Black Ink Project Part 2: Week 1 Preparing A Plan

Week 1 of the Black Ink Project focused on Planning & Preparation. I always thought affiliate marketing was simply slapping links on a web page but not so. All the greats has shown that it takes so much more.

Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative career but what I learned in week one is that to be a successful affiliate marketer takes a foundation of planning and preparation as with any business.

Important points that I took from that week:

1. Find a niche. Specificity is good on the Internet. It gives you the opportunity to carve a big piece out of a little market as opposed to vice-versa.
2. Treat your affiliate marketing like a business not a hobby. So when you do start making a respectable amount of money monthly re-invest it into your business. Decide on a business entity (LLC, S-Corp), acquire an EIN and open a business account to keep your personal and business activities separate.
3. Write your business plan down on paper. Determine your strategic goals and how you plan on executing.
4. Do your research. Find existing sites in your niche and study what they do and how they do it. Find out what your competition is not doing and use your affiliate site to fill that gap. A great tool to use to do this is a SWOT analysis.
5. Research your audience and the audience of your competition sites. Quantcast is a great tool to use to find out a sites demographic.

You don't have to take my word for it find your own gems in the wisdom of Jeremy Palmer by visiting the Black Ink Project Web site. Register and start learning what it takes to succeed in affiliate marketing.

Black Ink Project: Week 1 Training Sessions
Finding Your Niche
Getting Your Business In Order
Developing a Rock Solid Business Plan
Getting To Know Your Audience
Setting Up Shop

Plain Text & HTML Email Newsletters - A Powerful Marketing One, Two Punch

One thing I don't see very often anymore are plain text based emails. It seems everyone who is leveraging email marketing rather do so with a beautiful, image laden html based emails. I am of course not an exception to the rule although with every campaign I send I send out both plain text and html email to my subscribers. Why you ask? It seems like the diplomatic thing to do. I want to accommodate those that prefer to receive them and for some very practical reasons.

If you aren't already sending both you might want to re-consider sending both options for the following reasons:

1. With the proliferation of the smart phones people are reading email on things other than computers in increasing numbers. Mobile devices don't all render html emails correctly so it gives the opportunity for your marketing message to still be received.
2. Plain text emails can't be tracked. Which means learning how many people opened, read and clicked on links within your email won't be known, bummer.


Two simple reasons why plain text and html newsletters make a powerful punch together when email marketing.

P.S.
When designing both keep the content the same because there are filters out there (Spam Assassin) that will scan both messages and if they aren't consistent you could be penalized.