Finch Sells | Affiliate Marketing Blog

Revealed: A Goldmine Of Inspiration For Niche Markets

Sep 12 2011

Affiliate marketing niches

The Free Micro Niche Finder

Inspiration is the magic ingredient of a successful Monday morning, closely followed by an injection of caffeine if it’s been a rough weekend.

There’s nothing an affiliate marketer likes more than a mash-up of potentially profitable niche markets with low competition and high rewards.

So if you’re looking for ideas and/or direction, head on over to 43Things.

43Things is a community portal driven by users who share their goals and ambitions on the site. As a starting point for new projects, it’s a goldmine of inspiration. Where better to brainstorm than where thousands of users are spewing their innermost desires?

Instead of creating a 60 page website only to find that nobody wants to visit it, 43Things uncovers more than a small handful of micro-niches that are backed by solid social proof.

Now, if somebody could just strap on a self-serve advertising platform for Finch to target those “want to lose weight” users directly, that would be fan-bloody-tastic…

Recommended This Week

Lots of Ads is the latest service to offer spying capabilities over Facebook’s most profitable ads. The great appeal for me is the ability to spy on International markets including France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and many more. Save time on translations and tap in to the most lucrative markets on Facebook. Definitely a worthy addition to your toolkit. First 20 customers only who use code FINCH11 will receive 10% off their lifetime subscription. Enjoy!
Self-improvements junkies, head on over to Filthy Rich Mind, a project I’m collaborating on with several talented writers that I’m excited to work with.
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter Love you long time. Thanks for reading.

1 Conversion Saving Tip For Older Demographics

Sep 08 2011

I don’t want to stereotype, but it goes without saying that some demographics are more able users of the Internet than others. If you’ve ever witnessed your parents attempting to navigate The Facebooks for the first time, you’ll be quite aware that too many options can turn in to Next Step Paralysis. The ability to be completely and utterly unpredictable.

The best way to remedy this confusion is to build every landing page with the attitude that simple is best.

It’s important to build landing pages for the lowest common denominator. And by that, I mean sacrificing your creative urges and making your sales pitch as sweepingly digestible as can be.

Here in the UK, The Guardian has a reading age of 14. The Sun is lower at 8. There are many tools where you can measure the reading age of your copy, with my favourite being the readability test at Juicy Studio. If your reading age is too high, you’ll be losing too many conversions on mindblown casual surfers.

Reading age is one variable, but where older demographics are concerned, the actual structure of your landing page is even more important.

Have you ever stood over the shoulder of a user in your target demographic and watched as they stumbled across your landing page? Try it, you’ll probably be surprised by the results.

This isn’t always convenient, and I’m not suggesting you load up on binoculars and go all fucking Rear Window on your suburban neighbour folk. Thankfully there are services out there that specialise in tracking live footage of users on your site.

Behold:

We all know the importance of split testing, but witnessing the actual screen footage of users on your site is another leap in to the realm of truly getting your target market. These sites allow you to track the mouse, view hotspots of clicks and really drill down for usability data.

I managed to uncover a common flaw in my own landing pages, particularly with older demographics, where there were simply too many options on the page.

Are you building landing pages using the traditional bold Call-to-Action, with separate bullet points calling out various other incentives? I used to do this all the time. I’d have about five different anchor links, each trying to capture different sectors of the market. In the end, it was just too confusing.

Like your great grandmother staring blankly at The Facebooks, too many options is a bad thing. You will often enjoy much more success by having one simple Call-to-Action clearly defined, with a progressive sales funnel that leads the user on to the next step.

Or maybe you won’t.

If you’ve ever sat tearing your hair out at where all your ad clicks are disappearing to, the tools above should uncover some handy clues. If you’re still confused, here are those half price binoculars. Go hide in a hedge and collect some data.

Recommended This Week

Lots of Ads is the latest service to offer spying capabilities over Facebook’s most profitable ads. The great appeal for me is the ability to spy on International markets including France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and many more. Save time on translations and tap in to the most lucrative markets on Facebook. Definitely a worthy addition to your toolkit. First 20 customers only who use code FINCH11 will receive 10% off their lifetime subscription. Enjoy!
Make sure you check out the newly redesigned Finch Blogs, which is now a mesmerizing portal of lifestyle design and 3am brainfarts for the online professional.
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter Love you long time. Thanks for reading.

Hire Good Cheap Workers With EasyOutsource

Sep 06 2011

Outsourcing to India is no longer as cheap as it used to be. The race to the bottom of bargain basement prices for skilled workers has shifted in a different direction, a little further east to be exact.

If you’re constantly on the hunt for cheap labour, you’ve probably already heard that Filipinos are doing it cheaper, and doing it better. Well, certainly if you’ve spoken to enough Filipinos.

I am a firm believer in outsource arbitrage. If somebody abroad is willing to do work cheaply and to a high standard, I have no problems in taking business away from my own country. This has become widespread not just on a small business level, but in worldwide corporations that are desperate to maximise profits.

In an economic sense, it’s a disaster. How can America and the UK continue to thrive if jobs are being sent off-shore? We hear a lot of media scaremongering about jobs not being created but everybody knows, this is bullshit. Jobs are being created. They’re just being filled with cheaper labour from a warmer climate. It’s tough to envision a situation where that trend will be reversed.

So it’s on that basis that I recommend EasyOutsource as a good stomping ground for those looking to hire labour without paying the premium.

EasyOutsource was recommended to me by a friend when I asked him who had been responsible for the swish custom coding job behind one of his sites. I was pretty stunned when he told me the wages he was paying his staff, and it was much more competitive than the rates you typically see on Elance and oDesk.

EasyOutsource is free to use, and is essentially no more than a portal bringing buyers and service providers together. There are zero hoops to jump through. Just register a profile and post a job, or cruise through the profiles of workers and message them directly if you so wish.

It’s very easy, though I can understand why serious project managers would have apprehension about dealing with workers in such an uncontrolled marketplace.

I say this time and time again, but it never loses relevance. Outsourcing is an art. You cannot expect to simply bagsy a foreign worker, throw them a brief and expect it delivered to spec without any hiccups along the way. This applies to EasyOutsource and every other freelancing site on the planet.

You really need to spend time weeding out the pretenders from the legitimate workers who can add to your business. Get them on Skype and ask to speak directly to the individuals who will be responsible for the work.

I once took on a highly skilled University graduate who wrote like a fluent subcontinental Shakespeare in her briefing. I was impressed, almost shamed by her writing. But that means very little if she delegates the actual work to her bumbling school children and their shaky grasp of ‘Indlish‘. Which is exactly what she did.

Also beware of the super talented programmers who tell you they’re capable of working full-time, but take 2 days to reply to the shortest email. (ie. “Hello, are you working, you cheeky little shit?“)

Outsourcing effectively is a skilled art. Outsourcing unwisely is a waste of time, energy and subsequently your will to live. If you’re going to do it, put some thought in to it.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re looking for a more professional outsourcing solution, definitely take a look at Pepper Virtual Assistants. They were featured on ProBlogger last week and stand out as reliable, if slightly pricier, proposition.
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