It’s the same thing every day. I wake up, check my email and am inundated with a ton of new emails from affiliate networks. Whether it be new offers added to the network, offer rate changes or simply their latest newsletter… managing your email while being signed up to a ton of networks sure can be tedious and time consuming. It’s not so much that any specific network sends out a ton of mailings… but as a collective whole, affiliate networks along can quickly fill up your inbox. Let’s try and fix that.

Create a New Email Account for Just Affiliate Network Emails
You may already have all of your affiliate network accounts signed up with your main email address, but you can easily change your email address right in the admin section. There are lots of ways to better manage this email. An easy way to better manage your affiliate network email, is to simply create a new email and limit it for only network use. To start fresh you can easily create a new account with Gmail, create a new email alias or even make some filters and folders for easy automated sorting. Not only will this keep all of your personal and important emails separate, but you will also be able to see if any networks are selling or passing along your info to others. (To track networks separately, create an alias for each network – networkname@youremail.com)

Stay in Close Contact with Your Best Networks
I don’t know about you, but I’m signed up with nearly all affiliate networks. This gives me a good idea of who has what offers, the top payouts and keeps me in the loop. I get a massive amount of emails from all of the networks on a daily basis, but there are really only a few I actually do volume with. For any networks that you are seriously working with, they should always have your direct contact info (phone, email or AIM), and if needed they will stay in touch with you that way. Another option is to keep your current email with your best performing networks and send the rest over to your new network only email.

It’s easy to get distracted and quickly fall behind on your email account. Many of us have lots of email to go through on a daily basis, and just 10-20 extra email alerts from a few networks can quickly build up. Better manage your email and better manage your business.

Don’t forget to visit www.tamasindo.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

It’s an obvious concept. Get a visitor to your web site and have them take action. What may seem like a simple task, is anything but for many sites. The majority of designers and product creators out there always want to put as much information and options in the face of customers as possible. Instead of offering the world, just go direct and for the sale. One of the best ways to convert potential customers into buyers, is by limiting their options and focusing strictly on the sale or specific action.

Studies have shown that when sites have less options and distractions, visitors will be more direct in their original reason for visiting the site, and less likely to leave. More options leave the user with confusion and loss of focus. I’ve also seen some great case studies in the past when a site walks a user through the shopping cart process in steps, with nothing but the order form in view, and this heavily increased conversions and the possibility of upsell.

For example, let’s take a look at two huge competitors at the top of their niche markets. NetFlix vs. Blockbuster. We all know NetFlix is killing Blockbuster’s sales and business, but they are also killing them in landing page efforts. Sure, NetFlix is 100% online based, but BlockBuster is missing out on what should be their bread and butter… which is getting new users to join their monthly billing program. Take a look at each of the screen shots below and see which is more focus driven for you.

NetFlix drives home their efforts to get you to sign up for a free month trial to their movie plan. BlockBuster has things plastered all over the place… not to mention how the video listings on the bottom can easily side track users and send them off to other content pages which most likely drop conversions and result in converting potential buyers to “just browsing” visitors.

NetFlix vs. Blockbuster is just one example. The same holds true for many offer and landing pages being offered across affiliate networks. I wrote a post a few months back called “Examples of Good and Bad Landing Pages“. In the post I went into detail on how one landing page had a sign up form and another didn’t, which can drastically affect conversions.

The bottom line is, test different landing pages and don’t be afraid to completely change your design and action process. All content or links from your landing pages that aren’t resulting (or helping) in the site user signing up or taking action should be removed, or at the least listed before the fold if needed.

With a mindset of increased conversions and less distractions, see how you can improve your own landing pages or sites. Continually testing and putting these simple changes in effect, you will be sure to see increased conversions.

Don’t forget to visit www.tamasindo.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

All the buzz lately on Chat Roulette has a lot of people talking… and viewing! Over 20,000 users are accessing the peer to peer video site daily. If you’ve never been to the site before, think Instant Messaging, but with live video… and who you will meet next is completely random. For anyone who has used the site, it’s easy to get turned off, scared, paranoid or completely addicted. Like everything else… once something grabs hold, goes viral like crazy and has the whole world talking… the entrepreneur mindset says “How can I make money with this?“.

First there was MySpace… early monetization was by users who could create image resource sites, mass message users and eventually MySpaceAds came along. Then there was Facebook. Facebook was very professional in the beginning and limited users on customization, which also lacked revenue generating monetization efforts. It wasn’t til Facebook enabled their own apps, which sell virtual currently, reward users or simply allow advertising. Just like MySpace, Facebook came out with their own ad management system. Now there is Chat Roulette!

Just like MySpace and Facebook, Chat Roulette went from a small project created by a kid and exploded over night. You can read the full story on how Andrey Ternovskiy,  17-year-old high school student in Moscow created Chat Roulette and where it’s potentially going.

More importantly… how can such a site be monetized. Right now the site is completely bare bones, and just shows two videos and a chat screen. If you look at the bottom of the site, you will see a link for “Dating Service”, which rotates affiliate links to various dating sites. This may be a test and pave the way for more on site advertising???

I came across an excellent video from guy named Casey Neistat. Casey did a quick case study (but complex video) on what demographics are using Chat Roulette and how who they see popping up on the video screen, greatly effects if you will be “nexted“, or have a long/short conversion.

Here are some take aways from Casey Neistat’s video.

Demographic Users: (from rotation of 90 users)
Guys 71%
Girls 15%
Perverts: 14%

83%  Young People
17%  Older People
(Perverts!?… wonder why this is here? Just watch the video or try Chat Roulette and you will understand)

Yes, it’s a small case study… but the video does stir up some other user responses and can get ideas flowing. It will be interesting to see how the Chat Roulette site changes with time as it will cost more to keep running, investors get involved and the possibilities of someone acquiring the site.

Watch the video below and let me know what you think.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Don’t forget to visit www.tamasindo.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day and Happy Birthday to tamasindo.com Blog!

With today being the third year anniversary of ZJ blog, I thought it would be fitting to reflect back on the blogs growth and how it’s affected my business over the past few years.

Evolution of the ZJ Blog Design
When I first went live with this blog, I went with a very clean custom design. Nine months later, I met up with the Unique Blog Designs team and they created a new design for the blog, which looked a million times better, and was heavily improved for navigation and monetization. The key element of all designs? Better monetization each time and continuous focus on branding. You can see the progressive evolution of all three blog designs below.

Getting Out There & Bringing New Opportunities In
It’s almost been 15 years that I’ve been making money online, but it wasn’t til I started blogging about it that it got so much attention. Sometimes I do miss the days of being a quiet affiliate in the dark, but the pros definitely out weigh the cons when looking before/after tamasindo.com. Blogging has brought in a massive amount of new business opportunities. From building my own name brand to heavily expanding my speaking engagements, introducing new friends, helping a lot of people start making money online for the first time, and has even turning into a new six figure income source. The millions of dollars generated by my blog readers and advertisers would also agree, “Yea… I think it was a good idea after all!“.

With such success, I felt it was necessary to expand my blogging horizons. The timing and opportunity was right, and I recently acquired BloggingTips.com. With the addition of BloggingTips, I can further expand my exports in the blogging industry, while sharing valuable information across a new niche market.

Blogging is the New & Free Learning Tool of Choice
Since starting my blog in early 2007, there has been a flood of new affiliate and internet marketing blogs going live every day. Not only is blogging bringing a voice to many marketers in the industry, but it’s also allowing for new entrepreneurs to enter the market while receiving a ton of great feedback, case studies and resources for free. We are continually seeing new learning tools and membership services pushed out to those wanting to learn, but this usually comes with a high price tag. With such a drastic growth of affiliate / internet marketing information available, it’s tough to justify paying for some of these services, or that they should exist. Not all of these blogs are winners, but in the end… your only cost is the time to learn from their experiences.

Through 2010 and going forward, I’d like to focus more on providing new case studies, learning packages and what’s working for other marketers around the web. I have some great stuff in the works!

Whether you are an advanced marketer or just starting today, the idea of starting a blog is always a good one. At a loss for what to write about? If nothing in particular, you can start by writing about your ideas, case studies, your entrepreneur journey and thoughts to look back on. You never know what your blog may turn into down the road.

As always, thanks for your continuing support as we celebrate three years of tamasindo.com!

Don’t forget to visit www.tamasindo.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!