Malorkan News

Did you know that its possible to get a mobile phone totally free of charge with12 months free line rental? This means that you will be given a free mobile phone handset with free inclusive minutes and free inclusive text messages without paying a penny for them!Right about now you are probably thinking that this is a trick, but this deal is 100% genuine!The way to make it work is to whoop mobile retailers at their own game. Understand, cell phone retailers promote free line rentla mobile phones in order to attract prosepective customers into the shop. They then attach a load of catches to the offers to control the number of people that actually take out and correctly order a free line rental mobile phone promotion.Free line rental promotions operate because the customer sign up for a mobile phone contract in the normal manner, and pay the bill as normal. Then, at pre defined times within the first 12 months of the mobile phone contract you need to apply for cash back. At this time the shop who sold you the mobile will send out a cheque. Usually three different claims have to be made before you recover the total cost of your mobile.Now heres the deal, the retailers make the process pretty difficult, as they stipulate that you produce phone bills (which may be lost). They may also stipulate specific days for the claim (which you may forget) and put in place various other tricks and barriers. So, you must be smart and beat them at their own game!Read the contract fully, write down the dates, do not misplace the paperwork and make your claim punctual and you will geta mobile phone completely free for an entire year!The fact is that the stores don’t care about throwing away some of these phones for free as it is a good promotion for them. Being able to promote “free cellphones” promotes the profile of their business, and, as they recognize only a small number of customers are likely to get through all the catches essential to obtain a 12 month free line rental deal, it doesn’t really cost too much money!A free line rental promotion may not be the best for everyone as you must be prepared and be sure you complete all the steps of the claim properly, but, a 12 months free line rental mobile is definately something worthy of consideration if you are cost aware.

When I started my interest in affiliate sites I was just beginning to learn about web development and working for a company that offered affiliate programs. What are affiliate programs? Most popular merchants that sell something offer affiliate programs for other webmasters to help them increase their traffic and their revenues. Affiliate programs are for people that have a website that generates traffic and can help the merchant who is offering the affiliate program. Anyways, the goal of my experiment was to try to generate an affiliate website that will generate some income and spend the LEAST amount of money in the process.

Like most of you I am an average Joe with mouths to feed, trying to make ends meet. I decided to create my own website and added affiliate programs to boost my income. I first bought a domain name and web hosting, paying a total of about $11 a month in overhead. Now being the cheapo that I am, even this step was a heart stopper for fear that my site would not work out. I decided to make a website about coupon codes thinking I could offer this benefit to many shoppers who were interested in saving money. I designed and created my site utilizing all that I had learned about web development, and gave it a catchy name “cheap-buys.com”. When I finally had a decent looking website, I joined affiliate programs for many major websites through cj.com and linkshare.com. These are companies who handle a lot of affiliate business for many large-scale websites. To join is free without any obligation as long as you have a respectable website created.

Now remember, I did not want to spend any money at all so I did not advertise my website. I decided to optimize my site through “search engine optimization”. This is basically a way to make your website “search-engine” friendly so it can rank higher on the search results. I researched many or many search engine optimization techniques on the web and tried to implement those on my cheap-buys.com website. One site in particular, Seochat.com has many optimization techniques, tools and forum discussions that will help to improve your rankings swiftly. Finally, I added some Google ads on my website. Google ads pay per click so whenever someone clicks on your site you can generate some revenue.

Now after 1 year since the inception of my website here are my results:

I am not a rich jerk (some guy on the web that claims he’s filthy rich through affiliate programs), but I am making some reasonable money through my site. I can definitely pay my overhead of $11 every month but nowhere near enough to quit my day job. I can tell you for sure that affiliate programs do work and, if correctly implemented and successfully marketed, a website that you create can be a cash flowing machine.

If you’d like to create your own affiliate experiment here are my suggestions to help you succeed:

• 1. Create a website that is specific and not so broad based in popularity. For example, if you want to create a website about recipes, it is better to create a site specifically about a type of food category like dessert recipes instead of a broad category such as recipes. The website I created about coupons and deals has too broad of an appeal. If I were to do it over again I would have made it about a more specific topic. By narrowing the category you will be able to more easily be placed on top of search engines for the specific category.

• 2. Get a good domain name reflective of what your website is about. If your website is about horses’ tails then you want to call it something like “horses-tails.com” and not “animals.com”.

• 3. Provide original content rich material on your website. The search engines love it and will definitely allow for more people who search the web to find your site. It also helps if the content of your website changes a lot. In this case the search engines will visit more often to get the updated material.

• 4. Try to get as many other people who have websites to link back to your site as you can. This will improve your rankings in the search engines.

• 5. Sign up with Google Adsense or any other pay-per-click programs so you can offer an alternative for people who want to exit your site to click on related links and produce yourself some extra revenue through otherwise lost customers.

Brian Kim is a webmaster of two coupon code and deal sites: cheap-buys.com has online coupon codes for many popular merchants
and webcouponcodes.com has deals and promotional codes as well. Visit his sites and you’re likely to save a few bucks.

It never fails to amaze me how many companies have
employees who are empowered to offer former customers
wonderful incentives to lure them back, yet their customer
service representatives have the ability to offer virtually
nothing to convince an unhappy customer to stay.

Powerless, these CSRs often actually ignore customers’
requests and declarations of their intent to leave, even
encouraging them to seek out another company!

They often repeat the few phrases they’re allowed to say
over and over again, further infuriating the customers.

I recently interviewed the CEO of a mattress company who
told me that customer complaints never reach him because
his employees are empowered to, within reason, give the
customer what will keep him happy. His employees are
happier too because they believe the company trusts them
to make sound decision.

Sadly, that company is one-in-a-million today. If others
would follow his example, there would a lot less need for
those employees who call former customers because there
would be far fewer former customers to begin with.

When I worked in fast food as a teenager, giving an unhappy
customer a free apple turnover and having her leave happy
was common place. Today, fast food employees, like others
in customer service, are allowed to honor only coupons and
deals for which there are pre-programmed keys on their
registers.

It seems that companies today would rather lose loyal
customers for life than allow their foot soldiers in customer
service to toss them an apple pie.

Recently, we had just such as experience with our satellite
dish company. After more than four years as a loyal, paying
customer, we noticed a problem with our reception. We
asked to have someone come take a look at it, and we were
told it would be $100. That is the only option customer
service was empowered to offer. We announced that we
could get brand new satellite equipment for free from the
company’s competitor, and we were told to go ahead and
switch, which we did.

After we switched, the first company called to ask why we
left, and we told our story. The employee agreed that “after
four years, we should have fixed it for free.” Too late. We’ve
signed a new one-year agreement and we couldn’t be
happier with our new, free digital video recorder.

On the flip side, we have no unresolved customer
complaints at our business because, very simply, we do our
best to keep our customers happy from the beginning. Sure,
we make mistakes and we run out of things, but we always
do what it takes to make things right, plus a little extra
something for the customer. That attitude builds long-time,
successful customer relationships. Here are some tips for
empowering your customer service department:

1.) Depending on the nature of the complaint, arm your
customer service employees with the ability to offer
incentives to unhappy customers to encourage them not to
leave. Allow them to offer at least half what the people who
call former customers can offer.

For example, if you normally charge for a service call, but
you’re facing the prospect of losing a 10-year customer,
allow the customer service representative to offer half off.

2.) If your company screwed up, and your customer calls you
on it, allow your customer service people to admit that a
mistake was made, apologize and offer something to make
up for it - a free month of service, a coupon for a discount on
a future order.

Nothing is more aggravating than having someone
apologize without admitting any wrong doing (i.e. “I’m sorry
you feel that way.” Or “I’m sorry you’re upset about that.”) Let
them say, “I’m sorry, we were wrong. What can we do to
make it up to you?” What ever happened to the motto “The
customer is always right”?

3.) Toss the scripts. Giving customer service people lists of
things to say to unhappy customers turns your people into
nothing more than robots. With today’s voice recognition
technology, you may as well use an automated response
system.

Train your customer service people how to act like human
beings. Provide them with the kind of conflict-resolution
training they need to turn unhappy customers into people
who at least believe your company cares about their
problem and wants to help them.

4.) Offer incentives to customer service people who retain
unhappy customers.

For example, tape your calls, and once a month give an
award to the customer service representative who does the
best job turning angry customers into happy ones.

5.) Don’t’ wait for the customer to insist on speaking to a
manager. If the customer service representative’s authority
to offer a solution is not enough to retain the customer, it
should be SOP for the representative to request time to
consult a supervisor and possibly bring them into the
discussion.

Anne Brady is a freelance editor and writer with more than
20 years writing experience who, while working for Dow
Jones Newswires, was frequently published by the Wall
Street Journal. She and her husband own Brady’s
Homebrew (http://www.bradyshomebrew.com), which sells
home beer brewing and wine making equipment and
supplies.

Everyone who is looking to break out of their 9 to 5 routine is
seriously looking at the opportunities opening up on the
internet. It is true that ever since money making opportunities
started appearing on the internet the businesses have been more
or less centred on the USA and to a lesser extent on Europe and
Australia. The rest of the world has more or less been out of
this loop. However, statistics coming out recently make it
evident that the vastly exploding internet user community in the
rest of the world is fast outpacing the possible opportunities
in the traditional world of internet marketing.

For instance, as of end 2005 it is estimated that the total
world population that has access to the internet has crossed one
billion; one billion mind you, as compared to the total US
population of around 250 million. This will only increase and
provide huge opportunities for anyone who can identify the needs
and opportunities that become available elsewhere. Obviously,
there will be specific issues relative to different markets that
need to be addressed. Language and differing cultures play a
significant part in this exercise. For example, China today has
taken over number one position in terms of the number of people
who log onto the internet as unique users. China’s Internet
population surpassed Japan by the end of 2002, jumping to the
second place in the world following the United States and today
it is estimated to have already reached the number one position,
ahead of the United States. Although the total penetration of
PCs accessible to the population, as a percentage, is much less
than in the USA it has crossed 100 million. Although young
people still account for the majority of Internet users, the
makeup of the age groups has been changing. In 1998, 91 per cent
of all netizens were between the ages of 18 and 30. By the end
of last year, that number had dropped to 51.3. At the same time,
the percentage of netizens younger than 18 has grown to 18.8.
Some 14.2 million adults aged older than 35 have joined the
ranks of Internet surfers in the past six months, expanding the
group’s share to 17.8 per cent. This group includes some 3
million senior citizens aged 50 and above. It is interesting
that using the Internet for leisure ranks second among users,
more than study, getting to know friends, research or sending or
receiving e-mails. Shopping online or doing other e-businesses
accounted for only 0.4 per cent of Internet usage. This will
surely increase in days to come and provides a ground floor
opportunity for anyone looking for new markets. Joint Ventures
with Chinese internet entrepreneurs seems to be the way to go
given the lack of a broad based English knowledge among the
population of the world’s fastest growing economy.

**All data taken from The China Internet Network Information
Centre’s (CNNIC) report

Many people who have never tried this before would think that it is hard to make money. However if you become an affiliate you will realize that with hard work and dedication, it is possible to receive an impresseive income over time. If you are not familiar with affiliate programs, this article will help you get started by providing the advice you need.

The first step for anyone to become an affiliate is to find product or service that you would like to market. For example, a stay at home mom might like to market cookbooks. If this is a product that she knows a lot about, then it will be easier for her to promote and market these cookbooks. Using this example, the stay at home mom should first find which cookbook affiliate program is right for her. She can do this by looking at the
amount of revenue the affiliates will make as commission selling these cookbooks. It is best to find an affiliate program with at least 50% commission per sale.

Another thing that also must be considered when you want to become a marketing affiliate is the cost of the product or service to the consumer. If the cost is something that you know that you would not pay if someone tried to sell it to you, then it is not less likely others will buy it from you. Your goal is to choose a product you believe in, would stand behind and would be proud to offer your customers.

After you have chosen the product and decided which affiliate program is right for you, it is advised that you setup a web site to showcase your product. If you are not familiar with web design, there are numerous tutorials available online. Many affiliate programs include a web site for affiliates and most provide with a link to a sales letter for your product. You can also have a web site professionally designed for a reasonable price by searching online using the time ‘web site design’ or ‘web developer’.

Finally, I strongly recommend that you take one of the many excellent e-courses and subscribe to a few e-zines available to show you the basics of Affiliate Marketing. Also, there are many good books available on the how-to’s of successful online business. Why not get started now?

Dr. J. E. Burke
Burke Publications
Copyright 2005 Burke Publications All Rights Reserved

Dr. J. Elisha Burke, an educator and entrepreneur, has been involved in various business enterprises via Burke Publications. He is an educator, writer and motivational speaker on a variety of topics. Many resources to get your business from idea to profit can be found at Burke Publications websites: http://burkepublications.com or http://news.burkepublications.com

When you sign up for an affiliate program, you have the highest of expectations, and begin doing the math: x number of an item at $50 each, times your commission rate, and you’ve earned yourself a bundle! If you have a site that’s an authority on a certain subject or a gathering place for people who are, you may do very well.

But you still may not be seeing the big checks in your mailbox. Why not? There are a number of possibilities:
Your merchants or affiliate network may pay only on a monthly basis.
You may be working with a merchant who pays only after you reach a certain threshold of sales.
Commissions may be paid monthly, with rollovers from a prior month if your click-thru’s didn’t hit the threshold the prior month.
Your commission account may have been debited for returns or order cancellations
Or, worst, your merchant may not be able to pay the commissions.

Returns are a tricky one, but one way to reduce them is to be certain you link only to sites with high quality products. Check out the advertiser’s site and see how it strikes you. If you think they’ll be important to you, order something, or go through the ordering process, up to the point of confirming the order. What are the return policies?

Also, make certain that you aren’t unsuspectingly creating a buyer’s remorse situation. If your gardening site caters to people with average-sized yards and homes, should you really provide links to merchants offering three thousand dollar grills? Your visitors may order on a whim, and feel sorry in the morning. Staying with what’s appropriate or a small reach is likely to work out better for you.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:

http://www.affiliatebandit.com

http://www.advertisingcellar.com

http://www.billionfreeads.com

There are many different ways to promote your affiliate program, however, it depends upon what type of program it is, “Your Turnkey Program” or Affiliate Linked-Program for selling a product. Hmm-mm, interesting. What works, what doesn’t?

GET OUT THE WORD

Bulk Emailing - Bulk emailing use to be the craze. Did you notice the word use to be the craze. That has changed with the stricter spam rules and penalties - all to protect us. But bulk emailing can be done, if you have an opt-in list - people who have opted-in - to gladly receive your emails - such as, through a newsletter.

Classified Ads - With free classified ads can definitely get hits - and possibly some sales. But don’t choose this as your only way of getting sales.

There are drawbacks. You ask, “What drawbacks”. From my own experience, I’ve encountered individuals requesting information about my program - as a ploy to getting me to listen to their sales pitch. SPAM? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely. The height of annoyance is when they ask me to call them long distance, so that I can speak with them - only to have them give me a sales pitch on their program.

However, if you have a classified ad site on your website - you’ve got yourself a built-in opt-in list. You can gently sell to them, while verifying or thanking them for their ad.

Traffic Generators - Traffic generators can work on a turnkey site that many others are also partaking in to generate money for themselves. What I found is traffic generators are better suited for turnkey businesses. It is basically a simple way for businesses to entice other people in business to look at your program. You know - it’s the “I’m not really happy with what I’m doing, but what else is out there” syndome. Or it’s the - “I really need another program so that I’m not a one-man Joe in business” syndome. In either case, it’s a safe place to see what’s happening or new on the Internet.

Messageboards, Discussion Groups, Forums — These are great ways to get your message out and be personal at the same time. But you have to follow the rules, and you should contribute constructive and/or helpful information that is relevant to the discussion at hand. This is a time-consuming way to build sales - but a great way to build credibility, business relationships, and sales.

Ezine and Safelist Advertising — Ezine advertising and safelist advertising are good methods of advertising. In each case, you have to join their list and follow their rules to submitting your ads.

If you want to try your hand at safelist advertising, I would suggest that you create a separate free email account on Yahoo. Why? A safelist allows all that have joined to submit their ads to you, as well as, you to them. Here, your subject line is your eye catcher - so choose wisely.

Ezine advertising is a very good way to advertise your turnkey site, website, product or service. You have the option for free (need to watch for their instructions), and various paid ads. What’s great about ezines? It’s an opportunity to sell to a more targeted market. The more targeted your market, the better the opportunity to get a sale.

Articles - Articles are a great way to get the word out about your website and your product or products. However, please make the article informative - or you’ll lose your credibility and the reader.

Search Engine Optimization - If you have a website you should submit to search engines. To review the process on how and where, you can go to my site at http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_Info_SEO_Keyword.htm.

As you can see, there are many methods of promoting - but the method of promoting your business is dependent upon whether it is a turnkey affiliate program , an affiliate product of service, or a website. The choice is yours on how you want to promote — experiment, find what works, and what doesn’t — that’s the sure way of learning and growing in the Affiliate Business.

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. She left the corporate world as an Reports Programmer,to begin her journey as an Internet marketer. Visit her site at:
www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, and how to info for the affiliate marketer.