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| Get 30-40% off BlogMastermind Courtesy of a Weak Australian Dollar (Until Monday) Posted: 09 Oct 2008 05:17 AM PDT
This is just a short note to say that until next Monday you can get an unofficial discount of around 35% off the price of the course - simply because the Australian Dollar sucks at the moment! Here’s why. Yaro set up the price of Blog Mastermind in Australian dollars rather than US dollars (he’s an Aussie living in Canada). At the time he did this the exchange rate between the two currencies was almost dollar for dollar (the AU$ was slightly less). Over the last couple of weeks the Australian dollar has quite simply taken a nose dive! Yesterday it hit $0.66 USD (as I write this it is 0.67)! This means if you buy Blog Mastermind today you’re getting between 30-40% discount (depending upon what financial markets are doing at any given moment). Instead of $97 USD for the month it is actually around $65 USD. This ends on Monday as Yaro is switching to charging in USD (and I can understand why - the Australian dollar is not a good one to be earning right now). He is also ending the month by month payment option for those who sign up after Monday. |
| Is Twitter Selling Links and What in the World is a ‘Promotion’ Posted: 08 Oct 2008 03:43 PM PDT Yesterday I logged onto Twitter and find a little addition to their sidebar. It says ‘Get some Perspective’ and contains a link ‘Watch Hack the Debate‘. Here’s how it looks. So I have two reactions to this. 1. How much more politics does Twitter need?I’m sick of the ‘election bar’ that continues to appear when I visit Twitter. I’ve closed it many times but it continues to appear. I thought perhaps it was just me or at least just a frustration that other Non US Twitter users had seeing that Election promotion - but when I tweeted about it I only had 2-3 out of 50-60 responses that were positive about the election bar (including US Twitter users). WIth the election bar and now a sidebar link Twitter seems to be moving away from their ‘what are you doing’ type focus. Sure a lot of the world is ‘doing’ elections but a large number of the world is also sick of them. I do think that the US election is important but I’d love to see them give us the choice to opt out of this type of ‘promotion’ or at least to know if it’s an ad or not. But maybe that’s just me? 2. Is this a partnership, paid link… or?My first reaction when seeing the link was that it looked a lot like an advertisement. There’s no marking of it as such but it does seem a little odd to just have an unexplained link to a political site just sitting there on the sidebar of a social media site under one’s stats. When you look at the ’source code’ of a twitter page you see that the link is tagged as a ‘promotion’ (click to enlarge the source code): Interesting…. but what is a promotion? On the site it links to (Current.com) it says that Current and Twitter have ‘teamed up’ - so it looks like some kind of ‘partnership’ but that doesn’t really explain it fully. Now I’ve got nothing against Twitter monetizing with advertising, but I’d love for them to disclose whether that is actually an ad or not. If it is - they might want to ‘nofollow’ it or they might just find themselves penalized by Google for trying to game them (or for helping someone else game them at least). What do you think? Tags: disclosure, social media, twitter |
| Affiliate Marketing on Twitter - Does it Belong? Posted: 08 Oct 2008 05:30 AM PDT
What do you think about affiliate marketing on Twitter? Lately I’ve noticed more and more affiliate marketers getting onto twitter. There’s been a real buzz about it actually in many internet marketing circles - almost like it’s the latest ‘new’ thing (I guess it is relatively new). The unfortunate thing is that the model I’m seeing some internet marketers use on Twitter is quite spammy. Some have spammed Twitter so much directly that they’ve been booted off. Today I got an email from Joel Comm. I’m one of his affiliates and have promoted some of his books and ebooks previously. We’ve met in person and I admire his knowledge of internet marketing greatly. However todays email didn’t really sit that well with me and I’d love to hear your opinion on it. Joel is currently promoting an AdSense Secrets ebook. I actually like his writing on AdSense and some of what he teaches helped me a lot in the early days of getting into blogging. I’ve promoted his AdSense stuff before and would probably do it again - but not in the way he’s asking his affiliates to do it this time. The promotion he’s asking people to do is to Tweet a link to his book. Not only has he asked us to tweet about it (something I wouldn’t be anti doing to some extend) he’s given his affiliates a link to make the whole process automated. All you have to do is click the link and it sets up a tweet in your own twitter account (if you’re logged in) and it embeds an affiliate link into the tweet automatically for you so you can earn money if people make a purchase of one of Joels products as a result of clicking on your link ($10 a month for each month they stay in his program). Looking at Twitter Search just now it seems that his tactic is working - to some extent.
I wouldn’t call it a raging success (yet) but with 30 or so people tweeting about it (largely using the automated script Joel’s provided) there’s been some take up of it. Now on some levels I don’t have a problem with Joel’s campaign. I am not against affiliate marketing, I’m not against promoting products in new media - however there’s something that has been playing on my mind about this all day. To be honest I’m not completely sure why I don’t like it (as I say above I don’t have a problem with some of the principles behind it) but there’s something that doesn’t sit well with me about this. Risky Behavior and SpamI think one of my main problems with it is that it almost seems like Joels asking others to engage in a little risky behavior for him and putting them a little at risk. Twitter is pretty anti spam and while he’s not done it directly the search results do look quite spammy when you line them all up and see the exact same message over and over and over again. I wonder how Twitter will respond to this and who will suffer? Joel or those who tweet it? Impersonal MarketingAnother thing that I am reacting against with this strategy is that the tweets Joel is suggesting seem very impersonal. “Download Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets For FREE! “ This just doesn’t resonate with me as the type of message that would do well on Twitter. A message out of the blue about someone encouraging a download. I’m not sure it’s where affiliate marketing is going online either. My own experimenting with affiliate marketing over the last few years is that it works best out of relationship and trust with those that you recommend products to. I find that promoting products do best when you are able to give an honest review of them, when you’re able to tell people who they are best suited for etc This is actually why I think blogging is an ideal message for affiliate marketing. It’s a great place to build trust, fully review a product and give a balanced recommendation - 140 or so characters just doesn’t seem enough to do much to do most of that. I guess what I’m coming to is that a tweet like this doesn’t really sit comfortably with my style of affiliate marketing. What do you Think about Affiliate Marketing on Twitter?But that is just me - what about you? Does affiliate marketing belong on Twitter? If so - how would you do it? To be clear - I’m not wanting to start an anti Joel Comm thread of discussion here - like I say, I like the guy and don’t have anything against his products, but I am interested to hear what you think about the topic of affiliate marketing on twitter (and other forms of social media). Over to you…. How Affiliate Marketers Should Use Twitter?It’s pretty easy to say you don’t like affiliate links on Twitter and not say anything constructive. So tomorrow I’d like to attempt to put forward some ideas on how Twitter (and other social media sites) could be used by affiliate marketers appropriately and effectively. Keep an eye on my RSS feed over the next 24 hours to see when the post goes live. Tags: affiliate marketing, Affiliate Programs, social media, twitter |
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