Archive for March, 2008
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
I’ve heard these terms only a few times during my life offline, but now I’m learning about these concepts more and more as I go deeper into internet marketing.
Soft Selling. I’ve always understood this as unobtrusive selling of a merchandise. examples include small banners or links and the like that people may just see in passing, and may or may not opt to click. This is less obvious, and apparently less irritating to potential customers than…
Hard Selling. Writing about the product, using action words like ‘buy’ or ‘avail’ or ‘click’. This is actually synonymous to pushing the product to potential buyers, and is only considered irritating if the person is not interested, or detests being forced to buy something.
Let me tell you about my experience as a Christmas stall lease owner. I leased a stall for 2 days during Christmas rush time and the space wasn’t cheap. I sold gift items (i.e. pre-packed, available for wrapping) such as small towelettes in 2’s for generic gift giving; bath sponges in various shapes and colors, also pre-packed in 2’s and 3’s; plastic boxes filled with craft items for kids; and chocolate houses. During the first day, I planned on breaking even, and I did so by lunch time. The second part of the day was slow, as siesta time set in. I sat there smiling at customers and entertaining orders as they came. This was soft sell day.
The second day was hard sell day, and I knew it. Because the benchmark for gaining back my investment was met the other day, it’s profit time. It was the day before Christmas and people are rushing to complete their Santa lists. I broke open a chocolate house and invited passers by to taste some. I engaged parents in conversations and pushed the craft items to them, all the while creating my own crafts from one box to demonstrate. I sold a lot more than the first day but noticed that a lot of customers who were really ‘just passing by’ got irritated with my pushing.
Some would say i probably could’ve sold more if I started out hard selling rather than lounging around waiting for customers to inquire. I see the same trends in internet marketing. Will I be content just pouring out the content and attaching affiliate links to posts and sidebars, or should I review the products, push them, market them everywhere, wear them on my signatures and the like? There are certain factors that affect how I may approach an affiliate program:
1. Time
Some affiliate programs terminate accounts after a duration and nothing is sold. Another thing related to this is personal deadlines. Some bloggers or marketers value the time they spend on one project very much and won’t spend a lot of it on products that don’t sell for a certain time frame. What they do is hard sell a product from the onset and all throughout. If they don’t convert during that period, they quit and move on to the next.
2. Resources
Not all affiliate programs are free to join. Some of them require a certain pledge money from associates, or require that you buy their product first before you have the right to earn by re-selling it. Some never want their resources to get tied up for extended periods and want to gain the invested money back ASAP.
3. Trends
If the item you are selling is hot as of the moment, you can sit back and relax, put up a banner and let the sales roll in. However, if a product is an innovation that no one has heard of, or an improvement (or knock off) of a popular thing, you’re in for a challenge.
Selling a product whether insistently or not really depends on how much you loved the product yourself. Sometimes, it’s easier to hardsell a product if you are firmly convinced that people who can relate to you will buy it too.
Posted in Misc | No Comments »
Friday, March 21st, 2008
I am now accepting guest bloggers again at Evilwoobie.com!
My first round of guest posters chose topics they liked and pimped some affiliate links. This time, however, I’m keeping the guest posts within the topics regularly discussed in that blog. Here’s what’s written on the shop page (you must have an entrecard account to enter, I think).
If it gets stumbled I pay you back 200EC. If there are at least 5 comments within 24 hours of posting, I pay you back 300EC. Must be about Love, Relationships, Dating and other hormone-driven issues, emotions or activities. I also accept astrology-, fashion- and lifestyle-related posts. Strictly PG13-R18 only. Maximum of 700 words. I reserve the right to edit the article if it contains too much profanity and/or inappropriate images. I will offer your RSS feed and a short overview of your own blog at the end of the article.
One Requirement: You must create a posting avatar using this tool http://www.tektek.org/dream
The avatar idea was an afterthought, to add more fun to the guest posting. The avatars are customizable from eyeshape and skin color to clothes and accessories. That should be a fun project for someone who wants a link on my site through a guest post for ‘almost free’. Why almost free? The price to purchase is 500 EC, and if the post does get stumbled and commented on as stated in the description, I refund the 500EC that was used to purchase it.
Not bad huh?
Here’s a sample avatar I made from the Gaia Online Avatar creator. It’s Diva Blogger!
Posted in Blogging, Entrecard | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
I’ve been listening to some podcasts and as an ambitious internet marketer I got hooked. How soon before a listen to podcast option appears here at diva blogger or over there at my main blog? It really depends on how I will tackle the following hindrances:
1. Followers - Granted, some podcasters have only a few followers, relative of course to the hundreds of thousands that the A-Listers and internet masters have. Having a steady following guarantees that someone will listen to or download what you have to say about a certain topic. The basic concept being: if they like what you write about, they might like what you talk about.
2. Stage Fright - Being an Asian, English isn’t my native language. However, if I could muster the same confidence that I have in my writing when on air over podcast, I could do well. The problem is, I frankly admit that I can write better than I speak because of… you guessed it, stage fright. If my dismal debutant speech is the benchmark to my improvement as a speaker, I can say I improved a bit. This is not to say I can’t talk anyone’s ear out, I can. However, I — ….
Note, i said “however” twice already. Another will make me think I’m being too defensive… moving on… :D
3. Pressure - Let’s say I found the groove and started talking happily on the microphone. How long before listeners start coughing “bullshit!” and hitting the stop button? On tv, at least 2 researchers, 1 production assistant, one techie and one anchor work to get one news report out, how can I even think that my material is well-researched enough to please the more discerning listener? Rambling and talk are entirely different things. On paper, they look similar, but listening will bring out the differences remarkably.
Pondering podcast… still pondering.
Posted in Blogging | No Comments »
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Hi there! You need content? I write quality content for blogs, ebooks and websites. Just let me know what writing project you need help with and I’ll see what I can do. My 8-year experience in the outsourced content writing industry will benefit you greatly. My rates are reasonably low, as you will discover.
Need to contact me quick? Email me: divablogger(at)gmail(dot)com
Although I can write content on any topic, according to your specifications, I specialize in writing 200-, 500- and 1000-word articles on the following niche topics:
1. Mom Articles
2. Baby Articles
3. Self Help Articles
4. Science and Technology
5. Natural Science, Medicine and Alternative Medicine
6. Paranormal, Occult and Psychic Phenomenon
7. Erotica Stories
8. Role Playing Games/Online Gaming
9. Romance/Dating Articles
Email me at:
divablogger(at)gmail(dot)com
Posted in Misc | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Some MMOL (make money online) sites put new online marketers to sleep rapidly with parroted ideas and ‘the usual i-make-money-online’ slogans. However, some do work and bring in hundreds of sign ups a month.
Those that actually work have several things in common:
1. They have a unique thing, usually a personality quirk, besides affiliate programs that they market. - An intriguing brand of sorts, that makes them stand out.
One good example of this is carlocab.com, who started blogging as a pre-teener (12-year-old?) and made big bucks. A first time visitor will bite the bait of “if a 13 yo kid can do it, you can too”, and will most probably join all that the programs that the kid blogger has joined. Not many are pre-teeners who write like him, and the multitude who followed his example are looked upon as unoriginal.
2. Originality of Ideas - Not the insane sort of ideas that boggle the mind and make you grab a thesaurus ASAP, but the kind of ideas that make people say “hey, why didn’t I think of blogging about that.”
For this, the best example is problogger.net. He has so many useful and “new” ideas that actually provide the necessary things to make bloggers get more into blogging. Like he’s the blogging magician who can put into words the abstract concepts circulating in anyone’s mind. Some examples that I have tried include blogging to the future, guest posting, recycling minor ideas from previous posts to create a series, and many others.
3. A relate-able personality - I subscribe to a blog because I can relate to the blogger, his or her style, taste in layout colors or hobbies.
The WAHMs (work-at-home-moms) best exemplify this category. Within it are multitudes of personalities like moms who really just stay at home, moms who work part time on the net and full time in companies, moms who work on the net through the company’s ISP, and even moms who don’t excessively market their blogs but are absolutely adorable so they can’t help but be marketed by others (e.g. Psychicgeek.com and Antibarbie.net).
But the real secret to the success of WAHMs is this: the world’s most powerful consumers can relate to them. Mothers are the ultimate evolution of the single girl persona, and anyone who is female, whether evolved or not, look up to the successful WAHMs.
4. Showing the money - Check photos and earnings screenshots make your efforts believable.
The notion of telling people how much you earned is distasteful offline. Like showing your paycheck to people in bars and getting a punch or two for being a braggart. Online, however, this could actually help in telling people that ‘the programs I have joined really bring in the cash’. Showing profits and telling how you made them works (see JohnChow.com)
Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »
