Kelly Asks:

Dwayne – You seem kind of like a guru on the online shopping stuff. My husband and I want to try and make some extra money by doing something online. We both have jobs but we figure we can spend about 3 hours on each weeknight and one weekend day to make a go of selling something on the net. We have a few hundred (maybe $500) to put into it. Can you suggest anything? We see the wholesale and dropship ads all over. Does that work?.

Answer:

Howdy Kelly;

Okay that is a great dream and a nice nest egg to start with. First you’re not going to replace your day job any time soon with a $500 investment, but with a little elbow grease and several weekends you can parlay that into something that will pay a car note and maybe create some mad money to boot.

First while I urge you to look into wholesale and dropship options, don’t just leap into anything just because of a sales pitch. Remember that landing page sales copy can be very persuasive and is designed to separate you from your money before you have time to carefully consider. So look into these options then come back and ask for any further advice once you find one you like.

Also consider novelty. Suppliers for novelty items like sexy panties and gag gifts are also an option.

Wholesale or Dropship products:

These are fun. There are aggregators like Doba and Simplix who you pay a fee to and they give you access to many ‘so-called’ wholesale products. Be careful because they are usually closer to 25% off retail so not really wholesale.You can also look into getting individual products and specializing once you find a good wholesale source. For example you can look are and select say, wholesale sunglasses to get started. Setting up a specialty stand at a flea market or the corner of a busy parking lot can make you more in a weekend than a year of eBaying the junk at Doba.

Remember that a lot of other folks are out there trying to make a few extra bucks on the web. If you take a moment to think and talk about differential marketing (how you can be different from everyone else) it can pay off tons.

We want to hear how it goes so please write back.

Thanks again;

Dwayne

Socially Conscious Marketing comes from a place of truth — not deception. It comes from a place of giving — not taking. As the name implies, being a socially conscious marketer means you hold yourself accountable to your clients or customers and you strive to be conscious of the impact of your message — beyond just getting the sale.

In the business development world, people want to grow relationships. It is often assumed that both sides want to develop the relationship. But in internet marketing, the relationship is often just one way. The buyer is going along with their life and the marketer is trying to persuade them to take an offer or make a decision — often when they are not really ready to make one.

The best way to bring all these things together and to make everyone happy (on both sides of the relationship) is to build trust and report with your audience. If we stop trying to hurry the close and push the service or product we always win.

The BizDevMark team is actually doing this with our marketing — to you. We are here for you every day, providing free content and resources to help make your life better. We very rarely present an offer or sales pitch because that is not what this site is about. We prefer to build a relationship and be accountable to you.

Yes I know that sounds corny and trite but it is the truth. So if you’re a marketing professional your job is to do the same thing over and over, until you can’t tell your friends from your prospects!

Dwayne

BizDevMark – Business Development Marketing

The thick and thin of affiliate marketing often comes down to a trade-off between work and worry.

Work: The work and time it takes to build good authority sites with high visitor value and long lasting serps positioning.

versus…

Worry: The stress over when those quickly ranked machine gun affiliate traps, slick redirects and frame pages will get nerfed or even flagged as spam.

Whether you’re designing an affiliate internet marketing plan from scratch, or if you already have affiliates sites deployed, you always need more testing and feedback to monitor your conversion-path effectiveness. The most common ways to adjust are spinning and split testing pre- and post-click components like ad copy, anchor phrases, and landing page copy. But if you operate networks of thin affiliate sites you are very limited in how effective your spin-post-test cycles can be since the goal is direct injection into the sale channel from the initial search click.

Thin affiliate sites have minimal original copy and limited visitor value. It’s tough to bring them up the serps and get these kinds of pages organically ranked. No kidding right? No not really. The cause-effect relationship between value and organic ranking is made more difficult by the constant adjustment required to address ever changing search algorithms and ever increasing human-assisted page ranking.

But thin sites have one huge advantage; deployment speed. While everyone else is hoeing away on their content, trust relationships, and logical link building, the thin affiliate farmer has already grown a huge 100 acre co-op and by shear scale has socially self-promoted their sites into the top 10 or 20.

Unfair? Unethical? Slimy? Maybe so, but that’s not the point of this post. Let’s get back to main idea: The choice that YOU as a web developer and marketer have to make when planning your deployment strategy for a certain niche or product line.

You may find my attitude callous but honestly I don’t waste much time thinking about which way to go. I want to do what works best for my clients. The real choice depends on the market. Let me explain.

When you approach a campaign that is affiliate based you are faced with strong competitive challenges from other affiliates and also from the product/service originator. Competing affiliates create market buzz but that buzz quickly turns into noise once everyone breaks into the game — or if you are late to the party and there is already strong brand and social exposure working against you.

Competition from the brand is also a serious challenge — especially these days, when SEO consultants are everywhere (ahem). It is no secret that many companies are collapsing their affiliate programs and putting the resources into brand and buzz building and dabbling in social link promotion.

So before you flex your affiliate site creative muscle, consider a balance of thick and thin affiliate properties. Sure, thin sites can help you achieve faster conversions, but high quality pages build real link equity and will help you survive in the long run…and isn’t this all about the long run?

Talk soon;

Dwayne