If you missed this (and I did admittedly) you missed an important announcement from Google.

Load time is now a large factor in determining your landing page quality score for AdWords.

This effects everything from the design of your pages to the hosting company you choose. Ultimately, in this department, you have to choose between quality and price. Saving $20 a month on hosting could end up costing you much more in the long run if your quality score drops and your marketing costs go up.

It’s something to think about!

Google has a lot of information here (this is a direct link to the part about load time and quality score)

Yahoo! announced last week that it is changing the minimum bid for Sponsored Search from $0.10 to…well not $0.10.

They go into an explanation that somehow involves Van Gogh and hog auctions, but the long story short is that some minimum bids will be lower and some higher.

The objective, according to Yahoo!, is to reward advertisers for better ad quality by allowing lower entry points for certain keywords.

While this move is likely to hurt some affiliates and advertisers, I believe that overall it will help those that are willing to put in a little effort and will go after QUALITY!

You can read the full post at the YSM Blog here

Enjoy!

Many of you know (and love) Ed and Ion, two of our European programmers.

Recently they came to visit us in America for THREE WEEKS! It was great to finally have two of our family members here.

They had to leave but will be back in a few weeks. I hope to have some more of their adventurous pictures (there were a lot) soon but here are two that I found:

Ed, Me, Ion

Ed

OK so this post is quite tongue in cheek, but it is so true and worth a quick read.

The Sleepy Surfer shares his 7 tips that was given by an Affiliate Marketing Loser who just got dumped by his girlfriend.

According to many sources, MSN will cease to give out the $50 credits for new account promotion on February 29th of this year! Previously they had said April 15. So, if you have not yet set up a new account for you…or your best friend…or dog (if you get my drift), NOW is the time!

Click here for the MSN $50 New Account Credit

An article about the Affiliate Classroom awards was on FoxBusiness.Com recently. It is a good read about all of the deserving winners!

Click here to read the full article

It seems this picture is already outdated (it was taken 10 days ago) as we have had 3 new employees start since it was taken and have 4 more starting within the next 3 weeks. We are quickly running out of room here at HometownQuotes!

Congratulations to our Affiliate Manager, Matt McWilliams for being honored recently by Affiliate Classroom with an Honorary Certification for Affiliate Managers. This award was only given to 14 affiliate managers worldwide.

Check out the video below from Affiliate Classroom

Click Here

That is good question, however, the real question is, “how do you get converting visitors to your website”?

You can send thousands of people an hour through your site without a single insurance form submit. Unfortunately, you will not make any money that way. So, you need targeted website visitors to see your banners and links. People who might be looking for insurance now or people who will need insurance quotes sometime in the future.

There are really only two options for this type exposure. Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization.

Pay Per Click

PPC is expensive, the competition is great and the industry leaders dominate the market. The big insurance companies will pay any amount for a visitor if they are branding their business and trying to dominate their specific insurance market. These same companies can also be seen on television and are often heard on the radio.

My daddy use to say that banks and insurance companies have all the money. He was right and trying to compete with these guys on a PPC level will make your money disappear quickly. This is not to say that all paid placement is unattainable, just that some places are going to be out of reach for many affiliates. Obviously, Google, Yahoo and MSN are on that list. You will find the most competitive advertisers on page one of these search sites.

What about page two or page three? Give it a try. The costs will be significantly reduced on each click and using a good landing page may well produce profitable conversions.

Search Engine Optimization

Personally, I recommend you apply your affiliate links to a themed website or blog that can reach searchers organically without paying for clicks. This is a much harder proposition but a great deal more profitable in the long run. I believe all of you reading this now are looking for a long term opportunity. If you dedicate yourself to an easy business model, the income will come.

The easiest way to SEO any website is through a blog. Blogs are favored by search spiders for a variety of reasons but the main benefit to a blog is quick and easy publishing. Insurance covers a wide variety of topics that can easily be blogged. Anything related to home, auto or health can be blogged and monetized through the HometownQuotes insurance affiliate program. These three “products” alone cover literally thousands of broad and niche topics.

Some of you have years of experience in fields that many people search for everyday. Blogging allows you to communicate with these people about your experience while putting free website visitors within eyeshot of your affiliate links.

Blogging may not be the answer for some of you just as PPC may not be an option for some as well. However, if you are serious about the earnings potential available through HometownQuotes, together we can find the right fit for you.

Obviously there is much more to marketing the HometownQuotes opportunity than I have listed here. I just wanted to drop a quick post to hopefully stir some conversation and get some feedback.

Also, please email me your questions. I will be creating a separate category for questions where I will be providing answers on a regular basis. Our business is growing. There is no reason why you can’t be a part of our success.

Today we turn 4 years old! It is hard to believe that we have only been around for 4 years.

We have grown so fast and I can truly say that each and every day has been exciting and fun.  I am surrounded by the most amazing people on the planet and it has been the greatest blessing to work with these people.

To our affiliates, you guys are remarkable!  Many of our affiliates joined our team at a time when they did not have to.  Like many of our employees, you turned down better offers to stay a part of our family…and you are truly that, a part of our family.

Thank you to everyone for believing in us and being a part of this ride.

-Matt

We had a blast at our Christmas Party. Here are some pictures

Our Family

Yes, I AM wearing a Mario Brothers Shirt

Krista and Bert

Winners!

These are the gifts we bought for a local family for Christmas.