Affiliate Marketing

The many different formatting requirements of mobile browsers make it tough for someone new to mobile marketing to get started. In fact, optimizing your landing pages for mobile traffic is probably the number one trickiest task once you want to move beyond direct-linking mobile offers. It’s possible to limit some of this workload by focusing on just a few device types, but that nearly always means leaving money on the table. You can spend hours researching the various devices and their browsers, their resolutions and capabilities, but this is a very active area of technology. Keeping your finger on the pulse of the shifting flavors of formatting is tough and time-consuming. You can use tools like BeastMobi if you are a Mobile Monopoly member to help you build pages quickly and for short-term landers, that may be the best way to go. Another option is to use Adobe’s line of products to create flash media based sites using Device Central, but Flash is not supported by all devices; in particular, iPhones don’t like Flash.

WordPress Mobile Pack

For longer-term sites and to mobile-ize existing sites, there is a better approach though. Just use WordPress! Using the free WordPress Mobile Pack plug-in and perhaps some specialty themes you can set up your WordPress-based site so that desktop browsers see a full-sized theme and mobile visitors have access to the same posts, images, and other content using a different, custom theme. The plug-in includes a mobile ‘switcher’ that detects the type of device the visitor is using and serves up the content using the appropriate format. You can set a link to let users override this  and view the site using the other theme.

The Mobile Pack also pays attention to possible device-format conflicts and blocks content, such as video or flash files that a device can’t handle. Possibly the best feature, as I mentioned above, is that you can add the plug-in to an existing WordPress site to adapt it retroactively for mobile use.

Issues of Note

The plug-in is pretty fantastic, but it is not a magic wand. If a landing page relies on the visitor being able to view a video, bit of Flash media, or large background image you may still have some work ahead to optimize the site for your specific purposes. While the plug-in ships with several optional mobile themes, you must still configure these to your liking, or find a different mobile-optimized theme that meets your needs.

In many ways mobile traffic mirrors ‘ordinary’ net traffic, only the formatting of ads and other material is a lot more strict, the potential market size is a lot larger, and mobile users often have expectations that are quite different than those of desktop users. It is important to keep these and other differences in mind when advertising on mobile devices, but it is equally worth remembering the similarities. It might feel like a whole new world when you plan a mobile campaign, but don’t let that force any assumptions. Paid traffic is not the only way to reach mobile users. Properly tagged audio and video iTunes podcasts can be just as effective at driving mobile traffic as paid ads.

When marketers look into the potential of advertising on mobile devices they initially see a huge field of pay-per-click marks with lower competition and lower cost keywords. Working within a tiny screen real-estate is a small price to pay! But don’t forget the expectations of mobile users that align them with other advertising methods. Using a mobile device is often just as interactive and immediate an experience as sitting with a laptop or desktop can be. Consumer demand has driven the cell-phone market to provide larger, brighter screens, high quality audio, and reliable internet access and there are services that have developed along with these trends. To target these customers for free just make sure to give them what they want.

A five to fifteen minute podcast designed to outline a problem and offer a solution makes a great venue for a product advertisment. Offer something of genuine value that matches the interests of your target market and then refer them to your offer. Do you have an Italian cooking website or cookbook to advertise? Offer a recipe in the form of a simple video podcast, or if you are afraid you’ll cut off a finger in a fit of performance anxiety, create a video guide to shopping for the best produce using still images in a slideshow timed to demonstrate your points. Then send them to the offer. Of course audio-only podcasts can work well, too, but remember that mobile devices can go just about anywhere. It doesn’t hurt to echo your audio points on the video and vice versa. You just might catch that customer on the subway who couldn’t hear you properly.

iTunes is not the only place this technique works. Naturally, you can try YouTube as well; many mobile devices can display YouTube videos now. Depending on your content you may have to stick to one platform, however. I talked to another internet marketer who explained that many ad platforms terms of service prevented him advertising his poker training site, but his short instructional podcast video was a hit on iTunes, generating tens of thousands of hits per month for more than six months.

It is true that with this approach your target demographic will be a little less focused and you may get as many or more people on desktop systems viewing your creatives as on mobile devices, but aside from production costs, the traffic is free. What’s more, it will often be a different subset of traffic than can influence with your paid ads, so the two methods won’t interfere with one another.

For a more thorough coverage of specific mobile advertising topics I can recommend the short, intense video tutorial series at Mobile Monopoly. For lots of mobile marketing advice & support, plus loads and loads of other internet marketing techniques, there simply is no better place to learn to earn than the PPC-Coach forums.

This is not one of those silly fear-mongering posts moaning about how tough Google has made life for affiliate marketers. Google still makes it truly easy for diligent, clever people to earn a lot of money. But sticking with only one source of traffic or just a single method of putting advertisements in front of your target market is not a good bet. The motivational image above is there to remind you that the potential is greater than ever to sell to people online before they even sit down at the computer! Certainly some products are going to always sell better on a desktop or laptop, but there are also dozens of cases where you, the marketer, stand a better chance if you put a product in front of a cell-phone user.

The level of demographic targeting one can achieve with mobile traffic is often far more precise than expected on a desktop ad platform, which seems strange, since your target audience is often busy moving about. The cost of similar techniques at this point is much lower for mobile than it is for standard Pay-Per-Click traffic for the same keywords and, depending on the offer you use, the rewards can often be much higher.

Unfortunately, marketing to mobile users is not nearly as simple as using a cell-phone is. There are important details to consider that are different than with run-of-the-mill PPC traffic. It’s important to seek out mobile-compatible offers that work even on the tiny screens of cell-phones. It is also important to know how to properly target the segment you want using cellular advertising platforms.

To learn how to profit from mobile campaigns and lots of other types of PPC traffic, PPC-Coach is always a reliable source for training. Another training option That is excellent, but strictly limited to mobile techniques is the Mobile Monopoly course. It includes step-by-step video training about which networks to join and what offers sell best with which techniques, but perhaps it’s best features are the special techniques, including one totally free method. Adam, the creator of the course also realizes that even with mobile, it is a silly risk to keep all your eggs in one basket.

It seems strange that something that’s only been around for three years can seem old and established, but with thousands of members and over a hundred thousand posts, dozens of instructional videos and a whole range of wisdom and experience PPC-Coach.com seems downright venerable.

Now, after a short hiatus, the site has been tidied up and updated. It is back in fighting form as the top spot for PPC-noobs.

Learn more about PPC-Coach.com here: http://billionscorp.com/ppc-coach-com-offers-solid-advice/

WolfStorm Media is a new affiliate network specializing mainly in CPA offers and focussed on assisting new internet marketers.

Originally, my plan was to use earnings from affiliate marketing to facilitate a move from my native Canada to live somewhere along the west coast of the USA. I’ve traveled in that region and it’s beautiful; the people are generally fantastic. In years past it was also economically and politically spectacular. Unfortunately, the irresponsible reaction to the recent financial troubles has made the United States a fair bit less attractive. For now, I’m satisfied to enjoy Canada with all it’s warts and limit my exposure to the US to a few visits now and then.
Who knows? Perhaps if the economic recovery sneaks by and happens despite the best efforts of the ruling Democrats I’ll be lucky enough to see a return to some degree of sanity south of the border.

With all the affiliate networks out there it can get confusing looking for offers, especially for people new to the game. Affiliate Fleet  works hard to cater to new affiliates with an ever-expanding set of guides, hands-on help, and carefully considered offers. With many networks the affiliates must be on their toes at all times to be certain the offers they select are completely legit. It’s not that the networks intentionally run fraudulent offers, but they will sometimes rely heavily on the merchant to ensure their offers are compliant.

Affiliate Fleet is extra-careful to scrutinize offer details to make sure affiliates don’t end up running something shady. The responsibility still lies with the affiliate about how to promote the various offers, but as long as they disclose information properly on their landing pages, they can rest easy with Affiliate Fleet’s offers.

PPC-Coach.com is the internet’s premiere affiliate marketing training site dealing with Pay-Per-Click techniques. The advice offered there in the form of video tutorials, written guides and massive amounts of forum posts is unequaled. Unlike other large training sites and affiliate marketing forums, questionable advice is not tolerated. If someone posts something that is misleading or incorrect, it is corrected right away. I’ve been with the site since the beginning (look for Kraggy) and have watched it build and develop while other sites flopped or became stagnant.

The contacts you can meet in the forum are also invaluable. I’ve lost count of how many different exclusive tools are offered (certainly more than a dozen), but the site is based on coaching, so members are taught how to do for themselves before they turn to automatic tools to save time. By the same token, the site on its own does not automatically make you money – you must work at it, but it is definitely the place to go when you find yourself asking, “now what?”