Alice Seba has been an online mentor for me. Not only is she a smart online marketer, but she is nice, too. This is part of her success. Here is a great article from Alice on how to bolster your affiliate program:

If you want star affiliates in your market to join your affiliate and promote your products, you really have to go out and find them. You can certainly promote your affiliate program on your own website and to get people to sign up, but the best results come when you go out and find your own joint venture partners.

You can find potential partners by finding websites that:

- Have good website traffic
- Have decent sized email lists
- Target your buying audience

How do you find these people?

- Go to your favorite search engine and see which sites come up near the top for your target keywords.
- Check their ESTIMATED traffic ranking at Alexa.com – this site very roughly estimates how popular a site is based on traffic and page views. The lower the ranking number, the busier the site. This is not a foolproof method, but can be used as a guideline to compare websites in similar markets.

- See which sites link to your competition. Go to Google or Yahoo and type in the following: link:yourcompetitorsdomain.com. Just substitute “yourcompetitorsdomain.com” with your competitor’s actual domain name. The results that show up will be sites that link to your competitor. You will potentially find some good sites to partner with here.

- Check DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory for websites in an appropriate category for your market.

How do you approach these people?

The common method of many website owners is to send a mass email to entice the webmaster with the lure of commission. Of course, you should make every effort to get a first name to personalize the email and use your Autoresponder to automatically add their name into your email. Include information like their first name, their website URL and any other personal details you can include. This method will get you the most partners for the least amount of time and effort.

Of course, if there are some websites that you REALLY want to say yes, you will need a more personal touch. Realize that in competitive markets, these webmasters probably receive many joint venture requests and yours might be sent to the trash, along with the rest.

If you want to be taken seriously:

- Offer to send them your product for free so they can review it – or just mail it to them right away without any expectations. Even if they can’t promote your product now, if you treat them cordially, they might just promote your product down the line.

- Show them that you know something about their business and comment specifically on some of the projects they are working on or some of their products that you have purchased

- Do something for them first. List them as a recommended resource on your website, etc., and tell them about it.

- Pick up the phone and develop a relationship. Perhaps you can offer to promote his or her product first, instead of asking for a favor right away. Don’t be in a rush to get them to promote your product or you may just burn your bridges completely.

- Show them proven results of other affiliates or illustrate how well your website converts visitors to sales. Overall, realize that you’re probably going to get a lot of “Nos” before you get to the “Yesses”. Don’t take it personally because people are busy and they can’t promote every product that comes their way. Just be open to developing relationships as that is the best long-term strategy in finding great JV partners.

——— Alice Seba is an online entrepreneur that thrives on helping people get ahead in their Internet businesses. If you’d like to kill your competitors with kindness, check out her online study course.

She also has a free teleseminar. Click here to listen.

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I love the stories that people tell. And, more than any other media, blogs give each one of us the opportunity to tell our stories.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a taxi cab driver, of a convenience store clerk, or a waiter? Or perhaps you were one of these…or you are still. But every single person has a different experience, a varied location, and an self-oriented filter through which they view the world around them.

And, so blogs brings us these perspectives. Here are some blogs written by shift workers:

New York Hack: (a cab driver) excerpt: “…Once the big awards show was over, a very drunk gay cowboy flagged me down. I’m not kidding. He was wearing a cowboy hat, a fringed suede jacket, and cowboy boots. He was so wasted, probably from trying to drink away the pain of losing to “Crash,” that he could barely tell me where to go…”

Waiter Rant (a waiter): excerpt: “…Armando bangs his head slowly against the Sub Zero. “No mas,” he whimpers, “No mas.”

I walk out of the kitchen. Armando will pull through. He’s got boundless energy. I, however, dragged myself in early on little sleep. I’m really dogging it. For the thousandth time I remember why waiters do coke. Since I don’t do drugs I reach for the next best thing - Red Bull.

I grab a can of liquid crack out of the fridge and gulp it down. I look at the clock. H-hour’s coming. I need all the help I can get…”

Shual (a convenience store clerk): “…For those of you just tuning in, I work at a convenience store/gas station, mostly during the evening now. Ordinarily, this would not be a bad thing. Being a clerk isn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but the management is good, the store is nearby, and I’m making enough money to pay off my remaining loans at a decent rate. Unfortunately, as I have come to learn, the place is also a swirling cesspool of stress, and I can almost feel the ulcers forming….”

Random Acts of Reality (an EMT from London): excerpt: “…The plan was perfect - we’d just taken a drunk to hospital and the patient (a 45 year old man, married, father of two) had decided to urinate in the back of our ambulance. Both my crewmate and I were happy at this, as we would have to return to our station to ‘mop out’, and on the way my crewmate could grab a chicken takeaway meal.

And I could get a cup of tea…”

Clublife (a bouncer in a New York night club): excerpt: “…In my line of work, they’re everywhere — a perpetual procession of potential paramours parading past my predatory perch. Quality horseflesh, all the way down the line, as far as the eye can see. Of course, given my allegedly misogynistic riffs about the female clientele at the club, I’d be a hypocrite to claim to have dipped my toe in that pool recently. I mean, you know, it looks good, but we need to hearken back to my whole “rotting from the inside out” theory, upon which I expounded many months ago…”

Grumpy Teacher (An English Teacher): excerpt: “…Erwin is in charge of the school cafeteria.

I’ve never liked the man. Neither do the students. I’ve always had the theory that, if past lives exist, the man was once a concentration camp commandant. I say this because he treats people like shit - the dishwashers, the custodians, the students who volunteer their time over the lunch hour. He has some locked-in core of sadness that’s eating away at him, but instead of trying to get rid of it, he’s trying to take down as many people as possible.

Being short and scrawny lies at the heart of most of his troubles. He feels inferior, and everyone is a threat. He’s a small man living in a big world, and he doesn’t like anyone who is bigger, smarter, or potentially more virile than he is. Unfortunately, for him, nearly everyone in the entire human race falls into this category…”

Hugs, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven
P.S. Do you know of any other good blogs by shiftworkers? I would love to check them out. Post them in the comments section…

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Well folks…another one bites the dust.

Yes, it’s true the Maven is finally off the market. Because on Saturday, my sweetie, proposed and I accepted. It was our one-year anniversary.

Nathan has the biggest heart of any man I’ve ever met. I am so excited that we are engaged! We could be stuck in a big cardboard box and still find a way to giggle ourselves silly.

The wedding won’t be until summer, 2007 but then you get to say, “Hello Mr. Maven!”

Just wanted to share my big news with you. I’ll keep you posted with updates from time to time.

Hugs and success, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven

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If you are a service professional offering coaching, writing, design, consulting, and so on…remember: Contracts keep friends!

Please, please, please…do not work for clients without developing specific contracts that spell out payments and the project details. By creating a proposal that carefully defines expectations, deadlines, payments, and deliverables in the beginning of a project, you will save yourself a lot of headaches down the road. Take the time to develop proposal and contract templates that you can customize for each new job.

I also recommend you develop a contract that you can use with contractors that you hire to work for you. For example if you are a website designer and you hire a writing contractor to develop the copy for a client, create an explicit contract defining their roles and budget.

At Kinesis, we subcontract work to print designers, web designers, illustrators, programmers, and copywriters. They all sign a contract that specifies the contractor relationship with the business, the scope of work, due dates, deliverables, and a commitment to keep information confidential. This procedure does not take much extra time and it’s good to have if the IRS comes knocking OR if the contractor does not fulfill their obligations.

If you are unsure of any of the legal aspects of your contract, have your attorney review the template of the contract and then customize this to each project or person. If you aren’t currently in the habit of doing this, it takes a little bit of work up front, but it can save you HUGE headaches and costs down the road.

Hugs and success, Wendy Maynard,
Your friendly marketing maven

Pssst… Hey You! Have you signed up for my ezine yet?

REMARKABLE MARKETING is a free ezine featuring more maven tips and strategies for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Go to my website at www.gomarketingmaven.com to subscribe and get your free report: The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes!

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Life-like print ads are sweeping the world’s most prominent cities. In Paris, Stringfellows strip club has put the pole into pole dancing by cleverly designing their print campaign to work with existing lamp posts throughout the city. The ads are sharp, sexy and almost interactive in their appearance, providing the ultimate X factor that most advertising agencies only ever dream about. (from the Cool Hunter)

Hugs and success, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly Marketing Maven

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Do you have a male dog? Has he been neutered? You know…has he had his male organs removed?

If so…then I have a product to tell you about. The patented Neuticles are the revolutionary testicluar implant procedure for pets. Actually there are neuticles for canines, felines, equines, bulls, or any pet which has been neutered. They can be implanted years afterwards in most cases.
Yes, I’m serious.

Here is information pulled straight from the website:

Over 100,000 caring pet owners Worldwide have selected Neuticles as a safe, practical and inexpensive option when neutering.

Neuticles allows your pet to retain his natural look, self esteem and aids in the trauma associated with neutering…

We feel the removal of a God given body part - leaving a male pet looking unwhole after the traditional form of neutering is not only unethical but unnatural.

With Neuticles- It’s like nothing ever changed!

There are three firmness selections in multiple sizes. And here’s a young fellow after the procedure:

Hugs and success, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven

Pssst… Hey You! Have you signed up for my ezine yet?

REMARKABLE MARKETING is a free ezine featuring more maven tips and strategies for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Go to my website at www.gomarketingmaven.com to subscribe and get your free report: The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes!

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For those of you who like to geek out on statistics, here are some fascinating on numbers of subscriber responses recently released by Tom Kulzer, CEO & Founder of AWeber Communications detailing the Open Rate, Undeliverable Rate and Day of Week Open Rate:

“Below is some interesting information relating to various open rates on cumulative data gather from AWeber customer newsletters sent over the last 30 days. Obviously, your own results may vary and a big part of response is based upon your own lists expectations and relationships.

Average open rate of HTML and Text/HTML newsletters is 29.7% over the past 30 days.

Sunday generates the highest average open rate of 41.1%, followed by Saturday at 36.7% for newsletter sent date.

Average Open Rate by Sent Date: (higher is better)

Sunday 41.1%

Saturday 36.7%

Wednesday 34.0%

Friday 32.8%

Tuesday 29.6%

Thursday 24.6%

Monday 23.2%

Sunday generates the fewest undeliverable bounces at 0.36% for newsletters sent on that date.

Average Undeliverable Rate by Sent Date: (lower is better)

Sunday 0.36%

Saturday 0.45%

Friday 0.47%

Thursday 0.56%

Wednesday 0.77%

Tuesday 0.83%

Monday 0.88%

Monday is the most popular day of the week for customers to send their newsletters with 17.1% of newsletters being sent.

Percent of newsletters being sent by customers weekly:

Monday 17.1%

Tuesday 17.0%

Thursday 16.2%

Wednesday 15.8%

Friday 14.5%

Saturday 10.3%

Sunday 9.0%

An 8:00 AM EST send date generates the highest open rate of 50.6%. Interestingly sending at 9:00 AM EST has a significantly lower open rate of 33.7% with the worst time to send being 3-4 AM at only 19% open rate.

Plain text messages are the most popular format of sending newsletters with 65.9% of all newsletters sent. Mime format Text/HTML messages follow at 23.8% and a remaining 10.2% of customers still send HTML only messages even though it is strongly recommended not to.

Plain text messages generate the fewest undeliverable bounces at 0.46%. Mime format Text/HTML follows at 0.56% and HTML only messages have a whopping 1.09% undeliverable rate. This is a significant reason behind our recommendation to always send a plain text alternative with HTML formatted messages.

Subject line personalization using the date generated an average open rate of 51.4% compared to personalization using the subscriber’s first name generating 40.9% open rate. Newsletters sent without personalization of any type in the subject line generated average open rates of 28.9%.

17% of customer newsletter subject lines sent in the last 30 days contained date personalization while 19% used the subscriber’s first name. 56.3% of subject lines did not contain any type of personalization. Interestingly, using the subscriber’s full name or last name generated lower average open rates at 20%.

99.34% of all email was delivered successfully in the last 30 days. 0.66% of all email was undeliverable in the last 30 days. (mailbox closed, non-existent user, etc.) ”

Hugs and success, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven

Pssst… Hey You! Have you signed up for my ezine yet?

REMARKABLE MARKETING is a free ezine featuring more maven tips and strategies for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Go to my website at www.gomarketingmaven.com to subscribe and get your free report: The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes!

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Many small business owners struggle with the feast or famine cycle. During a feast, sales are strong. During this period, you find yourself working too many hours and running to keep up. You may find you allow yourself to get too busy, sacrificing your personal life, relationships, and and fitness.

In the famine portion, you desperately scramble to try to find new customers and generate sales. You don’t start your marketing until your sales fall. This is too late!

The best way to break the cycle is to develop a weekly marketing schedule. Part of each and every week should be spent contacting current and past customers, networking prospecting activities, and developing your marketing tools. And yes, this even includes when you are extremely busy.

Make time in your schedule for marketing. If you don’t have enough time for this important function, then learn the power of “no.” Treat your marketing time as if it were time with your customers. In other words, it is a non-negotiable aspect of your week that you keep on your calendar.

Don’t break into this time to schedule customer activities. Instead, tell a new customer, “I’m sorry I can’t fit you into my schedule this week. However, I do have time next week (or next month).”

Don’t be frightened of saying “no.” Two things will happen as a part of this approach. The first is that you begin to create demand for your services or products.You reinforce that you are offering a high value to your customers. They will be willing to wait.

The other thing that will happen is that your less-desireable customers will begin to self-select themselves out. In other words, the clients that aren’t committed won’t hang around. You will begin to develop a business that weeds out less desirable, less profitable customers.

If you have a business that faces seasonal drop- offs in sales, careful planning can mitigate this effect. Create seasonal incentives and begin to get them in place well in advance. Allocate your advertising and marketing budget to target these times.

ACTION ITEM: How can you create an ongoing marketing push to break the feast or famine cycle in your business? Create a list of three things you can put into motion immediately. Don’t forget to schedule time into your weekly schedule for marketing.

Pssst… Hey You! Have you signed up for my ezine yet?

REMARKABLE MARKETING is a free ezine featuring more maven tips and strategies for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Go to my website at www.gomarketingmaven.com to subscribe and get your free report: The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes!

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