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Payday Loan Blog - Affiliate Marketing
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Yesterday while leaving the grocery store on the way home from work I noticed something on my windshield. While my first reaction is the usual "son of a f*#$* as*(#$* sh#$@%">sh#$@%* jerk" [yeah, like a sailor], I thought I'd take the opportunity to see if any interesting marketing ideas could be gleamed from the brute force marketing approach being employed.
I laughed for about 5 minutes straight. Why?
The person leaving the flyer was trying to sell me a payday loan, but if that weren't enough, the URL used was of the obfuscated CJ.com variety…seriously, 70+ characters that would have been nearly impossible to fully type in due to the recent rains occurring in the Phoenix area.
There are some important affiliate marketing lessons here:
1. Know your market - the parking lot of AJ's probably isn't where your target consumers are hanging out.
2. Know the medium - if you are trying to sell something online, and are using an offline approach, you need to make it as simple a transition as possible. The 70+ character URL probably won't get you any consumers…it got me to check, but only after a couple tries of mistyping the damn thing to make sure you weren't promoting us.
3. Know your product - financial products and services usually require a higher trust factor for a consumer than something like buying a book, the reason being the type of information required in order to complete such purchases; a sketchy flyer on a windshield with an insane URL is a very low signal of trust.
You gotta love affiliate marketing; it takes all kinds.
JoeSinkwitz
We’ve all heard the phrase that it isn’t what you know, but who you know. I personally encountered this saying multiple times back during my undergrad years when I was interviewing with guys like Deloitte, Compaq, and KPMG. A person could be brilliant, but lose out to someone with better connections (i.e. nepotism); it was usually the difference between an offer and an interview elsewhere.
As we get more ingrained in our respective industries, especially true in affiliate marketing, it isn’t just who you know, but who knows what you know, and who they know. Yes, it is a mouthful, but worth understanding.
My mother-in-law and my mother are both heavily connected in medical communities; as a proxy relationship, I know a lot of “who” individuals. However, it doesn’t do me much good because they really have no concept of what it is I do for a living, yet alone why my firm is better than company X, etc. If I were a newly minted doctor, it'd be striking gold, but I'm not (and I hear about that decision at least once a week).
That takes care of the importance of the first two pieces, and now the final. Let’s say that you know a lot of “who” individuals in your respective industry since you’re ancient, but they also understand what it is you know that makes you so special. This is a fantastic step, and if you are at this point in your career, you’re bound to be successful…now for the clincher and the whole point of social networking (the kind that mattered, before the likes of Digg): it is all about who they know. Metcalfe’s law is very, very important and will open up a sea of opportunities if you know how to use it to your advantage.
Below are some people in our industry that you should get to know for connections, that you should aspire to show off your unique talents to, and whom can probably connect you to an unbelievable amount of other contacts you might not even be aware of. Did I leave a lot of people out? Yes, but mainly because by connecting to these individuals, you are likely to run into the rest due to the size of their respective networks.
Affiliate Programs
Linda Buquet
Blackhat SEO
Quadszilla
Community Development
Lee Dodd
Domaining
Frank Schilling
Insanity
Chris Hooley
Link Building
Jarrod Hunt
Organic Search
Aaron Wall
PPC
Jeremy Schoemaker
Social Media
Michael Gray
Whitehat SEO
Rand Fishkin
If you can impress just one of these people and can show that you are worth doing business with, it’ll make all the difference.
JoeSinkwitz
Initially the plan was to talk about where search engines might be in 10 years, who the big players might be, etc. I still want to do that, but I wanted to broaden the discussion to touch on more topics relevant to the affiliate community, since I believe other topics will significantly influence how the game is run. Below are a collection of some thoughts on the subject.
1. SEO and domaining will converge leaving zero distinction between the two; it makes far too much sense for SEOs to understand that as search evolves, the exact match (non-hyphenated domain) will have the highest likelihood of being the most relevant, everything else being equal. For domainers, to ignore a channel as big as search is silly…because of this I expect to see quality search agencies getting gobbled up by large domainers and large search agencies buying small to medium-sized domain portfolios.
2. Unsolicited commercial e-mail will shrink. As the intent understanding increases, and the message can be determined on the fly to be commercial versus non-commercial, a series of AI elements should be able to figure out whether you wanted it or not. Consider that the three most popular e-mail addresses are held by the three biggest search engines, and you'll see that the necessary AI advances will have to be produced anyhow. White listing services will be worth their weight in gold.
3. Search will remain an oligopoly, with 4 major players and little else outside of it. Google, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon. Google remains primarily due to their current status and edge, developing algorithmic solutions based on the world's content and historical linking data, with relevancy that varies the way that slot machine payouts vary [and for the same reason]. Yahoo will continue to purchase social media and community-centric networks, eventually showing more and more signs of financial stress, resulting in the company being unable to quickly tie the networks together; Microsoft will help ease the transition by purchasing them outright…the Yahoo/MSN brand is up for grabs, but Microsoft will slowly pull the data together, determining relevancy across and breadth and depth of user data that Google will not have (though they'll be close). eBay's purchase of Stumbleupon, integration of Skype and Paypal, and increased understanding of global markets will make them the number 3 player in search, as the premiere shopping engine; future purchases of shopping agent technology may also be necessary. The number 4 player will briefly be IAC, but after years of trying to make ASK a success in its own right, the technology will be sold to Amazon, who integrates the small but growing community into its own network, competing more head to head with eBay than either Microsoft or Google is capable of doing.
4. Text-messaging, IM, and E-mail will converge; the choice of communication will either be instantaneous or delayed, largely due to when a person is willing to carry on communications - they will grow to become a commercial communications platform, complete with voice and video. A person will have the ability to communicate hidden or in view, silent or aloud. Privacy and unconnected time will be but a flutter of a memory.
5. Affiliate networks will be replaced with affiliate platforms, which make it easy for offline companies to create boxed solutions complete with CRM, the benefit being it will be harder and harder to distinguish between the ultimate retailer and the actual affiliate, especially among the savvier affiliates that corner market after market. While the easy money will likely have disappeared much in the same way it disappeared after each Internet gold rush, there will still be a wealth of riches to be made by those capable of thinking differently and pushing limits.
6. Television and streaming online video will be essentially the same thing; leaders like Comcast will attempt to tie up the cable line monopoly, but intelligent distribution companies like Google, that have been buying up dark fiber and wireless distribution rights, will be able to circumvent the strict scheduling process that the outdated paradigm currently upholds. Entertainment will be real-time or it will be on-demand; product placement and internal advertising will replace commercials; Youtube and its future peers will replace ABC, NBC, CBS, et al.
7. Word of mouth will still be the most effective way to gain mindshare and build a lasting brand.
JoeSinkwitz
For those of you not intimately involved in social media, there was quite an event unfolding this evening on the popular social news site Digg.
It began with a story containing a HD-DVD key, which according to the DMCA is illegal. Digg, as a business, acted to remove that post.
Cue Russell Crowe yelling "unleash hell" because that's exactly what happened. Posting multiple stories and voting them up as quickly as possible, under the pretense of a revolt revolving around free speech and rallying against censorship, many Diggers made their voices heard.
Where do I as a person stand on this issue? Well...Digg is a business, Digg.com is owned by Digg, and the DMCA, while arguably an inane law, is still a law. Digg did what was right, and now Diggers are showing the world what many outside the cynical community already knew: it is time to grow up.
Does that mean that dissenters should have their accounts deleted? For simply dissenting, no. For posting illegal material? Yes. Hopefully this will all blow over soon so Digg can go back to just hating us SEO types and burying useful information without actually reading the content.
JoeSinkwitz
Update: Digg decided to ignore the C&D, for better or worse. Personally, I don't think it was a good idea to take that stance, and think it is even worse that he publically took that stance, given the ammunition the opposing lawyers will now have.
According to 7search, it looks like our industry is once again popping into the list of high keyword payouts, which isn't that unusual given the influx of competition (both on lead purchasing and lead selling).
At first glance one might be willing to say "wow, I should just throw some Adsense on the page and collect my money in the payday loan industry", but you may recall that I previously explained why I thought private label affiliate programs are better than Adsense. Does this explanation still hold up? Oh yeah.
First, from an affiliate's point of view the big question is: what am I getting paid?
If you are able to survive quality score updates, smart pricing, and have a premier site, you might crack that $4.50/click range, sometimes, maybe. Is that really what you can expect to earn? Not really.
You see the quality score updates and advent of smart pricing didn't exactly benefit the advertiser or the affiliate; it was a profitable move for the network. Before quality updates and smart pricing, it was possible to sell space on your site, hoping to get matched with quality content, which is not a given no matter how big you are. During that match, you were given a split of the proceeds with Google. Well my affiliate friend, times have changed. Nowadays, that split you get will be determined on a sliding scale, depending on whether they deem the quality of your site high enough - if it is in their interest as a for profit company to get as high a percentage as possible, what do you suppose happens?
If your answer to that is "I bet I don't get close to $4.50" then you'd be correct. That per-click is the ideal outcome, but in reality, doing a fair amount of testing, I know that it is usually not even ¼ of that, and for sites that are definitely of a high quality and relevant to the end user.
It hasn't been a walk in the park for advertisers either; while the smart pricing hurt honest affiliates trying to sell traffic from their site, quality score updates hurt advertisers trying to buy that same traffic. It was bad enough not knowing where the traffic was always coming from, given the lack of transparency woven into the Adwords system, but now the amount charged has a tendency to increase for arbitrary reasons hidden under the pretext of CTR, ad relevancy, and landing page relevancy. The same question is posed again - if it is in their interest as a for profit company to charge as much as possible given their higher percentage split from smart pricing, what do you suppose happens?
The answer in the short-term is that Google makes more money at the expense of both buyer and seller; the long-term answer is that both buyer and seller will move into more private label affiliate arrangements, where both know exactly what they are getting.
Don't be fooled by the search engine in sheep's clothing.
JoeSinkwitz
The Internet continues its constant churning, with heightened deal-making over the past few weeks. What do you make of the following?
eBay acquiring StumbleUpon?
CLEAR CHANNEL in advertising deal with GOOGLE?
Google to Buy DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion Cash?
Now, not everything above is a done deal and is certainly subject to change, but it reminds me of a different time, one that looked like:
eBay acquiring Paypal?
Ask Jeeves in advertising deal with Google?
Google to buy Pyra Labs (Blogger)?
Every few years in business there is an expansion, followed by rampant consolidation and excess VC funding, and then ultimately digestion and contraction; these business cycles aren't really anything new, and because of that, it can be possible to use them to your advantage.
In years of expansion we see little fishes get their start, among a sea of bigger fishes that don't pay them much mind. Why not? The larger fishes are a battled scarred from previous cycles, not paying much heed to these new nuisances; the larger fish are really only concerned with the other larger fishes. Time passes and those little fish start to bulk up a bit, maybe swimming faster and further than some of the bigger fish…suddenly, one of them gets eaten. At that moment, one of the larger fish just got a bit larger than the other fish, which frightens the others, fueling a furry of ferocious fish feeding. After that frenzy finishes, the remaining fish are bloated and lumbering, barely able to move…many die. Time passes and new fish come along.
While a bit cynical, that analogy isn't far from the truth, where companies at some point begin to buy anything and everything remotely related to the buzz phrases of that particular business cycle. Just 8 years ago it was a search for more eyeballs, without concern for profits. After the consolidation and digestion period, purchases were slower and the companies of the time that launched were uninteresting (read: profitable). Now the cycle is in full swing again with bubble 2.0, with the bigger fish again snapping up a variety of unprofitable companies that have a large number of social eyeballs.
Okay, okay. How do you make money in all of this craziness?
Selectively adapt.
I don't advocate ignoring your core business because that business is likely the reason you are even in business (convoluted enough?). Instead, it might make sense to spend 10-20% of your time on a new buzz-related concept, building a tiny fish that looks like it might just be something a larger fish would eat…granted, the original larger fishes would likely sniff that venture and pass on for something more substantial, but the newly larger fishes that are on an eating binge generally don't taken into account true value - the logic seems to be that if it looks sort of like food, even if it isn't, chomp. Hook. Line. Sinker.
Just make sure your 2.0 clone is easily spun off from your core assets so you can go back to really growing your business in the wake of the feeding frenzy, and if you don't actually get eaten, don't worry. Why not? Most acquisitions have a negative combination value, meaning that your venture at some point very well could have a value greater than the originators of the concept; by the time the next business cycle is coming around, you could be one of the first to be eaten.
JoeSinkwitz
Everyday, before I leave the office, I make sure my three lists are ready. These three lists keep me focused; these three lists keep me profitable.
When I was younger, I'd often try to develop an insanely large business concept that'd require millions upon millions of investment and years of implementation. The result? I was pretty good at making business plans. That's about it. Thankfully, in between launching new ideas I happened to read an autobiography of someone I've now forgotten, whose simple lesson for success was to create three lists labeled revenue, costs, and everything else.
Revenue
Obvious enough at first glance, the only tasks that one is able to place on the revenue list are tasks that will directly result in an increase in revenue. "Write business plan" would not fit on this list if it cannot be directly linked to an increase in revenue, nor would "negotiate better hosting rate". What would make this list? Using an example of a young affiliate looking to finally make money online after toiling in corporate America, signing up for a top notch affiliate program would be a revenue-centric task, as would designing a landing-page for the eventual traffic, and purchasing an e-mail list.
Costs
Again, the obvious title of the list implies that items on this list are geared towards reducing costs. "Write a business plan" probably won't save you any money at the end of the month, nor would signing up for that high performing affiliate program, but "negotiate better hosting rate" sure would, provided your host is willing to negotiate.
Everything Else
If it doesn't directly result in an increase in revenue or a reduction of cost, it belongs here. Cool widgets that your customers may like on your website (that you aren't charging for), buying posters for the walls, reading 17,349 seo and affiliate forums without a clear purpose or objective in mind…these are all tasks that you may like to do, but can't justify them.
All things being equal, each day should begin with you trying to cross off as many of the tasks as possible for increasing revenue and cutting costs. Some people will advocate increasing revenues first in the early stages of a business, focusing on the costs only after the business is established, and for the most part I agree with that idea; if you cut your monthly hosting bill in half, but don't have any websites live to sell your products, it doesn't really do you a lot of good.
What happens if you should mark off all these tasks for the first two lists? Think of some new tasks. If you do it correctly, you'll never run out of tasks on either the revenue or costs list, because new opportunities will continue to present themselves to you, allowing you to grow, profitably.
Advanced
As you become more comfortable in your list creation and execution, add a new wrinkle…$. If you can estimate off the top of your head what a task will make you, or save you, you'll be able to bounce back and forth on your two most important task lists, doing what is necessary to increase your overall profit. The beginning levels will still make you money as you focus on the correct general direction, but see this like a tactical smart bomb as opposed to the carpet-bombing approach to profit above.
Additionally, it will become necessary to revisit the "Everything Else" list from time to time, because after second…third…or twentieth consideration, that task may in fact be directly tied to either increasing your revenue or reducing your cost. The "Write business plan" item could conceivably increase revenue if an acquirer of businesses was eyeing your operations but would only consider purchasing after viewing the business plan; also, if your operations are as focused as the sunset light hitting the Pacific ocean, writing a business plan could help you to trim costs. However, I consider those the exceptions rather than the rule, and should only be entertained after using the first three lists exclusively for a period of time.
These lists have helped me over the past decade or so, and I sincerely hope they can help you too.
JoeSinkwitz
One of my pet peeves in business is to see an individual with potential refusing to live up to that potential; usually it revolves around the person not valuing his or her time by working on tasks that won't either increase revenue or cut costs, but sometimes I have to wonder if people simply don't know how much they are worth.
How much is your time worth?
1. Fast-food restaurants in the Phoenix area are starting to pay $10/hr because no one wants to do that type of work, a factor of supply trying to reach a moving demand curve.
2. The average American salary in 2005 was $39,795, or $19.13/hr, roughly double what the fast-food joints a few blocks away from me are offering.
3. A super-affiliate that earns the minimum five-figures a month makes $120,000 a year, or roughly $56.70/hr.
What do the above statistics mean to you? Does it enrage you, or does it engage you to do something about it?
The affiliate marketing game is still very new and has a lot of room for new players that are capable of adapting to the ever-moving cat and mouse game, so why aren't more people entering the wild west atmosphere that is our industry?
Knowledge? Fear?
Sometimes we don't act until we are forced into a corner; maybe if you quit your job and force yourself to make a living online, it'll actually happen. Away goes the pointless business plans full of graphs and charts, projections and forecasts, in comes actually doing something to generate income.
Next I'll talk about my three lists.
JoeSinkwitz
How's that for a title? Before I get too deep on why I think private label lead generation affiliate programs will outperform Google Adsense CPA from the affiliate perspective, some great points have already been made here, here, here, and here.
One of the scenarios discussed above by the Daily Domainer is that a free-for-all environment may be created with literally thousands of affiliate programs openning up to automated content MFA sites that will be paid differently than before, with a greater focus on conversions (CPC affiliate managers that aren't currently looking at the conversion data available to you, shame shame). Will this hurt MFA sites that are already using Adsense? Maybe. I am open to the possibility that the conversions from this type of traffic are good enough to warrant a switch-over from the PPC format to CPA within Adsense, but I can assure you that MFA developers watch their core stats closer than most affiliate managers I know, so if there is a dip, expect a flight to quality (or in this case, more sign-ups at Panama or an opt-out of CPA ads).
How will it affect higher quality sites like direct navigation based portals and SEO/SEM landing page programs? Jeremy nailed this one: CPA fraud is likely, on the affiliate management side of things, as the conversion data isn't that difficult to fake…look at it this way, with Google Adsense CPA, you might make more than the original Google Adsense PPC model, but do you know which programs you are even promoting? How can you track to see which programs are saying your traffic converts at 5% and others at 0.5%? If they pay the same $/lead, I'm betting you'll have a hard time tracking that down.
The customization and industry-specific monetization issues are also likely to be nightmares for serious affiliates looking to get into the payday loan affiliate market. Do you want to tweak your own graphics, tailored to your own site? With a private label program that likely won't be a problem, but with Google you'll probably get stuck with the same tired creative or a text link that doesn't exactly scream "this ad was editorially chosen by me for you because it will enhance your user experience on my site." As for the industry-specific monetization, forget about it. The top guys in most financial industries use some form of XML ping/post capability in order to maximize both the placement percentage and $/lead for the leads they generate; I'll go on record right now to say that I don't expect Google to even consider offering something like this for another 3-4 years, and by then, our industry will have evolved into more efficient mechanisms for the acquisition and sale of customers.
In short, that's why we at the PLAN will outperform the Google Adsense CPA, hands down. On one hand, I'm disappointed in how they are going about the launch and execution of their eventual affiliate network, and on the other, I'm elated. If you'll remember, I had a few thoughts on why affiliate programs are better than Adsense; what I expect to see now is a lot of marketers that have been married to PPC, testing out the CPA waters, and getting hooked on the increased profits. Whenever something like that happens, quality programs with good reputations flourish.
JoeSinkwitz
This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but is something I was pondering since I've been called the usual due to my peculiar ways: insane, crazy, weird, odd, most likely to build a lair in a volcano, etc.
Thankfully, I'm not alone. Exhaustive research (read: 10 minutes of randomly pulling up blogs) has revealed the following about how weird we marketers are. In some cases I found it more fitting to just pull an image, because they explain those thousands of words that escape me.
1. Some of us don't watch traditional television. Really. John doesn't, and neither do I. I bought a big screen for my wife, but find myself either reading or working on one of the computers.
2. Since I don't watch television for the "content", I periodically check out the commercials to keep up on the advertising. If I had a Tivo, I'd find myself skipping the shows and just watching the commercials.
3. My typical wardrobe consists of a free t-shirt and an old pair of shorts/jeans. Aaron Wall of SEO Book exemplifies this adage of the most important people dressing as though they are the least important. Forgive me Aaron, but I found this image with you and Wendy hilarious.
4. Some marketers want change the world and some just want to mess around with the world while having a little fun. Drinkbait, win a date with a seo? Yep, that's Chris.
5. There appears to be a direct correlation between an unhealthy obsession of well-marketed brands and marketers. Case in point: VM campers, Guinness, and Disney.
6. Just like advertisers that don't consume the media they create, some top online marketers can't type or no write with good grammer.
7. A lot of us idolize Weird Al; some choose to rewrite his lyrics.
8. Cynicism and satire abound with most of us, especially with regard to mass media and large sites/companies, but how do I compete with this though? Quads is king there.
9. Some marketers find clever ways to do everything through mediums, even be romantic.
10. I read absolutely everything I can about everything, because I never want to be the last in the know, and yet I still find myself rereading things from some that are consistently the first to know. Andy Grove was right about the paranoid surviving.
11. The walls of my office look like John Nash was up for three months straight looking for patterns and the office garbage can has the empty Diet Coke cans to support that theory. Search marketers in particular have to understand the why of what is changing; some of us just so caught up in it that it consumes us.
Know of some really weird things marketers do? E-mail me at jsinkwitz@paydayloanaffiliate.com and I'll add to the list along with a link to your site.
JoeSinkwitz
Just for fun I thought I’d look into the random ads served up by Google Adsense on social networks. For those of you new to Adsense, the way the contextual advertising works is by examining on-page content and then attempting to match it to the most relevant advertising; it isn’t perfect of course, but sometimes it is downright hilarious, especially for some of the whacky first page stories.
Click the image above for a larger view.
Okay, I can understand writing articles for cash; that’s pretty targeted. Health insurance though? Maybe the Adsense bot thinks diggers are unemployed and need benefits before making a trip to the emergency room to remove super glued VHS tapes.
Click the image above for a larger view.
Alright, once again diggers can get paid to write articles, waste time filling out surveys, and…Christian news? The tagline is classic: “View the latest world news in the way you already view your world.” Wow. I’m pretty sure this ad doesn’t get the best conversion rates from Digg; no wonder churches need so much money.
Click the image above for a larger view.
Um…that’s a sort of delicate topic right now; how should I put this…not even close.
What’s the funniest contextual result you’ve ever seen? The problem with contextual advertising is that it is unable to determine intent, so in the case of social sites with a love for satire, such as Digg or Fark, the intent is very difficult to determine, and thus the ads are not ideal.
My suggestion to Digg would be to ditch Adsense and choose an affiliate program that caters to its techno-savvy, humor indulgent audience.
JoeSinkwitz
If you caught our post regarding the books we read recently you may remember that one that I read was Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. In the book, Nassim describes various situations where profitable traders are wiped out by what he refers to as a Cygnus Atratus, or a black swan event. In essence, these are events that are capable of destroying a career's worth of wealth and positive history.
So why am I talking about a book that focuses on randomness/luck, numbers, and trading patterns? Mainly because I see many businesses everyday online that are particularly vulnerable to a Cygnus Atratus. In other words, I think people need to pay more attention into developing defensible traffic. Rather than technique and specifics, I aim to provide a thought process for doing so.
Imagine that you are a small company on the web that receives 90% of its traffic from Google, and of that, 80% comes from the single search phrase, loan. In this simple example, Google dumping your search result is your black swan event. It needn't be a delisting, just a SERP move of a few pages. How do you overcome and survive this Cygnus Atratus? Most will probably say to diversify link text, vary content, yada yada yada, with the end result being a site that ranks for multiple phrases. That gets past the first black swan event, but exposes you to another in the event the site truly is delisted, or is simply penalized due to some scraper activity. Take it further and some will say to develop multiple sites to catch as much of the available search traffic for your industry's taxonomy. Better, but what if your privatized WHOIS fingers you as someone with a network of sites? Or if your dedicated server goes down?
It isn't that solving one event leads to another; in reality, it is very similar to what happens when a manufacturing plant adopts just-in-time procedures. On the surface, it may seem like JIT is creating problems, but all it is really doing is exposing problems that already existed, much like an iceberg becoming more visible if the water around it is drained.
Mentally solving these successive black swan events will force you to examine every conceivable flaw in your business model, to the point where you'll find yourself developing what I like to call nightmare scenarios. As you might imagine, these are scenarios where you pick several black swan events, on paper, and make them all happen. For an example, let's pick that small web company again. This time, let's say they've grown to 10 employees and have 50 sites in a variety of sectors, with a clean non-interlinking structure, getting traffic from a variety of sources (search, PPC, e-mail, word of mouth, etc). It seems much better than the first example, but what happens if a malicious employee modifies the WHOIS e-mail and tries to hijack all the domains, at a time when your e-mail hits a snafu and is no longer white listed, over a weekend where the company credit card is stolen and PPC must be halted? Everything comes to a grinding halt.
This isn't really meant to scare you, only to prepare you. By envisioning nightmare scenarios, chalked full of numerous black swan events, and then solving them to the best of your ability, you will be leagues ahead of your competitors. In terms of likelihood, occam's razor holds true, and the simplest of the scenarios will ensue, in which case you'll already be ready for them with defensible traffic and can take the in-depth knowledge about how your business works, that most people never develop, to the next level.
Good luck!
Your friendly neighborhood Cygnus Atratus,
JoeSinkwitz
JonK was going to do a post about some of the books on his desk a while back, but he is caught up in the middle of a couple projects and is going on a ski trip this weekend, so I thought I'd be nice to steal his idea help him out. The idea is, what do you read to help you become successful? Well, that list is exhaustive, for a few different reasons 1) a some of us here read a LOT and 2) I have a bad little habit of dropping books on people's desks and implying that reading that book will make them better at what they do.
To keep things relatively short and sweet, I decided to just take down the books from the desks of the three people blogging on the Affiliate Blog, versus trying to poll the entire office. In is interesting, to me at least, the types of material found. If what we read is the reason we're successful, then the aspiring affiliate marketer might want to develop competence in coding, graphic design/art theory, and a host of whatever miscellaneous marketing and random science / software topics that I find myself reading. Keep in mind, this is just what is on our desk, as of right now. If people want more, we can try and put together something that aggregates every design book we ever liked, every coding book we ever liked, every sales/marketing/leadership/management/how not to be abducted by hitchhiking aliens/etc book we ever liked.
Don't worry, I didn't use affiliate links, and yes my office is pretty messy.
Blumey (Design / Art & Layout)
Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design; Eric Meyer
CSS Pocket Reference; Eric Meyer
The Non-Designer's Design Book; Robin Williams
Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction; Dan Margulis
JonK (Coding)
Agile Web Development with Rails; Dave Thomas, David Hansson, Leon Breedt, and Mike Clark
Intermediate Perl; Randal Schwartz
Learning Perl; Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
Learning PHP 5; David Sklar
Perl Cookbook; Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
Perl Pocket Reference; Johan Vromans
PHP Cookbook; David Sklar and Adam Trachtenberg
PHP Hacks: Tips & Tools for Creating Dynamic Web Sites
Rails Recipes; Chad Fowler
Ruby For Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers; David Black
Spidering Hacks; Kevin Hemenway and Tara Calishain
JoeSinkwitz (A blender of random literary tastes and subjects)
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; Malcolm Gladwell
Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds; Howard Gardner
Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era; John Cassidy
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and Markets; Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Futureshop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get the Things We Really Want; Daniel Nissanoff
Hacking Del.icio.us: Web 2.0 Building Blocks; Leslie Michael Orchard -- don't read too much into that.
On Intelligence; Jeff Hawkins
On time! On track! On target!, Managing your projects successfully with Microsoft Project; Bonnie Biafore
RSS and Atom in Action; Dave Johnson
Small is the New Big, and 183 other riffs, rants, and remarkable business ideas; Seth Godin
The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad; Michael Cusumano
The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture; John Battelle
The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence: How to See Through and Stay Ahead of Business Disruptions, Distortions, Rumors, and Smoke Screens ; Leonard Fuld
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; Malcolm Gladwell
Read up and enjoy!
JoeSinkwitz
In this week's round-up of what we felt were the best blog posts / forum threads on SEO, affiliate marketing, and anything else that might be relevant for marketing payday loans, we found some excellent posts covering a wide range of topics. This week Aaron discusses the gray areas of marketing, Domain Editorial announces an interesting new service for generic domain holders, Michael compiles his views on the Adwords quality score changes, and Bill explains from a patent point of view what the Adscape Media purchase means.
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