Joel’s Blog

The Amazon affiliate program, which is also known as ‘Amazon Associates’ can be an easy way to monetize your website. By acting as an affiliate to Amazon, you can place links on your website to their products, and you get a commission if someone purchases that product via your link. It’s easy to sign up, you receive almost immediate approval and you can start placing links on your website the same day.

However, when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. After doing some research I found that a lot of users of the program were using it as a primary business model, which is not sustainable. Some users were also creating websites with terrible content that were specifically designed for search engine keywords. but even if these websites are getting a few hundred visitors from Google Search right now, it won’t last for long because of copied content, poor user engagement, and high bounce rate. (Khan, 2019)

Here are some of the problems associated with the Amazon Affiliate program (Khan, 2019)

• You get only a 24-hour window in which your referrals need to make a purchase on Amazon.

• Your product is no longer available on Amazon

• Your ranking drops for the main keywords

• The demand for your products decreases

• Most of your referrals take more than 24 hours to purchaseAmazon bans your account

You also can’t promote affiliate offers with email marketing. In the U.S alone, more than 66% of online consumers (15 years or older) made a purchase in the last 12 months because of a marketing email.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats

Commission being at a low rate and Amazon dictating the variables of the program are major causes of the problems that are faced by users of the program. However, this can be used in an effective way to monetize your website in the early stages of its life, but do not confuse the program for a long-term sustainable business model.

Khan link: Khan, J. (2019). 9 Reasons Why Starting an “Amazon Affiliate Site” is the WORST Thing You Could Do as a Newbie (And What You Should Do Instead) [Blog]. Retrieved from https://nichehacks.com/amazon-associates-program/

Joel Davies

We’ve all been there, searching for restaurants nearby for breakfast, lunch or even dinner. But for some reason, it’s always difficult to find a menu, often we’re scrolling down each google search in the hope that one has the menu available. Either that or the menu is available on an app we’re forced to download like Zomato, or are directed to a noisy website that has ‘About Us’ and “Our Story’ on the first page. Most of us don’t care, we just want the menu, please.

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Why can’t we just be redirected to a PDF file of the restaurant’s menu? That would be nice, but not the most effective way for restaurants to obtain more clicks from Google. There are better options for restaurants to provide information as fast as possible for potential customers, and avoid us disregarding your website as a result of the menu being hard to find.

85 percent of online searches for restaurants result in purchases, according to a Telmetrics/xAd study (see link). So how can restaurants assure that they take advantage of us potential customers who are searching for the best smashed avocado?

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100129880

The answer is to assure that the menu is searchable. By having a PDF file of the menu, it is unable to be searched for keywords or specific dishes in the menu. This is why restaurants should have a text menu available on their website, in order for it to be searched for specific dishes and keywords that potential customers may be looking to find. The menu should also be available on the first page of the website in order for customers to see the information as fast as possible. Also, if the menu is spread across several HTML webpages means that the customer is likely to look across several pages of the website which will likely result in higher placement on search engines, as they are likely to favour larger websites.

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When I’m looking for a restaurant, I want to see the menu as fast as possible, and if its too hard to find I’ll usually keep searching for another that provides a menu quicker. Do you guys care about seeing the menu, and if you do, is it important for it to be extremely easy to find?

Joel Davies.

A social media campaign that went viral recently we have all probably seen is the Gillette ‘The best men can be’ campaign. Gillette took a stance on ‘toxic masculinity‘ with a controversial video on their social media pages that ‘called on men to be better’ Take a look below.

It seems blasphemous that a company that has a core consumer base of men, would be bold enough to take such a stance.

According to the analytics company Talk Walker, Gillette had less than 10,000 social media mentions prior to the video being posted, which then on boasted 1.5 million social media mentions between Jan 14 – Jan 16 when the video was posted

• The brand’s hashtag, #TheBestMenCanBe, was used 187,400 times during the same period.

• As of April 2019, Gillette’s original tweet has been retweeted 236,000 times

• The video has more than 30 million views on YouTube.

So, Why did this go so viral? So quick?

Social Currency– The topic encourages opinion, people are concerned about how they look to others, so they may share, like or comment on the post sharing/debating such a controversial topic and what they think.

Stories- Gillette showed different scenario’s in order to communicate their message, which helps people understand perspective. People are more likely to engage with something they can understand.

Inner Remark-ability– Ever seen a brand that sells mainly to male consumers, have a campaign that may have a negative reaction from men? Pretty remarkable if you ask me. the post is worth making a ‘remark’ about.

Emotional – HIGH Arousal. Gillette were able to utilise a controversial topic in order to gain high arousal, people were either pissed off, or amused, or even excited that a brand had taken a stance on a social issue.

Social Proof– Conformity, people witness other people have a negative or positive reaction to the topic will cause them to do the same, the video encourages opinion, which was shared by many, its a ripple effect really.

Although this went viral, it alienated a portion of their consumers that disagreed with the sentiment. Many did call for a boycott of the razor brand, labelling it ‘man bashing’ which triggered a hashtag of #boycottgillette

Many brands are now attempting to go viral at any cost, taking political stances seems to be an effective strategy. According to Edelman’s 2018 Earned Brand Study it has been found that 64% of consumers will support (or boycott) a brand based on its political or social stances.

Do you believe these brands are just capitalising on a controversial topic in order to go viral or are they genuinely concerned for the issues they take a stand on?

 

Joel Davies -s3795681

Digital Marketing, Monday 830-1030am

Blog post #3 Week 5 content

Drop-shipping is a business model that draws similarities to a brokerage model, Drop-shipping brings buyers and sellers together by marketing the products for the wholesalers and creates revenue by price manipulation (fee of sorts). Drop-shipping has become a popular business model for young entrepreneurial minds, mostly because of it being low cost-low risk. In 2017, approximately 22-33% of online sales were fulfilled via Drop-shipping (see link). This illustration displays how it works:

https://www.americommerce.com/the-numbers-behind-drop-shipping

Who is the supplier? The most common supplier used for this business model is Ali Express. AliExpress.com sell just about everything, for prices that are far below retail price. Dropshippers will use this to their advantage by selling those products through their own website for a higher price, when customers purchase the product on the Dropshippers website, the supplier will ship the product on their behalf.

You’re probably wondering, how are people able to make their own store? Shopify.com is a website that allows users to create their own website (online store). Charging a fee of $29 a month for users to have their own URL and even provides statistics on website traffic.

Instagram Advertisements, Instagram Influencers and Facebook Advertisements are often used in order to reach the intended target market for these products and to gain more traffic on the Drop-shipper website to encourage sales. Despite this being such an attractive business model, many websites suggest that 90% of Drop-shippers fail within the first month (see link below).

https://www.cloudways.com/blog/dropshipping-failures-and-success-rate/

I think the 90% failure rate could be due to the model being so low cost-low risk and easily accessible, that it easily attracts people with hopes of entrepreneurship, who actually have little idea of how to run a business or market a product. What do you guys think? Feel free to discuss in the comments.

Joel Davies -s3795681

Digital Marketing, Monday 830-1030am

Blog post #2 Week 3 content