Experian Hitwise just recently sent out a tweet that the fledgling social networking platform experienced quite an impressive jump in traffic volume and more than doubled the number in a matter of month. The research agency tweeted: “Google+ total US visits reach more than 49 million in Dec, biggest month to date & up 55percent”. It pointed out that total US visits for the site had grown eight out of the previous nine weeks.

Though Google+ has not reacted publicly about its rising membership numbers, analysts are drawing their own conclusions. The founder of Ancestry.com, Paul Allen, stated that the social site had already crossed the 62 million mark, almost 25 percent of the site’s total user base generated in December alone.

The growth rate is indeed praiseworthy since Facebook had not passed the 60 million members’ marl until almost four years after its launch. And at this rate, experts like Paul Allen expect Google+ to surpass 400 million users by the end of the year. For record, Facebook has over 800 million active members. The growth of Google+ can be attributed to the fact that it has become easier to access it on compatible Android devices, with millions of them being purchased each day. Google integrates its Android devices with Google+.

Incidentally, Facebook was the top-visited Website for the second year and accounted for 10.29 percent in terms of all online visits in the U.S. (from January until November 2011), according to another study done by Experian Hitwise. This marks almost a 15 percent jump from the number of visitors in 2010, the findings suggest. Google.com is ranked second on the list with 7.70 percent of total visits, which incidentally is an increase of 7 percent, followed by its video site YouTube (3.17 percent increase), Yahoo Mail (2.95 percent rise) and Yahoo! (2.47 percent increase).

The combination of all Google properties accounted for almost 12 percent of all U.S. visits on the Web – a solid 22 percent rise in 2011compared with the previous year. On the other hand, Facebook properties accounted for close to 9 percent, whereas Yahoo! properties grabbed nearly 7 percent of all U.S. visits.

According to the report, these top 10 sites (the rest of them being MSN, Myspace, Mail Live, Search Yahoo and Bing) accounted for not less than one third of all U.S. visits, registering a flattish move compared with 2010. Among the fastest-moving search terms on basis of absolute change in 2011 were hurricane Irene path, osama bin laden dead, bin laden wives, les paul, apophis asteroid, nick ashford dies, sheen dumped, and amber cole.

The community-based approach in effect, is more beneficial than an individual based approach. Most importantly, know exactly what your customers really need or demand from you for you to become a more customer-centric company, as the concept denotes. In essence, ideally try to capture their pulse as precisely as possible. Here are a few steps to attain this goal:

• Know what the customers want and what they expect from you. Seek their opinions.
• See where the other competing brands are lacking in terms of fulfilling the customer needs. Incorporate these facets in your services/products.
• Take their suggestions and grievances seriously and try working on them.
• Keep checking with your customers about their specific requirements. A company cannot just offer them the basic services to meet their needs for once and then leave it just at that. A marketer need to grasp what the customers exactly require and work on their needs to ensure that the same are fulfilled.

This will make them believe in your sincerity and commitment of your brand in order to make them brand loyal. Don’t keep them waiting for too long. In case they need any help, give it immediately and in a convincing way. Implement your plans after asking for customer suggestions and opinions. A mere verbal assurance is not of much use.

Another key criterion when you blog is that you avoid divulging secrets about yourself, your company or any of its important activities. Thus, it will be a bad idea to post anything confidential even while striking a chord with your customers.

Before you put up something, recheck the facts, since many users would be reading it. See to it that your post doesn’t offend any individual, religion, or an organization. An offensive comment will only antagonize readers. They might even file a legal suit against you. Also, use a polite and friendly language.

Avoid wastage of space by typing long URLs. A URL shortener service squeezes any long URL into minimal possible one for sharing over social networks, instant messages, or even SMS. Twitter’s new URL shortener will automatically shorten the URL in the Web version of the service. Bitly on twitter is the way to do that.

In a nutshell, let your customer be a key to success! Understanding their aspirations and following their requirements is the most vital aspect in making your company customer-centric.

 Widely known as affiliate Marketing, it’s a proven option for Merchants to boost their sales, encouraging the well-performing affiliates. Commission is paid on events only like an actual sale or a lead generation.

1. Look for an affiliate network with countless proactive merchants plus a variety of products and services on offer plugged into it. They pay commission on the tangible sales if you bring in a customer. The core idea and its implementation are obvious. It’s for you to decide the merchants whom you wish to promote and how to do so. You can check relevant stats in real-time if and when merchant commissions are generated.
2. In order to participate, affiliates need to have a proper site address and an e-mail address. Through a top-level-domain name, and a catchy description of their motive to join a network, they can clearly differentiate themselves.
3. While developing and executing your performance marketing plan, a user-friendly network offers the requisite support as well as expertise to optimize performance and end results. Various aspects like offer & pricing strategies, relationship development & management, creative optimization & upload come into play.
4. Well-managed PayPerCall programs let advertisers and publishers develop as well as track offers even beyond the online realm through offline support to track leads and sales, which tie back to online and offline behavior of a consumer. This will invariably result in much more responsive and fruitful engagements, well-extended reach and better conversion rates.
5. Success of any performance marketing program is equally dependent on a well-informed and elaborate product catalog. Many advertisers seek help of affiliate networks to design, construct and maintain their respective product catalogs, thus ensuring optimal results for the partnering publishers and themselves.
6. A holistic affiliate network possesses the knowhow and practical experience to inculcate a sense of urgency as well as stimulate engagement in optimized online environs through banner ads and well-constructed landing pages to lead generators, emails, newsletters, and co-registration forms. It should easily be leveraged across a wide range of CPA platforms like affiliate, e-mail, display, newsletter etc.
7. Performance marketing cannot work sans accurate and reliable tracking-reporting systems to track transactions back to their relevant source. An effective network revolves around a strong and superior tracking technology, right from inception and sale right to compensation stage. An affiliate network leverages its tracking platform to ably support offline sales and has the systems to support all of your channel expansion efforts.
8. An online performance-based marketing initiative blended with channel partners allows you to extend reach, to keep your partners engaged, and to enhance the overall purchasing experience for consumers.
9. A multi-faceted tracking platform should be customizable to back a wide array of transaction & payment arrangements. It offers infrastructure and expertise to publishers and marketers, keen to drive growth, traversing traditional affiliate relationships.

There is immense potential for affiliate marketing provided you are committed to it. Carefully analyze your affiliate marketing goals and objectives in terms of the end result you expect. Put in place a proper monitoring mechanism and ensure you view the statistics. It is important to constantly update and upgrade your affiliate program. Here are some handy ideas and information for affiliate promotion, traffic generation and monetization:

• Affiliate is an interactive and dynamic business model based on a unique set of practical techniques. Irrespective of the market segment you opt for, there will be intense competition to deal with. To become a top affiliate marketer, you will need to be prepared for a long haul, and stick it out by overcoming the challenges along the way.
• Affiliate marketing demands a considerable amount of time and energy before you can expect tangible monetary gains. You should be prepared to learn the basics, stick to them, and enjoy the learning curve from the outset. Stay focused on the long term goals irrespective of the challenges and negatives along the way.
• Content must among your topmost priorities as it’s the foundation of your affiliate marketing strategy in order to monetize your site. Avoid cramming it with affiliate links and then not backing them up with appropriate content. Your customers must see value in what you are offering to them.
• See how much the affiliate providers pay, how useful their products are, how much they sell for. You should feel interested in the products or services for you to sell them. Don’t Worry About the Pay Percentages
• If you just start calculating “this affiliate merely pays X and well, I could do better!” It’s not going work. Instead focus on the product costs, and not the percentages you will get from the sale while working as an affiliate. Take your time to work out the pros and cons of an affiliate program. Be patient and methodical in your approach.
• Look for effective affiliate services whether you decide to manage on your own the affiliate relationships or outsource the task. An affiliate network must incorporate brands – from the ubiquitous to the highly specialized, from middle-rung to the most widely recognized – to leave ample scope for lasting partnerships.
• Relationship management is a critical aspect that involves top publishers – the up-and-comers and innovators. The network should be equipped to connect publishers and brands in productive ways. A capable affiliate network ensures holistic program management by providing the requisite expertise and infrastructure.

Tips to ensure effective affiliate call to action

One vital aspect is to be passionate and knowledgeable about the product/service you wish to market. Find a program you are genuinely interested in and one that offers ample opportunities for business and personal satisfaction.

If you do not enjoy the domain in itself, and are not aware of its finer aspects, you won’t find the whole exercise compelling enough for yourself. This will ultimately reflect in a rather poor performance of your affiliate program.

Ensure good backlinks and quality design

Of course, a strong link up plus a quality design are equally important for users to visit and click around on the website. Its stickiness in terms of content, navigation and looks holds the key for them to linger around instead of quitting the site, never to return, and thus be deprived of precious revenue.

Make sure the visitors feel motivated to click through and buy your affiliate’s product for you to make money. This is attainable through inducing a strong call-to-action for your website visitors to make them click on your advertisers’ links.

Provide compelling content

Quality content forms the key part of affiliate marketing strategy. Your site must include carefully created, original and user friendly text closely aligned to the products and services advertised by the affiliate partners. It should be dynamic in nature and in varying formats. The important site pages should be constantly updated to increase new traffic, and sustain the existing flow.

The content should be aimed at making the visitors follow the significance of services on offer after clicking on affiliate links. They should feel encouraged to seek more information or even to place a purchase order. For this, some part of the content should be drafted in the form of deftly worded directives.

Your site must leave scope for a call-to action for the visitors. It should clearly explain what they are needed to do, how and when, by making them to realize the urgency of their action before ‘it’s too late’!

Motivate call to action

Motivate your site visitors with updated and insightful content to click on the right links. Pepper you copy text with compelling keywords to make it search engine friendly and then structure your website in such a way that the people will reach the product or service pages in order to ensure conversion.

The proper directions that you provide to your prospective customers will motivate them to effect a purchase so that you can be a successful affiliate.

There are different ways to monetize your online venture. But amidst the competition and clutter, on the Web, you need to make your affiliate program stand out and sustain on its own in order to use it to its optimum potential. Of course, this will demand much more than merely pasting and hosting your links and waiting for the affiliates to oblige.

Here are some handy ideas to create a productive Web based platform and make your affiliate program unique for it to stand out from those umpteen others available:

1. First and foremost, claim a niche and defined market. It is not a wise thing to promote everything to everyone. A thin spread is not going to last for long. Instead, the emphasis should be on locating niche partners through elaborate independent research. Find sites that attract users with interest in your niche marketplace.
2. Obviously, you will be keen to know partners who already have built a targeted traffic base and would invariably gain from your affiliate offer.  It should be a win-win situation for both sides, including your affiliate partners.
3. It is vital to develop compelling and attention grabbing creative. Give desired creative and promotional material to your affiliate partners in order to make their task of marketing your bouquet of products or services as smooth as possible. The less groundwork they are required to perform and the more leads or conversions take place, the more eager they are to promote your site.
4. Be on the constant lookout for new partners. Don’t sit on your past track record and be contented with a few good existing partners. You must broaden your affiliate base, if you want to expand the scope of your business. Actively search and recruit new partners by advertising the affiliate program on your site, listing in domain-specific affiliate directories, or by directly contacting potential affiliates.
5. Protect the interests of your existing and potential partners. Strike a rapport with them through regular interaction. They should remain tuned to your affiliate program all the time. Update them on relevant developments including product launches, incentives, new services, technological innovations, commission changes, latest additions etc. Provide them with necessary tips, advice, insight and ideas on marketing your products.  Last but not the least, pay them on time, without fail, to retain their trust.

Successful affiliate marketing is as much about a well-designed site, strong linkages, and the right affiliate partners’ network as about meticulously following your call-to-action and ensuring meaningful conversions.

First and foremost, you need to pick the right affiliate program. A wrong choice can negatively impact your performance over time with no tangible results apart from wastage of time, energy and resources.

Conduct your own independent research before opting to join it because a dynamic, flexible and proactive affiliate program forms the cornerstone of meeting your goals as an affiliate marketer. I shall discuss this very basic, albeit essential ingredient that go into the making of a self-sustaining pay-for-performance plan.

• Most affiliate programs are easy to join and are free to join. If you want to be a good affiliate marketer, it is critical to carefully pick one. You must join only the top ones with a powerful and popular product ranges that is in demand, a good track record, known for paying on time and providing a solid back-up support. It is not a wise idea promoting programs that do not have much credibility or popularity.
• Keep yourself updated about your affiliate programs’ latest offerings. Newer ad units, advertisers, and marketing tools are constantly getting added for the purpose of improving usability and scalability and visual appeal. Such changes help to increase chances of conversion. In fact, a proactive affiliate program gives marketing tools to their affiliates in order to promote their programs.
• A quality program sees to it that affiliate support systems and customer service are in place. It has accurate and reliable affiliate statistics. An affiliate should be able to modify a campaign and effect necessary changes that can be made possible with a precise system for tracking the campaign performances and grasp where it’s clicking and where it’s lacking.
• A program, which pays in the range of 35 percent or more residual income, is preferable so as to ensure a reasonable income flow. Of course, the range of affiliate commission may change from one domain to another and also the Affiliate Program’s popularity and the level of competition.
• Last but not the least, keep in mind the fact affiliate revenue flow grows and sustains with time. Some of them provide for lifetime payouts. After you’ve referred a visitor, you can continue to earn from that visitor even if he or she doesn’t return to your site. In some cases, referral links active even in your old posts may ensure payout for you.

Go through the different available options for products/ services and payment structures by thoroughly checking an array of available programs. Join one that usually pays good affiliate commission without any disruption or delay.

Here are some more handy tips for running a successful affiliate program:

Keep the focus firmly on your users’ needs

While picking product/service promotions as part of pay-for-performance strategy, consider a dynamic mix of marketing plus branding that your target audience will most probably like or need the same for practical purposes! Tweak the ads a bit around your users’ needs. Accordingly try out different combinations.

Create a compelling and dynamic copy

Write a compelling and dynamic copy text that will hold irrespective of passage of time so that it will remain relevant for a longer period. It should be valuable and valid even after it’s pushed to archives. The landing page should always be dynamic, making sure it’s tuned to the recent trends and developments in the industry or domain that you are dealing with in order to make it visitor friendly.

Rotate ads; make them appealing 

Do create some appealing graphic and catchy text variations. Find the one with the maximum possible impact by tracking the traffic pattern. You may need to rotate ads to draw the user attention. Try out different programs in case an existing one is not producing results to your satisfaction. Run another one and check the feedback to it. 

Be finicky about site maintenance and content quality

Remove every bit of outdated information like expired offers as well as redundant or non-functional pages. They convey a message that you are not serious about the site maintenance, and the user will desert your site right away.

Do not keep stale content, upfront. If a visitor comes across to your page only to realize that the content is not updated and the information is not contemporary, it will send a wrong message.

Reuse your old pages

You may retain older content pages, provided they are still relevant. You may leverage your earlier pages by linking them to your updated articles. Many leading platforms let you display ‘most popular’, ‘most recent’ or ‘related articles’ on a page.

In other words, no matter when an article was published, it would have an access to newer ones. In this fashion, even your older content pages can also be monetized and made productive for you over time.

Be aware of market trends

Relevancy of content and ads keep changing quickly as per the users’ needs. So stay tuned to the market trends in order to make your product portfolio and copy aligned to the user demands. Constantly monitor trends and explore new business opportunities.

If certain programs are more flexible in terms of ad unit types available, colors and design so as to jell with your site’s layout and look, a few cannot be easily customized. Check all these aspects before finalizing one. Also see if your favorite vendors conduct their own affiliate program.

You can directly go to the source in some cases and are not bound by big affiliate networks. Make systematic ad testing an integral part of your strategy for maximizing the gains.

1. Simply pushing and throwing out links on a random basis to available products/services with no co-relation or a logical thought will only confuse your site visitors. For instance, do not just put up a long list of your favorite titles, believing that they will go to the affiliate link, check the titles because you have taken the efforts to compile the list. Things seldom work that way…
2. Just because you have followed your instinct and have experimented, you cannot cash in on an event or be assured of conversions. Think from a broader perspective. Take some time and do research before writing a detailed review. Employ affiliate ads to point in the proper direction in case users opt to act on basis of it. That’s exactly what affiliate ads are supposed to do.
3. If you pen a good review recommending a title and readers buy it, that’s an ideal outcome for you. As we’ve checked in the previous post, to make an affiliate program work, it is necessary to meet expectations and aspirations of your users. The affiliate program must serve as a holistic solution sans any mismatch of interests.
4. The key is to grasp the specific needs of your audience, being fair, maintaining honesty and transparency so as to win their confidence. Another important aspect is to disclose your affiliations. Encash repeat visitors to spread the word about your products and content. Make the content relevant, dynamic and informative in order to make it valuable for your users. They must feel encouraged to explore the site. Keep both your ads and content in sync with each other to make them relevant from the readers’ perspective.

Keep in mind the fact that affiliate programs are not for impatient individuals. It’s not a get rich quick formula. However, if you are perseverant enough, it provides ample scope to build a sustained flow of income over time. The key is to be patient and persistent without losing your focus and always putting the users’ interest at the core of your affiliate strategy.

1. You need access to a dynamic blend of publishers drawn from diverse business models in order to have a comprehensive understanding overview of each one. This will help you to decide which will prove to be more successful for you. 
2. As all of us will agree, affiliate is one of the most cost effective and efficient marketing channels? If you can get proper support in terms of infrastructure and investment, you can run an elaborate affiliate marketing program. By approaching experts, you can make the most even out of your limited marketing budget.
3. The question that you should always be asking yourself is whether you are moving at a fast enough pace! In this backdrop, it is essential to consider the vast mobile opportunity now available within the spectrum of performance marketing. You can look forward to sharing comprehensive m-commerce data from inside the affiliate Network. Get a grasp of an affiliate channel’s mobile strategy.
4. Review the elements that can be tracked and keep a tab on the future. Try to initiate a proper m-commerce strategy and follow the best possible practices to create a dynamic mobile strategy to blend with performance marketing to compliment your overal mobile initiatives.
5. Many affiliates are keen to optimize their program but are not able to figure out exactly how? Many of them find the domain of affiliate marketing industry often too perplexing without direction?  There is no need to worry if you follow some time-tested strategies that experts will suggest you can in order to work out a customized marketing mix that will allow you to use your resources and energy more effectively.
6. This is important to engage publishers and customers, which holds the key to a consistent growth trajectory in the affiliate marketplace. On their part, merchants can resort to a program checklist to assist in building a solid foundation for their affiliate program. The checklist has an accompanying timeline as well to make it really easy to facilitate program launch.
7. Affiliates are driven by the sentiment that you treat them as a valuable partner. In addition to this, tools and techniques like promotions, awards, bonuses, commissions and competitions are equally motivating to them. Constant interaction also strengthens the Merchant Affiliate Partnership.
8. A majority of the leading performance marketing programs employ various extension strategies as well a cross-platform initiatives in order to meet both long term and short term targets. You should fine tune your strategy accordingly.