Affiliate Marketing Explained

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.

Image: http://omoii.com/affiliate-marketing/

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.


So in simple terms affiliate marketing is:
“Selling Other People's Stuff” 


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

Helpful tips for working parents

Being a working parent is a challenging role. It involves a balancing act between meeting your child’s needs for care and attention, sharing a satisfying relationship with your partner and friends and being a reliable and competent employee while trying to enjoy life and parenthood.

Make life easier by:

• Setting realistic and achievable goals for you and your family
• Asking for help
• Changing your expectations and priorities around the house
• Involving other supportive adults in the planning and sharing of parenting and household responsibilities
• Be realistic about what can be achieved each day

Routine is important. Having an unpredictable lifestyle is time consuming and unsettling for everyone. Young children become frustrated, overwhelmed, and rushed when routines are frequently changing (understandably, sometimes it cannot be helped).

Talk to your partner about household responsibilities and expectations as a parent and adult household member.

Starting and finishing the day on a happy note:

• Give yourself extra time in the morning
• Rethink what is essential to be completed before leaving the house each morning
• Pack your work and childcare bags the night before
• Use the time in the car as a valuable opportunity to connect with your child both on the way to childcare and on the way home. Sing songs, and listen to your child when they talk to you
• Most importantly, leave work stresses at work
• Organise the next day’s clothing the night before for you and your child
• Avoid conflicts and fights in the morning – it is always a no win solution for everyone
• Getting your child to bed early ensures they have adequate sleep for development and growth.

Feeding the family does not need to be stressful:

• Prepare double amounts of food and freeze for later
• Invest in a slow cooker and put dinner on before you leave for work
• Remember your evening meal does not have to be a hot meal
• Depending on the age of the child, try and enjoy dinner around the table with the television off and all family members present. This is a good habit to get into and provides a great opportunity to interact as a family
• Consider a no TV rule in the morning as this can distract everyone from getting ready.

Washing:

• Wash and hang the clothes the night before
• Fold washing properly and save ironing

Shopping:

• Add an extra hour to childcare for shopping later in the day
• Avoid taking tired and hungry children shopping
• Consider shopping on line or in the evening, ask your partner to do the shopping
• Another suggestion is to do a big weekly shop to avoid the need to shop everyday.

Children get sick when you least expect it:

• Ensure your employer knows you are also a parent, so if your child does become sick you can take leave
• Either arrange for your partner to care for your child or have a backup plan such as a grandparent or a good friend on standby
• Babysitting clubs are a great idea if you want to go out at night with no extra childcare costs. Remember you do need to ‘repay’ the hours and babysit other people’s children

Maintaining family harmony and thinking of yourself:

• Take time out for yourself and your partner to reconnect and maintain a healthy relationship
• Go for a walk, taking time to talk and listen to each other even if it is only for a short time
• Plan regular enjoyable family activities that are simple (i.e. once a month take the family into the city – kids are fascinated with tall buildings and sailing boats on the harbour!). It is these activities that provide your children with family memories later in life!
• Continue or start to do a regular exercise program. This is an essential part of caring for yourself

Working from home can make some of these points easier, but I still find these tips handy anyway. I hope you do too.

Source: http://www.tresillian.net/tresillian-tips/helpful-tips-for-working-parents.html

7 Google Tools For Any Marketer

We all know that Google is a powerful marketing tool and a phenomenal search engine. Any marketer worth his salt will tell you that the goal for their online marketing division is to dominate Google. What does that really mean, though? Are we just trying to show up when someone types in a relative keyword phrase for our business? We all know that search engine optimization is hot, and that Google is the place where everyone wants to be. Unfortunately, though, a lot of marketers don't realize that there are many other programs that Google has, which have very different functions, to assist them with their online marketing efforts. Here is a list of all of the available Google tools, at the current moment in time, which you can use to jumpstart your online marketing campaigns.

Google AdWords - Anyone who knows anything about phrases like CPC (Cost Per Click), PPC (Pay Per Click), CPM (Cost Per Impression), Banner Ads, etc. should know a little bit about AdWords. There are two main networks within the AdWords program: Content/Display and Search. The Content/Display network allows you to post banner ads/graphics on partnering websites that are relative to your content. The Search network allows you to write/display a variety of ads and link them to relevant keywords. When someone types in these keywords, your ads display. It is an extremely powerful program that definitely has a bit of a learning curve, however, once you've mastered it, you can do amazing things!

Google Docs - Think of Google Docs as an internet-based Microsoft Office. You have all the same types of documents (i.e. Word Document, Spreadsheet Documents, etc.), but the beauty is that these documents can be shared with other people. It doesn't stop there... these documents are live creatures! You can literally watch live edits being made to the documents in real-time. This is extremely powerful for coordinating schedules or brainstorm sessions.

Google's Keyword Tool - There are two versions of this tool. One if for users with an AdWords account and one is a free version. Both versions are equally powerful, and allow you to search for keywords that are typed in by other users to get to sites like yours. You can easily compile a list of relevant keywords, their search volumes, how much advertisers are paying per click, and much more data. This can help with both your paid (i.e. PPC) or your free (i.e. SEO) efforts.

Google Alerts - This is another great tool to stay up-to-date with news in relation to keyword phrases. Many people set up alerts for their own company name, their competitors' names, and their industry terms to see when people are using these keywords in their content.

Google News - A great place to stay up to date with industry-related news. You can see what topics are being thrown around and it's a powerful tool to help you generate content for your own marketing efforts.

Google Reader - Google reader is an amazing time-saving tool. You can use it to filter through all the content you don't want to read about, and show only content that you've asked to be shown. Subscribe to blogs, websites, etc. and type in the keywords or phrases you'd like to stay up-to-date with. Whenever these sites release information regarding that keyword or phrase, you'll have that content presented to you in an orderly fashion.

Google Places - An extremely powerful marketing tool that enables people searching Google, to see all types of content related to your business. It will automatically show your location within Google Maps, and it appears towards the top of the page with search results automatically. Google Places uses location information from your computer to display local business results. Browsers can see your hours of operations, photos, your website, reviews, the types of credit cards you take, and much more! Many people use Google Places to appear at the top of the page for search results, especially small, local businesses. If you haven't claimed your Google Places page yet, you should do so immediately.


Any additions, please share!


Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6409313

Social Media & Video Statistics for 2014

How do you feel about the use of video in 2014 and beyond?

10 Years in Social Media

Infographic Source: http://www.fasttrackteam.com/the-top-social-media-and-blogging-infographics-of-2014.aspx

Top 10 Tips for Blogging

Blogging is a great tool for writing, sharing news and photos or art and just generally reaching out to the nameless ranks of people combing the internet every day in search of news and entertainment. TopTenREVIEWS have reviewed the best of the best blog software programs in the hope of showing you just how fun and easy creating a blog can be. 

The hard part for bloggers seems to be:

10. Consistency

Your readers and search engines love consistency. If you post three times a week, every week, this is considered the bare minimum for attracting and maintaining a readership. There is such a thing as too much blogging, though. Posting once a day is considered normal, meaning you’re not living in a dark cave staring at the glowing rectangle all day every day. But every post you make is a new page to be indexed by the search engines, so after one year you will have more than 300 pages in the web with your name on it!

9. Originality

With the ever-growing legions of bloggers out there, internet devotees are always on the lookout for the next great, original blog concept. One blogger might be devoted to showcasing photos of the rooftops of St. Petersburg. Many blogs are devoted to fashion and celebrity gossip, but there aren’t that many documenting people dressed in the gothic style during the hot days of summer.

8. Personality

Whether you create a web persona for the purpose of blogging or you plan to put your real self out there, personality is essential to a good blog read. This gift comes naturally to some bloggers and not at all to others. Whichever you are, your writings will reveal this personality to the world. A lot of bloggers give up fast when they receive negative feedback that is taken personally, but keep in mind that all writing media is subjected to waves of rejection. Don’t give up – there are mean, anonymous people out there surfing the web leaving rude, baseless comments, but there are also plenty more people with constructive comments to offer.

7. Brevity

Be brief in your blog posts. Break up text with cuts, subheadings, bullet lists, photos – people reading on the web tend to scan for anything that slows down or catches their eye. If you want to keep your readers reading, be succinct!

6. Diversity

Multi-media is almost a must these days. Text, video, photo, audio – use all of it in your blog to create well-written posts that are augmented with images or other media. As long as you’re on the way to becoming a blog superstar, might as well go for those YouTube views as well. Uploading your video to YouTube is a great example of how to drive traffic back to your site, as well.

5. Social networking

Use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, whatever your social network of choice is to drive traffic to your blog, alert your friends you have a new post.

4. Collaboration

Use online relationships to collaborate on blog posts and expand your readership – encourage comments, comment on other people’s blogs, link freely and share traffic.

3. Promotion

Commenting on other blogs and getting your blog noticed joins up with social networking here. If you are promoting a product on your blog pay attention to other bloggers promoting a similar product. Use your best judgment to decide what works and what doesn’t. But please, no spamming – it is discourteous, not cool, other users will not take kindly and search engines will penalize you (remove your pages from the index).

2. Other media

Why limit yourself to just a blog? Podcasts are a great example of new media working with blogs to make them even more up-to-date and interesting – your readers will enjoy hearing your actual voice and it will heighten their reading of your content in the future. Check out TypePad blog software for integrated podcasting capability.

1. Fun

The most important part of blogging is having fun and loving your blog. If you choose to blog about something you have a passion for that will come through across the vast and nebulous internet. Additionally, the blog will be sustainable for you because you care about it.


Source: http://blog-software-review.toptenreviews.com/top-10-tips-for-blogging.html

Top 10 Countries with most Facebook users 2014

We live in times where, if somebody doesn’t have a Facebook account, we think he has been living under a rock.
With 1.19 billion active users, you have to be one of them!

Facebook is not only a social networking website, but businesses have taken great advantage of this strong platform with such a large number of users. Any brand, institution, or business of any kind has a Facebook page upon which they follow the trends of their fans and come up with future business strategies.

Don’t be surprised to know that your single like can mean a lot to any business!

So let’s see which top countries have the most Facebook users around the world.



10. Germany – Our countdown begins with Germany at number ten in the list of countries with most Facebook users. Around 22 Million of the total users present on Facebook are from Germany and 65%-70% users are in the age range of 18-44.

9. France – After Germany, we have France with 25 million users dedicated to Facebook. The top brands liked here are Coca-Cola, Nutella, M&M’s and Ferrero Rocher. It seems like the french people have a bit of a sweet tooth, but they do have good taste. Bravo!

8. Philippines – Just like people around the world cannot resist the breath-taking islands of Philippines, the natives cannot resist Facebook. With 29 million users, this country is at number 8. The Filipino ladies take the lead when it comes to Facebook usage.

7. Turkey – At number 7 in the list of top 10 countries with most Facebook users in 2014, we have Turkey with 32 million users sharing their lives with each other on Facebook. The ratio of gender based usage in this country is almost equal for both male and female. Young adults form the most of the users (18-35 years old).

6. United Kingdom -In the UK about 53% of the internet users are on the Facebook social platform! Wow! People here do know how to socialize well. When looking at the top liked brands in the country, we find out that, like their neighbours, the british also have a bit of a sweet tooth. From approximately 33 million users here, around 51% are the ladies.

5. Mexico – Mexico is found in the middle spot, with 38 million total users. Here, both genders are also balanced. Corona beer and Coca-Cola top at the brand pages here; which shows that the Mexicans are pretty serious about drinks, and in the following spots we find PlayStation and Doritos. So… extreme gaming with coke and Doritos? Perfect Combo!

4. Indonesia – The population of the beautiful archipelago of Indonesia seems to be a bit addicted to Facebook. Coming in at number for in our list, 20% of the 22% of people who use the internet here are on Facebook, which means that almost everyone that can access Facebook, does. The inclination of males is a little bit higher than the opposite gender. In this lovely country we find that Blackberry, Samsung and Yamaha Motors take the highest positions in the category of liked brands.

3. Brazil – It seems that the beautiful people of Brazil are also spell-bounded by Facebook, making them the 3rd in the “Top 10 countries with most Facebook users in 2014″. Here the ladies and the gentlemen both take an equal participation in the social networking website, and the total number of users comes up to 68 million.

2. India – At number 2 we have a country from South Asia. India takes up the position with a total Facebook user of approximately 62 million. Male users are more dominant at this side, and if we were judging by what pages they follow most, they are very into technology and geeky things. The bigger chunk of the users is above 18, so mostly young adults, and this is a pattern common to all countries so far.

1. United States of America – So who is at number one? Yes, I guess we did not leave much to the imagination here; it’s the United States of America. 67% of the total 78% users on internet are on Facebook too. The total end users of Facebook from the States are around 160 million, and the age ranges from 18-34 are the highest! One more interesting thing is Wal-Mart it at the top of the brands followed by Target and Amazon! American’s do shop a lot, right?


Source: http://addictivelists.com/top-10-countries-with-most-facebook-users-2014/