Fred Mwangaguhunga, Founder and CEO of MediaTakeOut.com

Q: Fred, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how MediaTakeOut.com came about?

A: Sure. I started MediaTakeOut.com in January 2006. Before MTO I had a couple of careers. I worked as a corporate tax lawyer on Wall Street, and I started an online-based laundry and dry cleaning service in New York.

People always ask how a person with a non-media background, like myself, decided to move into the Internet news space. The short answer is, I sort of fell into it. When I was working with the laundry service, we spent just about all of our marketing dollars on ads placed in blogs. So I saw first hand how popular they were becoming.

When we eventually sold the laundry business, I figured it made sense to start a blog – and try and get into a growing industry. The rest is history.

Q: What is the most successful online marketing strategy you have implemented?

A: Early on I reached out to larger sites and asked them (begged is probably a better way to describe it) to link to one of our stories. 99% of the time they told us no. But the few times that they did link to us, it provided us a big boost.

Q: What is the least successful online marketing strategy you have implemented?

A: We’ve had a ton of those. We spent money putting together a Myspace page and a Facebook page for MediaTakeOut.com, and neither worked out very well.

I know that a lot of online marketers would disagree with me, but I never really understood how Facebook or Myspace could ever give you a real traffic (or awareness) boost. To me, Myspace and Facebook is all about personal relationships with real people. And anytime I see a company Facebook or Myspace message it looks like Spam to me.

But every marketer that I came across would tell me that I was wrong, and that we needed to have our own Facebook and Myspace page. I finally gave in and had them created. Now looking back, I’m even more convinced that my initial feelings were right.

Q: How do you think social media sites such as Facebook and social news sites such as Digg changed the marketing scope for blogs such as yours?

A: I don’t know about Facebook. As I said above, I’m not sure how much value it can provide. Digg, I think is another story. A single Digg link can send tens of thousands of readers to your site.

The problem with Digg is that they have a very Draconian policy. When a site gets too large, or if it falls out of favor with the powers that be over at Digg, they put it on a ban list, and people are no longer allowed to link to it. Somehow we got on that site, along with TMZ, Perez Hilton and I think every other major entertainment website.

Q: What current platform do you use to run MediaTakeOut.com?

A: We have a custom built Content Management System. It’s built for speed and security.

Q: What current trends do you see in 2010 and on in the online marketing sector?

A: I see more collaboration between companies in 2010. I’m seeing more link exchanges, joint content, and across platform ad sales between sites.

In the past, internet companies had an “every man for himself” attitude. Now things are changing, the industry is beginning to mature and larger companies are becoming more comfortable working with smaller ones, so long as it’s in their interest.

Q: What is the story that has driven the most traffic to your site to date?

A: We were the first place to report that R&B singer Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna. When we first posted that story, we had such an immediate spike in traffic it caused all 6 of our servers to completely seize up.

That was probably the biggest spike in traffic that we’ve seen. It was crazy.

Q: What would be your advice to someone looking to start an online based business?

A: Just start it. All too often new entrepreneurs spend too much time planning. In the world of the internet, the landscape can completely change in a matter of weeks. So if you’ve got a good idea and you’ve done a bit of preparation, get to it.

Q: Does MediaTakeOut.com implement any search engine marketing (i.e. paid search or SEO)? If not, do you plan on implementing any search engine marketing?

A: We use SEO, but have kept away from paid advertising. Actually we’re in the process to a total SEO overhaul of the site. That should be completed in the next 4 weeks, knock on wood.

Q: Who is the target demographic for MediaTakeOut.com?

A: Generally our readers tend to be young (25-40) and fairly well educated. And while most are African American, we have a substantial White and Latino audience as well. We currently have more than 7 million monthly readers and 400 million page views, making us the most popular urban website in the world.

Q: What is the best source of traffic to your website?

A: Search engines provide the most links to our site, with Google performing the best for us. That being said, the vast majority of our traffic comes from readers typing MediaTakeOut.com into the address bar.

Q: How is MediaTakeOut.com currently monetized and which method of monetizing is yielding the best results?

A: We derive all our revenues through advertising.

Fred, again, thanks for doing this interview and wish you much success in 2010 with MediaTakeOut.com. THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE PALATNIKFACTOR.COM INTERVIEW.

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What we really want to focus on is the online marketing of iWearYourShirt.com and how Jason is making this venture such a success. iWearYourShirt has been featured on MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many more.

Q: Jason, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how the idea of iWearYourShirt.com came about?

A: I’ve been in marketing/design for over 10 years, when I graduated college I worked a 9-5 gig and hated it. I co-founded a web design company from my couch and saw some great success from that for 2 years before trying to make money wearing t-shirts . I knew that companies were cutting back on their advertising budgets and that lots of companies weren’t able to use social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc). I figured t-shirts were an easy enough item for companies to make and the majority of them were already doing so. I bought the domain for iwearyourshirt.com late in 2008, had a website up a month later and soon after that I was wearing t-shirts for money. When the last day in 2009 sold out this past August I knew I needed to focus on become a full-time shirt wearer to avoid being a “one hit wonder”. I also knew that I needed a new twist and added value to keep going in 2010 and that’s where adding a second t-shirt wearer (Evan White) came in.

Q: What is the most successful online marketing strategy you have implemented?

A: There have been many success stories that you can read and I’ve posted a handful on the Testimonials page of the new and improved iwearyourshirt.com. I’ve helped people increase sales up to 80%, I’ve increased people’s traffic by over 1000%, increased Twitter followers by the 100s and have a very loyal audience that will comment on a blog post at the drop of a hat. The absolute most successful part of iwearyourshirt.com is the audience of friends I’ve built and the fantastic companies I (now “we”) get to talk about everyday.

Q: What is the least successful online marketing strategy you have implemented?

A: One of the hard parts about promoting a new company everyday is that sometimes a company thinks they know what an audience wants. This hasn’t happened often with me because the companies trust me, but on occasion people ask for things that aren’t realistic. One thing I really don’t like to ask people to do is become a fan of someone on Facebook for no reason. If you want to offer a giveaway for becoming a fan, that’s one thing, but just becoming a fan for the sake of it means nothing. I don’t fan things on Facebook unless I am actually a fan and that’s how I think it should be.

Q: How do you think social media sites such as Facebook and social news sites such as Digg changed the marketing scope for up and coming companies?

A: One of the biggest mistakes I see in the social media space is people/companies forgetting about the first step in using social media. And that step is, being social. If you expect people to keep coming back to your website and you aren’t engaging in conversations with them, remember their names, knowing something about them, you’re doing it wrong. I try extremely hard to know every single person’s name and something about him or her each day because they take the time to do the same with me. I think Digg is going to go by the wayside once all the standard media outlets start implementing social features and listen/converse with their audiences. Facebook is a fantastic resource, but if you aren’t writing on people’s walls, commenting on their photos and engaging with them you won’t get the same thing in return. Twitter has been a tremendous help in the growth of iwearyourshirt.com and a must have for any business. If you aren’t using Twitter Search for your business, you’re missing a ton of costumers.

Q: What current trends do you see in 2010 and on in the online marketing sector?

A: I think we saw a big example of social media becoming a go-to in advertising for big companies with Pepsi pulling their ad spot from the Super Bowl. This is something that I’ve been preaching for a long time, that MILLIONS of dollars are spent on TV and print advertising that have no direct return or personal touch for brands. Everyone ignores commercials on TV and ads in print, why are companies still spending so much money on them? I think a lot of that money will be transferred to people with influence online. We’re already seeing this with some of the most followed users on Twitter and will continue to see create marketing campaigns using Facebook and individual micro-sites.

Q: How were you able to get so much press with your business and is PR a big strategy for your marketing strategy?

A: PR was not a strategy at all. I have no background in PR and didn’t hire an agency. I used the connections I’ve built over the years, asked them to share the idea and focused every day on created unique content for each company. I worked and continue to work 12-14 hours a day and I believe that’s been the key to great press. Hard work pays off right? I do have to admit, I am still shocked that Katie Couric told my story on the evening news!

Q: What would be your advice to someone looking to start an online based business?

A: Don’t do something because you think it might work, do something because you love doing it. I love being social and interacting with people; that’s the entire basis of iwearyourshirt.com. Don’t plan on overnight success because there is no such thing. Put in a lot of hours and if you love doing what you do, it won’t feel like “work”. What are you passionate about? What could you wake up everyday and enjoy doing? Do that and exploit all the awesome and FREE tools around the web. One last bit of advice: Don’t skimp on design. You get what you pay for and first impressions are priceless.

Q: Does IWYS implement any search engine marketing (i.e. paid search or SEO)? If not, do you plan on implementing any search engine marketing?

A: I don’t do it now and I don’t plan on it. Organic traffic is what has built my business and what I hope continues to build it. I’d rather have 100 hungry and dedicated users than 1,000 people who spend 5 seconds on the website a day. I do however know the importance of SEO and implement some simple practices when writing blog posts, using tags in photos and keywords on YouTube daily.

Q: Who is the perfect candidate for IWYS? How can a company sign up for you to wear their shirt and get instant exposure?

A: Companies can buy any of the remaining 60 days in 2010 by going to the calendar on iwearyourshirt.com and looking for available days. Evan skydives once a month on Saturdays and our traffic is pretty solid throughout the rest of the week. Our audience is very engaged and loves to meet new companies. Last year I wore shirts for Zappos.com, LifeLock.com, Bill Cosby, Turbo Tax and a whole slew of other great companies, but I also supported bloggers, startups and more. We’re all about having fun and delivering social media content for companies for a very affordable price.

Amanda Steinberg from DailyWorth.com - Credit: Jeremy Messler

Amanda has been featured on Forbes and more recently, in an Inc article showcasing entrepreneurs and their start-ups.

Q: Amanda, can you tell us a little bit more about DailyWorth and how the idea to start this came about?

A: DailyWorth is a free daily email about personal finance for women. Here’s why I started it: In my 20s, I was a great earner, making upwards of 100K annually. When I turned 30, I realized that I had nothing to show for it. I hit a breaking point: I was deep into 60 hour work weeks, and I still wasn’t making ends-meet. To make matters worse, I’ve fought off debt and overspending my entire adult life. I was living life under the assumption that, if I made more money, I’d have more money. That’s not how it works. Statistics abound detailing how women, far more than men, have issues around money — specifically as it pertains to earning and saving. I started DailyWorth to help women like me establish real net worth.

Q: How many subscribers does DailyWorth have?

A: 9,000

Q: How do you monetize DailyWorth.com?

A: Now – ad sponsorships. We’re also building relationships in lead generation and webinars.

Q: Can you share with us your current online marketing strategies?

A: My target market is women aged 25-45, though we’re reaching many women into their 60s! I’m currently making use of both paid and unpaid advertising. An example of unpaid? I guest blog for Etsy. Paid? We’re a sponsor of the White House Project – a non-profit that develops women as leaders. Both organizations offer extensive exposure to my target market.

Q: Have you placed heavy focus if any at all on search engine marketing (i.e. pay-per-click or search engine optimization)?

A: No, none. I’m doing too well with my existing efforts and not sure that the conversion would be there. Then again, if anyone wants to send me a proposal

Q: What current social media strategies are you currently using to drive traffic to DailyWorth.com (i.e. Facebook, Digg, etc)?

A: Facebook and Twitter. Twitter has been the best. Facebook allows me to have direct relationships with readers and get instant feedback. I love that.

Q: What current online marketing strategy has proven to be most successful?

A: Email marketing of course, and guest blogging on niche sites (Etsy, ForbesWomen) with a lot of traffic. I’ve had a bit of luck with online contests, but the subscribers I get through them I think aren’t as loyal. I think they just signed up for the prize.

Q: What would be your advice to someone who wants to or is just starting their own online business (ecommerce, blog, etc)?

A: Make sure you understand your MODEL> that is — how you will make money. Look for comparable businesses. Just because you have a great idea doesn’t in any way shape or form mean it will make money.

We really appreciate your time Amanda and wish you much success with DailyWorth.com. THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE PALATNIKFACTOR.COM INTERVIEW.

Today we’re talking with owner Franklin Antoian regarding how iBodyFit is succeeding online and what online marketing strategies are taking his business to the next level.

Q: Franklin, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how the idea for iBodyFit.com came about?

A: I am a Personal Fitness Trainer. I genuinely love getting people fit and healthy. I work with my clients one on one in their homes in Palm Beach, Florida. My services are
$100 /hr. However, most people do not have that in their budget. I decided to take my unique training style and offer my services world wide with iBodyFit.com. Online clients can now get a month of personal training for less than the cost of 1 hour in person!

Q: What online marketing strategies are you currently implementing?

A: We are currently using affiliate marketing with fitness and health websites, blogs, and e-book owners, such as Kelley Herring at www.healinggourmet.com. The advertising is free and the commissions/sales are excellent. Email newsletters work well, too.

Our website is amazing and stands for itself. We have to thank our web designer, Jon Moldofsky at www.JGrantDesign.com

Q: What online marketing strategy is proving to be most successful?

A: N/A

Q: How is search engine marketing (pay-per-click and/or SEO) playing a role with your online marketing if any?

A: I started with pay per click advertising, but the cost was too high compared to the results. SEO is a better way to go, in my opinion. Better to put money into SEO.

Q: What type of social media marketing is currently being used to market iBodyFit.com?

A: You have to be on facebook, twitter, myspace and more if you want to succeed with an online business. By nature, I am a private person. This is a challenge when it comes to ‘putting yourself out there’ in social media, but I am working with the talented team at unu2.com for this.

Q: What’s in the future plans for iBodyFit.com?

A: To get everyone in the world fit and healthy.

Q: What would be your advice for someone who wants to or is just starting a business online?

A: Simple. Do what you love. Put your heart and passion into your business. The money will come later.

Thank you for sitting down with us today Franklin and wish you and iBodyFit.com much success.

Q: Rand, thanks for joining us. I think, as many people do, SEO is still growing in terms of people getting into it, as well as the demand for it. What do you think is the state of the industry as it is now and going into 2010?

A: At SEOmoz, we’ve been doing a lot of digging into the state of the SEO industry and what the future is likely to be. The conclusions we’ve come to are:

* The investment in SEO is going to increase at a dramatic pace over the next 5 years – marketers see more value in SEO than virtually any other tactic – online or off.

* The search marketing field is in a state of imbalance that can’t last forever. $14 billion dollars was spent on PPC last year and those paid search results received <10% of all clicks in the SERPs. SEO received $1.4 Billion in spend and more than 90% of the clicks. Disparities like this simply don't last forever.

* SEO is still very fragmented and still has a somewhat negative perception - that's been eroding and it's going to continue to do so as it becomes a more serious, standardized online marketing practice.

Q: People seem to be questioning the legitimacy of directories as a solid SEO tactic as they believe they don’t hold much weight anymore. Is paying $300 on a Business.com or Yahoo directory link still worth it?

A: I tend to think that for most businesses doing serious SEO and earning lots of revenue via the web, those listings are likely to be worthwhile, as are a few others. Where Google and the other engines (basically just Bing, now) are going to be reducing value is in the many pay-to-play directories that are essentially attempts to monetize links and PageRank.

Q: A link building strategy can be very diverse and very time consuming. Where do you start?

A: We recommend starting with analysis. Figure out what you need to do – who’s in front of you, how far ahead are they, what sort of links do you need to compete, etc.? Sometimes, you’re low on link diversity, other times it’s anchor text or raw juice (PageRank). You need to have goals in mind before you being a link campaign. Once you’ve set them out, you should also figure out what you’re good at and what will work? Is it manual link building, linkbait/viral content, embedded widgets, blogging, social media, etc.

There’s no doubt link building is challenging, but starting off by identifying the needs and the strategy is much wiser than just jumping in and trying to swim before you’ve figured out how far you need to go and what stroke to use.

Q: What are you favorite SEO tools?

A: C’mon, I’m totally biased here Obviously I think these – www.seomoz.org/tools – are terrific, but I also like www.seo-browser.com and DaveN’s Keyword Density Tool (even though keyword density is a complete myth). One thing I will say is that the SEOmoz toolbar (http://www.seomoz.org/mozbar) has gotten really excellent with the latest update. The “analyze page” button is possibly the most useful thing in my SEO toolbox of late.

Q:What are your top 5 SEO blogs?

I won’t even name ours, but I regularly read:

* www.searchengineland.com
* www.searchenginejournal.com
* www.seobook.com/blog
* www.marketingpilgrim.com
* www.davidnaylor.co.uk/blog

Q: As an authority in the SEO industry, how do you keep up with the industry, get the insights, etc?

A: Doing lots and lots of work on SEO topics, consulting, building tools that try to mimic the engines’ behavior and skimming everything I find on the subject keeps me on top of things. I think that the Q+A at SEOmoz – www.seomoz.org/qa – has also been really instructive in showing me the problems everyday SEOs face.

Q: Five most important on page SEO Factors?

A: I actually just wrote about this! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization – basically, the list goes:

* Title Tag
* URL
* HTML Content
* Alt Attribute of an Image
* Meta Description

Q: No-follow attribute. Should it be used, when and how?

A: As I’ve said on the blog, I really don’t recommend it for new sites or sites that are undergoing re-architecting and re-designs. However, if you’re currently employing it now, it might actually be dangerous to simply remove all instances before you shore up the potential crawl/link bandwidth leaks that could make the engines focus their energies on all the wrong places.

Q: What is the most difficult aspect of SEO for you?

A: For me, personally, the biggest challenge of late has been convincing VCs that there’s a huge market potential in SEO. We’ve been out doing some fundraising (see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-startup-experience-vc-entrepreneurship-selfanalysis-the-road-ahead) and there’s still a distinct lack of awareness about the field and where SEO sits (and could sit) in the marketing food chain. My guess is that other SEOs struggle with this at client pitches and internally at marketing meetings (for in-house folks) and it’s going to continue to be hard for a long time to come. I suspect that’s also the reason this graphic was a hit:

Q: We’re almost nearing 2010, what trends do you see rising or upcoming in terms of new SEO strategies, etc?

A: I see a lot of SEOs putting time and energy into Twitter, but I’m not sure that it yet has the returns and SEO impact they’re hoping for. I do, however, see a ton of value in vertical search – Google Local, Product Search, Google Base, etc. I think many smart SEOs are on the cutting edge of vertical/universal search and find ways to take advantage of these results (which are, generally, much less competitive). I’d say that classic linkbait is getting harder, though creative strategies are still effective and anytime you can marry viral content with embedded badges/widegets, you’ve got a potentially winning formula.

Really appreciate your time Rand. If you guys want to check out a quality SEO blog filled with solid information, check out SEOmoz.org.

Thanks for asking Pablo.

Well, SEO as an industry is growing steadily. I’m not going to go so far as to say it has been recession proof, but experienced SEOs I know who may have been looking for work in the past year had no trouble finding it.

It’s true that many, many more people are jumping on the SEO bandwagon and the field is starting to feel a bit crowded. The issue is that so many of the new SEOs are just tacticians, it is still rather rare to find someone who’s been in the field long enough to have a real handle on strategy. I’d recommend someone wanting to get into the field to work for someone else or an established firm for a while first, preferably with an old timer willing to and able to share some knowledge.

As for as 2010, the need and desire for SEO is only going to get stronger and the new SEOs are only going to get more experienced. Demand is going to rise faster than the experience and competition for the “cherry” projects is going to get tougher. I’m looking forward to it.

Q: Please give us the John Carcutt point view on PageRank, what it means, and how significant it is to SEO (if at all)?

The main thing PageRank is not is a metric. Do not grade the quality of a linking program by the movement of PR.

First, there are two forms of PR, the “Toolbar PR” and the “Actual PR”. You will never know a page’s Actual PR as Google will never publish it and most likely it is not even the same scale of 0-10 we are so used to. This PR is fluid and changes as often as you build links. This is the PR that affects the rankings of your pages.

The “Toolbar PR” until recently was only updated every quarter or so and is valuable mainly as an indicator. This type of PR is useful to monitor change or quickly evaluate the general strength of a page.

The interesting thing most people don’t understand about PR is that a specific niche or market segment contains a dedicated amount of PR that is distributed throughout the niche. This “amount” can grow and shrink based on the market activity and competition. Matt Cutts has even suggested to us that a specific niche can gain too much PR and the entire amount is reduced impacting almost every site in a niche.

That said, PR is nowhere near as important as is used to be. This is not to say that link building is not important, it is still a major cornerstone of any SEO program. However, don’t rely on PR as the metric to measure link building’s impact.

Q:Given tighter budgets and giving more thought on paid directories like paying yahoo $299 for a link, what paid directories are worth putting your money into?

This is one of those things I have to look at on a per client basis. Some sites may gain from top tier directory listings for others it may not be worth the effort. New sites can get a jump on the deep crawl sometimes if they get listed in these. Existing sites with a decent set of back links may not benefit at all.

Take a look at the budget as well. Can you spend that $299 you might give to Yahoo! on other link building techniques that would give better results based on the market? For example, a local pizza joint may see better results spending that $299 on a few local site listings as opposed to one general pizza listing on Yahoo. It’s a “Bang for the Buck” kind of thing.

Q: What are your most successful link building strategies? (I’m sure the readers will appreciate this but only list what you’d like =) ) Or to rephrase, which link building strategies do you find most effective?

The most effective link building strategy I use is “diversification”. Be creative and use a variety of link build techniques. If you find your using the same techniques over and over again, make yourself do something different to build that next link. Engines look for natural link growth; this by its very natural means the types of links found should be diverse. Don’t get stuck in a link building rut.

Q: What are you favorite SEO tools?

My all time favorite tool is one I have used for SEO Audits for as long as I can remember. It’s Rex Swains “HHTP Viewer” http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html I can’t tell you how many issues this has resolved for me over the years. It’s great for redirect identification, but it also displays the actual code sent by the server to the browser prior to any browser side modifications.

Jon is putting together some great stuff over at Raven-SEO-Tools.com and I am also working with a new tool out of Germany called Search Metrics. Both of these provide great resources for tracking and reporting on SEO.

Q: How do your SEO efforts differ when it comes to optimizing for Yahoo vs. Google

To be honest, not much. Good SEO practices should have you performing similarly on both engines.

If I am seeing vast differences between the two, I know that Google will weigh links more than Yahoo and Yahoo will weigh content heavier than Google. So I can make adjustments based on that.

Q: How do you see this Bing/Yahoo deal playing out for SEOs? Any serious implications or changes?

This is going to depend tremendously on how the integration is actually handled. How much control will Yahoo retain over the actual SERPs. What type and how much data is Bing going to send over to Yahoo. We just don’t know yet. For all we know, Bing could just be the data center and Yahoo would continue to apply its own algorithm to that data. We just don’t know.

The two big questions I have are … What happens to paid inclusion and are we going to lose Site Explorer? It will be interesting to see.

Q: Does Dmoz still hold serious weight?

This goes back to the same issue as we discussed for directories over all. It depends; some pages of that site will provide much more benefit than others. For example, if your category page has 150 listings, it’s not going to pass much link juice at all.

I don’t see any reason not to submit; it’s free and only takes a few minutes once you find the right category. Don’t worry about your listing, as many others often say, Dmoz is “submit it and forget it”.

Q: Due to spamming techniques of link building, many say the algos will go back to rank more based on content than links, how do you see this?

I don’t know who these “many” are, but they need to remember there are plenty of content spamming techniques as well. The algos will continue to contain a wide variety of factors and they will add new ones all the time.

Will content become more important than links? Some people have always maintained that opinion. I see that debate continuing for quite some time.

If you want to talk about changes to the algos, let’s talk about how local factors and real time search are going to change the game. I am already seeing IP based local search factors influencing my SERPs even when I am not logged into personal search. Real time search may end up having a large impact on the algos and what we do as SEOs.

Q: What is the biggest mis-conception of SEO today?

It’s the thought that SEO is an “Add-on” to your site that makes it perform better in the search engines.

More people need to learn and understand (even SEOs) that this process is a business process and should be included at every level of site’s lifespan. SEO is not something you do to your site; it’s something you do with your business.

I guess to put it simply; the mis-conception is that most people don’t think they need an SEO to be involved until they need meta data or some links. The fact is SEOs are needed from the day the site is conceived until the day it is turned off.

Thanks for the questions Pablo, I really enjoyed the conversation.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED INTERVIEW AT NO COMPENSATION TO PALATNIKFACTOR.COM.

Q: What are some important factors clients need to have in their e-commerce platform

A: There are many important factors for any e-commerce platform, but I will describe the top six factors that FORTUNE3 considers to be the most important, and therefore the factors which we have prioritized for our shopping cart software and service:

The first and foremost, would be site perfect functionality. A successful online store needs to function with perfection, never showing customers errors or problems while browsing or shopping. This is something that is basic, but far too many e-commerce software providers overlook. Fortune3 has given special emphasis to having all of our customers’ sites perfectly functioning and arranged.

A second and equally important factor is feature set. Having a system that has a complete feature set is essential, it enables a site administrator to alter the site, the shopping cart and checkout functionality to the point where it is fully flexible, adapting to the needs of each company. Having a good feature set can also make the order fulfillment process and offering support to your customers a much easier task, saving you money and time.

The third most important factor is having a software that optimizes online stores for marketing and search engines. An e-commerce website cannot sell unless it is exposed to potential customers on the web, therefore an essential part of establishing a successful online store is the ability of the e-commerce platform / software to get the site listed on search engines, with a high ranking. Fortune3′s software has accomplished maximum search engine exposure for our customers by making sure that every single page on our customers’ sites is properly optimized for search engines (meta tags, creating .html static pages, text optimization, etc).

The fourth important factor is having a superb customer support team for the e-commerce platform. Getting quality, fast, and efficient customer support for your online store is as essential as anything else. A complete e-commerce system is a huge software, containing millions of lines of code and thousands of features and functionalities, therefore, it is important to have an expert support staff ready to answer your questions, guiding you to fixing issues, and helping you with anything that you cannot figure out on your own. A successful online store cannot be sustained without a proper customer support staff. This is why in our company, we pride ourselves of offering 24/7 customer support, answering 95% of our support inquiries within 20-60 minutes.

The fifth most important factor is security. Security is an essential part of achieving online sales. At the first sign of any security vulnerability, most of your customers will abandon your checkout, mostly because they are afraid that their personal and payment information will not be safe. The checkout and secure pages must, and I emphasize this, must have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate installed, and clearly visible for your customers. A lock icon should be shown on the browser on all secure checkout and login pages, where customers enter sensitive information. Fortune3 provides all of our shopping cart software users with a free Geotrust SSL. It also always helps to get additional security products that assures your customers that their information is safe. For example, we offer customers the ability to purchase more advanced SSL certificates, which can include a clickable Site Seal by the trusting agency (Geotrust) being shown on each page of the site, assuring customers that their information is secured through a Geotrust SSL, and the Browser “Green Bar” SSL, which turns the URL bar of your site to a green color, and displays your company name to customers on your secure pages. Our ecommerce hosting platform and databases are also 100% PCI compliant, offering our users the ability to sign up for a PCI-Scanning account through a company like ControlScan or McaFee, so they can display a logo or Seal on their site certifying that your site is PCI Compliant to their potential customers. All of these additional security features and seals can greatly increase an online store’s sales, by up to 20%.

The sixth and final factor is design, layout, and branding. Having a beautiful and professional site layout and logo can really impress visitors and build visitor trust in your company. Many potential customers could be turned away by a non-professionally designed website. Impressing potential customers on their first click with a high-end professional and clean design, will surely increase any company’s sales. Branding is also very important, and so having a good logo can make all the difference in the world. This is why we have made the Fortune3 ecommerce software completely flexible for design and layout, and we also offer custom design services, which involves our expert graphic and web design dept. building a professional custom design, logo, and page layout for our users.

Q: What current trends do you see rising right now that will have an impact in the next year for online retailers?

A: Social features and video

Q: With the current economy in a downturn, what are some things online retailers can do during times like these to stay on top of their game?

A: A good strategy during economic downturns is always to balance your budget, finding the best solution your dollars can give you, for the lowest dollar amount possible. This is a big reason why our monthly plans are very inexpensive, to give our customers and users a chance to have a successful online business, without breaking their wallets.

Q: What would you say is the major upside between having software based e-commerce store than web-based?

A: There are many advantages to having a partially PC based e-commerce system like ours, as opposed to a fully web based (browser based) system. There are also some disadvantages, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, and that is why we chose to have our software partially PC-based.

In more detail, the 3 most important advantages of having a PC-based ecommerce system are the following:

a. Your PC is and always will be much faster than any web site, or anything being accessed by a web browser. Therefore, building and making changes to your e- commerce site will always be much faster with a PC-Based software like ours.

b. Your PC is equipped with great tools, that web applications are not equipped with, making the software more versatile and easier to manage when it is PC-Based. A great example is our software’s unique Product Tree structure, which allows you to manage your products in a Tree-like structure, making it extremely fast, efficient, and easy to build and make changes to your product information and structure. Our PC-based “Tree” structure also enables you to quickly and easily re-organize your categories, products and options, or any part of your product structure, with tools like copy / paste and drag / drop. The use of most of these tools would not possible with web-based software, and isn’t. These are tools that make our software and system truly unique.

c. Data and Backups stored on both local PC, and servers. By using a PC-based software like Fortune3, you will have backups of your site’s data on both your computer, and on our servers. This assures you that no data will ever be lost with our platform. This also enables you to recover older backup files and data, in case you make a mistake and need to retrieve an older version of your site, this is always available with a system like ours.

Q: Has the current economic situation affected the amount of businesses opening up web-based stores or do you see an increase in business?

A: We have seen a slowness in growth in new businesses opening up online stores, but it is starting to turn around now. E-Commerce is a young and growing industry, and it is still continuing to grow even with the current economic down… a slowdown in growth is all we noticed, but that seems to be abating now as well.

Q: What is Fortune3 doing to stay innovative in the world of e-commerce?

A: Fortune3 is always releasing new features, new versions, and integrating new technologies that become available into our ecommerce software platform. We release a new major version once a year, and deploy about 200 new features each year. These new features are always built using the latest programming technologies, to make them as efficient and user-friendly as possible.

Q: In the coming year, will fees for e-commerce businesses, such as credit card fees, online store fees, increase? Decrease?

A: Fees for online stores and credit card processing are usually pretty stable, since they are mostly based on transaction fees (percentages). I do not see this changing in the next year, but this also depends on overall economic inflation / deflation.

Q: If you had to give one piece of advice for someone is about to jump into an e-commerce business, what would it be?

A: Find the best software, with the best support staff, and best hosting platform (Fortune3- sorry for the shameless plug but I believe and endorse our product), work hard to have a beautiful and professional site, and to get your site exposure, and you will be successful.

Thank you David. If you’re looking to try out a software based e-commerce platform, you can download the Fortune3 free shopping cart software trial at www.Fortune3.com

Nick Passalacqua of Predictivedollars.com is a cutting edge entrepreneur with over 8 years of expertise in the lead generation field and plans to expand the growth of the company through its recent purchase of Savebig.com. Savebig.com will be a resource to empower consumers to spend less and save money in order to free up cash for the things they really want out of life. This will allow Predictivedollars.com to enter into multiple financial verticals among other products and help consumers save big on everything across the internet from credit card debt to electronics.

Mr. Passalacqua previously owned another lead generation company which he grew to well over 1000 clients and was later sold to one of his competitors. He was recently quoted, saying “I am excited to be in the lead generation industry where I can excel due to my innovative nature and have mutually benefiting relationships to all parties involved not to mention our ninety percent client retention rate to back it up.”

The company is currently expanding its workforce by 8 times its current capacity at their new corporate headquarters located in Boynton Beach Florida formerly the headquarters for Motorola.

Nick, tell us a little about Predictive Dollars?

A: Predictivedollars.com is a quality lead generation firm specializing in debt settlement leads among other lead gen verticals. We own and operate a significant amount of web properties in which we generate high quality and a high quantity of leads on a daily basis. Our web properties are dedicated to consumers who are financially distressed and in need of a solution to eliminate existing debt. To date we have generated over 47 billion dollars in consumer debt inquiries and all leads are delivered to our clientele in “real-time” after they pass a 16 point electronic validation system for accuracy.

Why is it a good time to be in the Debt Settlement Industry?

A:I am glad you asked all though that is a tough one. There is no doubt the debt settlement industry is growing at record paces and their is plenty of opportunities for consumers to potentially alleviate their existing debt and also for debt settlement companies to prosper like never before. The challenge the industry currently faces is as the economies financial distress grows daily it is unfortunate that some families must choose between feeding their families or paying off their debts and the choice is obvious. This creates which is known in the debt settlement industry as fallout ratios and they are at record highs though many DS companies remain cash flow positive.

What would you tell any affiliate trying to generate B2C Leads?

A: I would tell them to take the high road of standards and ethical practices at all costs. Many leads companies get into the business with the intention of short term gains and wind up with an unprecedented amount of irrevocable long term failure just like some debt settlement companies. I am ecstatic to say I wear the name of my company Predictivedollars.com proudly.

How do you see the standing of the Lead Industry as you see it today?

A: When it comes to the lead industry the battle over quantity vs. quality and lead vendor vs their customers is never ending. April, 2009 statistics show no signs of letting up, especially as dollars remain tighter and sales cycles longer. You know this battle and the side you’re on usually boils down to your role on either the marketing or sales team.

Marketing wants a flood of leads and to keep the pipeline full. The sales team wants a flood of leads, too — but they don’t want to waste their time with unqualified leads or dead-ends. Oversimplified? Sure. But in general, this is still how the quantity vs. quality tug-of-war plays out in many organizations.

The most devastating problem overall is debt settlement companies which keep non performing employees and deflate the overall results of perfectly legitimate lead companies. Many debt settlement companies believe more employees is a good thing when in fact 80% of their business comes from 20% of their employees, this is obvious sales 101. Do the math? This causes an extreme deterioration to a companies over all R.O.I. and the lack of results are blamed on the lead providers. Also technology and relevant communications play a crucial role in a companies overall chance of survival in this day and age and PredictiveDollars.com by far is steps ahead of our competition on every level of technology and communications we just wish more debt settlement companies would invest richly in technology as well.

What do you think about incentivized leads?

A: 3 words. Set for failure.

Is the current economy hurting the lead industry?

A: Absolutely not. As the economy toughens the amount of lead inquiries for those in need of a debt solution rises. The only challenge we face as a company is state to state legislation in which hurts our overall margins because most debt settlement companies can only do business in a handful of states and we take in lead inventory on a nationwide basis.

What should new affiliates or lead generators be watching out for?

A: They should watch and learn how to adapt to market conditions like a chameleon and I will leave it at that.

UPDATE: Since there are some comments regarding the lead verification system PredictiveDollars uses, below is an image:

**SPECIAL NOTE**: PredictiveDollars is a client of mine. I have absolutely no involvement in Predictive Dollars business, only SEO. Please do not leave comments invovling Predictive Dollars employees, this is not the forum to do so. This is simply an interview regarding Debt Settlement Leads which was an industry (Lead Generation in general) I was invovled in and always had an interest. You can contact the owners and employees of PredictiveDollars for any questions or concerns at their website, www.predictivedollars.com. I try to do interviews with many clients I work with on a temporary or daily basis. Thanks.

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]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2009/04/30/the-future-of-debt-settlement-leads-by-nick-passalacqua/feed/ 15 http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/12/10/10-seo-questions-with-ann-smarty-from-seosmartycom/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/12/10/10-seo-questions-with-ann-smarty-from-seosmartycom/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:12:42 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=865
Following the PalatnikFactor.com interview series, this week our interview guest is Ann Smarty. For those of you who dont’ know Ann, she writes probably one of the most popular blog posts’ on SEO in Search Engine Journal and you can follow her SEJ post here. She also writes on her blog, SEOSmarty.com and has built a great following and reputation over the last couple of months.

1- Q: Ann, thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. I’ll start with the same question I started with Aaron. I think, as many people do, SEO is still growing in terms of people getting into it, as well as the demand for it. What do you think is the state of the industry as it is now and going into 2009?

A: First, thanks for the questions – I love being interviewed Now to the question: I am glad the industry is evolving. Probably it’s just me but I have an impression that SEO is moving to a more quality level. It’s not just trying to cheat search engines any more – it’s about creating value and applying creative approaches.

2- Q: What are your most successful link building strategies? (I’m sure the readers will appreciate this but only list what you’d like =) ) Or to rephrase, which link building strategies do you find most effective?

A: Building relationships with bloggers… I’ve done quite a few posts on that recently sharing my secrets. Besides, competitive research has been awesome help too: select your competitors and combine all their most successful tactics in one.

3- Q:What are you favorite SEO tools?

A: Link Diagnosis, and recently launched SEMrush (by Russian developers).

4- Q: What are your top 5 SEO blogs?

A:I have already listed them in one of the previous interviews. But they are always the same, so:
Search Engine Journal - I love blogging for the site and it now feels like home;
SEOmoz – that’s the first place I joined when deciding to start my own SEO company, that’s where I met most of the friends and that’s where all smartest people in SEO share ideas!
SEOroundtable – the best resource for SEO forum news;
SEO Book – who doesn’t love Aaron?
SEO ROI - Gab is a good friend and clever guy! I enjoy reading his blog.

5- Q: How does this latest Google promote feature factor into your SEO strategies (with Google)?

A:It hasn’t influenced my strategy in any way yet (and I doubt if it will). To me SEO is doing things right (clean code, good content, right keywords) – this is not going to change, I guess

6- Q: You wrote an article on SEJ which I’ve blogged about recently on Google sitelinks which is still a mystery to many. From the theories you listed in that post, have you found one to be the most on-point?

A:From my experience factors that really matter include:
- term competitiveness;
- domain age + external backlinks;
- internal structure

As for the last one, I am sure it is important and saw evidence to that (changing the internal anchor text and interlinking to get the page appear in the sitelinks) but I can’t say I can control that much. With some sites, it works, with others – don’t. You can try searching [seosmarty] to see that Google picked up some really unexpected pages to show as my site sitelinks.

7- Q: Five most important on page SEO Factors?

A:For the page (not the site / domain)
- Page titles;
- Page unique content (versus template driven / sitewide elements);
- Page H-tags;
- Page links (both internal and external);
- Page HTML code (make sure everything is seen by the Googlebot).

8- Q: Three most important off page SEO Factors?

A: – Internal interlinking and internal anchor text;
- Site architecture;
- Robots.txt (it’s often used wrong and prevents the site from doing well);

Off-site factors:
- Links No matter how much we are trying to guess if Google takes other factors into account (traffic, bounce rate, etc) backlinks are still most important.
- Domain age;
- Domain past records (reputation).

9- Q: No-follow tag. Should it be used, when and how?

A:Nofollow attribute you mean? On the link level (versus the nofollow page meta tag I mean).
I am using it to link to dynamic pages (e.g. Google search results) or to link to site sub pages that contain nothing but a form. I don’t believe it flags the site or there is anything wrong with it but I am not getting obsessed by it (I know people that nofollow every single external link).

10- Q: What do you think is the next big “thing” for SEO such as social media became?

A:Tough question… I’d say I wish I knew The Internet is changing so fast and I am having hard time predicting what is going to stick. Social search? Not sure… Anyway, if you know what it’s going to be please let me know so that I had time to get prepared

More Interviews:

- 10 SEO Questions with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com

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]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/12/10/10-seo-questions-with-ann-smarty-from-seosmartycom/feed/ 4 http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/11/25/10-seo-questions-with-aaron-wall-from-seobookcom/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/11/25/10-seo-questions-with-aaron-wall-from-seobookcom/#comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:47:53 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/?p=797
As the PalatnikFactor.com launches its first interview for the Interview Series, the first guest is non other than Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com. For those of you who don’t know who Aaron Wall is, he is probably one if not the most popular SEO out there. Aaron has been mentioned in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Time Magazine, MSNBC and much more. Read more about Aaron Wall.

Q:Aaron, thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. I think, as many people do, SEO is still growing in terms of people getting into it, as well as the demand for it. What do you think is the state of the industry as it is now and going into 2009?

A:I think the industry is going well, but many of the people who really know what they are doing are moving away from the client services area and toward the build your own profitable sites model. SEOs are becoming more holistic internet marketers…which bodes well for their long-term value as the web keeps evolving.

Q:Please give us the Aaron Wall point view on PageRank, what it means, and how significant it is to SEO (if at all)?

A:PageRank helps Google determine the relative authority of different pages and how deep to crawl through a website (more PageRank means you can get more pages indexed). It is only one element of the relevancy algorithms, but plays a much bigger role in determing things like

• Crawl depth
• Crawl rate
• Number of pages they are willing to index
• What index those pages go in

It also has a higher order effect on how some algorithms or filters are applied against your site. For example, a high PageRank old site can have a lot of duplicate content with little to no risk…but if a smaller newer site does the same they can end up getting whacked.

Q:Given tighter budgets and giving more thought on paid directories like paying yahoo $299 for a link, what paid directories are worth putting your money into?

A:Three great ones are the Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, and BOTW. There are a few smaller ones that are decent as well, but the more often one lists them the more likely they are to get nuked by the Google spam team. Don’t forget to look for industry specific and local directories and organizations.

Q:The whole issue of the sandbox with Google, is this a legitimate concern?

A:It takes time to build up enough quality signals to rank for competitive keywords. If you need traffic right away it might be cheaper and faster to buy an established site and build it out rather than starting from scratch. If you have a strong brand and/or strong public relations you can build quality signals fairly quickly and be able to rank a new site much quicker than others would be able to do.

Q:What are your most successful link building strategies? (I’m sure the readers will appreciate this but only list what you’d like =) ) Or to rephrase, which link building strategies do you find most effective?

A:Things involving social interaction and ego stroking do well on the ROI front. Giving away software and tools is another great strategy.

Q:What are you favorite SEO tools?

A:There are a lot of great competitive research tools that just came out. SEM Rush and The Google Search-Based Keyword Tool are nice. So is Compete.com.

Analytics tools are also nice for digging into your site to see how it interacts with search and where you should be spending more effort to rank. Xenu Link Sleuth is also nice for looking at your site structure.

My favorite SEO tool is still SEO for Firefox. Our keyword tool is nice because it helps you dig into more data available from other keyword tools. It might be a bit overwhelming for newbies, but it is nice to be able to access many keyword research tools in one spot.

We list a bunch of other SEO tools on our site. Some people only promote their own tools, but we promote whatever we think is useful. A lot of it comes down to personal preference…there are so many tools that there are many different ways to do the job.

Q:What are your top 5 SEO blogs?

• Search Engine Land – they cover more news than anybody else.
• Johnon – honesty and bluntness and off the grid thinking you just don’t see on most SEO blogs.
• Wolf-howl – Michael Gray’s blog is similar to Johnon to some degree, but with more frequent posts.
• SugarRae – lots of great publishing insights from the perspective of a publisher and an affiliate.
• Matt Cutts – the official voice of Google in the battle against SEOs ?

There are lots of other great blogs out there that I read daily, like the new We Build Pages blog, SEOMoz, Dave Naylor’s blog, SEO Black Hat, Stuntdubl, Tropical SEO,
Shoemoney, Bob Massa’s blog, Search Engine Journal, and Brian Provost’s Scoreboard Media blog.

Q:As an authority in the SEO industry, how do you keep up with the industry, get the insights, etc?

A:Instant messaging with friends is also a nice way to get a second or third opinion. Our private community forums are great for filtering out the noise but offering a variety of opinions from successful people who have different backgrounds and perspectives.

A lot of it I learn through creating new websites, seeing how they rank, and monitoring the search results over time to pick up trends. Conferences and reading patents and search research helps me pick up some of the macro-trends as well.

Q:How do your SEO efforts differ when it comes to optimizing for Yahoo vs. Google?

A:If I have a low authority new site it will take a while for it to do well in Google. Typically it will take even longer to rank in Yahoo!. If there is a keyword I feel I must rank for in Yahoo! when I have a new site I might be more inclined to do 1 of 4 things

• Buy an old site
• Publish content on an old well trusted site
• Use Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Use the Yahoo! Search Submit program

Q:How does this latest Google promote feature factor into your SEO strategies (with Google)?

A:It is still new…am uncertain how much they will use it, but if they do then creating the type of content that people would want to bookmark and share is important. Branding would increase in value.

Also the type of people looking for an additional voice beyond what they find in Google’s organic results are the type of people who would be likely to be able to cite / link to quality resources…if you like the concept of social media then you have to appreciate that this is another channel to be found through.

Aaron, thank you for your time!

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]]> http://palatnikfactor.com/2008/11/25/10-seo-questions-with-aaron-wall-from-seobookcom/feed/ 19 http://palatnikfactor.com/2007/04/03/interview-thoughts-w-kris-jones-from-pepperjam-thinking-outside-the-box/ http://palatnikfactor.com/2007/04/03/interview-thoughts-w-kris-jones-from-pepperjam-thinking-outside-the-box/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:11:29 +0000 Pablo Palatnik http://palatnikfactor.com/2007/04/03/interview-thoughts-w-kris-jones-from-pepperjam-thinking-outside-the-box/ There is so much information out there (online) that is so valuable if you are in the SEO/SEM/Affiliate Marketing industry. It is an ever changing industry which literally, everyday there is something new to know about, new strategies, ideas, etc.

One blog I personally follow is the Pepperjam Blog. It is written by Kris Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjam, which is one of the largest and fastest growing Full-Service Internet Marketing agency’s in the U.S.

I met Kris at the Elite Retreat in San Fran where he gave his presentation on Search Arbitrage and had a great example with his Ugg Australia campaign he did as an affiliate project.

Kris wrote a blog about “Thinking Outside The Box.” I don’t think it’s an option anymore in our industry, its almost a MUST these days. In such a competitive market, ideas being shared, you must stand out to beat your competition and do something not too many of us have caught on to (eventually we will, but if you’re the first, it’ a huge jump start).

The train of thought that comes to most of us is, “What is everyone else doing that I’m not?” This is our thought when we’re not successful at something of course and than you hear guys like Shoemoney making a killing from affiliate offers. We should ask ourselves, “What can I do that no one else is doing?” You might be thinking every idea is taken but the internet is still new and the possibilities to get creative are endless, you just have to find a way.

Here are questions I asked Kris about some things I was curious to find out myself:

1) In such a competitive industry as we are in now, with more and more people entering the affiliate marketing world, why are there so many people sharing their strategies on becoming successful knowing it can be duplicated 100x’s?

Kris: Clearly, not everybody is willing to share money making information for free. In fact, I would consider my friend Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) and I to be part of a small group of internet marketing professionals with the willingness to share insight. From my perspective, I’m a strong believer in giving back – a lot of what I’ve learned over the years has come from people like Shoemoney who are willing to offer free advice through blogs and forums.

The reality is that there are hundreds if not thousands of different opportunities that exist to affiliate marketers – the industry presents a huge opportunity if you are willing to be creative and think outside the box. When I blog or speak at national conferences my philosophy is to not hold back – I share my insights that have helped me make money. Of course, I assume that others will try to duplicate my success but the truth is that they need to take it to the next level (thinking outside the box) to make sustainable affiliate income.

2) What would you say are the THREE first steps you should take when building your affiliate campaign, let’s say how you went about building the campaign for UGG Australia?

Kris: (1) Brainstorming Session – during this step you are looking for trends, thinking about opportunities presented through seasonality, holidays and popular TV. For instance, American Idol is hot right now and UGG is populr, especially during the winter months – Affiliate marketers must have an approach to monetize similar opportunities; (2) Keyword Generation – we use tools like Keycompete, Keyword Discovery, Rapid Keyword, etc. This step is very important. In general, most successful search-engine marketing affiliates focus on generating keywords around trademarks, targeted brand names, and lower cost long-tail keywords (three or more keywords in length) and; (3) Paid Search Campaign Set-up – Create an Ad Group for your affiliate offer. Note that you have two options in terms of where you send your paid search traffic: {Direct Link,} which is when you send traffic directly to the affiliate offer using the affiliate tracking URL or {Custom Landing Pages,} which involves building your website or specific landing pages around the affiliate offer. When creating an ad group I strongly recommend writing multiple ads – for instance, Google allows you to write multiple ads – they rotate the ads until one converts at a higher rate. Also, because of the Google Adwords Quality Score algorithm, search affiliates should create tight ad groups, meaning that ad text and keywords should be closely related – this way, search affiliates will maximize quality score.

3) We know Pepperjam is successful with its clients (which is an impressive roster by the way) but how much (percentage wise) would you say the Affiliate Marketing aspect makes for Pepperjam?

Kris: Affiliate marketing represents less than 5% of Pepperjam revenues. The other 95% comes from our core management and consulting services, including search-engine marketing (SEM / SEO), affiliate marketing management, and online media buying.

4) For someone who is JUST starting out doing Affiliate Marketing, what would be your advise, as far as if it’s a good industry to get into, fun, etc..?

Kris: Affiliate marketing presents an enormous opportunity for entrepreneurs. My advice is to think outside the box. Allocate the necessary time to learning and understanding the industry since your success will be tied to your ability to be progressive and ahead of the competition, which, in my opinion, is the result of education. The blogosphere presents abundant opportunities for affiliate marketers to learn the business. Also, there are numerous opportunities outside of traditional affiliate marketing (i.e., Commission Junction, Linkshare, Performics). For instance, ad networks such as Azoogle, CPA Empire, Hydra Network and many others allow affiliate marketers to generate commissions on thousands of affiliate offers. Once again, allocate the necessary time to understand the differences between the traditional affiliate networks and ad networks.

5) Last Question! Where do you see this particular industry moving to in the next 5 years?

KRIS: I believe affiliate marketing has only begun in terms of income generating opportunity for smart entrepreneurs. However, the industry has diversified and requires a relatively high-level of outside the box thinking. For instance, more and more affiliate marketers are taking advantage of advances in web services technology to build product feed websites (i.e., Golden Can) and advanced software widgets (i.e., auction ads). Others are tracking buzz and translating popular trends in television, radio and other offline media into affiliate marketing income. I provide examples of this on my blog, such as the idea of creating affiliate offers based on the popularity of hit reality TV shows, such as American Idol and I also highlight the UGG Australia example you mention in the beginning of this blog post.

In 5 years I think the industry will diversify significantly from where it is today. With companies like Google entering the affiliate marketing space I can’t help but think there will be some serious consolidation and diversification of existing affiliate networks. In addition, more and more networks will emerge that offer Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies that offer affiliate marketers new and exciting opportunities to make money.

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