This is part of the Mac Book Pro Challenge where we show you how you could get your own Mac Book Pro or some cash. Why not see how and join the challenge.

Last time on the challenge I discussed the idea of creating a persona to appeal to an audience I have also covered some aspects of Email marketing and making lists safe but I want to cover your legal responsibilities.

Before we start two disclaimers

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I am not a lawyer, seriously any queries on legal issues take it to a lawyer here in the UK if you are a sole trader why not try your local Business Link where they can put you in touch with a lawyer who can answer your questions often for no charge if it’s a simple generic enquiry.

This article refers to British Legal system, why? I am a Brit, but also the UK has one of the most stringent legal systems when it comes to business online. Most of its laws and regulations are similar to those in Europe and so is a good basis for marketers, while your own country may differ particularly in the US where its very much dependent on the state you happen to be standing in.

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Creating your Legal Notice paper work

I want to cover how to create legal notice paper work that will make even a lawyer be proud. So create a new page name it Legal Notices, Disclaimer Notices or something similar and lets get started.

Who are you?

Our first step is to determine who you are and how you are trading in the UK there are various levels of trader (similar for the rest of the world) but the basics are:

• Individual – some one who is perhaps a hobbyist makes and declares monies but also has an alternate revenue stream (pension/job)
• Sole Trader – A singular person who trades (has a business) which he is the sole person in charge of the finances and who’s business assets are owned by the person.
• Non Limited Partnership - As per sole trader but a group of people manage the company and its assets within an agreed legal agreement.

• Limited Company – A company that is registered with Company House, such companies are registered and must present their books to company house once a year.

Beyond Limited company there are several more levels but by that stage you are into high finance world and well beyond the scope of this article. Most people reading this and trying to make money online will be Individuals, you probably have a job and are after some additional money in which case legally all you have to do is report your additional earnings to the tax man. A Sole Trader and Partnership is legally required to inform the Tax man about individual earnings but nothing more. A limited company must report its finances as an entity to Company House and individual directors who draw money but not a salary from the company must record this separately. The big advantage of a limited company other then to protect a trading name is that the company debt is not always personal debt of the directors. If you are not a limited company debts accrued by the company are held against the individuals of the partnership.

One thing to hold in mind is the British tax system has perhaps one of the strangest laws attached to it.

“Under the UK’s Tax Avoidance Schemes Regulations 2006, it is illegal not to tell the taxman anything you don’t want him to know, though you don’t have to tell him anything you don’t mind him knowing.”

Basically this was designed to make it illegal to hide money deliberately, but to protect those who failed to make a complete tax return from harsh sentences but it is some what unenforceable but hey its worth remembering you don’t want to hide things from the tax man.
Before moving on it’s worth adding VAT a non limited business can be registered for VAT this is different from registering with Company House if the company is VAT registered it has implications as to what information you need to display.

Trading as…
Sole Traders and Partnerships often don’t use their names when trading, but in formal documents a trading name must be declared…

Tim Nash trading as CNMS

For example or in a partnership surnames are normally sufficient as long as the full partnership is named elsewhere so…

Nash, Hills, Johnson trading as CNMS

Owner of a web site

When you register a web site you can choose to register it as an individual, sole trader, partnership and limited company. With the exception of Limited Company the website domain name is the property of the person who registered it, unless it is agreed differently in a partnership agreement. The information on the Whois has to be correct, for a sole trader or partnership who are VAT registered this means the address you gave on the VAT return, a limited company your company registered address and for everyone else the mailing address of your business. Sometimes you may find you need to adjust these after purchase particularly if your address of your Credit Card was different.

Every web site should have contact information on it, apart from allowing people to contact you in nearly all cases as a trader it is required. However unless you are a VAT registered or Limited Company the amount of information needed is limited to a method of contact such as email address remember though this is purely on the web site itself the information is still needed in the Whois.

The Ecommerce Regulations require the minimum information to be kept:

• A Trading Name – example.com is the property of CNMS
• A contact Email – A contact form is not enough it must be a valid email address
• Registered Address if Limited or VAT registered – The complete address, plus the place of registration for Limited Companies
• VAT and Company numbers – If company has both then both need to be displayed.

Example Who Are You section

Sole Trader
Example.com is the property of Tim Nash trading as CNMS .
For more information please contact via info@example.com

VAT Registered Partnership
Example.com is the property of Nash, Johnson, Smith trading as CNMS
For more information please contact us via info@example.com
CNMS is VAT registered, number 00000000, Address: 4 made up street, PP33 SDK, UK

Disclaimer of Brands

Andy recently discussed some of the issues related to the UKs Consumer Protection Regulations which covers many issues including the not telling the truth or pretending to be something you are not. Given our last post was all about creating personas, people to sell our site we need to cover ourselves from the act. This section is also a good place to credit photographers and external brands even theme designers if its appropriate.

Example of Brand Disclaimer

Example person images, name and description are branding of CNMS, All images are the property of Joe Blogs Photographer and are licensed for use by CNMS all models are over the age of 18 and their images are used with permission. The site theme was designed by Joe Blogs and released under license.

This may not seem very fair and indeed it is only really dealing with the legality of the act, when designing personas it is important to make sure that potential buyers do not believe they are dealing with a specific individual unless of course they are.

Trademarks

This section would also be a good place to declare trademarks referenced and used. It is unlikely you hold trademarks so this section will be declaring their use on the site. Most Trademark use is when mentioning products which are owned by the company such uses are perfectly legal but you should declare the use of trademarks if you have not done so within Articles for example

Example of Trademark Disclaimer
Within the UK: Mac Book Pro, Apple, IPod are trademarks of Apple Ltd. Google Adsense, Logo are property of Google Ltd. Use of the respective companies trademarks is for product description purposes only. Other trademarks are used within guidelines of fair use when describing products or services and are the property of their respective owners.

Disclaimer of Facts

Do you know Lying is immoral right? Its also nearly always illegal to, the distance selling regulations along with unfair trading regulations pretty much make it illegal to misrepresent your product or service in anyway this includes but not limited to.

• Inflating earning potential
• not specifying sale length
• inappropriate description of services or product

One of the more problematic part of the regulations is that you are in breach if you attempt to mislead an average user even if you are factually correct. Put simply If you state the car is Green but in reality it is Green and Yellow you have breached the act as while you are correct it is green you have not fully described the product.

Example Disclaimer of Facts

CNMS takes every effort to accurately reflect statistics and products in a true manner, occasionally statistics and other figures maybe rounded or averaged to make them simpler to understand in such cases CNMS strives to notify the reader. Occasionally CNMS is unable for legal restrictions or other reasons to provide accurate figures in such cases the reason is given prior to the figures.

Descriptions and statements declared to be factually accurate are checked prior to release and every effort is made to maintain accuracy. If a statement appears not to be accurate please contact us via our address as stated.

CNMS can not be held responsible for misrepresenting a third party product or service if the description of the product has changed since the initial release of information.
The disclaimer is primarily to cover your interaction with third parties rather then your own products when it comes to your own products no declaimer page is going to help if you miss sell a product.

Disclaimer of Earning Methods

While not strictly required in every case most people are going to need to declare how the site earns money and in particular if you use affiliate links within reviews. This is also a good place to declare paid for links if you have any note this is not a legal requirement, it’s important to understand a company guidelines and requirements such as those from Google should not be confused with something legally binding. However a notice section is a good place to include such information

Example of Earning Methods

CNMS uses affiliate links (web links which associate sales of a product to CNMS) when linking to some products, offers and services on this site. In addition advertising in the form of images and textual links are bought such advertising are declared and the purchase of advertising does not influence the content on the site. CNMS may provide additional marketing and advertising methods to third parties.

If you are selling your user lists now is the time to declare it make sure you also declare it within your privacy policy and include opt out info there to.

Example of selling your users

CNMS from time to time will pass user’s details to third parties for use in statistical analysis and marketing. CNMS is not responsible for the content from third parties.

Links Policy

You can’t prevent people linking to you, and nor do you want to however its worth declaring you have no control on what they said about the site or product likewise you should indicate you do not have editorial control of external sites.

Example Links Policy

CNMS has no control over inbound links and will not honour prices, descriptions of products and services which are different from those stated on this site without prior agreement. CNMS links to external sites and does not have editorial control and is not responsible for their content.

Nice the good news is we are pretty much there now its time to add your Privacy and Accessibility policies.

Privacy Policy

I covered this not so long ago on WebDigity so will not go through the entire policy but to highlight it needs to match with statements here, including names, addresses. For more information please check out my sample privacy policy template.

Accessibility

UK and Europe have some tough anti discrimination guidelines but almost no one knows what an accessible site is though most agree it is probably a site that reaches WAI level 1 & 2 as set down by W3C. Most blogs should easily meet these requirements presuming your site does so your declaration should be fairly straight forward.

Example Accessibility Disclaimer

Where possible we try to maintain this site to WAI level 1 & 2 priority standard and well within the UK and EU disability guidelines however if you have a problem while reading or commenting on this blog please do contact us as described below.

Putting it all together, ok so this was a long post, but your complete policy should look something like our Legal Notice. This might seem like a lot of work and you may think that so few people read such documents why bother?

Two reasons 1) Ass covering, its the law and if its not where you are it will protect you against random law suits 2) Requirement, more and more affiliate and advertising companies are looking for privacy policies and declaring paid content.

Remember IAMNL (I am not a lawyer) any one making money should get a lawyer in their home country to read through any legal notice.

A few months ago I wrote an article looking at Affiliate management called Affiliate marketing from the other side. At the time I discussed how Affiliate management had helped Aaron Wall to have one of the most linked to sites in the SEO (search engine optimisation) community. Since then a few things have changed but I think Affiliate management is still a crucial part of any serious online business. So I have gone and reviewed 3 of the best products on the market ok two of the best and a .net script which just works.

Affiliate Management Software Comparison

So what are you waiting for if you haven’t already taken the plunge and are self managing then hopefully this will help you make up your mind which software to use.

So the recent press headlines here in the UK have not been great for British Airways their brand spanking new terminal “T5″ has gone down like a lead balloon. The disaster now means thousands of bags are separated from their owners indeed many people even the most loyal BA customer I suspect are now thinking it’s time to look at what the other airlines are doing.

So it comes as no surprise that one airline is currently flying high. At the start of the year Virgin Atlantic started a £6 million pound advertising campaign to promote their new first class lounge and existing services at Heathrow. Now Virgin is a brand everyone is familiar with because of one guy but it has recently attempted to move the Virgin brand away from being the soul domain of Richard Branson and attempt to sell on the individual companies merits.

Affiliate Marketing with Virgin Atlantic

So what this got to do with affiliate marketing, well once you have started to get your first few cheques in, it’s worth putting some a side into a quick project slush fund. Not millions just a couple of hundred dollars for when events are just to quick to miss. So lets see how I would spend that fund right now:

1. Buy a domain name
2. Setup a quick mini site 3 pages or so on the current problems at T5
3. Create a dedicated landing page for Virgins new lounge
4. Base the headlines around the air line that gets you and your baggage their
5. Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes
6. Drive traffic

Buy a domain name

Domain names are cheap, so it’s worth setting the majority of your projects up on their own domain name for a $8 investment you have nothing to lose, if the project fails and or is similar to existing projects you can redirect the domain when you are finished for a little benefit from search engine traffic. When buying a domain name either keep it very generic or very specific, in this case be care to avoid domain names with Virgin Atlantic, Premium Economy or Upper Class in them as the Virgin affiliate program prohibits those terms. Given the current crisis and it will be in peoples minds right the way through the summer is baggage I would start there. Indeed flywithyourbaggage.co.uk is available from me if anyone is interested

Setup your mini site

We don’t really need to tell you how to do this part, suffice to say content, template rinse repeat. Find a suitable theme if your pushing the first class lounge aspect or Virigin all the way then Reds and Purple colour scheme will be your best bet. There is plenty of content out there, so use your imagination or scraper depending on your hat preference.

Create a Dedicated Landing Page

Or two, it really is worth creating specific pages dedicated to Virgins Services and those of others I’m using Virgin as the example, but let’s take Virgins Chauffeur pick up service, their are plenty of companies offering this service many with Affiliate Programs of their own. Each product your planning should have it’s own page. You might even want to consider a US to UK page and a UK to US version.

Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes

Following up from the 2 pages their are in fact 3 Virgin Atlantic Flights affiliate program and several others based round their credit cards. Both of the ones we are interested in for this article are run by the same company but require you to sign up twice. Why? Well the first is the UK based version of the program, this allows you to make money selling Flights booked from the UK to the US and to sign up you need to visit AffiliateFuture UK To make money booked from flights from US to the UK you will need the US version AffiliateFuture USA their is also a European option. Each program only pays out in its currency Sterling, Dollars, Euros and only by wire transfer. This is not a problem as your bank will do the conversions for you automatically just be aware when your looking at your currency values if you have never worked in multiple currencies before.

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GeoTarget - Given you are using two programs you don’t want a Brit accidentally clicking your US link so Geotarget this is not very hard you could use Nick PHP Class to make sure Brits only see the right code

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Drive traffic

You can drive traffic to your site via all the normal methods while the story is hot I would suggest PPC just be careful what you bid on. Terms such as Virgin Atlantic are out but Baggage Chaos is in. Focus on the terms that are topical today. Avoid things like Cheap Flights the cost per click certainly isn’t cheap. Ultimately while this example is a throw away site it could be a long term investment. Baggage going missing is a fact of life and people will be discussing terminal 5 for the next 10 years so don’t just use PPC build up more long term traffic streams and search engine traffic.

This was a quick example

This was an example in a pretty unsaturated market, but with a couple of hundred dollar slush fund and an eye on the news (ideally before the story breaks big time) you can make these sort of opportunist sites. Affiliate Future have an interesting range of travel related sites and I picked virgin because they are riding just so high at the moment. Just think in a few years time you could be promoting Virgin Galactic and making money off people going into space!

The idea, build up hype and expectations and then um deliver!
The reality build some hype dash some expectations and deliver more then most people expected. That was the feedback from our recent sale.

But just to take you back, the premise was simple:

Take one blog post packed with juicy info, take interested users money and deliver the info. To build urgency and hype we introduced a Fire Sale.

So what actually is a Fire sale?

Put simply its a price increasing system, where by the price is dictated by the time, so for the first few hours/days the price is x and then it increases. Often its not just time but volume so the price is for the first 10 items sold or the first 5 hours for example.

How did we do?

I would call it a success, from concept to the event was a little over 10 hours so the time frame was pretty short. The post was already half written, but was heavily expanded, the inclusion of some free software to which I owned the resale rights and the mailing lists were I think on balance a good idea. Cost wise and this is minus my time remember was entirely on promotion, two were run campaigns a Google Adwords Campaign and a StumbleUpon Sponsor Ads both were approved in record time and a big thank you to both companies after several emails were needed to get the landing page sorted. So total costs was about $40 I placed $30 in the StumbleUpon ads but in the end used just $14, the rest went on Google Adwords.

Revenue return: 14 people bought at $10 while a further 3 have bought at $20 so after basic costs you are looking at $160 return.

Remember this doesn’t take into account my own time, even so I would consider it a success if only because I have learnt a lot.

Traffic Sources

I have already discussed some traffic sources but the breakdown is as follows;

• StumbleUpon (prior to Ad) - 96(1)
• StumbleUpon (Ad driven) - 194 (4)
• Google Adwords - 189 conversions (7)
• WickedFire (buy/sale thread) - 12 (1)
• Digital Point (buy/sale thread) - 6(0)
• Other (Word of Mouth, direct to site) - 30(4)

The number in brackets is the number of attributed sales, This means the page converted at about 3% which is remarkable given how awful it was.

The Good, the bad and the plain ugly

The Good
Ok I’m going to say the content was the good, interesting subject hopefully of use to people but clearly not something we cover very often. The good is really people will pay for information if you give them a compelling reason to. Several people who bought the article are also on our Mac Book Pro Challenge judging by their email addresses, and so its nice to see perhaps it was loyal readers who were maybe less interested in the article but were looking to help the site out that pushed the figure up. Ultimately the good is it made a profit, and proved the concept.

The bad
The Firesale was badly organised, for starters it meant I had to stay up well into the night to change the prices. There was no mechanism in place to truly check time stamps and my half hearted attempt at a referral scheme was pathetic. From StumbleUpon side of things the sponsored ads attracted a few thumbs down mainly due to the wording of the landing page.

The just plain ugly
Never ever ever use a blog post as a landing page, don’t change your wording on the fly and proof read everything. These are simple lessons to be learnt. The landing page was by the biggest issue, when I originally envisioned the idea, the plan was for a separate landing page, introducing the article with an opening snippet, the bonuses and Firesale information but due to time constraints I didn’t finish the page. Because the original post was designed to whip people into some sort of hyped frenzy it emphasised the time more so then the product.
Ultimately the landing page failed because of this.

StumbleUpon does not accept time sensitive offers, which meant I had to reword the post to reflect and emphasise the fact you could purchase access after the post. This of course meant I was editing the post on the fly and spelling errors and some nasty grammar snuck in. A couple of negative comments appeared to my shame and slightly against my better judgement I did not publish them.

The information was not time sensitive and ultimately the Firesale detracted from the sale of the articles. In that respect I should have simply published and set a price.

Lessons Learnt

So what have I learnt;

• Always have a landing page
• Don’t change such pages
• Time sensitive offers are hard to get pass StumbleUpon (great fantastic and lovely staff)
• Fire Sales are not really suitable unless you have a time sensitive information or limited access
• Plan, prepare, check before you start your campaigns
• Automate as much as possible

Will we be doing it again, I think so at least in part, we need to automate everything on the purchase side but that should not be an issue. From the purchase point of view the Fire Sale aspect will I think be dropped and instead focus on offering premium content at good prices. What will not be happening is the site becoming into an article or ebook bazaar, the vast majority of posts will be free and hopefully of the usual high (one hopes) standard you come to expect.

Have you attempted to sell posts and articles? Did you have much success?

This post is part of the Mac Book Pro Challenge it’s not to late to get involved and start your journey to a shiny Mac Book Pro.

Email is on my mind

So with the Email Gathering Firesale which is continuing as I write this but will be over in a couple of hours, I noticed a couple of familiar email addresses of people who joined our challenge. So I think its worth throwing around some ideas around to help you get the most out of your potential new niche addresses without exposing yourself to a torrent of abuse and potentially your affiliate accounts shut down.

I do not approve of spam

Given I have spent yesterday telling you how to get clean, and verify your emails I strongly believe that if you are unsure of the legitimacy of how the address was collected then you never send more then a single introductory email.

Pressure selling via the first email never works

This I think is something that needs to be emphasised over and over again, and I know I covered it in the other article but throwing your affiliate links down peoples throats in the first email is not the way to convert them.

Instead try to build trust, given yesterday I managed to rewrite the Firesale opening letter 4 times and by the end it was a grammatical nightmare (sorry to the commentator who wrote the long comment on building trust with spelling at 7 in the morning you were deleted) to the point where people were questioning not only me but the information behind the letter. Suddenly after the initial rush people were holding back it is amazing but sometimes just spending time spell checking is enough!

Trust is getting close - trust is about persona

Remember our persona’s post from a few days ago? Well let’s put them to good use, the niche your targeting will dictate the style of the email. For example:

Is very unlikely to say…
Hey guys whats up? check out my new site its really cool!
Is she?
Well maybe she does but it is not what her peers and therefore the target audience will expect fit the language to the persona.

Sell the idea, then the product

If you are not planning a long recurring relationship with your new contacts? Why not? then at least get what you came for and grab the sale, or in our case entice them into the dream. Most Affiliate sites quite rightly do not approve of spam. So our process of verification is simple…

• Present your offer in brief
• Present the way forward (a link to your site and landing page)
• Present a way out

Remember your targeting this group of people because you think they are interested in your offer. If they are not then you do not need to waste your time and resources there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Introduction shot

If you have been given or got hold of a list and need to verify then the introductory email is critical. Clearly emphasis that it is a welcome, single email and that they will receive no further communication without there expressed permission. Explain why they are receiving the email, don’t be shy if you bought the address be honest tell them. Offer them the opt out even if you are never going to contact them again. Finally make your offer/sign up page easy and quick. If they have clicked your link you have them on the line so to speak don’t waste the opportunity.

Spam sucks - be personal

Seriously the way to avoid being classed as spam is to personalise your content, names, IP addresses you name it what ever you got that is personal to your target. The fact you are actually targeting a niche and not the masses gives you lots of potential. But remember if you want to flog Viagra no amount of me to telling you nice ways to present your information will help you will be just another spammer.

So I think it’s time to start building our landing site and looking at the idea of landing pages. There are loads of good articles out there on making persuasive sales pages, I will start up a resource list but if you have some articles let me know in the comments?