Recently, while I was buying a Private Labels Rights (PLR) package from one of my favorite freelance writers, I had a self-proclaimed creative idea for advertising online businesses.

I originally posted the idea in the Open Source Marketer Community Forum, but I thought it was worth posting on the blog as well. Basically, the idea is to put your product offer or advertisement at the end of someone’s autoresponder signup process.

If your not familiar with the autoresponder signup process, let me explain. A professional autoresponder service provides the ability to create mailing list signup forms that can be copied onto blogs, webpages and the like.

The form is often used in combination with a free offer to entice visitors to join a mailing list. When someone enters their name and email address into the form, they are presented with a webpage telling them to check their email for a confirmation link.

The visitor checks their email, clicks the confirmation link, and they are presented with another webpage that confirms that they have completed the opt-in process.

This is what’s known as a double opt-in signup because it requires the interested visitor to hand over their name and email address (opt-in number one) and then click a link in their email to confirm they want to receive email from the list owner (opt-in number two).

When you sign up for a newsletter or mailing list you usually see these standard set of notices. After completing the signup form, you see a page that tells you to check your email, and you get a page that confirms your opt-in status when you click the confirmation link in your email. It happens like clock work.

However, most new marketers (heck even experienced ones) leave money on the table by not customizing these notification pages. They just use the default pages that are provided by the autoresponder service and they miss out on opportunities to further promote their own or related products and services.

What they should be doing is putting a one time offer on that final confirmation page to capture a sale from someone who was interested enough to double opt-in to their mailing list.

Here’s where you come in. Since that list owner is not fully using their autoresponder series to it’s fullest potentional, why not contact that list owner and ask to put your custom offer or message on that confirmation page?

Then your message will be seen by every person who double opts in to their list. Depending on the offer and the message you provide you might be able to get in front of a lot of people and not directly complete with the list owner.

If the list owner is interested in affiliate marketing, then you could offer them a percentage of sale. Or you might do well to negotiate a flat monthly fee or a per visitor fee. The right mix will depend on their past opt-in numbers and the conversion rate on your product or service.

This is just an idea and worth a think about, considering how many people don’t use that space today. Who knows, you might be able to get advertising space that is cheaper per visitor than Pay Per Click advertising.

Looking for an edge,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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When I die I hope my wife goes through my coat pockets to look for spare change, because I am notorious for leaving money in my pockets. I’ve found twenty dollars bills in coats I haven’t worn in two years.

Well, if she goes through my coat pockets, she should also go through my online affiliate accounts as well because just the other day I found money in one account I had forgotten about.

Several months ago I set up a one page website that offers to deliver inspirational messages via email. The site contains just one call to action and an email sign up form. The inspirational messages are delivered using autoresponder software and it has been on auto-pilot adding one or two new subscribers a month for the past several months. At the bottom of every automatically delivered email there is a simple text link promotion for an affiliate product. As new subscribers sign up for the free service they are effectively starting a chain of emails that will provide them with daily inspirational messages and a single offer for a product promotion.

This is a fantastic way to set up an automated sales force, but there are a few things to consider.

The balance is to not make a pushy offer because it will over power the positive effect of the inspirational message. You want your audience to look forward to your emails or they won’t open them. By not being pushy, but consistently providing an offer with every email I am playing on the nature of curiosity that we all have. Eventually, they are going to be curious about what’s behind that link and then they will check out the offer. If it is something they are interested in then they will check it out sooner than later.

It is also important to try and match the offer as closely to their interests as possible. The more relevant the offer is to the list member who is seeking inspirational messages, the more likely they are to take action. I have been using promotions from AzoogleAds with much success. You could use any affiliate network that has ad inventory to match your target audience.

I picked offers from AzoogleAds because I like what they are promoting and their reporting is easy to use and understand. They also offer a good selection of ad formats and creatives. That also helps me match ads to my list because an image ad is not always appropriate in every situation and sometimes a text link just doesn’t get noticed. So, I like to have choices when I am presenting an offer.

But basically that’s it. Aside from a few small promotional links on other sites I have not had to do that much promotion of the site. I did pick the domain name based on a few keywords and I have been sure to use keyword specific phrases on the homepage. This in combination with using stumbleupon and other social sites to promote the site has served well. And since the whole thing is on auto-pilot I am not pressed to manage it constantly, which of course is why I forgot about the affiliate revenue.

Maybe I should investigate some affiliate management software and report what I find. I know there has to be other affiliates out there with this same problem. Of course it is a good problem to have.

If you know of any good affiliate tracking software out there send me a message and tell me about it.

Forgetting to remember,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Tracking clicks can be an important part of any online marketing but not everyone has the nerd muscles to set up their own click trackers. There are a number of scripts out there and home grown solutions for tracking clicks, but I want to give you a quick overview of a tool I like to use for tracking specific click events.

The tool I like to use is BoldURL.com. At first glance BoldURL looks like another long url shrinker. There are several hundred of these url redirection services in use today. In fact, you may have heard of tinyurl.com or some similar service, but BoldURL has a hidden surprise on the inside.


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Recently I bought a new car and I used an online lender to fund the deal. Throughout the whole process I noticed that the lender was using sales techniques that all of us could learn from. So, I am going to highlight seven key points from the experience and examine how we can use these techniques in our own Internet Marketing efforts.

1. Getting Started Is Easy

While I was researching my choice of cars I decided I wanted to walk into the dealer with pre-approved financing. So, as I was shopping on Cars.com I noticed a banner ad that said I could apply online for financing with RoadLoans.com. Unfortunately I don’t remember what attracted me to the banner ad because, I normally never click on banner ads. I know that a banner ad means a sales pitch and like most people, I want to buy but I don’t want to be sold to. Maybe it was just the fact that I was in the market for what they were offering and I transferred the trust I had built up with Cars.com to Road Loans as one of their sponsored advertisers. What ever the reason, I clicked through.

It’s important to note that I had already filled out an online application with Capital One’s Auto Financing, but I didn’t like their rates. But since I had completed their loan application online I already knew what kind of questions would be asked of me. I found that the Road Loans application flowed well and was easy to follow. I had the entire application completed in just a few minutes. I also use RoboForm so that helped the process a great deal as well because I didn’t have to fill in all of the fields manually.

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I recently received an Associate Programs newsletter from Allan Gardyne. In the newsletter he linked to an interesting new product he is selling called SpeedPPC (Speed Pay Per Click). So I clicked through to see what the software was all about and what I found was not only an attractive product offering, but also an article about super affiliate marketing that I just had to highlight for you.

After reading about the software and it’s affiliate program I started poking around the affiliate site to see what type of affiliate tools were available to promote the product. Allan has been making money on affiliate marketing since 1998 so I know he has some things to teach me, so I use his writings as a model for learning more about successful marketing online.

As part of his affiliate tools I found an article entitled, “How to promote SpeedPPC like a super affiliate”. In the article Allan gives some universal advice that I believe you can apply to just about any product promotion or online sales process you might be planning. Take a look at these pearls of wisdom and commit them to memory. Print this page if you have to and pin them on your cork board until they are second nature.

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