Affiliate Marketing

According to Rupert ­Murdoch, the days of the newspaper websites offering free content maybe over. His media empire is looking into paid for content for its news websites, which includes The Times, The Sun and The News of the World. He is encouraged by the Wall Street Journal, which is reportedly making healthy revenue from its subscription model. When Rupert Murdoch speaks, people tend to listen. He correctly predicted the market for subscription based digital TV and owns a massive media empire that wields enormous political and economic influence. But is he correct on this occasion?

It is as if affiliates have no originality what so ever. There are so many blogs by affiliates that are called something affiliate. affiliateblog.co.uk, affiliatestuff.co.uk, affiliatemarketingblog.co.uk, affiliate-my-cat-ate-my-homework blah blah.

The 80/20 rule is an important one in business. Also know as the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers.

This rule can be applied to any manor of businesses. In the affiliate marketing world, 80% of your profit might come from 20% of your merchants, or 20% of your websites. In freelance web development, 80% of your revenue might come from 20% of your clients.

There has been a lot of talk in affiliate circles lately about Google slapping affiliates. It has become pretty clear in the last year that Google does not like affiliates and intends to be a "super affiliate" itself.

There have been a few blog posts in the UK Affiliate Marketing world about Commission Junction being a rather rubbish network. So I thought I had might as well join the bandwagon and express my dislike for good old Commission Junction!

Another UK affiliate has made it onto Dragons' Den. Last session we had Ling Valentine gracing us with her presence in Den, who famously said "I eat Dragon's for breakfast" while turning down the Dragon's investment.

I've been planning on doing a weekly roundup of interesting or inspiring posts from the blogsphere for sometime now.

So here it goes, a few posts that grabbed my attention in the past week

John from Lammo.net has written an excellent article on eating an elephant. Yes, thats right, learning how to eat an elephant is an essential skill in the world of affiliate marketing. How do you eat an elephant? A little bit at a time. How do you succeed at affiliate marketing? A little bit at a time.

There is an interesting post on Net Business Blog about why it is better to build one website then building multiple websites.

I know many newbies wonder whether to build a traditional website or a blog for affiliate marketing. Both have their place, but which one is more likely to succeed? I have a strong feeling that a blog is more likely to and I am conducting a few experiments to try and prove my hunch. These experiments are blogs in highly niched areas.