Last week was awesome!

Congratulations to:

Joseph T.

Salina A.

Paul L.

Brad G.

Alex Y.

Oriel E.

and Donald L.

for joining the First Lead Club
Congrats also to six affiliates who had record weeks!

The top payouts last week were:

$20,588.00

$19,795.00

$16,402.65

$16,398.75

$8,450.36

Congrats to our first ever $20,000 a week affiliate!

Are your titles too keywordilicious?

That is one of the questions asked by Jennifer Slegg, an SEM consultant in this post

Her post is a very interesting look at the rules and, as she calls them “thou shalt nots” of Search Engine Optimization.

There is not much I can say that she does not cover so go check it out

To make up for last week’s lateness, we were able to do the payouts for this week one day early!

Two affiliates joined the First Lead Club
Congrats to Roch S. and John I.

Congrats to Kelly P. for joining the $5,000 Club.
The top five payouts last week were:

$19,823.75

$19,133.00

$17,369.46

$17,349.50

$9,781.85

In the battle for literary supremacy on the web, it appears that numbers beat letters in a 7 round TKO. According to a new article by Jakob Nielsen: It’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data. Traditional literary rules say that you should spell out (Four vs. 4) whole numbers from one to ninety-nine.

OK, I admit, this post is the first time since high school that I spelled out a number…they are NUMBERS after all, but I cannot argue with the experts.

Jakob is the expert on online writing though so I take his advice.

His full article is full of awesome information and background on the research (a bunch of fancy eye-tracking stuff), so check it out…Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers

Earlier this month, SEOMOZ released version 2 of Search Engine Ranking Factors.

37 leaders in the world of SEO, such as Danny Sullivan, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Aaron Wall, gave their opinions and insight on the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization.

The full article and results can be found here

Top Positive Factors included:

Keyword Use in the Title Tag, Global Link Popularity of the Site, and Anchor Text of the Inbound Links .

Top Negative Factors were:

An Inaccessible Server, Similar/Duplicate Content, and Low Quality External Links

Each factor is given a ranking by each of the panelists and ranked accordingly.

This article is a MUST READ! 

Last week’s payouts (April 2 - were one day behind (sorry about that) but will still arrive on time.

Part of the reason for the delay was the sheer amount of payouts and the overall amount of the payouts.  It kind of caught us off guard…in a very good way.

Four affiliates joined the First Lead Club

Congratulations to:

Jessica F.

Mark R.

Susan T.

Lodovico O.

Oren A. and Ryan A. $1,000 Club.

Congrats to both of you!

The top five payouts last week were:

$19,230.25

$19,161.00

$18,825.72

$16,502,75

$8,854.65

The Profit Seeks Network has published a very helpful e-book entitled “10 Ways to Write More Effective Ads”

For the most part (at least for the experienced marketer) it is full of common sense, no frills, tips for getting in the right frame of mind for ad writing and understanding the customer mindset. Consider it a refresher course if you are an expert and a great starter guide if you are a newbie.

Some of the more pertinent to insurance marketing (along with my brief comments) are:

Focus on Them, Not You This one speaks for itself. Focus on the audience and what they want. Remember, there is a pretty good chance you know 10 times more about your product than they do. Push Their Emotional Hot Buttons

Life insurance…kids starving with no family and no money. What a picture. Homeowners insurance…a house burned to the ground and a family with nowhere to go. OK, those are extreme. People buy when you CONVINCE them to buy, not because they have nothing better to do.

Incorporating Proof and Believability

My article about the biggest missing pieces on affiliate sites (how is that for shameless self-promotion) covers a bit about how to build trust with your visitors. Contact pages, privacy policies, SSL encryption, and the like.

This also means do not make promises you cannot keep. To be honest, no one is going to save $5,000 by using our service. They are not going to grow natural hair overnight or woo a supermodel either…trust me I have been working that for years now and it ain’t working.

Make real claims that are compelling. We WILL help you save money and we DO make a difficult process a lot easier. Being honest will get you more clicks and more conversions.

The More You Tell, The More You Sell Content is king! Hmmm…have I ever heard that before?  Tell them about what we do (see above) and make sure they have no questions left unanswered.
Write To Be Scanned Bullet points and tags and bolding, oh my! Content is great, but ridiculously long unbroken lines of text make me cross-eyed and lose interest.  Make your copy part outline and part detail.

Last week showed another great week with many affiliates moving up the ladder!

We had 3 affiliates joining the First Lead Club
Congrats to:

Ryan A.

Josh C.

Jose G.

Congrats to Marcus B. for joining the $1,000 Club.
I know how much work he has put in over the last year…that’s right a full year!  Marcus, you are the perfect example of persistence and hard work paying off.

The top payouts last week were:

$19,431.50

$19,034.00

$18,230.56

$15,998.80

$8,945.85