Nice one, Best Buy. Instead of giving your loyal affiliates their usual 1 percent commission on laptops and Wii consoles, just give them 0.25 percent instead. Happy Holidays.

Shawn Collins, writing in Affiliate Tip, points out that Best Buy’s move to slash affiliate commissions is similar to Apple’s decision not to allow affiliates to promote the iPhone when it came out. Both moves are ‘anti-affiliate’ and both will end up pushing affiliates away from such merchants.

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In yesterday’s feature article I mentioned how my husband and I failed to get venture capital for our first business idea… which left us with no jobs, no money, huge debt and no business…

Fortunately, we quickly rebounded by coming up with a business concept that was already proven. And apart from developing our products and services, we quickly did what ALL businesses should begin with: see if we had something our target market would be willing to buy.

For the next year, we focused most of our attention on two things: marketing and product development.

I actually believe we spent too much time on product development and too little on marketing. We also made plenty of mistakes. But here’s a mistake we made that in some ways I’m glad we made: we failed to properly manage our financial records.

In fact, when we finally engaged an accountant, we were told that we had a massive tax debt.

It was news we certainly did NOT want to hear. I also felt rather stupid as I had studied accounting and law – including tax law – at university. Nevertheless, we paid the debt and eventually got our books sorted out.

But the more I speak with, and observe other, entrepreneurs, it strikes me how common it is for successful companies to have neglected things like properly keeping financial records, choosing the best corporate structure, maintaining appropriate legal documentation, in fact, doing any kind of administration, in their first year or so.

In each case they were too busy getting and serving customers to worry about such things.

No question, it can be costly and painful when a financial or legal oversight finally catches up with you. But I wonder: is that really just a small price to pay - even a rite of passage - for getting a successful business up and running in the first place?

In other words, is it almost inevitable for a successful business to neglect “important” financial and legal stuff in their early years… simply because the business owners are focusing their entire attention on their business’s SURVIVAL and can’t afford to mess around with ensuring all their records are kept up to date?

After all if the business can’t sell its products… there won’t BE a business. Which means that putting a lot of effort into creating the right corporate structure and making sure all records are in order… is rather pointless.

Now, I will say that given my training and background, I have a natural interest in ensuring that we do things optimally from a legal perspective. But I realise that it’s not so easy (or inexpensive) for a typical startup to set up a certain corporate structure or use a set of water-tight legal agreements. Even so, there are still legal areas that I have specifically NOT focused on – such as various patents, which I have left to others to look after.

In any case, my view is that in many – if not most – cases, you are a FAR, FAR better off focusing your time, energy and resources on establishing that you HAVE a business – that you HAVE a product or service people want to buy – than ensuring you have the perfect corporate structure, accounting system, filing system, and the like.

When you are starting a business YOU are the profit center. As such, do what any other profit center would do – leave the admin to others… even if there are no others to begin with!

I’m not a huge fan of targeting prospects based on their “generation”. Call me old fashioned, but I would have thought that there are a range of better ways to target people than how old they are.

Really, you don’t want me to get started on the marketing to people based on whether they’re Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y or some other broadbrush generalization about people based on their age.

But apparently some people do study these things, and for what it’s worth Charles Schwab has studied the online buying behvavior of Generation X (which it defines as people born between 1965 and 1981).

As reported by eMarketer, Charles Schwab’s survey of 2,000 Gen Xers reveals that they are well educated (28 percent have bachelor’s degrees or higher), debt-ridden (45 percent of respondents said they had too much debt to think about saving, with most being concerned about credit card debt, car loans and mortgages) and skeptical.

eMarketer’s conclusion is that Gen Xers seek value for money, and aren’t afraid to shop at discount or diverse stores to get it.

Source: eMarketer, “The Gen X Online Shopper”, eMarketer, November 10, 2008

Want our firm, Kikabink, some other search engine optimization company, or someone on your staff to assist with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? Well, before you get your SEO program underway, it’s a good idea to have clear answers to these three (3) questions:

1. What is your goal?

Sure, it might be higher rankings… but it probably isn’t. It’s more likely to be increasing qualified traffic to your website, right? Unfortunately, some companies get sold on the promise of higher rankings… and indeed they get higher rankings… but for keywords that don’t generate any meaningful or qualified leads. Your best bet is to ensure your SEO provider understands what your true goal is, and not to be ‘wowed’ by meaningless promises of high rankings.

Sadly, SEO consultants and clients can often get caught up in details and metrics that, at the end of the day, are irrelevant to the true goal. Perhaps more than in any other area of marketing, it can be easy to fixate on rankings, click through rates, keyword density and other statistics, that guide us towards - but in no way signify our arrival at - our goal.

So before you get started with SEO, I suggest being very clear about what you (really) want.

2. When do you want to achieve your goal?

Once you’ve defined your goal, the next question is when do you want to achieve it. Depending on how competitive is your market from a SEO perspective, getting higher, meaningful rankings may take several months. Getting to the first page, or in the first few spots on the first page, may take several more.

Now it’s not unheard of for companies in highly competitive fields to leap from nowhere to the first page of results within 6 months. But there are all kinds of reasons for jumps of this magnitude, and it’s not wise to assume it will happen for your site. So, in general, it’s wise to view SEO as a long-term process that requires continued effort.

On the other hand, if you need desperately need more traffic, you may be better off using another means of getting it e.g. advertising, partnering or joint-venturing with others, etc.

3. What are you prepared to pay (not just in money) to achieve your goal?

You didn’t really believe SEO was free did you? Like anything worthwhile, there are costs involved - whether in terms of your (or your staff’s) time, the costs of engaging someone to implement the raft of activities that SEO involves, or other resources. And keep in mind that just because you hire an SEO firm, you may still need to do plenty of work yourself. In fact, it’s all too common for companies to hire SEO consultants who, as promised, give them plenty of advice on what to do - and how to do it - in order to achieve higher rankings. Problem is, those companies don’t have the resources to implement all that advice.

Someone has to optimize the website… someone has to install the analytics scripts… someone has to upload the optimized pages to the website… someone has to write the press releases and articles… someone has to distribute those press releases and articles… someone has to monitor the SEO performance.

And someone has to manage all these people and processes.

Are you going to do that? Is your SEO consultant going to do it? Apart from the budget required to get your SEO firm’s advice… do you have the budget to implement their advice?

All in all, when evaluating the extent to which you wish to pursue SEO - and the return on investment (ROI) you expect - keep in mind the costs involved.

Now for the good news: if you CAN answer each of these questions – and your answers indicate that SEO is well worth the effort - you are well on your way to implementing an unstoppable SEO ‘machine’. A machine that will consistently pump out the necessary content, attract the right back-links, and do everything required to lift your search engine rankings.

It’s never been easier to download images, movies and music from the Internet. Which means you can literally pull images, videos and music off all kinds of sites - from royalty-free sites to torrent sites – and use them in your marketing.

Except that… you may be breaking the law.

Just because you can readily download and repurpose content doesn’t mean you have the legal right to do so. That may seem obvious when it comes to downloading images off just any site or movies off torrent sites… but even where it appears possible to, for example, buy royalty-free content, there are typically terms and conditions that apply.

For example, when you purchase content from a royalty-free site you are really purchasing a ‘license’ to use that content. That license is typically limited, the limits of which are described in the license terms – you know, all that stuff you ‘click’ your agreement to when you buy the content.

As an example, many standard royalty-free licenses enable you to use the given content for promotional purposes, but do not allow you to resell the content in question. There are often other restrictions on how you use that content too.

So… read the terms and conditions before you make assumptions about what you can do with the content!

Now, let’s not all panic. There are sometimes implied licenses to use certain content. For example, on sites such as YouTube, video contributors must specify if they don’t wish to allow others to embed their videos. If they don’t disable the embedding feature they are taken to have agreed to letting others embed their movies. But again, read the YouTube terms before assuming anything!

1. In fact, if I could offer three final thoughts, they would be these:
2. Always read terms and conditions;
3. Assume nothing; and

Ignorance of the law is no defense!

Based on its survey of 1,400 consumers across the United States, MarketingSherpa has concluded that most people WANT to opt-in to a list.

In particular, at least 50 percent of people are at least ’somewhat more likely’ to subscribe if offered any of the following benefits:

• A guarantee that you won’t share their address with other companies: 43 percent much more likely, 23 percent somewhat more likely.
• Special pricing for email subscribers: 32 percent much more likely, 29 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize how frequently you receive emails: 27 percent much more likely, 30 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize the information you receive to meet your needs: 25 percent much more likely, 32 percent somewhat more likely.
• ‘First look’ at new products, services: 22 percent much more likely, 28 percent somewhat more likely.

Of course, don’t take MarketingSherpa’s - or even these 1,400 consumers’ - word for it. Your own test results will be much more conclusive.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide Excerpt”, MarketingSherpa, October 8, 2008

In a recent Search Engine Watch article, Erik Qualman makes some predications about how ecommerce and online advertising will fair during the current or impending (depending on where you live) economic recession.

Among other things, he predicts that online advertising may actually benefit as more companies shift their ad budgets online. But although online ad expenditure may increase as a share of total marketing budgets… the actual spend on Internet advertising may grow only marginally, plateau, or even decline somewhat.

Let’s face it. Many companies will simply have less money to spend, whether it’s on broadcast media or television.

Similarly, some online retailers may see more people shop on their websites. For retailers with ‘bricks-and-mortar’ stores, growth in online sales may not be enough to offset a decline in off-line sales. Pure-play ecommerce stores may, on the other hand, achieve a boost in sales.

Again, however, many consumers may just spend less. When it comes to buying ‘necessities’ they may well choose to shop online rather than offline.

But when it comes to ‘nice to haves’ they may simply cut or reduce their spending. Which means that online sellers of ‘nice to have’ products may also feel the pinch of the recession.

Regrettably, I don’t have any figures on how ‘how to’ information products tend to perform at times like this. Instinctively, I’d think that low-priced info. products aimed at helping people AVOID any of the pain associated with tough times are likely to do better, overall, than high-priced products aimed at helping people GAIN the pleasure associated with boom times.

That may mean we all start rethinking what we sell and/or how we sell it. For instance, we offer a course on how to build wealth and achieve financial security at http://www.investmentsuccessformula.com It might be wise for us to think about how to reposition that course so that the emphasis is on ensuring financial security now… Or it might be better if we shifted our attention to other products and services that are more naturally inclined to do well right now.

Or perhaps it’s a time when we – and YOU - simply focus on better serving our existing, valuable, loyal customers and subscribers. If the 80-20 rule holds true, about 20 percent of customers are responsible for 80 percent of sales. It may well be that, depending on what you sell, while you lose some of the 80 percent… your 20 percent will keep on buying… PROVIDED that you keep on delivering value.

While I don’t suggest any business owner let themselves become a ‘victim’ to the recession, I don’t think ignoring it is a wise move either. Depending on your business, it may be a time to rethink some of your strategies - either to avoid or to capitalize on current events.

Source: Erik Qualman, “Economic Depression 2.0″, October 2, 2008, Search Engine Watch

Do you run pay-per-click ads in the search engines… or run ads in different ezines, email newsletters or on other marketers’ websites or autoresponder series? Do you have – or want to have - just ONE landing page for the traffic from ALL those ads… but still be able to track the click-throughs from each of those ads?

Well, instead of creating mirror pages of the same landing page (which can be painful) just do this: add a ‘tracking code’ to the end of the destination URL in your ad.

Your tracking code should begin with a question mark i.e. ‘?’ and end in whatever word or code is meaningful for you.

For example, if I was running an ad directing people to the Kikabink News advertising page I might add the following tracking code at the end of the URL:

?knsept08

‘knsept08′ is simply a made-up code to help me identify traffic that derived from the ad in question. I would add this to the destination URL in my ad as follows:

http://www.kikabink.com/news/advertise-with-us/?knsept08

So my ad might read:

Have a product or service aimed at Internet marketers? Advertise it in the Kikabink News email newsletter and reach a growing audience of passionate, entrepreneurial Internet marketers eager for ways to improve their marketing results. Click here to find out how: http://www.kikabink.com/news/advertise-with-us/?knsept08

Now, if people click on that link:

1. They will end up on the right landing page and
2. I will be able to check my web analytics to see how many people clicked on this particular URL, giving me an indication of the effectiveness of the ad.

Nifty, huh?

If you ask an experienced Internet marketer what’s an average visitor-to-customer conversion rate they’d probably say 1 percent. 3 percent is generally regarded as good, and anything above that is viewed as outstanding.

But whether you’re achieving 1 percent or 12 percent, the vast majority of visitors to your website are still leaving without buying. And most of them won’t return either. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy from you! There are many reasons why they didn’t buy the first time they visited your site.

So, will you (a) just let this huge majority of potential customers leave your site never to return, or (b) get them to come back and buy?

I hope you answered (b) because it will add hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of dollars to your bottom line (depending on how big your enterprise is, and want it to be).

So how do you do get people coming back? There are two ways (and ideally you should use both). The first is to provide “sticky” content on your site. Sticky content is new, fresh and constantly changing content that appeals to your visitors. News, blogs and forums are three examples.

However, sticky content is often not the most effective way to convert prospects into buyers. (Do you want them to buy or visit your sticky content?)

A more targeted way - in which you have some control - is to to entice visitors to give you their name and email address.

Now you can communicate with them one on one, garner their trust and appreciation for the value you offer… and persuade them to buy!

This is what we call email marketing - and there’s an art and science to doing it right. But for now, I hope you’ve got the key idea - don’t ignore the 97 percent. Aside from the people who’ve already bought from you, they are your hottest target market.

Next time we’ll talk about how to construct your optin offer and what exactly you should send to list of subscribers.

Here’s a quick tip for improving just about any aspect of your marketing or business: start measuring it.

Now, measuring performance is NOT enough of course. It’s critical to take action to improve that performance. But measuring it is a great first step. Once you know the numbers - whether they relate to traffic, conversion rates or anything else – you’ll naturally start thinking about how to improve those numbers… and ideally you’ll start making those improvements.

Even if there are numbers you just don’t have the time or resources to improve right now, it’s still worthwhile having them on your radar. In fact it’s critical if you’re to avoid unpleasant surprises. By keeping track of key metrics you’ll tend to notice patterns or anomalies that require immediate attention. More importantly, you’ll be able to give them immediate attention.

If you haven’t implemented a website statistics program, I recommend signing up for a Google Analytics account. It’s free and provides a range of invaluable data. If you do track your web statistics, make it a habit to check them at appropriate intervals.

Don’t do this obsessively of course - i.e to the point where you spend more time checking your numbers than doing anything about them!

Instead, check them as frequently as is necessary to be able to notice trends, problems or opportunities, and make any necessary changes.