Seven To Ten

To rescue the economy and encourage consumer spending, the US government is printing more money and increasing federal debt. But the shadow of recession continues to loom large.

Monthly mortgage payments are rising as home values plunge. This double whammy has caused some homeowners to simply abandon their homes and their loans, rather than throw good money after bad.

New tax laws introduced last year have allowed home buyers to walk away from mortgage obligations without a tax consequence. Last time, if bank forgive the shortfall when the house is foreclosed, it is considered as income and hence taxable.

Is it alright for troubled homeowners to walk away when they can no longer afford their homes? I think if you choose to walk away, you have to accept that you’ll pay more for car loans, credit cards and mortgages in the future. At least for a while. I am worried that the hard lessons of greed are not learned if the exit strategy is so easy.

What do you guys think?

A new form of marketing has been tailored for the mass of unsold home inventories and foreclosures. A Foreclosure Bus Tour….

It is a six-hour trip to showcase homes to buyers in Orlando and educate them on the vagaries of snatching foreclosures in a state where residential real estate has stagnated over the past two years.

The foreclosure bus tours are good value for visitors. A cost of $45 per person or $65 per couple covered the tour, house information, teaching sessions, a continental breakfast and lunch at Applebee’s. A mortgage broker, attorney, home inspector and agent are on hand to advise; for newbies, you get a feel of the team you need to set up for your first foray into real estate.

Real estate agents have also organized foreclosure bus tours in California, where the idea seems to have originated, and cities such as Phoenix, Detroit, Kansas City and Jacksonville.

There are more reasons out there why affiliate marketers fail. We will explore it later, here are two more…

Promoting Only One Product

Some affiliates promote only one product and the readers/customers are not given enough options to choose from. There is also the risk of generating fewer sales, it is always better to give them a few alternatives than to give them only one.

Promoting Too Many Products

The converse is equally true. Promoting too many products can harm your affiliate business. Customers become confused and end up not making a choice at all. They depend on your recommendations and if you say everything is good, they may not trust your judgment.

Understanding some of the common mistakes affiliates make can dispel the gloom about this affiliate business. There are certain dos and donts, just like in any industry, if you want to make your effort count.

Lack of Knowledge

Lack of knowledge concerning principles in their business refers to the affiliate’s knowledge of search engines in particular.

Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines. What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely.

This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.

Banner Stuffing

It is a waste of time and space if affiliates just stuff their sites with banners but do not provide enough information about the product at hand. The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content to accompany such banners.

It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.

It seems a lack of preparation is the main reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. For merchants, selecting the right affiliate websites is the key to success.

To ensure quality, he must consider all the highly interested affiliates whose sites can fit nicely to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers.

As for affiliate marketers, they also have to research on the good-paying and reliable merchandisers before signing up in any affiliate program. He must ensure a fit of the merchants’ products and services to his interests so he can appear as an authority on hte subject and also give his full attention to the program.

Valuable information is available in affiliate forums and articles on affiliate marketing. The pros have been there, done that and will offer tips on how to choose the best products with better conversion rates.

How important is our website in the affiliate business? According to experts, it can make or break us. From day one, we should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Obviously, I have not been doing it…yet.

At first glance, the user must like what they see and if they find it ugly, they won’t read the content even if it is very interesting or informative. But of course, content is important.

Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites.Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote.

Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing?

There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is promotion and advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well.

Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products.

As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.

A lot of people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet.

It’s a fair deal between the merchandiser and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale materialized. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies.

Everyday, as affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase or avail of the products and services offered.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing?

There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is promotion and advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well.

Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products.

As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.

I was thinking of purchasing a few thousands unique visitors from an expired domain traffic company and another 10,000 of the same from other sources.

I will test it out and see what is the conversion stats. Zero contribution from a high number of uniques is no good and must be improved asap.

For some of the seasoned marketers, they may not like the idea of purchasing bulk traffic since the source and quality of the expired domain traffic, but testing wouldn’t hurt too much.