By now you are sure to have heard that the FTC has released guidelines that will apply to online marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, etc. from 1st December 2009. There have been ripples of discussion about the implications, particular for affiliate marketers, ever since.

The reaction among various groups has ranged from “the FTC can’t tell me what to do” right up to “look out, the sky is falling!”

Apart from a few elements of the guidelines which I believe to be completely unworkable - I’m talking about the part about product owners being held liable for what their affiliates say - most of the guidelines are designed to clean up the small number of marketers who clearly believe that it’s OK to make whatever claim you like about a product as long as you get the sale.

There is a section that deals with the use of testimonials which I think is going to hit a lot of the “make money online” people and the “weight loss” crowd quite hard initially. They will now be limited to testimonials that support “generally expected” results, as opposed to the “make a million bucks by next week” kind. No doubt some bright sparks will come up with something that works even better, so keep your eyes peeled!

For affiliate marketers, the main issues are that you will not be able to make claims that you don’t have the evidence to support. But you shouldn’t really be making claims about the products you are promoting anyway. Observation - fine. Comparisons - fine. Explanations - fine. No claims, OK?

The other issue for us is the requirement to disclose our relationship with the product owner or vendor. In other words, affiliate marketers will now need to disclose that they benefit financially from recommending a product or referring a sale.

Unfortunately the FTC hasn’t bee explicit about how this disclosure should be made. But I would expect that it might be a good idea to begin with a general statement that appears on each page of your website or blog. You could do this easily by adding it to your site template or including it in a Text Widget if you’re using Wordpress.

Even if there is a more definitive solution proposed closer to the time, at least this way you can show that it is your intention to comply with the Guidelines.

In the absence of an FTC provided solution to this issue (don’t expect one), I decided to draft up some affiliate disclaimers of my own (in a variety of flavours - some very definitely with tongue in cheek). Please feel free to use them on your own site or blog. They are provided AS IS and without any implied guarantee whatsoever of fitness for the purpose. Get them checked over by your own lawyer if you want to be sure.

Polite and Professional:
Please note that the owner of this website may earn a commission should you decide to make a purchase from one of the websites linked to from this page.

Polite and Informative:
Creating the useful and interesting content for this website costs time and money. That money is recouped through affiliate links. These links are a form of referral-based marketing. If you decide to purchase a product recommended by us or linked to from this website, we may earn a small commission from the product owner.

With attitude:
Here’s how it works: You visit my website, maybe you leave via a link to another site, if you decide buy something there, I make a few bucks for pointing you in that direction. Simple. It’s called an affiliate commission. It’s not illegal. I’m not hiding it.

Once again, with attitude:
This website contains links to other sites. Wierd, right?
By clicking these links you are telling the other site that Mark sent you!
If you buy something while you’re there, Mark gets cash. Marks buys food and lives another day.
Relax, I don’t get your cash, I get paid a commission. It’s business. Deal with it.

The Hijacker:
Please note that the owner of this website may earn a commission should you decide to make a purchase from one of the websites linked to from this page. This is called ‘affiliate marketing’. To learn more about affiliate marketing, click here now!

Hope you like them!

-Mark Wilson.

Whether you are a wet-behind-the-ears internet marketing newbie, or you’ve been involved in the industry for some time - if you are reading this article, chances are that you are still waiting to experience the success you desire. Why is that, do you think?

From the moment you step into this ‘arena’ you are bombarded by other marketers with hyped-up products to sell. You get jostled from one ‘best-ever’ way to make money online to the next. Your head is left spinning and before you know it you are 12 months down the road with nothing but a big dent in your credit card to show for it.

The problem

Part of the problem is that there are SO many different ways to make money online, and if that’s your goal you are drawn to the promises being made by each new offer you come across. But in actuality, all you need is one way that works. Just pick one and stick to it.

You can read all the forums you like, buy as many internet marketing products as you can afford, and learn as much as you can about the business - but it still won’t make you a red cent. It takes something else to succeed in this game. Action. The missing ingredient that everyone knows about, but rarely includes.

No Magic Success Pill

There is no Magic Success Pill you can take that will change your fortunes overnight, so stop looking for one. Stop buying products on the spur of the moment. And stop fooling yourself that you are taking action, when you are not. You know, all the stuff you fill your time with that doesn’t get you anywhere. For example, swop the time you spend reading and posting to forums for something that can actually make you money.

Take massive action

Whatever you decide to take action on, be sure to take ‘massive’ action. Don’t just give it a try for a week. Don’t dip your toe in the water. That won’t give you results. Instead, give it 30 days of ‘unprecedented’ action.

What constitutes ‘massive’ or ‘unprecedented’ action’?

A consistent, continuous, impressive level of effort with accumulating results.

For example, if you decide to write 3 articles a day for 30 days you’ll have 90 or more by the end of the month. If each was just 300 words long, you would have 27,000 words written. That equates to 2 or 3 decent length ebooks if you decided to create your own product instead of writing articles.

Ramp that up to 10 articles a day and you’ll really start to see results. 300 articles by next month or 9 x 10,000 word ebooks. Do you think those articles or ebooks would be worth money? You betchya! Keep up that level of activity for a few months and your massive action will reap massive results.

This is Part 3 of my Diary of a Wealthy Affiliate member:

Despite wanting to get the week’s assignments out of the way early on, I just couldn’t get to it until the very end of the week. So, not wanting to run over into Week 3 of the 8-Week Action Plan without having Week 2’s work done I eventually threw myself into it with a day to go!

Week 2 leads you through a more detailed look at Internet marketing, and in particular, Affiliate Marketing (unsurprisingly). The main affiliate networks and payment structures are covered here too. There are learning resources on quite a few different topics to get through this week before getting to the nitty-gritty of the actually assignments.

At this point you are recommended to choose whether you want to go down the route of using free marketing methods, or paid methods like Pay-Per-Click (PPC). I opted to use the free approach simply because I believe it’s the method most people who join Wealthy Affiliate will use at first, and I also want you to be able to compare my results with what you yourself would achieve using these methods.

There is a Clickbank Research tool provided that you can use to find a niche to get started with, as well as lists of top products and new products in the network, along with basic trend information so that you can tell whether a product is on the way up or down. So it didn’t take me very long to find and choose a Clickbank product that I wanted to promote. I opted for one that is not in the internet marketing or make money niche, but one that provided a good range of tools and material for affiliates as well as 75-100% commissions.

I picked a niche and a product that I haven’t promoted before, so that I am starting from scratch, as you would be. I have no websites in the niche and I don’t know very much about it, except what I would have read in passing in the newspaper, or seen on TV. You can choose a niche market that you know lots about or are passionate about if you wish. But by choosing one I don’t know about I can (hopefully) show you that you can make money in just about any niche if you use the right approach.

One thing I like about the product I chose is that it belongs to a sub-niche of a larger niche of very related products, so there may be the opportunity to diversify my targeting later on if I have success with this product.

Back on the Wealthy Affiliate site I used their Keyword Research Tool to dig for keywords connected with my chosen product. I soon found a 4-word keyphrase (which qualifies as a longtail keyword) with quite a few variations, reasonable search traffic and not too much competition. The guide recommends to look for a keyword with under 10,000 competing sites - the one I selected has just 3,990. Bingo!

The rest of the assignments for the week involve creating your first Squidoo lens, and getting your feet wet with Article Marketing. I got the the assignments done in time, but I really should have started earlier in the week.

Coming soon - Part 4 of Diary of a Wealthy Affiliate member

I spent most of last night watching Seth Godin videos online. The guy is a certified marketing genius, but his larger gift is that he is very entertaining to read and listen to, and illustrates his ideas in a way that is immediate, impactful and often very amusing.

This video is of a talk Seth gave at last year’s Business of Software conference. And while the talk is directed at programmer and such, there is much to be learned by anyone trying to market their own products or affiliate products online.

He discusses the importance of NOT being mediocre or average, or creating products that are designed to appeal to the masses. As he says: you make money by being uqiquitous - being everywhere, or by being bespoke - through scarcity. You don’t make money by being in the middle, being average, mediocre.

Seth illustrates vital marketing concepts with discussions of Meatball Sundaes, purple cows, sliced bread and Sneezers. This is 60 minutes of Absolutely unmissable, classic Seth.

-Mark Wilson.

I can never get enough of Seth Godin. In this video he talks about referral-based marketing and about giving your best customers a megaphone to sell for you.

If you market your own products online using affiliates, giving them a a great set of affiliate tool and offers they can use to promote your product helps them spread the word about your product.

-Mark Wilson.

This is Part 2 of my Diary of a Wealthy Affiliate member:

When you first log in to the member’s area of the Wealthy Affiliate website it’s a little bit intimidating. The main screen is very busy and it is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of icons, logos and menu items available. You quickly get over this however, and begin to realize that there is a huge wealth of material on offer here.

You are advised to begin by starting with the 8 Week Action Plan. I would recommend the same to you. It is geared towards the complete newbie, the idea is to walk you through setting up your affiliate marketing business over a period of 8 weeks, with specific training and assignments to complete each week. But there is a ton of stuff here for the more experienced marketer too, so don’t fret.

Once you have set up your profile or ‘Space’ you are directed to read specific sections of the, really quite vibrant, forum. Apart from the usual discussion topics you would expect to see on an Affiliate Marketing forum, the success stories posted by other members are truly inspirational and further proof that the system you are here to learn actually works!

Week 1 will not tax you too much, even if you ARE a newbie. Most of it is designed to help you find your way around the site’s tools and resources. You are directed to the most important ones and walked through using each of them. Easy-peasy, and you are soon sifting through the other material available to find something more to do. Thankfully, there’s plenty to keep you busy!

Lessons in the Learning Center are divided up so that you can quickly find the ones that suit your level of experience. The site keeps track of any training you have completed, which is handy, and you can work through it as quickly or as slowly as you want. You definitely want to get your assignments for the week done first though, as Week 2 gives you a LOT more to do and complete, without swamping you.

If you get stuck with anything, there are usually hundreds of people logged in to the forum at any given time, and you can get advice or assistance quickly.

Coming soon - Part 3 of Diary of a Wealthy Affiliate member

When it comes to learning to make money online with Internet Marketing, it seems like you can’t move without falling over a ‘guru‘ selling their ‘secret‘ method of making $10,000 a month ‘in your sleep‘.

If you’ve spent more than a wet weekend looking for a way to make extra cash or replace your lost income, you already know that there seem to be thousands of different methods, all claiming to be the latest, greatest money making method … as long as you ‘buy before the 300 copies are gone forever‘. It’s easy to get pulled from one thing to another, spend your precious cash on something that either doesn’t work, or simply leaves you even more confused.

Another question that comes to mind is, If it’s so easy to make money online using these methods, why do 95% of people fail to make anything at all? Is it the method they choose, or is it something else?

In an effort to strip away all of the sales hype and help you get on the right track to success I’ve decided to join, buy or implement the teachings of some of these Internet Marketing gurus and report back to you on my progress. That way you can make up your own mind about a particular program or method and decide if it’s for you.

To shorten the process I’m only going to pick programs that I’ve already heard good things about, rather than simply pick any old program at random - and I’m going to start with Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is a members-only ‘Affiliate University’ run by a couple of guys by the name of Kyle and Carson, with the intention of teaching you how to build a successful Affiliate Marketing business. The site has been online since 2005 and has thousands of current members. You don’t need any previous experience, complete beginners are catered for, and catered for very well!

Affiliate Marketing is all about PRE-selling other people’s products or services. The big benefit of this approach is that you never have to stock product, handle transactions or provide customer service. You get paid a commission if someone ends up buying from the vendor after following one of your web-links. Also, you can get started with this business model using totally free methods and gradually switch to paid solutions once you are making money.

Wealthy Affiliate costs $29.99 a month if you pay a year’s subscription up front, or $39 if you opt to pay monthly. If you are hesitant about paying a monthly fee to learn how to build a successful online business, don’t be. The training, support, tools, community spirit, motivation and encouragement you get from being a member of a like-minded community beats the “here’s an PDF and a few videos - good luck!” approach hands down!

The fact that members are posting in the private WA forum on their first and second anniversary of becoming a Wealthy Affiliate member speaks volumes about how good it is. You don’t keep shelling out cash if you aren’t making any.

On joining you are recommended to begin the 8 Week Action Plan, a series of guided learning assignments to help kick-start your Affiliate Marketing career. In the next post in this series I will talk about my first week as a Wealthy Affiliate member.

-Mark Wilson.

This month’s Namecheap domain registration coupon code is FIREWORKS

The coupon code is valid for July 2009 and reduces the cost of registering a domain at Namecheap to $8.81

The coupon is for domain registration only, and will not work for hosting or domain name transfers.

-Mark Wilson.

I know this is meant to be Traffic Tuesday, and in a way it is. Get ready for a rant!

Maybe I just attract the wrong kind of people, or maybe customer service standards - online and offline - are really as bad as I think they are. I’ve encountered 3 examples of appalling customer service in the last 2 days alone. That’s got to be some kind of record.

Surely the primary task of a salesperson is to guide you to the point of parting with your money. Seeking to help you if you need help, answering your questions about the product (or at least directing you to someone who can), and generally adding to the customer experience so that you would happily shop in the same place again. Because, as we all know, loyal, repeat customers are the goal of any successful business - unless you’re in the Adsense game of course.

The first incident resulted in a lost sale for the store involved. I knew basically what I wanted to buy. The value of the purchase was about $60, so not insubstantial. All I wanted to know was if it was OK to get a better look at the product before I bought it. Sounds simple. right?

Well, there were 3 sales assistants close by - this was not a large store but part of a large chain of stores, nor was it very busy - one of them was busy making plans for the evening on her phone, and the other 2 were so engrossed … in a game of Tag … that they didn’t hear my “excuse me”.

In the end I took the product out of its package and assembled it to decide if it was what I wanted. Nobody bothered me or asked to “assist” while I did this. I can’t be sure they even noticed. When I was done I re-packaged it and looked up to see that, in order to purchase the product I would have to spoil the fun the salespeople seemed to be having. I didn’t want to do that, so in the end I just walked out.

The second incident occurred in another big name chain store. I was shopping for something different this time. The item was reduced by $100 so I was keen to buy it in this store. However the salesperson couldn’t find the keys belonging to the product. Well, I was getting $100 off and this was the last item that they had in stock, so I was prepared to wait a while.

It took him 45 minutes to find the keys! During which time I was bombarded with customer-winning gems like “Why didn’t you buy it yesterday? I had the keys yesterday!”, and “Can you come back at the weekend? We’ll have more in stock then, but they will be at the full price”. I really should have given up sooner, but the attraction of a bargain can’t be underestimated!

I even suggested that he give me the display model instead, because I could see keys taped to the inside of it. But that only served to generate the bewildering response, “If I sell you the display model, I’ll have to sell someone else the one without keys”. I give up. Or at least, I was about to, when the keys eventually turned up. Thank God for that!

I’m strongly considering writing a course called “Basic logic for sales assistants” after that one.

Finally, I spent a fair amount of time trawling through the Knowledgebase of a product website trying to find if a particular product I wanted to buy was capable of being used in a specific way. I couldn’t find the answer so I emailed Customer Service and explained my question and that the Knowledgebase didn’t contain the answer.

You probably know what I received back. Yup. An email from Customer Service saying how important my question was to them and how happy they were to be able to help. An email into which they Cut-and-Pasted a section of their Knowledgebase which completely failed to answer my question.

The reason I place such an importance on Customer Service pre-purchase, is that if you have a problem after you’ve bought something, you’re going to encounter exactly the same ignorance and stupidity when you try to resolve it - only by then you’ll have parted with your cash!

Excellent customer service is such a core part of customer acquisition and customer retention, you should be watching and learning from it wherever you encounter it - online or offline. And over time, if you can’t provide top-notch Customer Service, all the Website Traffic in the world isn’t going to help you.

-Mark Wilson.