Internet Marketing at Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation

Structured Procrastination = Loss In Your Income April 22, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , 9 comments

You might already be familiar with the survivability stats for new start-ups that are commonly cited by entrepreneurship evangelists…

Out of every 10 new start-ups every year, 5 of them will go belly-up in the first year.

Out of the survivors making it past year 1, another 50% of them will cease operations at the end of year 2.

And so on, until only the top 1% make it at the end of year 5.

[The stats are across all industries and according to the company registrars that help these companies and sole proprietorships incorporate]

I don’t exactly know the stats for individuals coming into internet marketing, but I think it could be something similar.

A case in point, I’ve helped sell coaching programs, where we work 1-on-1 with new internet marketers, or people who say they want to make a living on the internet. These guys shell out close to $10,000 a head to enroll in these programs. They’re all fired up in week 1, just raring to go.

You ask them to research 5 websites, they research 50. But somehow when it comes to implementing the project later in the program, there’s some resistance and inertia to getting started.

Some may blame “affluenza” or middle class syndrome. If there (more…)

Tags:amit mehta, black ink project, inner game, internet marketing, jeremy palmer

Popularity: 3%

Is Your Internet Business Going To Be Around 5 Years From Today? April 16, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , 1 comment so far

If you’ve been to Greenland or the Antartica (especially around the North Pole), you’d have seen numerous icebergs, some as big as a house, and many that are many times the size of an apartment complex or even bigger.

That’s your internet business. Get it?

iceberg

Picture if you will your internet business as represented by the iceberg.

It could be huge. It could be imposing.

Or it could be just a couple of ice cubes floating about in the water, blown all over the place by the wind.

Here’s the kicker.

Ice is about 90% of the density of water. So what you see is the “tip of the iceberg”. There’s another 90% of ice attached to what you see above the surface of the water.

Or is there?

Here is the problem facing 90% or more of pure-play Internet marketing efforts today…

They’re focused solely on lead generation, and often there is little longterm viability built into the business.

Some may say that CPA affiliates are pretty short-sighted because they’re selling leads (the majority who fill in email and zip submits and sell them to CPA networks for between $1 - $5 a lead).

But are affiliate marketers much better?

In most cases, affiliate marketers are only paid on the initial sales. Eg: a lead buys $200 worth of merchandise from Amazon or Overstock or Buy.com, and the affiliate earns from 2% to 10% of the sale value (depending on whether you’re getting bumped up payouts/are a top performer, etc).

In many cases, once (more…)

Tags:affiliate fortune cookies, Affiliate Marketing, branding, internet marketing, internet marketing strategy, lisa picarille, sam harrelson

Popularity: 3%

How Users Consume Media = Monetization Strategies For You April 7, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , 1 comment so far

I’ve been listening to an increasing number of audio podcasts and video posts in the last 12 months, branching beyond the books, magazines and printed PDFs (and occasional PDF I read on my screen) and a thought came to mind:

If you are a marketer are not going to where your leads/prospects/customers are coming from or going to, you could be putting yourself out of their traffic loop, and ultimately the monetization loop.

If you are a merchant or affiliate and primarily using the text channel - articles, blogs, social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and even text ads on Google AdWords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing, are you leaving yourself out of the traffic loop if your best prospects are walking around consuming their media on iPods?

Here’s a brief rundown of my media consumption:

Text: - newspaper, magazines, books, PDFs, text blogs, email -Â I am usually sitting in front of my desk, in front of my computer when consuming text-based information. A large part of it has to do with being tethered to my computer.

Even though I have a laptop (actually 2 now…) and there’re a number of Wi-Fi zones around, and even though I have an Apple Touch, I (more…)

Tags:Affiliate Marketing, geekcast, ijustine, internet marketing, jim kukral, justine ezarik, lisa picarille, sam harrelson, shawn collins, the daily flip

Popularity: 3%

Web 2.0 Is A Dirty Word… March 27, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , 5 comments

Or should that be “Words”?

However, you cut it and define it, there’re marketers out there who do their best to make use of Twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages, MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Metacafe, Youtube, Revver, forums and other social networking site (of the “Web 2.0″ ilk) to generate adsense or affiliate income.

Some of them are spectacularly successful, while others just flame up and die, and have their accounts deleted en-masse.

So is Web 2.0 a “dead” technology for marketers?

Are Web 2.0 site destined to become a dead graveyard populated by “internet polluters“?

I don’t think so.

This issue came up during the taping of a Friday Podcast session with Affiliate Classroom’s Marketing VP and affiliate marketing industry veteran Rachel Honoway.

I was pretty impressed that Web 2.0-based affiliates ranked alongside SEO, PPC, Coupon, shopping comparison and other types of profiled affiliates in Affiliate Classroom’s new AC Certified program for Affiliate Managers.

If you recall, Jim Kukral presented a session on “Bloggers as the Next Generation of Super Affiliates” at Affiliate Summit West 2007.

And it’s great to see these new generation of affiliate marketers being profiled in the new program, and even better, there’re tips for new and experienced affiliate managers to reach out to these marketers.

But back to “Web 2.0″ for a second.

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last couple of weeks, you’d pick up the thread that this (more…)

Tags:affiliate classroom, affiliate summit, affiliate summit west, friday podcast, internet geek girl, internet pollution, jason calacanis, jim kukral, rachel honoway, stephanie agresta

Popularity: 4%

Get A New PC For Free…By Cleaning Up Digital Clutter March 19, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , add a comment

Although I’ve a pretty nice compact Fujitsu Lifebook ultraportable (not nearly as small as an Asus eee PC, but much more powerful), I’ve accumulated quite a bit of “digital clutter” on it over the past 2 years that I’ve owned it.

Digital clutter occurs when software is installed on a computer, then uninstalled, frequently leaving bits of code in the bootup sequence, or staying resident in the applications or device drivers loaded in RAM.

Another instance of digital clutter occurs when 2 conflicting device drivers or DLL files clash, with the result that the computer either hangs or reboots itself…

I found myself in the dilemma that the Google AdWords Editor didn’t work anymore, Firefox would suddenly hang every 15 minutes or so, and Internet Explorer hasn’t worked for the last year…

Over the past weekend, I did pretty major housecleaning and everything works like new now.

IE is speedy, so is Firefox, I’ve also downloaded the latest versions of the software I’d been using before and was pretty impressive by how much faster the new versions run and the number of new features.

In the process of upgrading however, I lost a couple hundred megabytes of email from Outlook Express. I guess I had hit one of these limits. I have folders within folders, and probably busted the 100,000 email or so limit…As a result, I’ve got my folders starting with “H” all the way to “Z”, but I’ve lost my folders from “A” to “G”.

If there ever was an occasion for a fresh start, I guess this would be it.

One useful tool was a registry cleaner I used, which helped to clean a lot of digital junk from my system.

It’s the first time I’ve used ParetoLogic’s RegCure product and if you aren’t already using it yet, you should test out the trial version.

Here’s what my scan and cleanup showed: