Exclusive: Three Question Interview With Janet Meiners

Few days ago I had a chance to interview (via e-mail) Janet Meiners. Janet has been in affiliate marketing for quiet some time. The first time I’ve ever met Janet was at Jeremy Palmer‘s members forum and have been daily reader of her blog ever since. Janet writes frequently about Affiliate and Internet Marketing– make sure to subscribe to her blog. Janet is also author of Affiliate Flash– a great source for affiliate marketing news and information.

Without further ado here is the interview. Enjoy!

Q:

Janet, would you please tell my readers how long have you been in affiliate marketing industry and what made you consider affiliate marketing?

Janet:

It was about two years ago at Adtech online marketing conference. I stopped by the Commission Junction booth and asked them what affiliate marketing was. To be honest the explanation I got confused me. I wasn’t sure how it worked. Being a curious person I tried to figure it out. It probably took a year before I started making money as an affiliate.

Later, I heard that some people in an internet marketing class I took were going to Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. I went as a member of the press. I needed to find an affiliate marketer to interview. Jeremy Palmer was on a panel and I asked him for an interview. He lives in Draper, Utah which isn’t far from where I live. Now that I know him, I’m surprised how easy it was to get in touch with him. The more I learned the more fascinated I was with the idea of affiliate marketing.

What is compelling is a way to sell name products without having to do customer service, carry inventory, or have a shopping cart on your site. You can promote name brands that you’d otherwise have no access to.

I’ve since come to view affiliate marketing as a good way to expand an existing product line. For example, I sell tents online through a dropshipper. I found an ebook that has Dutch Oven cooking recipes. If I promote that with an articles and information about cooking while you’re camping I can expand the ways to make money on my site. Personally, I make more from ebook sales than any others. I also like to ask my clients to use my affiliate links when they purchase products. It’s like leaving me a tip and it costs them nothing.

Q:

I personally have experienced difficult time to find a good source of practical advise and information on how to begin in affiliate marketing. What, in your opinion, is the best e-book, forum or a website would that be and could you tell my readers three main reasons why would you recommend that source?

Janet:

Read Jeremy Palmer’s blog, and Shawn Collins blog. Jeremy tells a lot and Shawn is a veteran in the industry.

I’m a fan of Jeremy Palmer’s book High Performance Affiliate Marketing.

1. It’s better organized than the other books I’ve read and he keeps it up-to-date with new information.
2. The chapters on keyword research and landing pages are excellent and apply to online marketing in general.
3. He has a private forum that goes with the book and it’s not mean-spirited or rated X like some are. He personally answers many questions.

Jeremy is for real and not just lucky. He’s worked hard to learn and never stops learning. He is a master at PPC advertising and landing pages. Keywords are gold and your competitive advantage. He’s made some videos about Google AdWords, MSN, and Yahoo search engine advertising at http://www.searchmarketingvideos.com/. It helps that I know him but I’m not getting paid to say any of this.

I think the reason most people fail or don’t make much as an affiliate is because it’s more advanced than they are ready for. When you start with zero traffic you either get good at buying or creating it (SEO). Most programs pay around 15% so you’re going to have to drive volume if you’re going to make any money.

Instead, set up an ecommerce site, using a service that makes it easy (like Third Sphere that has a shopping cart, web site creator, and autoresponder built in). Find products to sell where you don’t have to hold inventory. The merchant sends the product when you get an order. When you get a dropshipper you make around 25% a sale and keep the customer instead of sending them to someone else. I like to add affiliate products to supplement my product line.

Affiliate marketing is easier if you have a web site that lends itself to selling products or you become an expert at buying traffic. For example, www.SheSheMe.com is an ezine with a blog. They have articles that fit a particular demographic. All the links are affiliate links. It didn’t happen overnight though, They’ve been building the site for several years. If anyone tells you it’s easy make money as an affiliate they aren’t telling the full story.

One more piece of advice: don’t bother promoting any products that don’t perform well. Look at their sales performance and ONLY take the best. Why do the work if the merchant can’t sell once you get a potential customer to their site? Commission Junction rates merchants. Go for the brand names. I haven’t always done this and tried to cover all the options. That hasn’t worked well for me.

Q:

My readers know that I ma a huge fan of PRWeb, but what they do not know is that the only reason I have given PRWeb a try was due several articles on your old. One particular article comes to mind where you talk about PRWeb Experiment. Do you still use PRWeb to promote your websites or business and could you tell us three top reasons why you are using PRWeb?

Janet:

Yes, I’m still a big fan of PRWeb. I recommend them to many of my clients. Make sure to sign up for their free webinar, it’s excellent. They also have a helpful press release template I refer my clients to. Don’t mistake it for an article distribution service. It’s got to be actual news. Also, your press release must get an editorial score of at least 4 or you won’t get as wide distribution. So if you’re not a strong writer, you may be better served using another service. Don’t pay $200 unless you can nail it because you’ll waste your money.

If you want to find help writing a press release, I suggest rather than using Elance, try Craigslist and find someone local. I’ve had better luck that way and it’s usually cheaper.

Top 3 Reasons I like PRWeb:

1. You can put links in the body of the press release (at the $200 level) as well as a list of keywords.
2. They have great page rank and distribution. Your press release gets a permanent home on their site and in the search engines.
3. You can add images and video to your press release.

However, I’m also a fan of PRLeap. For $50 you can put links in the text – use your keywords as the link text. Repeat them between 5-10% of your press release. Focus on 2 keyword phrases that relate to the news. Use them in your headline, first sentence, middle, and end. Use them in quotes too. Make sure the site will let you put links in the text and has good page rank. Ponn did a great list of other press release services.

I’m writing an ebook to share what I’ve learned about online press releases. Writing an ebook takes much longer than I imagined. I’m sort of ADD so I try a lot of things. I’m a passionate blogger though. I’ll never stop blogging. It doesn’t make me money directly but has raised my visibility and gotten me contract jobs. Best of all it’s made me friends. I like to share what I learn plus the community of bloggers is just phenomenal. Of course, that’s how I know you too.

Recommended articles from Janet’s blog: Top 5 Online PR Headline Writing Tips from Marc Harty, Top 10 SEO Factors,You Can’t Be Everything at First, so Find a Niche