style/voice, having a base email marketing message can help you save time and get a quality message out to your list in a shorter period of time.

6.Twitter messages

Twitter messages can help you save time and figure out exactly what to Tweet about when you are promoting the affiliate product. Its not a necessity, but this can be an affiliate program perk.

7.Rebrandable reports

This is one of the most helpful pieces of affiliate marketing materials available.

If an affiliate program has a high quality promotional report that you can rebrand with your own affiliate link, you can get on the track to making affiliate income really quickly.

Rebrandable report should be helpful and interesting. If they meet this criteria, then put it to use right away.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Facebook And Twitter

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Social media is a place where you can share and network with friends and now-a-days even businesses. It enables you to approach your potential customers, converse with various businesses from across the globe and get to learn a lot many new things. There are various social media platforms that offer these services like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. But the most popular of all are Facebook and twitter. Facebook and twitter are mediums that have evolved a lot in time, with so many new businesses joining them and making profile in them. But still there are many people who are unaware about the advantages and disadvantages involved in using Facebook and twitter. Advantages: Facebook: 1.Facebook is very easy to join. The whole process of joining and then building a profile can be performed by any person new to the medium.

2.It enables you to easily find communities of groups that are related to your niche of business.

3.As a business you can search for your potential customers without much trouble.

4.Conversing can help you to augment your business to a very large extent.

5.You can create backlinks of your website for the customers to visit and increase your PageRank.

Twitter:

1.Creating an account is extremely trouble-free. Anyone can join twitter and the best part about it is that you don’t have to put in a lot of details about you; just the general information is more than enough.

2.The characters are limited to 140 words, which is a good thing as there will be no need to write or read a whole essay.

3.It contains many third-party services like HootSuite, with the help of which you can update your tweets automatically without signing in.

4.It also has many applications that can be used to augment the business.

Disadvantages:

Facebook:

1.Facebook addition is the main problem that is been faced by youngsters from around the world. This gives them no time to indulge in other activities.

2.Because of so many people joining Facebook the chances of fraud has increased tremendously. The odds of getting hacked have amplified which can be highly aggravating.

3.For businesses, it has become difficult to find who your genuine customers are and who are not.

Twitter:

1.There is no privacy, anyone can follow you even if you don’t know them and see all your updates.

2.With only 140 characters being allowed you cannot give the detailed information about your company, products or services.

3.Tweets are all over the place. It can be difficult to pick over the Twitter updates popping up around the web. With this material you can build your own result as to which social media medium, Facebook or twitter is most likely to give benefit to you and your business.

Make The Most Of The Marketing Mix

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Business administration involves the creation of a road map that outlines the specific goals that the business is working to achieve and targeted benchmarks for when those goals will be reached. By constructing a business and marketing plan companies develop strategies for reaching their goals in a timely manner. Experts in business recommend that ten percent of the budgeted operating expenses for the business be spent on marketing.

Because customers are the lifeblood of any business how the allocated dollars are spent on marketing can make a significant difference to the bottom line revenues that a company generates. Return on investment is essential for any business and finding marketing channels that will give returns above what is spent is the goal of the marketing department. The challenge for marketing directors comes in finding the right channel to put marketing dollars into and effectively creating a campaign for the selected channels that will give the highest returns.

The marketing mix is a term used to describe the combination of different channels that are to be used by the company to attract new business and increase customer retention. Within the marketing mix the director and his or her team divide the budget and make allocations for where, when and how the marketing dollars will be spent. Some channels may receive more money than others depending upon the cost of entry to the marketing channel and the effectiveness of that channel in returning dividends through sales to consumers.

A marketing mix might consist of print advertising in magazines and newspapers, direct mail, television commercials, radio spots and internet marketing. While traditional forms of media are dividing the budgets of big business smaller companies can also model a scaled version of a marketing mix down to fit their budget.

Where once the elements of traditional forms of media were incorporated into the marketing mix the online revolution has altered the perceptions and spending habits of many Americans. While some forms of media may still be included in the budget of a marketing mix directors of marketing departments are realizing that dollars spent on internet marketing are bringing the highest returns on investment.

While allocating a larger percentage of the budget to internet marketing on a macro level, executives are discovering that there are sub-channels within the internet marketing medium that require further study and division of the channels budget on a micro level. Search engine optimization, pay-per click campaigns and social network marketing are just a few of the options available to marketing departments that are focusing the core of their budgets on the cost effective and highly reachable consumers of their marketing dollars.