We all know that mobile commerce is poised to explode in the next few years. While its adoption has seemed slow when compared to the volume of commerce already taking place on desktop PCs, it’s only a matter of time before mobile devices are the preferred vehicle for online shopping. Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group forecast that within fi ve years half of today’s … [Read more...]
Tip-Of-The-Week The Best Content Research Tools
Content marketing is still the preferred method of most online marketers but finding things to write about is a problem for many. Even worse: having decided on a subject, you have to be able to write about it knowledgeably. The horror! We found a great post this week that brings together 12 idea-and-knowledge-generators. There are several in here that we hadn't heard of … [Read more...]
How-To Post of The Week: Building A Niche Website
The first of an ongoing series in which we will pick out one especially good how-to piece from around The Internets. This week a post that is terrific in its simplicity: how to publish a niche Wordpress site that Does Not Suck. It is such a seemingly easy process yet suckitude reigns. Noobs (and really, anybody who wants to be reminded of just what one should trying to do with … [Read more...]
Achieving ROI With Social Media
At a time when pretty much every organization or affiliate has a social media presence, it's amazing how many don't have any idea how to make it pay for itself. Key performance indicator (KPI) is the term of art for the metrics that matter. Webtrends identifies the most important KPIs: "What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you evaluate the success of … [Read more...]
11 Keys To Content Marketing Success
Getting your content marketing strategy right is more important than ever. Understanding your audience, your objectives and the landscape in which you are working is critical. Here are 11 simple things to focus on: "Know your reason: Why are you creating content? Your answer certainly doesn’t have to be altruistic, but you have to be able to answer that question." … [Read more...]
Prussakov's Baby: A Show Just For AMs
Geno Prussakov's new baby, Affiliate Management Days, launched today in San Francisco. The new two-day conference aims to educate affiliate managers in a professional environment focused on the needs of merchants and advertisers. The show opened with landing-page guru Tim Ash as keynote, with sessions featuring luminaries such as Todd Crawford, Karen Garcia, Jason Spievak and … [Read more...]
Eight Steps to Successful Performance Marketing
Marketing accountability is of ever-growing significance for advertisers and their agencies. For them to remain competitive, their marketing plans need to be both efficient and also fully integrated into existing product development, sales and delivery processes. These marketing plans will typically include many different media types, and while online media is still only a … [Read more...]
ABCs of Online Marketing
With words entering the lexicon constantly, it’s a good idea for performance marketers to study up on some new industry jargon. Because performance marketing encompasses a variety of different disciplines, including affiliate marketing, search, interactive advertising and lead generation – each with its own terminology – it can be difficult to keep up. Just getting a handle on … [Read more...]
Learning Outside the Box
Many of today's online marketers have unrelated backgrounds and have learned their profession through on-the-job training and supplemental offerings. The situation is similar to the first iteration of marketing on the Web in the 1990s. But unlike 10 years ago, there are more ways to learn and get information such as webinars and online courses; enrichment classes such as … [Read more...]
Colin McDougall: The Timekeeper
This past summer, super-affiliate Colin McDougall traveled around British Columbia with his family in his newly purchased travel trailer. From mid-July through Labor Day weekend McDougall worked a grand total of about 10 hours from the road. The rest of the time he spent paddling his kids around in an inflatable kayak, feeding the ducks, building sandcastles on the beach and … [Read more...]
Summer Reading Extravaganza
Forget about what Oprah's recommending. Put away the latest from Philip Roth and that potboiler from James Patterson. It's summertime and what's really sizzling is online marketing. So, now's the time to catch up on your reading about a variety of hot topics including affiliate marketing, performance marketing, online advertising, search optimization and more. And there's no … [Read more...]
Jeremy Palmer: The Million Dollar Man
Jeremy Palmer knew he had the entrepreneurial spirit. He just hadn't found the right thing to let it soar. He knew there was more to life than his mid-level job at a small financial services company. As a Web developer, in 2002 he launched website MeetYourMatch.com in hopes that it could generate a little extra cash for his wife and two kids in Utah and give him an outlet to … [Read more...]