Now I’m the first to admit that I am definitely not a social marketer. I have very little experience and basically I am just using the shotgun method and hoping something sticks.
In my previous post I tried a little experiment asking for volunteers to digg and stumble my site.
I got 19 diggs all up (from 250+ people who read the post… OUCH!) and basically it was nowhere near the momentum I needed to reach a page one ranking (you need at least 150 in a few hours to get that). Side Note - today I dugg another post at my new blog and it got 4 diggs in less than an hour (I don’t know where these people come from, but I didn’t ask).
Ok let me share with you the traffic that I got from these social marketing sites.
Results for Social Marketing
Stumbleupon = 8 (main page) + 57 (blog)
Digg = 3 (main page) + 16 (blog)
Total Fark = 3 (main page) + 14 (blog) <- I’m really annoyed by this one… I can’t even read the comments they are making because you have to pay for a subscription (And I’m too cheap 
).
Results are hard to track but there is 1 sale without affiliate and there maybe a couple of sales via my affiliate link so I can’t be 100% sure.
Results For Affiliate Marketing
Compare that to a 5 minute email I sent to somebody I found via Google promoting a competitors product. She immediately said yes and sent a message to her contacts.
63 hits & 10+ confirmed sales = 15.8% conversion rate.
And another affiliate, I don’t know where this one came from 92 hits and 5 sales = 5.4% conversion rate.
That is 15 confirmed sales from just 2 affiliates. That’s money in my pocket for just send one email (and a few back and forths)
PLUS there are 53 affiliates who brought 1 hit or more resulting in 3 confirmed sales .
And that was before I sent it to my list of 2576 affiliates.
So at the moment I am going to continue to dabble in social marketing but really there is no way to beat good old affiliate marketing.
It brings in the bacon.
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
P.S Who says you can’t get traffic via Google in just a couple of days. Google Organic = 29 (mainpage) + 7 (blog)
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Paul, the next step might be to research a couple of keywrod phrases that relate to your Mindprogramming site that have some traffic but have low phrase search competition in Google, then do the Social posting gig based on that term, and see if you can crack a spot in Google based on that term, using the authority of the Big Web2 Social site?
Peter Cutforth
Hey Paul,
Great post.
Social marketing is great but nothing beat the good old affiliate marketing
I’ll like to know Which of your product convert so well?
All the best,
Cedric Aubry
Good idea Peter… I have been tracking my own sites but I haven’t seen where the 2.0 sites are in the search engines.
Thanks for your comment Cedric,
-> http://www.MyMindShift.com of course
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
Social marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your sites. They can be used hand in hand with affiliate marketing.
Paul,
This is good to know. However, you said, “Compare that to a 5 minute email I sent to somebody I found via Google promoting a competitors product.”
My question is this, what do you say to an affiliate for a competitor product? Obviously she had done some marketing for that product, that’s how you found her. So, do you just say, “Hey, that product’s okay, but mine is so much better. Wanna be an affiliate for me too?”
As an affiliate, that would be tough for me to do. For 1) I usually have a relationship with the folks I’m an affiliate for. 2) I just promoted, and probably endorsed the first product. So, your email would put me in a bad spot.
Maybe I have more to learn about promoting multiple products for the same purpose.
Thanks,
Charles Burleigh
“StayHomeDad”
Thanks for your comment Charles,
My new favorite saying -> “The rich say why not ‘both’, I can be rich and happy, there is no either/or”
I come across this attitude a lot in internet marketer. Here is a perfect example. http://www.Linktator2.com and http://www.3WayLinks.net these are competing memberships that do pretty much the same thing. When Dave one of my students of Linktator2.com approaches JV partners to promote is new membership, most people say ‘I am friends with Jon’ but why not use the why not both thinking?
I have started using both services to great affect and that should be your attitude to. For internet marketing especially there is no silver bullet so a variety of products will always help.
Ok, regarding what I said to this person. It was a very short email, which didn’t mention the competitors product only that I found her via the search engines and if she could have a look at the product.
That is it. She asked how do I promote ;-).
Hope that helps,
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
Hi Paul:
Well, I think that you’re missing part of the point with social marketing. There are 2 things that you need to look at:
1) You’re discounting the fact that those bookmarks are links back to your site which, over time, with properly used keywords in your title and description, will bring VERY valuable traffic from the search engines; and
2) You’re only talking about one KIND of social marketing (social bookmarking) and there are SO many more things you can do! What about social networking? Using groups in sites like Facebook and YouTube?
As “The JV Queen”, you don’t have to tell me twice about the value of affiliates. They are INVALUABLE! However, the value of social marketing is EQUALLY huge.
Why not spend 2 hours per day on your traffic generation efforts and split them equally between getting affiliates to sell for you and using social marketing?
In the short run, your affiliates will ALWAYS bring in more traffic (and sales). But, over time (I’d look at a 90 day period or so), the efforts of social marketing should be comparable.
Just my 2 cents! (I’ll still promote for you anyday!)
Gina Gaudio-Graves (aka “The JV Queen”)
Spoken like a true marketer Gina, I agree.
Which makes me think as well… affiliates bring back links as well as instant and long term traffic.
Once again, there is no either/or… but there is which will give me the most benefit over the long term.
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia
The part about your affiliate sales sounds great. It also sounds like you should ramp up the social networking and bookmarking. I have a question about your affiliate software, namelely, which do you use. I use jam and it is a nuisance at best to figure out. What do you suggest that would be easier?
Clickbank is the one I am using for that product… check out one of my latest posts for it.
Sincerely,
Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia