Not much activity in Internet Marketing for the past week.  There has been one significant development for me, though.

Luke posted about an opportunity for affiliate marketers to promote a hunting/fishing lodge owned by some friends up in Canada, and I responded.  I became one of six Internet Marketers working on this venture.

The niche was similar to niches I'm interested in, not an exact match, but close enough.  The real selling point for me, though, was the promise of one on one involvement and help.  The owners of the Lodge wanted us to succeed and would be willing to work with us every step of the way.  There are great opportunities for training here at WA.   There are numerous tutorials on every imaginable subject so it's easy to efficiently gain knowledge on a particular topic.  There are also plenty of opportunities for one on one mentoring.  Marcus has been great about giving me guidance and suggestions on the campaigns I've started.  At the very least I can usually get a specific question answered quickly by making a post in the forum.  So I do not think there's a shortage of support here at WA.

However, to get into an affiliate relationship where the owner of the affiliate program is willing to provide mentoring that's specific to that particular campaign, well, that's really awesome, and until I encountered it I did not realize how important it was to me.  When I spoke to Lisa, one of the owners of the Lodge, she told me she has several years of IM under her belt, but just hadn't thought of using it to promote her lodge up until this point.  If I have a question (even on another campaign I'm working on) she is willing to help me find an answer.

Needless to say I've decided to place the bulk of my efforts on promoting this lodge.  I believe I stand the greatest chance of success with it and also, because it's a high end product (hunting and fishing vacations start at around $1000 per person) I don't need to make such a large number of sales to make a huge difference to my bottom line.  I set up two blogs specifically to market to two niches within the general community of folks who buy trips at hunting/fishing lodges.  Lisa told me her web developer would customize them with pretty wilderness type pictures/themes, and I can start adding content.  I bought two very cool domains, one of which I can't believe had not been taken before!

But I'm not giving up on all my other campaigns.  I've decided to keep up with two of them (as an alternative to the Lodge--sometimes you need to work on a different topic).  Those are the AOCS silver and a somewhat less defined one that delves into sustainable/survival living and more specifically will focus on innovative ways to compost.  I want to promote things like worm composting.  Interestingly enough, those ones I'm going to continue with happen to be ones where I've received a bit more personal support from the merchant.

In the case of AOCS, well I know the owners quite well.  It's a long story, but I've had lots of contact and know the product pretty much inside and out.  I have a barter business at home that uses the product and I'm familiar with the philosophy.  I can skype the executive director (or any of the other directors) pretty much any time I want and expect a reply.  It's a good niche for me.

In the composting niche, there are two main merchants I'm affiliated with and both of them have reached out to me by email.  One individually handled my affiliate application (even though their program is managed through ShareASale).  The other had a long list of individual product links on ShareASale except they were missing a particular product I hope to focus my promotion on.  I emailed them with a request to put up a link.  I got a reply within days informing me they'd put the link up and thanking me for my hard work (though to date I've done very little for them).

As an affiliate marketer, and especially a new one,  I find I really, really want to work with the merchants who will take a few minutes out of their day to help me do my job better and easier.  Most of the time it's not going to be full-blown mentoring.  Usually it will be a request for an interview, so I can have some fresh content, or a request to add a link to a particular product.  None of those things take a lot of time, but not doing them makes my job so much harder.  All other things being equal for two merchants who carry a similar product, I will choose to promote the one who will give me some personal attention over the one that won't every time.

This brings me to Clickbank, where I've actually emailed a log of merchants with requests for interviews or questions about their product, and so far I've only received two replies.  I looked into the ebooks telling you how to build your own solar panels.  I found at least six.  I emailed the owners of four of them (didn't get to the other two) and asked them for a phone interview.  I'm a professional freelance writer and I'm used to getting all kinds of people to talk to me who might not otherwise give me the time of day.  So far I've not heard word one in reply from any of those merchants.  I'm sure they're all doing great with the affiliates they have and probably figure they don't need to take time with an IMer who is asking for extra things.  That's fine and I wish them well.  I just have this thought that if you are competing heavily for affiliate marketers to push your product, going a bit out of your way to support your affiliate marketers could go a very long way.  I figure when your ebook on clickbank is one of six or seven others with the same subject, you have some competition and it would be in your best interest to go above and beyond "the call of duty" to attract good affiliate marketers.

There's literally thousands of affiliate programs out there competing for my time and attention.  I could set pretty much any criteria I want and be able to find an affiliate program that meets them.  For me, a certain level of basic individual support is important.  Something I will definitely keep in mind when I eventually launch my own affiliate program.