A Platform to Test Your Affiliate Marketing Offers

Posted: 23 May 2012 05:23 AM PDT

I am always looking for new websites to use as marketing platforms for my projects and products, and an interesting one I found recently is called UKritic.com.

Think about it as a Squidoo for product reviews. Basically users sign-up and write reviews about the product they have used or bought. Unlike other websites with user-generated content, however, UKritic will give you a piece of the action if people reading your reviews end up purchasing the product.

In other words, they are totally fine to have affiliate marketers aboard.

If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing this might actually be a good place to test things out. That is, you could pick a range of products and niches you want to promote and test things out on their platform.

After that you check what types of reviews and products convert better, and then you decide if you want to spend time and money building a whole website around those or not.

Here’s a video explaining how it works in detail:

Right after you sign-up you’ll be able to start writing your reviews. Before your profile becomes public, though, you need to have at least one review approved by the moderators, which is a positive thing in my opinion, as it helps to keep the level of spam down.

If you visit the site you’ll notice that every review has three big orange buttons pointing to the seller’s website: one on top, on on the sidebar and one at the bottom. Guess what, you can provide your affiliate links when writing the review and those buttons will carry it for you, so you get commissions for buyers going through your Ukritic review. You can also embed affiliate links in the body of the review if you prefer.

Overall I think it’s a nice idea, and I believe the approach to support rather than prohibit affiliate marketing will definitely help this platform to become popular, so check it out here.

Original Post: A Platform to Test Your Affiliate Marketing Offers

How To Keep Your Brand Consistency As A Blogger

Posted: 22 May 2012 07:32 AM PDT

A brand is way more than your logo and slogan. The overall style that defines you as a blogger can tell people to expect this and that from you. People tend to like what they recognize. We give trust to things that all to something familiar. If you make it easy for anybody to perceive who you are and you stick to that persona you'll surely make a good impression in the long haul.

To state it upfront: diversity is undeniably good when you are a blogger. You can settle upon a wide range of topics to write about, you get to revamp the site from time to time and explore new ways to express yourself on the social media. A brand's life is more relaxed in the blogosphere than, for instance, in the B2C world where each product has to create strong recognition in order to sell. We all know that.

However, what I am going to say (in the next 200 words or so) is just this: once you have defined your own style, stray from it no more so that you'll earn readers' trust and build a loyal fan base.

Clean your blog's appearance

When it comes to the design of your website, every detail should make a harmonious statement. Choose an assembly of no more than maybe 2-3 matching fonts (Kernest can help you combine them aesthetically). Decide the class parameters for links and set some unitary rules over when to use bold and italic in the body of the articles.

Images and color palettes used on the site also need to be coherent all together. And the core element, your logo, should be nothing less than wonderful. It's a good idea to hire a designer on this, to be sure the graphics will be distinctive and appealing. If you're on a tight budget, 99designs can be a great alternative.

Create a post trademark

It may be a crossed interview held simultaneously by two bloggers with a single interviewee. Or a face-to-face type of post like Daniel does. Or anything you would find relevant. Find a special formula of post and regularly spice up your blog with it. This is a trait of A-list blogs that you can easily put into practice.

Admit your own biases publicly if they exist

It's pretty hard to keep 100% unbiased – and actually few blogs try to. The essential thing is not to camouflate your partialities behind a fake objective tone, or you will lose credibility. First of all, choose carefully who you advocate and make sure you do believe in that party, so that you can write about it in a convincing manner. After that, go ahead and tell people: "This is me and those are my beliefs; now hear what I have to say".

For instance, if you'd like to advocate Microsoft and hence you love Internet Explorer, make your readers aware of that, so that they won't be intrigued that you refused to review their app just because they're on the Firefox bandwagon. You got my point. Maybe you're not in for Pulitzer award, but anyhow it's good to be honest.

Use whitelabels

Customize and adapt everything that may interfere with your public presence and wipe out parasite messages. For instance, we often use third party services to create and disseminate web forms and surveys, newsletters or press releases. In respect for your own image, all materials that are sent to the public should display your own logo and bare the minimum identification elements of the original service.

I really am tired of those newsletters I occasionally with a prominent Vocus mark on their headline. It takes me some 5 seconds to realize the message is actually from a financial blog I subscribed to, and this thing sucks. Consider spending a few bucks more and maybe buying a license for the sake of having a whitelabel material that you can customize for your own brand.

Design a brand-centered Facebook fan page

Apart from the website itself, Facebook is the second best piece of web real estate for your blog. Customize your fan page to display the distinctive appearance of your blog. The cover photo can be a sample of your site's header or a combination of graphics that resemble it, like Lifehacker has. You can unleash your creativity with the Welcome tab HTML – make it speak clearly about your brand!

Remain a real person

A friend’s advice: don’t let your own personality be assimilated to the blog itself. You are the head of it, but you may lose opportunities of networking and personal development if you incorporate your image totally in your work. Put up a profile for yourself on social networks, apart from your business pages. This way you will add value to your business online presence, by proving there is a real human behind it.

Good luck!

Laura Moisei has a degree in Communication and writes for 123ContactForm.com, an app that helps users create web forms and surveys for any blog and webpage. Laura's daily delights are blogging, photography and good food.

Original Post: How To Keep Your Brand Consistency As A Blogger

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