This post from Amy Armitage and Joe Whyte at lunartics.

They present the 60 reasons why web hosts suck. I have included a few of my favorites below:

Your host asks you to verify your account by repeating your password over the phone. Every time you say it, you hear a stifled giggle and they say “I’m sorry sir can you please repeat that?” Your password is IamTheBe$tLOVER

A cyber squatter picked up your domain name and is holding it hostage. You find out it’s the guy from your web hosting companies support team who you previously screamed at and called a stupid moron.

Your user control panel consists of 2 options. On and Off!

canceling - they’ll claim they let you cancel anytime within the contract, but it turns out you can’t ever get a refund (you have to write a letter in your own blood to prove you are who you say you are, then send it to their office in Nome, Alaska that reads mail only once a year during the famous dog sled race). Of course, when you complain about these points, they point you to their TOS where it spells out the whole Nome and dog sled stuff, although it doesn’t mention the writing the letter in your own blood (the person on the phone just made that up to be funny).

Read the full post here

Finally!  It is a beautiful day here in Tennessee.  I hope that all of you are getting some decent weather where you are at.

5 affiliates joined the First Lead Club
Congratulations go to:

Will B.

Touvan S.

Craig O.

Mark B.

Kristof V.

Marisa S.. Prakash C. and Mathew W. all joined the $1,000 Club.  Three new members!  Congrats to each of you!

A total of 9 affiliate had record weeks as well.  Awesome job by all of you!

The top 5 payouts this week were:

$19,834.20

$19,230.25

$17,856.00

$15,927.15

$12,675.80

What a great week!

Beginning today, we are increasing our payouts for agent referrals. We will now be paying $60.00 for every agent that signs up and will continue to pay 5% of whatever they spend with us, but with no cap on the amount you can earn.The average agent spends almost $3500 a year with us, so you can easily earn over $200 per agent in a year. Over 50% of agents will spend over 3 years with us, meaning you can continue to earn money for years after they sign-up!

If you are not sure how to create a link to the agent referral page, here is one to get you started:

https://www.hometownquotes.com/index.cfm?action=interestedAgents&affid=#affid#

Simply change #affid# to your affiliate ID and you are good to go! Or you can login and create the link using the link creation wizard on the Banners/Links page.

Also be sure to check out the suggested ads, keywords, and target locations.

As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me!

As we settle into 2007, we saw some movement in the top 5 this week, with a new affiliate and some ups and downs.

Only three affiliate joined the First Lead Club and three affiliates had their best weeks ever.  Congratulations go to:

John W.

Ray L.

Brian S.

For joining the First Lead Club
The top Five affiliates last week earned:

$17,982.25

$16,443.00

$15,528.00

$14,914.62

$10,582.05

The Dimano Marketing Blog had a recent post entitled 11 Quick and Dirty Ways to Increase Conversions
Some of these tips are not relevant to our insurance affiliates, so I have highlighted the relevant ones below.

To read the full post click here

Remove clutter Cluttered web pages are one of the most common mistakes on the Web. For some reason people like to jam all their information on one page. Clean things up by removing distracting, useless images, charts, or text. Provide users with information as they request it. You don’t need to put it all in front of their face at one time. The path you want the user to take should be clear from the homepage. When you stack up text and images, it dilutes the goal message, and can confuse users. Less is more!

Remove ads
If you’re trying to get people to buy a product or a service and you’re running Adsense or another ad system on your site you may be making a big mistake. These ads provide exit points for your traffic (and potential customers). Keep your customers focused on the task at hand. If they leave the site through an ad, “Great you made $.25,” but just don’t assume that person will hit the back button or ever return to your site. You may have just lost yourself a sale.

Not to mention, ads look extremely unprofessional on e-commerce sites. They are fine for blogs with no other means of monetization, but if you’re selling something do yourself a favor and leave the ads off.

Stronger calls to action
Evaluate your calls to action on a site-wide level. I just bet you find some great content or images that really pop, but lack a call to action. You may have come up with some outstanding copy about how special your service is and then left the reader hanging by not telling them to take the next step. You’re wasting your efforts if you aren’t telling your customers what they should be doing. I’m a fan of putting the word “now” on many calls to action because it implies a sense of urgency: “Order your money saving guide now!” This is just one example. There are many ways to form excellent calls to action. Find one that works well for you and stick with it.

Add reliability Indicators.
This another small step that can gain a customers trust. Consider adding brand-recognized logos “above the fold” on your site, such as the Better Business Bureau, and HackerSafe. Of course you have to actually join respective company’s services, don’t just put the logo up.

Security concerns such as using SSL to encrypt data are huge for web shoppers. Calm their fears by adding a security logo (maybe “Secured by Verisign”?), and a security policy to your policies page.

Also see my article on

The 4 Most Common Missing Pieces on Affiliate Sites

Test. Measure. Rinse. Repeat.
Okay, so this one isn’t quite “quick and dirty.” But trial and error is one of the foundations of usability testing. Try out different elements, such as different headings, one at a time. Then measure the effect through an analytics program. You should test one variable at a time so you know what change caused which effect. If you have some kind of multivariate testing program that can tell you what the effect of each change was, then by all means use it - its much faster that way. Keep whittling away at different page elements (”add to cart” buttons, headlines, page copy, image placement, etc.) until you are satisfied with the results.

An effective way to split-test is to point the same pay-per-click ad at 2 different pages, one with with your changed page and one with the current page to see if your changes were effective.

I just got back to the office from Denver, where I spent two days.

Things I learned:

1. Denver is really flat..flatter than Nashville even. It sits on a plateau with Kansas to the east and the Rockies to the west.

2. High-altitude is hard to get used to. I slept horrible both nights.

3. The microbreweries there are amazing..top reason to go back!

4. It’s much warmer than I expected. Pretty much Nashville minus 3 degrees.

5. The Rockies are immensely beautiful…10 times more so than I expected!

Most of pictures turned out awful but here are two:

A view from a top a building of Denver…with Coors Field in the foreground.

The only shot I got of the mountains that looks decent..driving through Aurora.

Google’s Quality Score updates are LIVE…

There is a thread on ABestWeb about the Most Common Affiliate Mistakes.

My post, one that many of you have heard before is:

The mistake that most people in any business make is getting a 300 item TO-DO list and never acting on the first item.

In affiliate marketing I see this too often as newbies do a lot of research, read all the forums, blogs, etc. but forget to act. Then they get overwhelmed at their long list and fail to act.

That 9 to 5 job beings to look safe…and it IS. If you want safety and guaranteed security, don’t get into affiliate marketing. If you want to be 100% in charge of your success and failure, it is for you.

I say to never let your to-do list get any longer than 5 items. If you want to add a 6th, you must do of the other 5 first!

My lesson: Don’t let a seemingly endless list of possible tasks get you down!  Act now on that good idea you had or learned, before it’s too late.

Check out the posts by other affiliates at ABestWeb.

So far, SEOBOOK may just be the most informative, accurate, and easiest to navigate SEO site I have seen.

According to the site:

SEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind. The first version of my popular SEO Book came out in December of 2003. I have propably revised it about 50 times since then.

The site has so much information, you literally have to be careful not to overwhelm yourself.

What more can I say? Check it out.

Yeah, we got more today

The Exhibit Hall

The Tryst Party Monday Night

The HometownQuotes crew with
Dale from ThingsfromAnotherWorld.com

Our booth: the only known shot of it…yes that is POPCORN!

For those who may have missed it, the contest with Matt’s picture is also a photoshop contest, so…

It is using a different photo but sure is cool

Have a great weekend!

This is just too funny…

There is a thread on ABestWeb for a caption contest for this picture of Matt. Check it out here…

As many of you know, each year ABestWeb (my home away from home) has awards for the “Best of.”

I was fortunate enough to be nominated for Best In-House Affiliate Manager of the Year, Best New Affiliate Manager of the Year, and Best New Member of the Year.

2006 was a great year for HometownQuotes and 2007 is already off to a rockin’ start. Thank you to ABestWeb for even considering me for the awards.

According to the Inside Adwords Blog, CPC (Cost-Per-Click) for site-targetting is now in BETA testing with AdWords. Their post pretty much explains it so here goes:

Site targeting is a feature that allows advertisers to choose individual sites in the content network where they want their ads to appear. Currently, advertisers using site targeting place bids on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. In March, we plan to begin testing a new site targeting feature to increase the flexibility and control advertisers have with site-targeted campaigns: cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.

CPC bidding has often been requested by advertisers who would like to utilize site targeting, but are not comfortable bidding on a CPM basis. Here are two examples of how CPC bidding can enhance your site targeting experience:

• Increased flexibility. Select the content network sites you want your ads to appear on and choose the bidding option that fits your needs. If clicks are your goal, try CPC bidding so you pay only when you get the result you want.

• Full control. Create new CPC site-targeted campaigns, or switch your existing campaigns between CPC and CPM at any time. As always, you retain full control over your budgets and bids.

If you’re an AdWords advertiser located in the US and are interested in participating in the CPC site targeting beta, please fill out this short web form: http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/cpc_sitetargeting. Please note that we are only able to select a limited number of advertisers from all that apply. If you’re selected as a beta participant, we will contact you within the next couple of weeks.