Just hitting the wires is this story about a massive lawsuit that Oprah and Dr. Oz are launching. The articles state that more than 50 small businesses have been targeted.

If you’ve been in the affiliate space for awhile you know that these ads have been all over the place, I’ve seen them mostly connected with Acai & resveratrol type offers.

From the articles … “The products at the center of the lawsuit are said to include cosmetics, such as anti-wrinkle creams, diet supplements, and tooth-whitening kits.” Colon cleansing also seems to be targeted.

I’m curious if they are going after just the companies that make these products or the affiliates as well?? Either way, with Google cracking down on people selling google kits, and now this, as an affiliate you should stay away from beefing up your landing page with questionable endorsements & false claims.

So, what do you guys think about this, as an affiliate you are definitely not out of reach of being sued, if not directly, then the company itself being sued may turn on its affiliates for false advertisement.

Lots of sources, here are 3:
Wall Street Journal Article
Yahoo News
TMZ

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If you have been in this game for awhile, you will inevitably have to answer the question, what do you do for a living? I always kind of balk at this, because a majority of the time I will have to go down the path of explaining what affiliate marketing is, using google adwords, ‘how it works’, etc… and it gets kind of repetitive, especially when you get that stare like, that doesn’t make sense.

How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

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So I get this email from the Google team saying that there was a ‘technical issue’ in the billing this week and that I may have been overcharged. Logging into AMEX, I see that yesterday I was charged over $60k for Adwords. While I spend a lot, it is not quite that much on Google … Yikes!

Kudos to them for being swift to address this and hopefully get it resolved. If they wouldn’t have sent an email, I probably would have been scratching my head come next month when the bill was due wondering why I spent so much. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up for those that still use Google (there seems to be a lot of banning going on lately). You might want to check your CC.

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Writing good headlines is key to getting your ad noticed and a clickthrough. Your headline is your ‘first impression’ and contact with the outside world. Miss this and you will let opportunity slip by. In the world of paid search and on the content networks a sloppy headline can literally make or break a campaign. So how does one write effective headlines?

Fortunately for you, there is a place where you can go where thousands and thousands of headlines are tested everyday. Digg.com. The whole concept behind digg is to make stories popular or bury them all based on one thing … the headline! This mass social experiment is very beneficial to us affiliates.

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

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Have you ever wondered why old sitcoms have canned laughter or laugh tracks? If you watch an old rerun of Seinfield you’ll know what I mean, someone makes a joke and you hear that ‘laughter’ in the background. Funny thing is, if you ask what most people think about this they’ll say it is dumb, fake, and useless. So why did these top TV executives do it?

It is human tendency to see an action as more appropriate or acceptable when they see others doing it

The idea of this herd behavior or social proof is very powerful and is often used in business and marketing. ‘Social proofing’ your campaigns can give the end user that little extra push to take action, hit the buy button, or fill out a form. It is very simple to incorporate this into your affiliate campaigns, and there are 2 primary ways of doing this: testimonials and taglines or sub headings.

Testimonials

Most people would agree, sprinkling your landing page with testimonials can only help your conversions. The idea of social proof is when someone is in a situation not knowing what to do, they look to others for guidance. Seeing and reading other people using the product and taking action makes them more comfortable.

Taglines and Sub Headings

Taglines are a great way to social proof your landing page. There have been many studies done that people really do read taglines and sub headings. The best places to put them are directly under your main heading or just under your call to action button or hero shot/main image. People will read them.
Here are some samples that I’m sure you have seen before on other people’s landers:

• Join 5,267 other members …
• Over 100,000 sold …
• Amaze your friends …
• Over 1 million downloads
• etc …

Don’t think this works? Take a look at the tagline below: