19th January 2009 was the day we finally released the very first public beta version of Easy Content Units, and what a whirlwind year it’s been – the system has been tweaked literally (take note Jamie Redknapp!) hundreds of times to take on board new features, suggestions and improvements from users, of which there are now nearly 1,300! Amazingly, this tool that we created initially for use on our own sites has generated more than 24 million impressions on other users sites in the previous 12 months – not bad from a standing start!

To help celebrate our first anniversary, we’d like to invite you to take a peek at what the Pro version of ECU can do, with a very special £1 offer.. With ECU Pro, you get:

ECU Pro usually costs £19.99+vat per month, however if you join via the button below you can try it out for just £1. Yup, the full version of ECU Pro, for a whole month, for the princely sum of a quid (including vat). This is a strictly limited offer for the first anniversary of Easy Content Units, and will expire at midnight on the 1st February 2010.

Sorry, this offer has now ended. However, please click here if you would like further information about ECU Pro.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Happy Birthday to ECU!

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I’m always harping on about how great ECU is at converting views into clicks, and clicks into sales (Did I mention the AVERAGE clickthrough rate for this month so far is a whopping 11.46%? No? Well, it is.), but thanks to those wonderful people at dgm and JD Williams, simply using ECU will not only result in more people clicking on your links, and more people buying through your links, but you’ll also get paid more for those sales – 10% more to be exact!

JD Williams have partnered up with Fusepump to get their product feed spot-on – There’s now more than 3,000 products in there, and to encourage affiliates to use the brand spanking new feed, they’re offering an extra 10% bonus on top of the normal commissions for every sale made via the feed – As Easy Content Units are powered by the network’s product feeds, that means that using ECU to promote JD Williams on dgm will earn you 10% more for every sale (not to mention you’re likely to see more clicks and more sales!) as opposed to standard deeplinks etc.

The standard JD Williams commission structure:

becomes…

The JD Williams (Product feed and ECU) commission structure:

And of course, don’t forget that dgm links on ECU are totally free – they’re not subject to the revenue share splits that the other networks links are – just another way you’re quids in by using ECU and dgm.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Get paid 10% more – use ECU!

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I’ve always loved the way Amazon work as an online retailer – They analyse just about every possible part of the user journey, and do everything within their power to not only close a sale, but increase basket size, and leave feedback about the product to help close the sale for future shoppers.

They think of just about every possible user objection, and offer a solution, all on the one page – Wrong colour (here’s the other colours), Wrong size (here’s the other sizes), not what I’m looking for (here’s what you might be looking for based on what other people eventually bought after viewing this page), it might not work (user reviews telling you it does.. or user reviews telling you it DOESN’T, but then a link to a very similar product that has favourable reviews).

I really enjoyed the Conversion Rate Experts session at a4uexpo last month all about increasing the conversion rate of your landing page – The upshot of it was that longer pages (with the RIGHT info, and the RIGHT call to actions) converted 170% better in their example. This caused some disbelief in the room as it goes against everyone’s main thoughts – Those long “letter type” sales pitches don’t work do they? It’s much better to have everything above the fold and get a quick conversion. So as if to ram home the point, the average length of a page at Amazon was put on the big screen, and guess what – it was huuuuuge!

Sure, the main call to action and main info was above the fold, but for those people who need a little (and especially those people who need a LOT) persuasion or reassurance (or even a totally different product), all the information they need is on that one page, and they are able to make an informed buying decision. Well, if it’s good enough for Amazon, then it’s good enough for me!

It got me thinking about how we can use Easy Content Units to display product information in some very different ways on the same page, thus following the CRE and Amazon model of providing all buying options on the one page for a product like the slanket. Again, I present a nice big image of the product, price info and a “buy now” call to action at the top of the page as you would expect. Most of the sales will come from this, but if I can persuade the people who have objections to buy an alternative product, then I can make more from this page, allowing me to spend more promoting it!

So, looking at the objections.. “I don’t want to buy from “Merchant X” – no worries, we can present a list of all the merchants who sell slankets.. “I want a different colour”.. Lets display all the colours.. “I want a smaller one” – Display travel and kids versions.. “I want a bigger one” – show the double slankets!

Now with a little bit of merchant inside knowledge, you could also create an Amazon style “You might also like…” unit of totally different products that people might be interested in – Products that don’t replace the Slanket, but simply increase your basket sizes (and commissions) by complimenting the product well.

If you’re selling a fair few slankets for a merchant, ask them what people who buy slankets also tend to buy.. Then promote those products on the slanket page – Amazon are the kings of doing this as they are able to target this very well, but this is something you can fairly easily replicate yourself with a little merchant knowledge – If people who buy slankets also tend to like Romantic Comedies and slippers, then promote Moccasins and Hugh Grant films on your page – they’re not going to be your biggest sellers, but they stand a good chance of increasing your overall earnings from this one page.

How many ways should you skin the cat? Every way you possibly can! If it’s good enough for Amazon…

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How many ways should you skin the cat?

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