Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

It’s Time for Affiliate Marketers to Embrace a New Conference

by

Updated! Use my code TRICIA2019 to take $10 off of any pass!

Most people wouldn’t believe it, but I am TERRIBLE at stepping outside my comfort zones. I like having plans and routines and predictability. I like safety nets and knowing what I am getting into. That’s a big reason why I go to the same events year after year and have been reluctant to try out others.

I think a lot of you are like me. We like what we like…why try something else? Especially when as self-employed entrepreneurs, money from our own pockets goes into funding every trip.

This is the year I try something new!! And I have some very good reasons for it that may also apply to you whether you are a blogger, a merchant, or an agency. [Read more…]

How You Can Support a Small Business This Season

by

Many of my friends are small business owners in one way or another. Whether they are online marketers who make their money from their websites, brick and mortar owners with a storefront, or home businesses that sell popular beauty and home products, many are making their livings in part or in whole from their small business.

Personally, my main source of income is my website Sunshine Rewards. As is the case for many of you, the holiday season can either make or break us. We look forward to Q4 with the anticipation that a strong quarter will help us keep our business at least one more year.

Running a business is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never done it themselves. It’s great to be your own boss, but it’s also a stress like none other.

How many times have you seen a friend or company go out of business and you said “Oh no! I loved that company!” but in reality you hadn’t given them any business for years…if at all?

As a business owner, let me tell you a few ways that you can support small businesses this season and help us see another year. Although we would love your financial support as well, these don’t cost a penny!

Social Media

Social media is a double edged sword for small businesses. It’s “free” advertising but it’s also a game you have to play almost full-time to win. “Liking” a company’s Facebook page is a good start. However, if not enough people interact with the posts on that page, Facebook will quit showing the posts to EVERYONE. It’s not quite that simple with the other social media sites, but the gist is the same.

Simply interacting with the business on social media will help them immensely. Leave an actual comment on one of their Facebook or Instagram posts. Retweet something on Twitter. It doesn’t even have to be something commercial. Most businesses post “fun” things as well. The more you interact with them, the more other people will see their posts and the company will get the free exposure.

Leave a Review

Many businesses have places where you can leave reviews for them. Some of them have business pages on Facebook with the review option. If they are a brick and mortar, you can leave comments on Yelp or through Google.

If you don’t see a place to review the company, do a search in Google for the company’s name and the word “review.” If they are an online company, there will probably be a few comparison websites with review option. Positive reviews will help the company rise in rankings and attract new business.

Tell a Friend

Studies show that people are more likely to try something if they hear about it from a friend than from any other source. That means YOU are a small business’s biggest source of advertising. Your friends are probably looking for a good place to eat or to buy this or that or to get a good deal. Why not share with them a small business that you know and trust? Your friend AND the small business will be winners.

There are around 28 million small businesses in the U.S., and there is a good chance your friends own some of them. Consider what you can do this holiday season to help them (us!!) out and keep over 50 million people in the U.S. employed.

How do you support small businesses? What else should we be doing?

3 Crucial Steps When Running a CPA Offer

by

CPA networks get a bad rap from many in the affiliate industry, but I have had success with many of them over the years–even on my content sites. In particular, they often have free offers and contests that are legitimate and perfect for my audiences. However, even when you are working with a reputable CPA network, you are at the mercy of the one thing that will kill your campaign dead instantly–the offer caps.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten into the swing of a very successful campaign and started making money only to get that dreaded email from the network that the offer has been paused. Sometimes it can come in as little as a few hours. In fact, I had it happen to me just today with the very successful Movies Anywhere offer. It was a great offer with a super payout and converting at over 30% for me. Of course they ran out of budget in a little over 12 hours!

Luckily, I had a plan in place. Here are 3 steps you should take before you run one of these type of high profit, popular offers that are likely to cap out.

Redirect Your Link

Never, never use the direct affiliate link in your emails. Use Pretty Link or some kind of redirect that you can change on the back end if the campaign ends. Once you send out an email with an affiliate link in it and anyone clicks on that link, you are sending them to a dead page. It’s the same thing for most social media sites. Once the link is out there, it is out there.

By redirecting your link, you have the option on the back end of changing where that link will go later. Speaking of changing the link….

Find an Alternative Link

This is something that will change depending on the situation. If you are a content site that has a loyal audience, you might want to be prepared to change the link to the direct link to the offer (in my case, the actual Movies Anywhere site). Although you won’t be making any money, you are still offering great content to your readers and they will remember that.

Before you give up on making any money, however, investigate your possibilities for linking through another network. It’s possible that you might be able to get the same offer somewhere else. In my case, I went through the same network (ShopHerMedia) but pulled a CPC link instead of the CPA link. I may not be getting that awesome $5 a signup, but at least I am still getting the 5 cents per click while sending my visitors to the offer.

Watch for the Cap

Most networks will send you an email as an offer is approaching its cap. You won’t have a lot of lead time, but if you have already done the above two steps, you won’t need much. In my case, I started looking for it as soon as I got up and checked my email every hour until I received it. Be sure that network emails are not going to your SPAM folder. I was able to immediately shift everything over so as to 1) give my readers a consistent experience, and 2) make some money off of the links that I had already put out through the email and my social media.

If you aren’t working with CPA networks but are now a little interested, read my article 5 Reasons I Work with CPA Networks. You might be surprised at how well it can work out when done properly!

I Was Burned by Affiliate Marketing (as a Consumer)

by

I love blogging. I love affiliate marketing. I love blogging with affiliate links. I will be the first person to defend our industry as valuable to the Internet as a whole. However, I got my first taste of what it’s like to be on the consumer side and feel duped by affiliate marketing.

The other day I saw an “article” posted by Mashable on Facebook. The title was “This app could be the key to speaking a second language” and Mashable had added “And teaches you how native speakers *actually* talk….” I’ve been considering learning Spanish so I was really curious to see what this app might be and if it would be better for me than the Rosetta Stone I have been contemplating.

I clicked on the article and started reading about uTalk Language Education. It was a glowing review. And yet, it was only 3 short paragraphs, with the last one being nothing but a plug for how you could get a subscription for 69 percent off. I thought to myself “this reads more like an advertisement than a product review.”

Sure enough, as I scrolled back to the top of the post, I saw this: “Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.” How in the world did I miss that when I first read the article? Here’s what it looked like:

Under the FTC rules (which I study and post about on a regular basis), this is probably an adequate disclosure. It was before the post. It was noticeable. It was in language that I understand. It was totally my fault for skimming over it.

And yet, between the disclosure itself and the way that the article was written, I was so mad that I decided I didn’t even want to click through to the product because I felt cheated out of a “real” article.

Why Did I Feel Cheated and What Would Have Made It Better?

I think in part, I expected that something posted like “news” on Mashable wouldn’t be a blatant advertisement. That was the first strike. The second was that in doing so, Mashable didn’t even make an attempt at reviewing the product. They probably took uTalk’s product information page, pulled out a few important points, and regurgitated them. They didn’t actually try the product. They didn’t give pros and cons. They didn’t compare it to any other products on the market.

It was a pure sales pitch, plain and simple–disguised to look like news.

I know Mashable isn’t the only one doing this. I’ve seen so many PopSugar wine club “reviews” that are nothing but advertisements that I have stopped following PopSugar altogether. Of course I can’t help feeling a bit hypocritical given that I am one of the people writing blog post product reviews with affiliate links in them.

It’s a good lesson to me and to all of us who write articles like this. A few lessons, in fact:

  • Don’t make something look like “news” when it isn’t.
  • Add genuine valuable content to your reviews rather than just product pitches.
  • Pros and cons show that you are genuinely reviewing rather than just shilling.
  • The “average” consumer might still skip over your disclosures, even when done properly.

Ironically when I went back to find the article later to write this post, I did click through the link. It took me to a “Mashable Shop,” so clearly they aren’t trying to trick the reader into thinking that they aren’t making money. It wasn’t a traditional affiliate link, but it was the same concept.

How would you have felt if you clicked through to read “news” only to find out it was advertising? Or do you assume that all posts on Facebook now are as likely to be ads as they are newsworthy?

 

Two Money Opportunities for Bloggers in One Place

by

Most of the time I write about affiliate marketing because it’s what I know best. However, this post is geared toward bloggers in general, whether or not you are affiliate marketers. Of course…only if you are a blogger who wants to make money!

When FMTC announced that they were combining their Publisher Toolkit product with Fress Press Media, I inwardly groaned. I don’t like change–especially when it means that I have to change passwords in LastPass or install new bookmark. I was already using both products separately and didn’t want to figure out how to use them together.

Then one day I tried to use my Deep Link bookmarklet and it told me that I needed to convert to the new site. That was enough to make me take action because I can’t be without my Publisher Toolkit bookmarklet! I begrudgingly had my accounts combined and spent the enormous amount of about 30 seconds to fix my bookmarklet.

It was more than worth it!

[Read more…]