Think Vis 2010 – An Internet Marketing Conference To Attend

About Think Vis

The Think Visibility Conference

Think Visibility is a conference on points you might miss elsewhere at other online marketing events. Take advantage of well-known speakers and emerging talents and networking opportunities with industry experts worth listening to.

The Think Vis events are usually held on a Saturday to ensure you get the opportunity to attend – no excuses accepted!

Find out more about the Think Vis September Event or book for the next Think Visibility >

Think Visibility Golden Nuggets – September 2010

Take a look at some of these articles on Think Vis for a real taster:

Summaries of ThinkVis

• Summary of the Think Visibility Conference – Carla Marshall’s run through of the key events on the day
• Rishi’s Unofficial Think Visibility Learnings – A view from RishiL on his key takeaway points on networking and schmoozing
• Think Vis Roundup – A roundup of the day from Kieron Hughes from PushON

Affiliate Marketing @ ThinkVis

• Affiliate Marketing Technologies – The affiliate marketing presentation from Kevin Edwards @ Digital Window

Design, Usability & Conversion @ ThinkVis

• Think Vis Design Clinic – Love this little design/conversion clinic from Michelle at Caboodle

SEO @ ThinkVis

• Think Vis Site Clinic – Dave Naylor was on hand to give candid SEO advice to selected lucky recipients…
• Social Media for SEO – Lisa Myers shares her slides from the event
• SEO Tools, Tips & Techniques – Dave Chaffey’s run down written live at the event
• Top SEO Takeaways – Paddy Morgan at Distilled gives his rundown on his top takeaways
• Keyword Domains & Mini-Sites – Written up by the guys over at FreshEgg

Did you attend Think Visibility 2010? Any other interesting blog articles worth adding above? What did you think of it and how would you pitch this to fellow Internet Marketers?

Affiliate marketing – the long-tail approach

My biggest earning affiliate marketing website exists within a highly competitive sector: travel. The website itself targets the uk market which is a small playing field with a large number of players. Ranging from OTAs (Online Travel Agents), holiday providers, private and franchised accommodation providers, from hotels through to caravans, cottages, cruise ships and B&Bs and of course a mass of well run, fully established affiliate sites it could easily put many new players off joining the ranks.

My approach as with all projects is to start small, test the waters and then take a call on whether to continue or scrap it. I was close to scrapping this particular venture 4 months in but persevered to see average page impressions each month hitting 50k. With an average of 10k UVs (unique visitors) a month that is an average of 5 pages viewed per visitor per visit.

Traffic is acquired primarily through SEO (search engine optimisation). I have PPC (pay per click) campaigns set up ready to drive more volume but the website is still in learning mode, to find out which keywords are driving traffic and converting into a sale (for free).

The point of interest raised from analysing the keywords, is the level of brand traffic this website is attracting. That’s not to say it is outperforming the brands for which I’m promoting holidays for, but that I am plugging a gap in the SERPs (Search engine results page) for those brands.

This is a crucial area for affiliate marketers without a strong niche – it can be done. What the big brands don’t have time for is chasing that 20% of long-tail traffic when the 80% of short and part long-tail they already acquire is turning over the majority of their revenue… and this is where affiliate marketing can work with the brands to complete the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction.

The majority of my efforts have gone into on-site SEO to begin with. By creating a strong search architecture, it allows for the website to continually take advantage of a well structured, robot friendly infrastructure together with the ability to maintain the daily content release process without the need to concern oneself with the technicalities of SEO. It is for this reason the daily content management of the site is out of my hands as is the on-site SEO, leaving time for more off-site SEO. This is the key to enhanced and sustainable search engine positioning.

This has also given me a rich dataset of top performing keywords to build a successful PPC campaign from whilst earning its own marketing budget. Therefore in year 2 of its operation I aim to double income by both increased SEO traffic (domain age, authority etc) and highly targetted PPC campaigns…. and whilst that’s all going on I know a thing or 2 about conversion and retention I’ve yet to utilise.

I shall keep you ‘post’ed!

Depesh

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing, or AM for those in the inner circle, is a lucrative and thriving sub-economy on the Internet.

I’d toyed with the idea of becoming an affiliate for a few years before I took the plunge. It’s one of those ‘wish i’d have done it sooner’ moments which you look back on with regret. My wife’s website is already earning a nice side income considering the small amount of time she has for it, using mostly SEO to drive traffic. Its provided me with a great test-bed to put SEO, PPC and Social Media marketing to the test.

If you’re sitting there procrastinating the decision then stop thinking and start doing!

I have a little more time on my hands now than i’d like so I will be posting some learnings, findings and stats from what I’ve found to help you out.

If you have questions in the meantime feel free to post them here.

Once again we raise a toast to the Internet and its far reaching possibilities for us mere mortals.

Depesh