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 »