Nov
30
2009
107

Letters From Santa

Tomorrow marks the official start of December and for many, the countdown to Christmas. This is a time when children start watching their behavior and begin making Christmas gift requests for Santa.

If you were lucky as a child, you may have believed in Santa up into the ages of 10 or 11. However, if you were like me and had older siblings, your Christmas wonder was probably shot down by the age of four or five. Either way, every kid is a believer at some point and should experience the joy of getting a letter from Santa.

Parents then have the option to forge a letter themself or make it more legit by ordering it online and having it post-marked from Santa at the North Pole. You can help make it easier on parents by including Epicenter’s newest Your Santa Letter offers into your holiday marketing campaigns.

Both Your Santa Letter offers are available now on the Epicenter network, along with some additional holiday themed offers and creatives.

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Written by Kim in: News |
Oct
26
2009
0

Google Updates

One of the best ways to keep an edge in affiliat marketing is to keep up-to-date with technology, trends and search engine updates. So on that note, here are the most recent updates at Google (minor changes, but still important to take note of):

AdWords API
New version is now available featuring asynchronous calls, keywords and placement ideas and location extensions previews. Upcoming features will include ReportService, AccountService and the ability to pre-check for errors.

Custom Search
This is now available on smartphones and higher-end mobile devices. Your mobile custom pages can be hosted by Google or you can host them on your mobile site.

Google Search Appliance
Added new Self-Learning Scorer that analyzes employee clicks and behavior to automatically improve its built-in relevance tool.

Google Reader
Just added an Explore section and Personalized ranking. The Explore section will organize new content based on popular and recommended sources. The personalized ranking uses a sort option called “magic” to organize items in your feed based on your personal usage and overall activity.

Google Friend Connect
Now you can strengthen your blog’s community with the Google Friend Connect Wordpress pulgin.

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Written by Kim in: News | Tags: ,
Oct
13
2009
136

Gaining Search Market Saturation – Organic and Paid

In search marketing, getting your message saturated into the market is the best way to gain control and ensure that as many people as possible are viewing your page or product. This gives you more creditability and increases the likeliness that the user will click on your link.

When a user enters a search query, Google will present them with 10 organic and about 11 paid listings, presenting you – the marketer – with about 22 chances to win them over. The goal is to gain as many of those spots as possible and to achieve a stronger presence for your targeted keywords than your competitor.

There are many ways to go about saturating your message and becoming successful with organic and paid search takes time and a lot of testing. Here are a few ways to gain more control of the search market through “free” and paid techniques.

If you are striving to dominate in a competitive market organically, you’ve got to get creative and use your competitors to your advantage. Start by running a query on the keyword or phrase you want to rank for and see who your competitors are and what they are doing. Then brainstorm ideas that can make you stand apart from them and offer a more specific, targeted solution. You can then incorporate your messaging into your page titles and meta descriptions and write them like ad copy.

Gaining saturation in a competitive marketing through paid search is not an easy task and will require a lot of time, money and monitoring. To get the most out of paying for top listings, you may want to consider day-parting, placement testing, geo-targeting and determining your most lucrative timeframes.

When working in a less competitive market, using long tail phrases for organic results saturation may help you jump up the page quicker. Focus on getting more than one page within your domain to rank for a query. This way, Google will combine your listings and you can move up a spot or two on your results pages. For example, if you were displayed at spot 4 and 6 before, Google would combine your listings and move you to spots 4 and 5.

For paid search saturation, gain rank through buying directory listings and paying for sponsored ads to be placed on competitors sites. You may also consider building multiple web sites and buying PPC ads for these sites for the same keywords and phrases. The only downside to this strategy is that it can be expensive and you need to make sure that you aren’t bidding against yourself. Additionally, this may grab you a large share of the market, but also gives your competitors a chance to drive up the bids on your long tail phrases.

Overall, the best way to gain saturation of the market is to stay one step ahead of your competitors. Keep an eye on what they are doing and strategies they are using and then try to optimize on them.

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Written by Kim in: News, Pay-Per-Click, SEO | Tags: ,
Oct
05
2009
2

Epicenter Las Vegas Getaway Winner

We are pleased to announce that this year’s Affiliate Summit Las Vegas trip for two is going to Aaron Rosenthal. Aaron has won a two night trip for two which includes airfare, hotel and tickets to a Vegas show of his choice. Congrats, Aaron!

Thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth and be sure to stay tuned for our next big giveaway announcement!

If you’d like to learn more about Epicenter or sign up to receive our newsletter, click here to send us an email and we’ll get you started.

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Written by Kim in: News, Publishers |
Sep
01
2009
0

Good Content, Better Results

I’ve always been a fan of the phrase “content is king” and believe that good content can truly help you make it or break when it comes to running a business online.

In an article written by Epicenter’s own Dylan McDanniel, he provides a brief outline of what is needed to create high quality content that satisfies the online consumer’s need for information. Here are the six elements he touched upon in his article:

    Satisfying a niche
    The more targeted your content is on one topic, the more useful it is to the reader. Furthermore, the more in-depth and detailed the content is, the more you gain the readers trust and they will be more likely to make a purchase.
    Originality
    Fresh and useful content creates repeat visitors and repeat visitors can lead to repeat sales.
    Get to the point
    It like the game Catch Phrase – deliver your message as clearly and quickly as possible. This is when editing comes into play. Revise your content and eliminate all unnecessary words.
    Avoid flowery language
    You are writing content, not prose. Limit your adjectives and focus more on your targeted keywords.
    Update regularly
    Updating and adding new content regularly will keep your web site higher in searches and keep your readers coming back for more.

To read the full article, click here.

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Written by Kim in: Affiliate Marketing 101, News | Tags: , ,
Aug
26
2009
0

Back-To-School Promotions

September is now less than a week away and that means that it’s back to school time. This is the time when parents and teens are turning to the internet to search for deals on clothes, school supplies and electronics.

Back to school searches on Google alone are up this year, with a 20% increase in searches on “school clothes”, with users searching for the best ways to save money. Searches on “free school supplies” and “discount school supplies” are also up this year.

With that being said, this is a good time to promote coupon offers, giftcard giveaway offers and anything else related to clothing, school supplies or computers. Parenting blogs are a good place to place top-10 lists for back to school necessities and to report on the latest trends and deals. This can also extend into acne products, eye exams or glasses and other beauty products as well.

Keep an open mind to which offers can be targeted to back to school discount seekers and be sure to speak with your affiliate manager, as they can set you up with offers you may overlook.

Along with taking advantage of the back to school crowd, this is also a good time to take advantage of deal seekers in general. Searches for the keyword “coupon” are up 40% from last year, “buy one get one free” up 30% and “free shipping” up 20%. This is a good time to take advantage of free trial and coupon offers and to create review or comparison shopping sites.

Happy marketing!

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Aug
14
2009
1

ASE 2009 Recap

Affiliate Summit East was a great success for Epicenter and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting everyone that stopped by our booth. We will be drawing our winning business card for the trip to Las Vegas shortly, so stay tuned!

Here are some pics of our booth at ASE.


Shot of the Epicenter booth.


Epicenter booth day 2.


The girls of Epicenter with James from JMCA Media.

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Aug
05
2009
0

4 Reasons To Stop By Epicenter’s Booth At ASE

I’ve noticed that the spacing between my blog posts have been gradually getting longer, so as my first post for August I’m providing you with 4 reasons to stop by our booth at ASE.

1. Good time to meet your affiliate manager
If you are an affiliate, you probably know all about the benefits of building a good relationship with your affiliate manager. Essentially, developing a relationship with your am goes hand-in-hand with growing your affiliate revenues. Plus, we’d love to put a face with a name, so stop by to say hi!

2. Check out our assortment of offers and exclusives
We are continually adding new offers to our network and maintain a wide variety of offers from all verticals. We’d love to chat with you about our exclusive offers, like Find My School Friend, and see what we can do to help you on your way to super affiliate status.

3. Learn more about DM2
If you haven’t heard about it yet, DM2 is Epicenter’s latest publishing tool that helps you quickly and efficiently produce professional looking web sites. It is 100% free to use and provides free hosting.

4. Win a trip for 2 to Las Vegas!
Apart from getting to know us better, this is probably the best reason to stop by our booth! Simply stop by and enter your name to win a trip for 2 to Las Vegas! The trip includes 2 tickets to a show and 2 nights paid hotel stay.

We will be located in Hall II, booth #2207, so be sure to come and say hi!

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Written by Kim in: News | Tags: ,
Jul
28
2009
0

Epicenter Affiliate Summit Giveaway!

aff-summt-postcard-copy2

Epicenter will be at booth #22070 at Affiliate Summit East and we would love if you stopped by to say hello!

Also, be sure to enter for a chance to win a trip for 2 to Las Vegas! The prize includes 2 roundtrip tickets, 2 tickets to a Vegas show and hotel room for 2 nights.

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Jul
24
2009
1

Seattle MeetUp202 Report

Last night’s Seattle MeetUp202 was a great success. It was awesome to meet some local online marketers and to bounce ideas off each other for new marketing ideas and opportunities.

As a recap of the night, here are the topics of discussion and some of the presentations:

    • Dylan McDanniel talked about building sites with DM2
    • James Seligman spoke about getting started in affiliate marketing and the benefits of working for yourself

We hope to have another Seattle MeetUp sometime this October and hope to see everyone again! If you are an online marketer located in Seattle and didn’t meet with us last night, be sure to join the group! Sign up here.

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