Well Nick is in the army still doing his year long stint as a potato scraper extraordinare! While I have been engaged on a top secret project that only, myself and half the world have known about, but what is this top secret project well I can tell you this have you ever wanted a Wordpress Membership Site plugin that actually works?

Of course you do which is why you will run out and purchase Your Members in about 10 minutes time!

In the mean time I have managed to log back into PaymentBlogger so normal if somewhat erratic service will resume soon!

Cheers for the support and the emails asking about us, I can tell you as far as I know Nick is fine if a little bored thankfully the Greek Army is about as active as a sloth.

Before I forget Join the Cambridge New Media Affiliates scheme let me know you done so and I will let you in on some cool new ideas that will blow your minds.

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!

This post is part of the Mac Book Pro Challenge, but don’t worry it’s not to late to start, so why not join us?

Getting a face

Think of the Mac book Challenge as a marketing campaign the goal (ahem wish sorry) is to convince people to join in your version of the challenge by presenting them with the information, the incentive and the reason. Now for a little game who do you want to target?

Seriously its that simple forget careful keyword research or demographic studies go with your gut who do you think you can convince to join up and encourage their friends. The reality is just about any demographic over the age of 18 is going to be interested in a free laptop be they a student, a Gran or a Working Mum so which group do you think you can appeal to which group can you get your head in.

Once you got your target we are going to create a sales person an online persona who will front your campaign just like any good advertising campaign. Now before we even think about web sites etc I want you to think personal the key to a good campaign is when the person on the receiving end (believes) they are on a two way conversation.

So lets look at some social groups and try and decide the best person to front a campaign for each of them.

18-25 Male Students
You got to hand it to them by far my favourite source for this kind of affiliate marketing, they are generally poor, most want to get rich, nearly all want beer and they all like pretty young girls. Ok so a few sweeping generalisations there but on the whole pitching to sterotypes works even if its not politically correct.
Perfect Persona: Pretty Girl Next Door

House Bound Mum
Wants to earn a bit on the side, is more cautious about giving to much personal information away. Often looking for things to fill short gaps, ideas have to be pitched as not time consuming and not evasive.
Perfect Persona: House Bound Mum alternate: Dashing Gent

Silver Surfer
The internet is not just home to young, more and more elderly persons are getting online, highly cautious and much more careful with their details. The silver surfers are a great long term revenue source and have fantastic networking capability.
Perfect Persona: Silver Surfer

Affiliate Marketers
Strong willed and expecting a con, they have been there and done that however as they know the business they make great partners and can easily expand any affiliate network. In many ways they are the best and worst people to pitch to.
Perfect Persona: Me

These are all stereotypes and pretty generic in most cases like encourages like but such as the case of our 18-25 Male its not always the case. Once we have an image in our mind of our persona it’s time to go out and make them a reality.

Bring a persona to life

Your sales persona needs to be fleshed out; create a name, and find a suitable picture if you can’t use yourself try getting friend, family, local model to pose for you. If all else fails then look for a suitable photos online try to avoid the free stock photo sites like sxc.hu and instead look at sites such as stockxpert.com. The reason is simple buying an image or set of images that have been rarely downloaded means that the chances your model has been seen before is limited. Try where possible to get a few images which can be used throughout your campaign. Given that in our examples we are aiming to get people laptops it makes sense to promote with images of your model with a laptop.

Above all try to keep it real certain people are just not going to promote certain things, Jessica Simpson is not the next model for a free laptop. When using an image make sure the model has signed a model release form and that the image is licensed for commercial use.

The more details the more customers

The more people can be brought into the site the more likely they are to bite, this may sound a bit manipulative but that is what you are doing it’s what the local shops are doing. For the ultimate effect try using video, if you have access to your model, get them to record a personal greeting/ sales pitch. Developing a character with personality quirks does not take much, try to create a short bio, include 5 things your new persona likes and dislikes what star sign are they and age. The more the better even if you don’t use these details on the site it helps build a stronger character a more believable character.

What’s next?

Next post we are going to start building a suitable site as our main sales site, we will look at the various elements needed on the site and discuss how sites look can influence a person. Through out these next few posts I will be building a sample site for you to play with complete with persona (no you can’t use it) but it will help you to understand some of the ideas and psychology behind such sites.

After some pretty terrible advice was being handed out over at Webdigity I thought it was time to look at Googles recent announcement that a Privacy Policy was required of course here in the UK this is nothing new as we have needed such a policy for years, how many people actually have one is another matter!

Anyway this is a short post so get your sample policy based on an early version its more robust then most and is in part built on the OIC Office or the Information Commissioner the people here in the UK who control data privacy policy. So hopefully it will be pretty solid. Given that most adsense users at least on Webdigity have more then one site the policy is designed to be global. so without further ado here it is the Tim’s quick guide to Google Adsense Privacy Policy

One final thing IANAL (I am not a lawyer) any serious commercial venture should seek professional legal advice so if your livelihood is based on Adsense (why?) then you should get a lawyer to help draft your documents

We so need to kick start the blog again, and how better then by helping you guys get a Mac Book Pro Each!

Why do you need a laptop?

When asked what is the single most important change in my life on the Internet I always answer my first laptop purchase with a wireless connection. Suddenly the world changes, now you can remain online in your own cocoon environment where ever you are in the world. I do not leave the house without a laptop, my laptop has gone with me to festivals, conferences, Hackdays, clients locations and even the shops!

If you don’t have a laptop then now is the chance to grab one, if you do have a laptop is it a Mac Book Pro? It is? ok well then you can just play for the cash!

The Challenge

So here is the challenge find 25 people and get them to join a site where they to can win a laptop each person to sign up needs to complete a single offer. When all 24 have completed 1 offer you receive a free Laptop or Cash!
Simple huh

Don’t panic it’s coming!

I bet most of you are chomping at the bit for the website address but I want you to hold on just 2 seconds more.
Before you sign up we want you to know we are here for you! over the next few weeks we are going to discuss not only the various offers, but ways to get people to sign up. In other words we are going to hold your hands through the whole thing!

One final thing before the address

One last thing before you sign up, it won’t cost you a penny! please, please make sure you read the small prints of offers but for everyone their is a free option so you do not have to part with money to take part* don’t be pressured into parting with cash on an offer unless you want to!

Let’s get started

Remember to successfully complete the challenge you will need to sign up 24 people, for Notebooks4free and have each person complete an offer.

Legal bits

We are not responsible for your earning potential, and while we will help as much as we can we can’t do the work for you. This is not a pyramid scheme it is a single tier affiliate program, we are using an affiliate link but any affiliates you recruit do not count towards our total. Please please please read the small print on the Notebook4free website. Only one entry per household etc. Finally not all countries can receive laptops in such cases the cash alternative is offered via Paypal.
Remember with free trials and offers always cancel them if you do not want them to continue!

*If in doubt sign up for Notebooks4free and stay tuned for ways to complete free offers even if you don’t have a credit card.

So who is ready to take on the challenge and join us on this simple but effective challenge? It doesn’t matter if your an affiliate marketing newbie or guru this is a great way to get a laptop or cash and what could be simpler then getting 24 friends together?

Taking the challenge to the next level!

• Goal driven challenges
• Creating your sales person