http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/product-reviews/are-you-the-perfect-clickbank-reviewer.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/product-reviews/are-you-the-perfect-clickbank-reviewer.html Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600
== The Problem With Digital Goods ==

I am sure you are familiar with the problem. If you have purchased an online ebook, or some other form of digital goods, only to soon be disappointed by the quality of the downloaded product, then you have contributed to that communal sigh of despair that issues forth daily from thousands of people just like yourself. When it happens there is not a lot you can do about it, other than request a refund. But even if you get your money back, you have just wasted several hours of your time, the process has caused you unneeded frustration, and you are back to square one, still hungry for a product to plug the need that sent you shopping in the first place. Surely there has to be a better way. After all, shopping for a quality refrigerator is not hard. Why are digital goods such a problem? And is there a solution to this?

As it turns out, there is a simple solution to this problem. You *can* have your digital cake and eat it too. But before I tell you what the solution is, I want to briefly take a look at that refrigerator purchase again, because it will highlight what is missing in your search for that elusive "just so" digital product.

== Quality Comparisons Between Digital Goods And Store Goods ==

When you go out to buy a refrigerator you benefit from the fact that the companies which build them have been doing so in most cases for a very long time. They have hashed out the technical problems decades ago, and then duked it out with their competitors for marketplace dominance using all sorts of business tricks you do not care about. All you care about is that only the best of those companies were left standing. The result is that you, the consumer, are more than happy to hand over your money, because these "brand name" companies have finally earned your trust by coming up with robust and dependable products.

Not so with purchases of online digital products. Most online companies have not been around long enough to establish recognizable brand names. Almost all of the digital products you find on the web will be less than a year old, in which case, just how good can they be? Instead of being able to select from an array of trusted digital solutions, the way a typical consumer finds a prospective "solution" to their immediate problem is to type some keywords into a search engine and then see what comes up in the way of recommendations.

== Choosing From The Chorus Of Recommendations... ==

What are they going to find when they do this? More often than not they will see a slew of sponsored advertisements for a handful of products. But of course the ads seen are just those that belong to the highest bidding advertisers, and very often these ads are placed by affiliates of products with very high sales commissions. You may be looking for recommendations for a quality product, but what you will find is recommendations for the product that pays the highest sales commission. And if you were expecting unbiased reviews from these affiliates, well then, you are exactly the kind of prospective customer they were hoping would click on their paid advert!

No wonder the rate of refund requests on digital products is high. The barrage of affiliate sales copy you find perfectly whitewashes the true nature of the product. It might be good. But it also might be a clunker that converts well with a high affiliate payout. So how do you get to the truth, and save yourself both time and money in the process?

== How You Can Solve The Problem ==

Well, that is where you, the perfect reviewer comes in. Because unlike those thousands of affiliates who make a living using interchangeable product names on the same high-converting sales copy, you are a real product user. You know the truth, and most importantly, you have nothing to lose by telling it to the next person who might be thinking of buying that product. Sure, it takes a bit of time for you to write a review. But if everyone follows your lead, and does it the right way, then--as I am about to show you--the outcome can be pretty amazing!

Here is why. If you were to write one accurate review for every ten digital products you purchased, and others did the same thing, in short order these aggregated reviews would provide an extremely accurate barometer on the quality of digital goods on the web. These aggregated reviews would characterize the benefits of digital products with relentless precision. No longer would taking the sales copy of affiliates and merchants at face value be the crap shoot it is now. Of course, these reviews need to be collected in one place, the user ratings for products averaged and then presented for product-wise comparison, but the model is known to work. We see it used with extraordinary success in places like the Amazon marketplace and the endless pages of Epinions reviewers.

== Awarding Quality Seals To Digital Products ==

One of the benefits of using a reliable statistical model to characterize product quality is that we can use the results to award "quality seals" to the best performing products, where performance is a direct measure of consumer satisfaction. When this is done, and accurate quality seals become commonplace, they provide affiliates with an incentive to consider them when selecting products for promotion. Why? Because a product that bears a quality seal on the official sales page of a merchant is going to convert better than a product that does not display a seal. In this way, quality products get the recognition they deserve, they make the merchant a better profit on their investment, and this in turn allows the merchant to offer affiliates higher commissions. After a while the high commission products actually reflect the quality products and consumers end up with the right product no matter which route they take to get there.

So. If you would like to help sort the wheat from the chaff in the digital goods marketplace, a large portion of which is mediated by the ClickBank merchant/affiliate network, get yourself to an online voting booth now and have your say. Time magazine voted You the person of the year recently, and one of the reasons for doing so is that you wield more power on the web than you may have realized to date. So why not put it to use in a place where your opinion really matters?

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Stephen Carter is the creator of ClickBank Hotshots, where Quality Seals for digital goods are awarded by consumers on the basis of Customer Reviews of ClickBank Products. New reviewers wanted!

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/build-your-own-youtube-site-the-easy-way.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/build-your-own-youtube-site-the-easy-way.html Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600
But is there really any reason the average webmaster could not build their own video or audio based portal? Would that not be a difficult thing to attempt? Well, that used to be the case, but it is not true any more.

Now, based on the fact that you are currently reading this article, I would hazard a guess that the following is true: At some point in the past, possibly even just recently, it occurred to you that building a YouTube-like site might be a fun thing to do. But then you tossed the idea out the window once you discovered that adding audio and video clips to your site can be time-consuming and tedious. Not to mention technically intimidating. But like I said, that no longer has to be the case. In fact, if you are prepared to fork out a few hundred dollars for the software to power your site, you can be up and running in no time flat.

In all likelihood you do not truly want to compete with YouTube for visitors. But maybe that real estate site you had been thinking about could benefit from audio and video feeds. Or perhaps that restaurant guide, or model plane construction website--short how-to videos on the best way to build remotely-controlled planes might be just the thing you need...

Are the ideas starting to bubble up? If so, read on to find out how you can set up a video or audio site painlessly.

So what are the barriers to us as webmasters wanting to set up such a site? Well, you have probably already investigated several multimedia-related web sites to see how they go about presenting audio and video clips to their visitors. Most of these sites now offer streamed content, which is to say the music or the video feed starts playing just a few seconds after you hit the play button. No waiting for a full download to occur. Visitors, even those with high speed connections, simply do not have that kind of patience. So, you must serve the content immediately.

There are two basic ways you can do this. One, you can install a special server that is optimized to stream audio and video files. However, this can cost you an arm and a leg, depending on the server you choose. It is also just one more thing you do not want to have to deal with if you can avoid it. The second option is to go with a simpler method, called progressive streaming, wherein you make a request to your regular web server to stream the file in such a way that it can be played almost as soon as the first batch of bytes is received. This is not as efficient as a dedicated streaming server, but unless you are running a very highly-trafficked site, the results are virtually indistinguishable. This is the option discussed in detail in this article.

Several applications exist on the market to handle progressive, or psuedo, streaming. The difficulty in using them lies in the amount of work it can take to add HTML code to individual pages on your site in order to call the application which will then stream your audio or video content. What you really need is an automated solution of some type. An application that will allow you, or your visitors, to simply upload the content that is to be streamed, and then have all the file storage and HTML link-formatting done for you, behind the scenes.

Fortunately there is at least one application that does all this for you (this is mentioned in the resource box below). In this case the application makes use of a Flash-based client named Wimpy, which exists in several different incarnations. The best known of the Wimpy players is the Wimpy MP3 Player which allows MP3s to be played from a fancy Flash-based jukebox. The appearance of this player is controlled by a skin, and there are literally dozens to choose from--some of which contain rotating dials, flickering volume bars, and so on. An alternative to placing a jukebox on your pages is to simply place a button that allows an MP3 track to be played or paused. This is the Wimpy Button Player. It is useful for pages where you are going for simplicity, or page real estate is at a premium.

But Wimpy can do more than just play MP3s. If you want to serve video files from your site you can elect to use the Wimpy AV Player. This version allows you to load an entire video playlist, just as the Wimpy MP3 Player does. But my preference for video presentation is the Wimpy WASP Player. This client will play just one video at a time, but it can be controlled with javascript commands, so it offers more in the way of programmable and presentation options. You can embed the videos right into your web pages, or you can elect to have them pop up when a visitor clicks on a link.

By using a solution that combines all these Wimpy clients into a single transparent application, and which also allows visitors to review the uploaded audio or video files, you have at your disposal just the tool you need to create a YouTube-like site complete with visitor reviews. Hopefully I have managed to convey the idea that creating such a site is fairly straightforward. With the right tools in hand, the only remaining ingredient you need to make it happen is dedication and passion. But if you have read this far, you likely have that in spades. Good luck!

--
Stephen Carter is the developer of Red Queen, a powerful product review script that allows webmasters to build audio-based customer review sites. To learn more, see: How To Create A Music Review Site.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/affiliate-programs/dramatically-increase-the-credibility-of-your-affiliate-website-with-customer-reviews.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/affiliate-programs/dramatically-increase-the-credibility-of-your-affiliate-website-with-customer-reviews.html Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600
The fact is, most affiliate sites on the web today are poorly constructed, and this beggars any authority the owner of the site hopes to convert into sales. Often these sites are thin conduits designed to ferry traffic from search engines to the sites of merchants who have neither the resources nor the time to figure out how to find the customers they need to ensure their business success. Despite this, and because the web is growing more and more congested, the value of a *quality* affiliate marketer nonetheless continues to increase. Unfortunately this simple fact is not at all recognized by the buying public who often begrudge affiliate marketers and view them as interlopers who put themselves between the customer and the merchants they are searching for. In short, the affiliate marketer has long suffered, and continues to suffer, from an image problem.

This image problem is not confined just to the public. Google, which derives huge advertising revenues from affiliate marketers, nevertheless regards affiliate marketing sites with complete disdain. Of course, affiliate marketers themselves have contributed to this problem because their websites very often contain little in the way of new or unique content, which is what Google values and believes its customers (web searchers) value. It is no surprise therefore, to find that some of the top affiliate marketers differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack in precisely this area. They offer not only critical assessment of the products they promote, but also take the time to blog and build a comraderie with the visitors to their sites. By offering unique, and regularly updated content, they appease the Gods of Google, and are rewarded with organic (non pay-per-click) traffic that very much contributes to the bottom line. In other words, the top affiliate marketers know how to project a good image--to their visitors, to Google, and to other search engines that might bring in prospects.

Blogging is a great way to produce unique content. But it is time consuming, there is a limit to how much daily content you can produce as an affiliate, and not everyone finds the task of writing content easy work. What if instead you could have the content create itself automatically? Well, actually you can. If you offer customer reviews of the products you promote you accomplish this and more. Not only is the subject matter on target, but the reviews themselves promote the products for you (supposing you have carefully chosen only the best products to promote, which is what any *good* affiliate marketer knows to do). Even better, you no longer have to worry about that credibility problem. If ten people come onto your site and say "Buy product XYZ, it rocks!" that recommendation is a heck of a lot more convincing than anything that you might say, no matter how truthful your utterances.

So, all you have to do as an affiliate marketer, to get people to "click through" to a merchant site in a buying mood is to promote good products and let people express their opinions about those products on your site. If the products are great, the reviews will reflect that. If instead it turns out that the reviews are consistently bad for one of the products you promote, then drop it! Replace it with another.

"But collecting reviews is really difficult!" I hear you object. "I simply do not have time for that. Do I?"

There is nothing inherently difficult about putting customer reviews on your site today. It does take a little time to set things up, but low-cost commercial quality reviewing applications are available to do the bulk of the work (see the one mentioned in the resource box below if you want to get a jump start on implementing customer reviews on your website). Not only does a customer review section on your site substantially increase your overall credibility, but search engines will love the content--especially if the review pages have been optimized for the search engines (as all good reviewing engines will certainly do).

There is another benefit to collecting customer reviews. Some review engines allow you to publish the reviews as RSS feeds. What this means is increased traffic. You can submit your feeds to the RSS directories. Moreover, if the reviewing application also allows you to create RSS feeds compatible with Google Base (as does the application mentioned below) you can upload your entire review database (or the first N characters of each review) to Google Base and make your reviews accessible to the various Google marketing avenues.

Given the clear benefits to implementing customer reviews on affiliate marketing sites it is surprising that so very few marketers have actually adopted this strategy to date. But as the web continues to mature, and affiliate marketing grows more professional, it is to be expected that this strategy will become more and more common on the sites of top affiliate marketers.

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Stephen Carter is the developer of Red Queen, powerful customer review software that allows webmasters to take advantage of the preselling potential of customer reviews. To learn more, see: How To Put Customer Reviews On Your Affiliate Website.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/rss/how-to-increase-sales-traffic-by-publishing-customer-reviews-as-rss-feeds.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/rss/how-to-increase-sales-traffic-by-publishing-customer-reviews-as-rss-feeds.html Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600
It is also true that by simply combining customer reviews with RSS feeds, you too can ride a new wave of shopping (or social) traffic.

Traffic! It is the one problem that webmasters continually face, and which can NEVER be fully solved. How to find visitors in a reliable, repeatable, and cost-effective way. Because without visitors all your beautiful content might as well be locked away in a vault--no one is ever going to see it. If the purpose of your site is to sell, you will sell nothing. If the purpose of your site is to build a social network, you might remain its only member. You need traffic to succeed. Lots of it.

In this article I am going to consider just one traffic building initiative--one that happens to be enjoying a growing wave of popularity. It involves harnessing the power of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to build traffic. You are probably aware of RSS as a means of syndicating news content. Websites that produce news have been building XML-formatted news stories for years. These files are retrieved by other websites, the new stories are extracted, and the content is placed (on these publisher sites) before a public ever-hungry for new information. The arrangement has worked well for everyone. Those who have displayed the RSS feeds have gained content to feed their visitors. Those who have produced the RSS feeds have obtained backlinks to their websites, which has helped to bring in new traffic. In fact the arrangement has worked so well that webmasters have been encouraged to move beyond simple news syndication.

This makes a lot of sense. News articles hardly represent the only content that surfers are looking for. Recipes, shopping coupons, MP3s, schedules for local events... The list of possible things that people search for is endless, and if you can provide "new" instances of such information, then RSS represents an ideal means of getting that information in front of the people searching for it. Sure, it used to be the case that everything you wrapped up in an RSS feed had to take a very simple form. Every item in your news feed was reduced to a title, a url (to the source of the information), and a short snippet, or description, to hook the reader. But RSS has sprouted wings over the years and now you can package practically any data structure into a feed that you like. Because of this there is no reason why we cannot suitably package customer reviews into a feed.

But what exactly would we put into an RSS-formatted customer review feed? And is this a good idea? Let me answer the second question first. Yes! It is a very good idea to package customer reviews as RSS feeds. Why? Because if you think about it, a customer review is very much like a news item. It is a packaged opinion that has been released for the express purpose of swaying the mindset of someone who is looking for information on the very topic it addresses, whatever that topic might be. To the person searching for the information, this review is news indeed, and more often than not it is welcome news.

So what should go into the feed? Well, a summary of the review, seems obvious. That can be used as the title element, and a snippet of the review can be used as the description. But there are other elements to a review that we have grown accustomed to over the years, and they can go into the feed too. Pros and cons of the reviewed item can be listed and highlighted. We can put in a numeric rating for several different attributes of the item being reviewed (for example, quality and robustness of the item, its ease of use, value for money, and so on). We can put in images too. Stars to represent the numeric ratings, maybe. A picture of the item. We could even put in a link to the profile of the reviewer if we wanted. When we do these things, the final formatted customer review feed can look very enticing indeed.

Of course, the prospect of collecting reviews, let alone formatting them into RSS feeds might very well seem daunting to the average webmaster. But there are low-cost commercial applications available which will do all of this work for you--for example, the review engine known as Red Queen (see the resource box below). Furthermore, you can now upload customer reviews (in RSS format) to Google Base and make them available to the various Google outlets. Admittedly these are early days for webmasters hoping to profitably hook into Google Base traffic sources, but the prospects are exciting nonetheless.

One thing that seems certain is that customer reviews as RSS feeds represent an as yet untapped opportunity for webmasters. Customer reviews have long been profitably used by big players on the web (Amazon.com being an obvious example) but have not been fully exploited. By coupling this popular opinion-based source of information with the technology of RSS syndication, savvy webmasters who take the reins today are sure to get first mover advantage on this new means of marketing, and build the traffic they need to assure the success of their online businesses. And, of course, there is really no reason why you should not be one of them!

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Stephen Carter is the developer of Red Queen, powerful customer review software that allows webmasters to take advantage of the traffic building potential of customer reviews published as RSS feeds. To learn more, please see the accompanying tutorial: How To Publish Customer Reviews As RSS Feeds.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>