Online marketing for people who hate marketing (and marketers)
I'm going in an odd direction, but one that for me was very necessary. I'm going to talk about how to monetize your online presence. Yes, this does include sales and marketing. Which is hard because if you're like me, your views on sales and marketing are pretty much in alignment with this guy:
Damn, he did look like Alex Jones, didn't he?
Look, I get it. A great product still has to be sold and marketed. It's a fact of life.
Doesn't mean I have to love that aspect of my job. And I cannot muster any respect for a lot of people who really champion it. I'm talking about the people that, when you search monetization or affiliate marketing online, all you get is the blog post from some guy (it's always a guy) saying "I MAKE $10,000 A DAY JERKING OFF!!! GIVE ME MONEY AND YOU CAN BE A RICH JERKOFF TOO!!! AGBLGHUGGKAGL"
First of all, thanks for sharing, and how proud your mother must be. Also, no. You don't. You're a liar, and you're running a con instead of helping people who can benefit from this.
So let's get right to it:
ETA I've updated some of this information. At the tail end of Coronapanic 2020, I've gotten back into the affiliate stuff, adding Rakuten and Clickbank programs, which I will discuss here.
So how does affiliate marketing actually work?
When you join the affiliate program, you must register your site(s) when you sign up. Apps, too!!! You can add more later. (UPDATE affiliate programs including Amazon also allow you to put links on your twitter, Facebook and other social media. I think.)
Then you log into a typical Members Home window for Associates, and you browse their online catalog through their portal. Or search for whatever they sell that's relevant to your blog post or webpage. For Rakuten you must apply for each advertiser and be approved, which, as you can imagine, is a pretty arduous experience. I'll let you know if that turns out to be worth it.
To the right, each item will have a Get Link button. Click it, and you get a link you can put on your blog post or page. Easy! Share it with your friends!
Now a visitor to your blog post or site clicks that, and it logs them into their Amazon account. For 24 hours, they can buy that book (at a discount...?) or ANYTHING ELSE. And you get 6% of their sale. ETA OOPS not that much anymore...
How simple is that?! How nice is that?!
But maybe you hate Amazon because Jeff Bezos is richer than god and he treats his employees like crap? Rakuten and Clickbank are the big alternatives, although the latter is turning out to be the source of those horrible SINGLE MOM DISCOVERS ONE WEIRD TRICK bullshit spams that flood your eMail box morning, noon, and night. Depending on your moral code, you might want to proceed with caution on that one.
At this point, Amazon is the Uber to Rakuten and Clickbank's Lyft and Via, the McDonald's to their Five Guys and White Castle. But, like Uber and Lyft, the law says you can moonlight because you don't work for them! So...try them all!
This is a bonanza for non-profits, I'd say. And novelists and musicians and other creatives. Or other niche sites - I'm looking at you, cult movie and weird movie fans. Just a suggestion.
Another option for the small site:
Blech. We hate banners, don't we!? Yes, we do! (A problem with me being in visual creativity, which is and always will be part of the ad department.) Also, you have to have a site with a lot of content. Google Adserve turned down mariocaiti.com flat because, well, it's a pretty bare bones site. I have a list of my skills, some contact info, and music links on my musician page and some videos on the post-production page. It's not, you know...Amazon.
Still, if your site has some degree of productivity, there's an option. Which brings us to the hard truth about all this sales and marketing and branding online.
You have to have something to sell first.
Sorry.
Your blog has to have something that people want to read. Your site and app have to be about your brand which has to have value. Period.
That takes work. All the work, all the time. The guy boasting about his masturbation career is actually out there selling every day, every minute that he can. (Working from your home office in the total comfort that brings is very motivating! Very motivating, indeed. I'd love to think Coronapanic 2020 has forced the business world to finally, once and for all, accept work from home as the norm and not a deviation, but that would be wishful thinking, wouldn't it?)
There are others, too. Crowdfunding. Just plain begging for donations. Getting published. The possibilities are pretty wide.
BUT.
Here's the deal.
(dramatic carriage return)
Maybe you're doing something different online. Maybe you're trying new things as an entrepreneur, or artist or blogger or culture critic or whatever it is you do. You can drive Uber and tend bar, sure - that's how we've always kept bills paid.
But maybe there's another way?
Needless to say, I've got a twitter thread chock full of Clickbank stuff here. You can review it if you can stomach twitter currently:
My twitter Clickbank thread
I use the Schedule Tweets function to put the tweets out at night or very early in the morning, and keep it in one thread but navigable with lots and lots of hashtags so the world can find it without interfering too much with my tweet page's day to day activity, such as it were.
And
Rakuten:
Shop Gaiam Yoga
Thank you for reading!
Damn, he did look like Alex Jones, didn't he?
Look, I get it. A great product still has to be sold and marketed. It's a fact of life.
Doesn't mean I have to love that aspect of my job. And I cannot muster any respect for a lot of people who really champion it. I'm talking about the people that, when you search monetization or affiliate marketing online, all you get is the blog post from some guy (it's always a guy) saying "I MAKE $10,000 A DAY JERKING OFF!!! GIVE ME MONEY AND YOU CAN BE A RICH JERKOFF TOO!!! AGBLGHUGGKAGL"
First of all, thanks for sharing, and how proud your mother must be. Also, no. You don't. You're a liar, and you're running a con instead of helping people who can benefit from this.
So let's get right to it:
Affiliate Marketing
ETA I've updated some of this information. At the tail end of Coronapanic 2020, I've gotten back into the affiliate stuff, adding Rakuten and Clickbank programs, which I will discuss here.
So how does affiliate marketing actually work?
When you join the affiliate program, you must register your site(s) when you sign up. Apps, too!!! You can add more later. (UPDATE affiliate programs including Amazon also allow you to put links on your twitter, Facebook and other social media. I think.)
Then you log into a typical Members Home window for Associates, and you browse their online catalog through their portal. Or search for whatever they sell that's relevant to your blog post or webpage. For Rakuten you must apply for each advertiser and be approved, which, as you can imagine, is a pretty arduous experience. I'll let you know if that turns out to be worth it.
To the right, each item will have a Get Link button. Click it, and you get a link you can put on your blog post or page. Easy! Share it with your friends!
Now a visitor to your blog post or site clicks that, and it logs them into their Amazon account. For 24 hours, they can buy that book (at a discount...?) or ANYTHING ELSE. And you get 6% of their sale. ETA OOPS not that much anymore...
How simple is that?! How nice is that?!
But maybe you hate Amazon because Jeff Bezos is richer than god and he treats his employees like crap? Rakuten and Clickbank are the big alternatives, although the latter is turning out to be the source of those horrible SINGLE MOM DISCOVERS ONE WEIRD TRICK bullshit spams that flood your eMail box morning, noon, and night. Depending on your moral code, you might want to proceed with caution on that one.
At this point, Amazon is the Uber to Rakuten and Clickbank's Lyft and Via, the McDonald's to their Five Guys and White Castle. But, like Uber and Lyft, the law says you can moonlight because you don't work for them! So...try them all!
This is a bonanza for non-profits, I'd say. And novelists and musicians and other creatives. Or other niche sites - I'm looking at you, cult movie and weird movie fans. Just a suggestion.
Another option for the small site:
Ads
Blech. We hate banners, don't we!? Yes, we do! (A problem with me being in visual creativity, which is and always will be part of the ad department.) Also, you have to have a site with a lot of content. Google Adserve turned down mariocaiti.com flat because, well, it's a pretty bare bones site. I have a list of my skills, some contact info, and music links on my musician page and some videos on the post-production page. It's not, you know...Amazon.
Still, if your site has some degree of productivity, there's an option. Which brings us to the hard truth about all this sales and marketing and branding online.
You have to have something to sell first.
Sorry.
Your blog has to have something that people want to read. Your site and app have to be about your brand which has to have value. Period.
That takes work. All the work, all the time. The guy boasting about his masturbation career is actually out there selling every day, every minute that he can. (Working from your home office in the total comfort that brings is very motivating! Very motivating, indeed. I'd love to think Coronapanic 2020 has forced the business world to finally, once and for all, accept work from home as the norm and not a deviation, but that would be wishful thinking, wouldn't it?)
There are others, too. Crowdfunding. Just plain begging for donations. Getting published. The possibilities are pretty wide.
BUT.
Here's the deal.
(dramatic carriage return)
Maybe you're doing something different online. Maybe you're trying new things as an entrepreneur, or artist or blogger or culture critic or whatever it is you do. You can drive Uber and tend bar, sure - that's how we've always kept bills paid.
But maybe there's another way?
Needless to say, I've got a twitter thread chock full of Clickbank stuff here. You can review it if you can stomach twitter currently:
My twitter Clickbank thread
I use the Schedule Tweets function to put the tweets out at night or very early in the morning, and keep it in one thread but navigable with lots and lots of hashtags so the world can find it without interfering too much with my tweet page's day to day activity, such as it were.
And
Rakuten:
Shop Gaiam Yoga
Thank you for reading!
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