1&1
December 2007 Issue
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Greetings Valued Affiliate,

This holiday season, share the gift of shared hosting, and give yourself the extra commission! Your affiliate link and banners are free and easy to use. Keep reading to get some great ideas on how to get the most from these unique tracking links. (Find out what your earning potential is).

In this December issue, our spotlight article focuses on the best ways to sell web hosting during the holiday season. There is also still one more month to earn our Q4 incentives, an awesome landing page design contest, hosting and server offers, affiliate bonuses, and helpful new ad creatives and secrets to success.         

Reminder: missed last month's issue? Click here.

In this Issue:

1&1 NEWS
arrow 1&1 Announcements
arrow Spotlight Article
arrow eMarketing News & Events
TIPS
arrow Ad Creatives
arrow Secrets of Success
arrow Tool Tips
arrow Affiliate Bonuses

 

 

 

1&1 NEWS

Q4 Incentive Offer - increase your earnings by 60%!*

Receive 20% extra commissions if you sell 50-99 of any 1&1 hosting products in a month.
Receive 40% extra commissions if you sell 100-149 of any 1&1 hosting products in a month.
Receive 60% extra commissions if you sell 150+ of any 1&1 hosting products in a month.

*Gross sales calculated after 60 days. We reserve the right to reclaim commissions for sales not active for our 90 day guarantee period, per our Affiliate T&C.


Q4 Landing Page Design Contest (10 winners)

Win a subscription to one of the most popular keyword research tools on the web Wordtracker

Contest:
Create a landing page for any 1&1 hosting product(s).
Prizes:

1st prize: a 1 year Wordtracker subscription ($299)
2nd, 3rd and 4th prize: a 1 month Wordtracker subscription (3 X $59)
5th to 10th prize: a 1 week Wordtracker subscription (5 X $30)
Deadline:
All landing pages MUST be submitted by December 31st 2007. Send a link to the hosted page to jesse.bouman@1and1.com

Requirements:

Title:
60 characters, contains good keywords.
Keywords:
No more than 3-6 for the page.
Description:
150-200 words. Contains at least 1-3 keywords. 1-2 full sentences, no marketing words like biggest-best-strongest-fastest, etc. (see DMOZ.org for how to write good site descriptions).
Content:
500-1000 words. We want you to create unique opinion/review/help/instructional user generated content (great for search engines). You may use the specifications/features of the product(s) you chose to present on your landing page, but content must give additional value/insights to readers.
Linking:
Must have at least 1 link embedded into your content. Page should be linked to from another page on your site (for example homepage, about us page, links page).
Affiliate banner:
Optional but nice.
Copyrights:
No copy stealing images or text copy from 1&1's site. You must respect the copyrights/trademarks of 1&1 and content/images of other companies as well.

Additional Tips:
For your keyword research you can use the free trial that Wordtracker offers on their website: http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html

You might also consider signing up for Wordtracker's outstanding 'Using Keywords' mini-course – delivered to you via email in 9 handy installments. http://www.wordtracker.com/promotions/1-and-1-november)

Generally we recommend "link cloaking" or link encrypting for your affiliate links. This can be done using a free online tool. More advanced users may choose to write a redirect script or a meta refresh, but the result is the same.


November Special Offers

Due to the overwhelming number of new small to medium sized business owners currently looking to expand their web presence, 1&1 is making hosting and server offers assured to cut costs.

HOSTING: In hosting, we are offering $50 off the first year for all Business Packages, for an overall savings of over 40%! While this is a great package for small to medium business users, it is also great for home users in need of more web space, bandwidth, domains, and free PPC ad money.

SERVERS: We are offering Free set-up and a whopping $200 off the first year price of all Enterprise Servers!  This is a great opportunity for businesses to save money before the end of the fiscal year. 

 
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Increase Your Holiday Hosting Sales this Season 
By Joshua Sloan
Director of Online Marketing at 1&1
 

As online shoppers ponder gift ideas for their loved ones this holiday season, there is a great opportunity to promote 1&1 hosting as a truly unique and lasting gift. In particular, this article will go through our most popular products and discuss specific strategies for selling them during this holiday season and beyond. 

The 1&1 shared hosting packages offer the broadest array of holiday sales opportunities with a wide-range of features. These hosting packages provide both gift givers and recipients the opportunity to build family sites or blogs, store photos and memories and provide a personalized domain or email address for personal, business or family communication.  With a 1&1 Home hosting package, customers get 2 free included domain names, a super simple free Site Builder as well as 1&1's Click 'n Build site 'add-on' tools, free Photo Gallery Builder, and the easy 1&1 Blog builder software. Most hosting companies do not offer such a huge variety of website features and tools for such a low price, so each of these features provides a unique opportunity to market hosting products this season. By the way, your affiliate commission for referring a $4.99 per month 1&1 Home hosting package is $20.00!

Now that we have established an array of features and possible applications, it's important to translate these into benefits which will help convert your site visitors into holiday buyers. This will give you some extra income this holiday season, while providing them with a creative and unique gift. While our affiliate banners focus on our monthly specials and highlight our brand strength, providing additional text is crucial to shaping the right message and telling your page visitor WHY you are displaying the banner. Some examples of "strong call to action" text which you can place near your banners include:

  • "Share your family photos with the world. Free Photo Gallery with 1&1 hosting. Click on the banner below to get yours!"
  • "A unique holiday gift for techies and non-techies...1&1 all inclusive website hosting. Click below to see why over 4 million sites trust 1&1 for hosting"
  • "Need a gift for the person who has everything? Give them a website! Click below for more details." 

This text both identifies a need your visitors might have, while offering them a compelling solution: the key elements of successful marketing. Another angle might be to focus on the countless consumers who have always wanted a family site but have been intimidated by a lack of technical skill, for example: 

  • "Use 1&1's easy-to-use site building to get your family website up without the hassle. Now is the time to get started to store your holiday memories!"  
  • "Build your loved one an online Photo Gallery this holiday season. Free and easy gallery builder with hosting. Click below to get yours!"

The audience for web hosting is nearly unlimited, and with our easy do-it-yourself tools and free valuable add-ons, you can target even those who have been traditionally intimidated of getting a website or who know little about hosting. Try these tips during the end-of-year holidays, and increase your 1&1 referral commissions.

We wish you a great holiday season and a happy (and profitable) New Year! 

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All the news that's fit for affiliates and online marketers to read. Stay up to date with the latest news about affiliate marketing, search engines, e-mail and other issues which can affect your online marketing success.

News:
AffiliateTip.com - From affiliate marketer Shawn Collins
www.affiliatetip.com/affiliate_newsletter.php

ReveNews - Affiliate portal and newsletter
www./revenews.com/newsletter.html

MarketingSherpa.com - Premium Internet Marketing studies and research
www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters.html

SEO news - Weekly search engine optimization news
www.free-seo-news.com/index.php

Marketingnewz - Assorted marketing headlines
www.marketingnewz.com

Searchenginewatch - Top search engine news
www.searchenginewatch.com

MediaPost - Professional online marketers news and resources
www.mediapost.com

 

Events:

December 12 – December 15, 2007
Search Insider Summit
Park City, Utah

TIPS
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Ad Creatives

For all the talk in affiliate marketing about increasing traffic to your site or the best links and banners to use, the most effective way to promote your affiliate link often is through email. Here are some good examples:

The key is personalization. The people that trust you trust that you will make them a good recommendation. You are helping them out while at the same time earning commissions for yourself. It’s a win-win.

Our current banner - If you don't have it yet, make sure to get it from your control panel: 1&1 Control Panel

Banner

TIP: Adding a line of text under or above the banner helps your visitors nderstand what you can do with 1&1 for example:

Creating and hosting a website is easy and painless thanks to 1&1 Internet!

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You probably know you need to find the right keywords and to write the best possible ads and content for search engines all in the hope that you will drive good traffic to yours and your advertiser’s websites. Not nearly enough time is spent on the best tool to turn your good traffic into sales; a landing page! Here are 5 tips for creating an awesome landing page.

  1. Clickpath of death. Avoid having too many clicks between the ad or landing page and the final destination (credit card entry, email entry, etc.) The longer is takes to get through the buy/join/subscribe process, the more people you will loose.

  2. Make sure your landing page is in tune with the ad that got the customer there in the first place. If you are advertising 1&1’s $50 off special on the Business Package you do not want to include information on instant domains or Enterprise servers on your landing page. Less distraction, a clear unique selling point are very important.
  3. The focus should be on having your visitors make one specific action or Call to Action, such as:
    - Buy Now!
    - Get Yours Today!
    - Click Now or Loose Out!
    - Signup Now.
    - Join Today!
  4. Keep the content short and to the point. Emphasize benefits more than features. There are only really a few reasons anyone buys or does anything, and it is not usually related to features.
    5) If your resources and time allow, it is recommended that you test the elements of your landing page to see how this affects conversions. What to agencies who test look at? See http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com/landing-pages.html for an example. Testing is one of the most important things you can do to improve the conversion rate of your site or page.

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These tools and newsletters are completely FREE. Hint: Add these goodies to your web favorites and grab them today.

NEW! Design your logo FOR FREE with LogoMaker by HP.
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NEW! Free widgets for your blog
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Free CSS website templates:
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Web Master Tools
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/

Search Engine Marketing Tools
http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex

Create a Googlerankings account
http://googlerankings.com/positiontracking/

Free website templates
http://www.oswd.org/

Free PDFmaker (great for making newsletters or eBooks that you can imbed your affiliate link into)
http://www.pdf995.com/

Favicon Generator - Brand your site!
http://www.favicongenerator.com/

Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins
http://blog.affiliatetip.com/

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NEW! 20% Off any order with Text-Link-Ads!
http://www.text-link-ads.com/1and1 (use promo code 1and1)

UPDATED! Wordtracker offers 25% off their one month subscription (normal price $59)
Click here (offer extended through December 31).

Website Magazine
Get your Free Lifetime Subscription today!

Free Revenue Magazine
Revenue Magazine the performance marketing standard

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Search Marketing Standard
Free 1-year subscription


1&1 Affiliate freebies you might have missed
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Thanks again for your continued support of 1&1 and for your interest and participation in our affiliate program. Although many people receive this newsletter, only a few bridge the gap between knowing and doing.  But we know no matter what kind of site you have, or how many 1&1 affiliates sales you make each month, the more you learn, the more you can earn.

We hope you will share this newsletter with others and the value it creates for you and your site. We will continue to bring you the latest product and affiliate tips to help you increase your traffic and your 1&1 affiliate commissions.

Until next year, happy holidays!

Joshua, Jesse, Benjamin and the 1&1Internet Team.
1&1 Internet Inc.
701 Lee Road Suite 300
Chesterbrook, PA 19087

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