InsureMe is a company that is committed to giving to charitable causes. Every year, we give 10% of our profits to charitable organizations and we recently were awarded the Champion of Hope Award by the Mile High United Way (the United Way’s top award). It is our company’s belief that when you give to others, you get much more in return than you give.

While there are hundreds of organizations out there who could use your donations, I want to point out an organization that we just started working with this week - Kiva.org. Here’s how Kiva describes what it does on its website:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

So basically the way it works is:

1. You pick a business to loan money to


2. Kiva transfers your funds to a local partner who gives the funds to the business


3. The partner then collects payments and provides updates to Kiva and you


4. The loan is paid back (Kiva loans have an amazingly low default rate…in many countries the rate is 0%) – and you can withdraw or re-loan the funds

A very cool concept…but I know that some of you might need a little extra push when it comes to giving, so here it is…

As a Kiva lender you are given a profile page which keeps track of the loans you have made. Your profile also includes a bit of information about you and also can include a link to a website of your choosing. (Here is what the InsureMe Kiva lender page looks like.) I’ve seen lender profile pages on Kiva that have a PageRank as high as four, which isn’t too shabby if you consider that you can start loaning to Kiva for as little as $25.

And for a little extra incentive, if you sign up for a Kiva account and email me (jomdahl at insureme dot com) a link to your lender page I will link to your lender page from this blog post. Hopefully a link from here will get your lender page found a little quicker and help you get some credit for that link.

So what do you say? In less than fifteen minutes you could help a small business in a third world country and get a quality link to your site. What could be better than that?

Affiliates Helping Kiva:
Andy Darley

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last week I pointed you to Matt McGee’s article about SEO don’ts in a post titled 20 SEO Landmines that Could Leave You All Blowed Up. This week, Matt returns with a list of 21 dos for search engine optimization.

Matt’s list covers various aspects of SEO, from the self-education side of things all the way to internal linking an URL structure. If you’re new to SEO or you are a veteran looking to make sure you have crossed your T’s and dotted your I’s, this is a worthwhile read.

If there is one thing that really stands out to me in this list it's #6 –

Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page of the results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.

This point is a reminder that the best way to get and keep rankings is to align your goals with those of the search engines. Search engines want their search results to be the best in the world. They want the ten most relevant sites in the world to show up on their first page. By creating the best site possible, you have a much better chance of ranking well and staying there than if you set out to outsmart the algorithm.

I think Seth Godin said it best in his post Building 43, when he is talking about web site optimization and the Google engineers who work in the super-secret Building 43 on the Google campus:

Betting against Building 43 doesn’t seem nearly as smart as betting on them.

So what’s your SEO strategy? Are you betting on yourself, betting on Building 43, or betting on both?

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I got out of college I found it strange to be working but not getting graded on the work that I did. I was always enjoyed the feedback I would get from professors – yes, I’m a nerd. What of it? :)

In the “real world” you don’t get grades all that often…and as an affiliate, the closest thing you get to a grade is your bank balance. And maybe your AdWords Quality Score.

If you miss grades like I do, I’ve got good news for you – there is a web site that will analyze your site and give you a grade and feedback on how to improve it. Megan over at our Insurance Agent Blog pointed me to the site called Website Grader. By entering your domain name and some keywords you get:

• Overall Grade
• Score Summary
• Google PageRank
• Web Page Structure
• Domain Information
• Heading Summary
• Image Summary
• Google Indexed Pages
• Google Crawl Date
• Conversion Methods
• Inbound Links
• Technorati Ranking
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks
• Alexa Traffic Ranking
• Readability Level
• Search Rankings
• Digg.com Submission Summary

While some of these items might not mean too much to you, the report will likely find an area or two that you might want to improve. The best part is that the report is free, so you might as well run one.

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everybody knows that all new affiliate marketers have thousands of dollars in start up money to start their online business, right?

Actually, no. Most new affiliates are on a budget…sometimes a very strict budget. That’s why, back in May, Patrick Sexton of SEOish asked seven online marketing experts what they would do if they had a very restrictive budget to promote a site. The magnificent seven who answered this question were Aaron Wall, CK Chung, Lee Odden, Andy Beal, Andy Hagans, Todd Malicoat and Partick Sexton himself.

If you are a bootstrapped affiliate you should take the time to read the article, but for those of you looking for the Reader’s Digest version, here were some of the most popular suggestions:

Write/pay for great, link worthy content (by far the most popular answer)

Buy a good domain

Find a quality host (DreamHost was mentioned more than once)

Read/learn/educate yourself

Use WordPress as a platform for your site

Buy/Swap high quality links to your site

Make sure you have a day job to pay the bills for a while

Look for awesome affiliate programs to work with (yes I’m linking to our affiliate program here)

How about you? If you only had $100 to spend on site promotion where would you spend it? Content? Links? Ramen noodles? Let me know by leaving a comment…

[Thanks to the amazing April Hartmeister for finding this article.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Just like love, SEO is a battlefield. A battlefield full of landmines. Newbies in the internet marketing field often walking onto the battlefield unaware that it’s a dangerous place, and often, they get blown up. God knows I’ve gotten blown up on occasion.

Avoiding SEO landmines is a matter of knowing what to look out for and what to avoid. The good news is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of SEO professionals out there who have made all the fatal online mistakes…and when we’re lucky, they share their war stories with us.

Yesterday Matt McGee shared some of the SEO lessons he has learned in his post SEO “Don’ts”: 20 Fatal Mistakes You Must Avoid to Succeed. The post addresses some of the most common mistakes, scams and oversights that lead to classic cases of SEO fatalities. Some of my favorites (and most common affiliate mistakes) are:

1. Don't reply to the SEO spam you get via e-mail.
6. Don't waste your time submitting your URL to search engines.
13. Don't ignore usability.
17. Don't plaster your link all over blog comments, guestbooks, etc.
18. Don't fret over keyword density.

Read the entire list here – it could save new marketers a lot of heartburn, and remind veterans of their classic SEO war stories.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got an email from a fella named Rob the other day telling me about a new keyword research service called KeywordSpy. From the looks of the site, it seems like a pretty neat way to find out what keywords other sites are bidding on.

Using the free example you can access on the homepage I was able to type in the keyword “health insurance” and see a list of companies who are bidding on the term. Then from there you can click on a company name and get a list of the keywords they are using to drive traffic. Once you get the list, you can export the list into a text document or Excel for easy upload.

I haven’t had too much time to really delve into the site but so far it looks promising. I figure it’s got to be pretty powerful for $89.95 a month. :) If you’re in the process of doing some keyword research, and you want to try something that is slightly more nefarious than WordTracker, KeywordSpy might be the tool for you.

UPDATE : Carsten Cumbrowski pointed out that KeywordSpy is a reseller of KeyCompete.com – so if you want the same thing for less money you can use KeyCompete. Read Carsten’s comparison of the two services here.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Whenever I’m at an affiliate conference it is fairly common that the affiliates I meet don’t have a business card. Not that this is totally surprising, since many affiliates are one man or one woman shows who tend to do most business online, not in person. Also, when it comes down to it, the actual process of designing and ordering business cards on our own can seem as foreign as Paris Hilton in a Kmart.

Come conference time, having a business card is a great way for an affiliate to increase the chances of getting connected to the right folks. When done right, a good business card will make you stand out from the other affiliates at the show. Luckily, the process of getting business cards online has become a lot easier in recent years, so you don’t have to rely on Kinkos to crank out cut-rate cards for you.

Two sites that I really dig for business cars are Moo and Street Cards.

Moo, who I just ordered some cards from last night, produce “mini-cards,” which means they are cards that are about half the height of normal business cards. I’ve always been a fan of the oddly shaped business card thing, since they’re always the ones that I remember. What’s really cool about Moo cards is that you can use a variety of media to decorate your cards. I used the Flickr option, which allowed me to use photos in my Flickr account to design the back of my cards. You can also pull images from Vox, Bebo, Second Life, Fotolog, HABBO and other sources. For $19.95 you can get 100 mini-cards made with a different picture on each of the cards, or 100 cards with the same picture, or any other numerical variation. The site’s interface is as slick as can be, and that price can’t be beat.

If you want a more traditionally sized business card with a bit of flair you should use Street Cards. I ordered some cards a while back with cartoons from GapingVoid (one of my favorite blogs) on them. They aren’t super cheap, but the quality is great and some of the images you can select from are hilarious conversation starters.

Next time you are getting ready to hit up a conference, don’t forget the business cards. Having a professional, remarkable and personalized business card is just a few clicks, and a few bucks, away.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you aren’t testing landing page variations for your PPC traffic, you could very well be leaving money on the table. Or at least that’s the idea behind landing page testing.

Anyone who has been in the online marketing space for more than a couple months knows that changes to your PPC landing pages can have a serious effect on your conversions – so optimizing your landing pages is key to your affiliate success. But how do you test a landing page?

Andrew Goodman (one of the best known PPC industry veterans) has done a nice write-up about some page testing that he is doing for a client using Google Website Optimizer. He discusses the methodology, assumptions, and elements he used to test 24 variations (YES 24!) of a single landing page simultaneously. While setting up a test might be time consuming, it could be a fantastic way to get your site’s conversions up and raise your profit margins.

Head on over and read the post for a little education and inspiration.

[One note: The Google Website Optimizer isn’t SEO safe (it’s basically a version of cloaking), so don’t do it on a page you are working to optimize.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’d say if there is one skill in online marketing that I’d love to get better at, it would be link building. Most of my attempts to reach out and build links tend to end in a disastrous silence. In the last couple of months all of my requests for links from sites except for one or two has been ignored, and quite truthfully, that can be a little more than annoying. Maybe it’s because of our affiliate program, maybe it’s because I’m late to the link request game, or maybe it is just because I’m not offering money for the links. Either way, link building is hard…and it takes the right kind of people to be successful at it.

People like Eric Ward.

For those of you who don’t know Eric Ward, Eric is considered the godfather of link building. Some people even call him Link Moses. If there is one person in this world you would want to hire for a link building campaign, it would be Eric. Sadly, I’ve tried to contact him to enlist his help to develop links for InsureMe, but he never returned my email. I guess that’s what you get to do when you’re Moses.

Since I can’t hire him, I guess I can try to learn from him. Like today I learned what makes Eric so successful in the link building world by reading his column at Search Engine Land. Check it out if you want to do the same.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Right before I posted this I realized this post ended up sounding like a pretty lame acceptance speech at the Oscars…my apologies in advance.]

Wow! I just noticed that the InsureMe Affiliate Blog has just reached its 500th post. Pretty amazing…especially since this blog started as a pretty basic experiment back in December of 2005.

I wanted to say a huge thanks to all of our regular readers and commenters who have made this blog fun, educational and successful. You don’t know how much your input, idea, and readership mean to me and everyone who has posted on this blog.

Also, I want to give a big thanks to the InsureMe management team…because not a lot of companies are open to using blogging in this capacity. There are a lot of reasons why a company would not want to make blogging a priority, but luckily InsureMe decided to focus on all of the reasons why we would.

I also wanted to extend a personal thanks to Scott Jangro, since a lot of our regular readers found us through his BUMPzee community. BUMPzee has certainly taken this blog to a level of exposure that we had a difficult time achieving on our own.

The point of this blog has always been to help affiliates succeed – those who work with InsureMe and those that don’t. I hope we’ve accomplished that goal in one way or another, but if we haven’t, give us the next 500 posts and I’m sure we will help you by then. ;)

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Google is getting a reputation for being cocky. Unfortunately, small marketers like you or I don’t really have the financial leverage to call Google on its cockiness, so we tend to accept it, bow our heads and continue to shell out cash to the Google juggernaut.

Luckily, there is one big company who has the guts to stand up to Google when it’s being, well, a bit of a jerk – that company is eBay.

A quick recap for those of you who missed the headlines:

EBay is having its huge eBay Live conference this week in Boston, and Google decided to crash the eBay lovefest with a big blowout promoting its Google Checkout product. This doesn’t sound terrible, but Google Checkout is not supported by eBay, since eBay owns the extremely profitable company PayPal. Google promoted its Checkout party with fliers containing slogans like “Let Freedom Ring” on them, inferring that eBay oppressing its users by forcing them to use PayPal. Not exactly something you should do to a business partner.

The party and slogans pushed eBay over the edge, so they decided to something unprecedented - shut down their US AdWords account!

That’s right, eBay actually stood up to big G and shut off their AdWords ads yesterday…a move that could potentially cost Google a little under $25,000,000 per quarter. Not a ton of money when you consider Google brought in $3.7 billion last quarter, but still, I see it as a high profile example of how Google’s cockiness towards its partners can and will backfire.

I suppose only time will tell if this incident will lead to a larger move within Google to start considering how their actions and perceived superiority complex will hurt their business in the long run. My hope is that eBay’s move will at least start some discussions within the Googleplex of how they should treat all of their partners, big and small.

The latest update on this story is that Google has cancelled their Checkout party. As far as I know, eBay’s ads are still turned off.

Facts and figures from this post came from the New York Times article. Also read up on all the scuttlebutt around this story at Search Engine Land.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The BUMPzee affiliate community is a-buzz with talk of two class action lawsuits against Commission Junction for, in the words of AffiliateFairPlay.com:

breach of contract, negligence and unfair business practices on CJ/BF’s part by allowing adware affiliates to operate within their Network

Since everyone is chiming in, I’ll give my quick two cents…

In my opinion adware is, in all cases, a bad thing. I know we are horrified when we find affiliates/publishers promoting us with adware…and those who do are immediately dropped from our affiliate program.

I’m always amazed to see a CJ publisher applying for our affiliate program with software listed as a method of advertising they us – and I’m twice as amazed that these publishers are readily accepted into CJ’s publisher group. CJ should not allow adware to be used to promote their merchants, just as merchants should not use adware to pimp their products.

Like Forrest Gump say…”that’s all I have to say about that.”

Find more opinion/coverage on this story here:

Two Class Action Lawsuits Filed Against CJ/BF/ValueClick on Behalf of Affiliates and Merchants

ValueClick / BeFree / Commission Junction Sued for Adware Affiliates

Boycott Commission Junction

2 ADWARE Class Action Lawsuits against CJ - ValueClick - BeFree

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s not Christmas, but Google Claus is dropping a present to all AdWords advertisers – their new Content Performance Report. Advertisers received and email from the AdWords team that explained the reports like this:

The Placement Performance report provides site-by-site performance metrics -- including clicks, impressions, cost, and conversion data -- for domains or URLs in the content network where your ads have appeared. The report also provides a new level of transparency for traffic you accrued from sites in our network that are participating in the AdSense for domains program. Currently, AdSense for domains statistics are collectively reported, but we are working to give you site-by-site level statistics soon.

This is a step in the right direction for Google, since it will not only allow advertisers to optimize their use of the content network, but also allow Google to see which sites are unpopular with advertisers. In effect, this will make advertisers into AdSense police…since we all will be diligently looking to see where our clicks are coming from.

While this could reduce some advertiser spending in the beginning, I think this will help build advertiser trust in the Google content network and increase the likelihood of more advertisers using the content network in the long run.

Maybe this is Google’s way of mending some hurt feelings from the recent quality score update…or maybe not. Either way, Performance Reports will make the content network more accessible and profitable for AdWords advertisers – which is a good thing for all of us.

See Search Engine Land’s coverage (with screenshot) here and the Inside AdWords blog here.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you still reeling from last week’s AdWords quality score algorithm change, UK affiliate marketer Kieron has the post for you. In the post called Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples, Kieron explains what you should do to make quality score compliant landing pages (or more accurately, web sites) for your AdWords ads.

When it comes down to it, Kieron suggests that the affiliate landing page is a dying breed and that quality, content rich web sites are what Google is looking for. I know that’s not really news in itself, but the fact that the AdWords algorithm seems to be getting better at detecting pages and sites with quality content and those without is certainly new.

Kieron suggests that at a minimum all of your AdWords sites include a sitemap, privacy policy page, terms and conditions page, along with a contact us and about us page. Beyond that, he suggests adding everything from a blog to news to a FAQs page to your site.

The moral of the story is that you need to build a high quality website that adds more value to the user experience than just some affiliate links. Yup, the days of the lazy affiliate computer generated landing page site is going the way of the Dodo. Better evolve before it’s too late.

Kieron’s whole post is brilliant, so stop wasting your reading this and read the original post here.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Is it me or is this week the week of bad news blog posts? What the heck!]

If you logged into your Google AdWords account this morning you may have been surprised to see a number of your keywords have been given much lower quality scores and much higher minimum bids. The reason is a “minor update” (as Search Engine Roundtable's Barry puts it) to the AdWords quality score.

We’ve already heard from a couple of our affiliates that they have been hit by the latest update – and from the looks of the posts over at WebmasterWorld it seems that they are not alone.

The comment in the Webmaster World forum that got me the most was from pexcornel who said:

I am a programmer and all my life is based on no-nonsese logic.
What is happening makes no sense at all.
Anyone trying to excuse what is happening with some sort of "logic" is laughable.
I will take NO action towards Google, if they don't want me, its ok, I will find other ways to market (I am an affiliate).
I have the best add you can get. Like:
__________________
Product name - $Price.
Product detail
Buy at 30% discount at $Price.
_____________________
On the landing page there is the product, the picture, and the buy button that goes to the buy page of the merchant.
There is also a contact form and 2 adsense boxes on top and on bottom.
Then there are other 3 products from the same category to choose from.
Everything is designed simple and with taste, I don't dupe anybody, the prices are always right (I have a script).
My account had 700 groups with some 5000 keywords on a 1300$/month budget.
Only the best converting keywords are disabled. From 0.26-0.30 to 10$
What else should I do? Give them money for free?
I mean this is it. They build this system for this.
We did what they wanted.
You don't want me? Bye bye then... I don't feel guilty at all. I did what I had to do. It's not my fault.
Best regards, maybe my post helps somebody but I doubt it.
Pex

If Pex is being totally forthright it seems that Google’s quality guidelines need to get a little more specific about what is good and bad, because it seems that Pex is doing what Google has told it’s advertisers to do (good ads, solid landing pages, etc.).

Others in the forum seem to think this is an attempt by Google to track down affiliate sites specifically and penalize them – although some non-affiliates seem to be getting hit as well.

It’ll be interesting to see how all of this shakes out. I’m hoping this isn’t an affiliate link hunt on the part of Google. If so, there are ways around this (URL redirecting, JavaScript and cloaking), but it seems like a waste of time for everyone.

Anyway, I’d be curious to know who out there has been hit by this quality score update. If so, leave a comment (you can leave an anonymous one if you want). If not, leave a comment as well.

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As if our indexing problems with Google weren’t enough to worry about, from the looks of things, Yahoo! has decided to mix things up with a fairly substantial algorithm change.

From what I have been reading, early in the update there were a couple versions of the algorithm showing, with one being overrun by spam sites and one showing decent, yet decidedly different results from the last algorithm. Now it seems like the higher quality results are showing and things are starting to get consistent across datacenters.

I’ve got to admit, I liked the old algorithm better - mainly because we ranked a lot better with it. Interestingly, in the insurance vertical I am seeing a lot of sites that are appearing high in the rankings that have come out of nowhere.

I’ll be sitting tight and seeing how everything settles on this one. Hopefully good old www.InsureMe.com will work its way back up…but if not, well, guess we just have to wait for the next update (trying to keep the “glass half full” on this one).

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday my boss Mike asked if I had heard about LinkShare acquiring Traffic Strategies.com, a PPC affiliate. I hadn’t, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t think much of it. That is, until I read Adam Viener’s post on the topic.

Adam points out that this transaction could be a harbinger of things to come in the affiliate space. As many people close to the affiliate business would attest, major networks are facing some serious threats to their long term survival (CPA networks like Azoogle, in-house affiliate programs like the one eBay just started up, etc.). By acquiring affiliate companies the networks can “lock in” the skills, talent, and profits that come from a successful affiliate venture.

It will be interesting to see if there will be more super-affiliates getting purchased by networks…or maybe even by merchants themselves. Also, I’d be curious to see if a company like Traffic Strategies.com will be able to operate and flourish under the wing of an affiliate network or if the corporate interference will lead to the defection of key employees. Affiliates don’t seem to be the type who like to work for “the man” – and every impression I’ve gotten of LinkShare is that they are very “the manish” (yes I just made that word up).

What are your thoughts? Do you think LinkShare made a smart move here? Do you see this being the start of an emerging trend or just a one-off that will fizzle down the road? I’m interested in what you’re thinking, so leave a comment.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ok, note to self – don’t mess with the Google.

After yesterday’s post on Google indexing a competitor’s site incorrectly, I came into work and saw this:

That’s right – InsureMe has been indexed incorrectly! OUCH!

From what we can tell from the cache date, Googlebot hit our site right in the middle of some late night database issues and the end result was Google getting served an error page.

Needless to say, it’s a bit embarrassing.

[Bonus link: There is an awesome story in the New York Times that talks Google’s search team. Definitely worth a read.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I ran across this search result this morning, and it really cracked me up:

I removed the company name because they are a competitor, but I have a pretty good feeling this is a problem on Google’s part, not theirs. It is nice to see that Google is feeling remorseful about the mistake. :)

If you’re wondering, the funny title tag doesn’t seem to be hurting them in the rankings, and I’m sure the glitch will be fixed soon.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve found that one the common traits between all successful affiliates is creativity. Whether it is the creativity to find an untapped niche, promote a one-of-a-kind offer, or create an kooky online video that helps sell a product – creativity is a common gene in the affiliate DNA.

Kirsty McCubbin proves this point with her poetic blog post Ode To CJ – A Tale Of Affiliate Betrayal *Sob*! It seems that Kristy had a $4300 charge back by Commission Junction because a merchant went out of business. Needless to say this irked Kirsty just a bit. After some unfulfilled promises of restitution, Kirsty decided to take out her frustrations through poetic therapy.

Read the poem here to see classic verses such as:

With golden tounge dids’t they woo,
Yet all their promises turned to poo.

Fantastic!

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)