Posted by Ron Givens

Why Build Relationships?

Building a good relationship with your contacts is a must in today’s marketing world. It can take you into the realms of stellar achievement both on the local and global marketplaces.

Also, a home can the biggest investment a family will ever make. It’s very important for people to have a high level of trust in you. This is the place their family is going to come home to; they’ll create many special memories there.

Once you have built this trust, your contacts will always come to you when they need something. In addition to this, your customer’s word-of-mouth business can prove invaluable.

Some Relationship Building Ideas for Realtors

Because of it’s dynamic nature, real estate marketing can lend itself to creative ideas. Building your reputation can be a unique adventure.

Here are a few that you may find helpful for your prospective referrals:

Of Realtors and SPAM

It’s very important for Realtors to know which practices are acceptable and which aren’t. There is a bit of a difference between traditional real estate marketing as opposed to what is acceptable in the email marketing world.

Realtors use a technique called farming in order to reach out to people in their area. This can be done in the form of sending unsolicited postal mail to a given area, over long periods of time.

Farming to email addresses is considered SPAM – bottom line. Because SPAM is such a problem worldwide, it is completely unacceptable to send out unsolicited email to those who have never asked you for it. This includes people in your local board of Realtors, NAR, or from any type of directory.

If you have any questions about specific marketing practices, please feel free to contact us. We would be more than happy to answer your questions.

A Realtor Apart

The merger of real estate and email marketing can be a very exciting and lucrative one. If done correctly, it can add a new level to your creative approach and set you apart from the rest.

I invite you to take a look at a couple of previous posts about content for real estate emails, and real estate email tips.

Keeping the points above in mind, how can you use AWeber to establish and strengthen relationships? Share your ideas.

Our affiliates responded to the recent survey about the affiliate program with a lot of helpful feedback.

Your input was very helpful, and will allow us to better serve your needs. Thank you very much for responding!

Based on your feedback, we are happy to announce the following changes to the AWeber affiliate program:

1. All commissions will be raised to 30%. This includes existing 1st tier commissions of 20%.
2. Second tier commissions will no longer be available. Existing 2nd tier commissions will be deleted.
3. Your affiliate cookie will be a 1 year, first visit cookie.
4. In the future, you will have the option of being paid via PayPal or postal check.
5. All affiliates will be paid once a month, on the first of every month.
6. The minimum check payout will be $30.00 for US affiliates and $50.00 for affiliates not based in the US (This applies to both PayPal Payments and postal payments)

All of these changes will be effective on April 8th, 2009. The only exception will be the PayPal payment option, which will be available in the future. If you do not have a PayPal account, now would be a great time to sign up for one here.

How Your Input Helped Our Decisions

We feel that your input is always very important. So the information you provided us in our last survey was instrumental in our decisions.

For example, let’s take a look at your responses to our question about how long we should make our affiliate cookie length:

As we can see, 36.1% of you voted for the 1 year cookie. Second was the 10 year “lifetime” cookie at 23.6%. However, since the remaining 40.4% of you voted for a cookie duration less than 1 year, we thought a happy medium would be the 1 year cookie.

Now let’s take a look at your feedback on our commission proposal of 30% :

A commission hike of 30%, plus the removal of the second tier affiliate commissions was met with very strong approval. It was apparent that this change would be welcome, so we certainly are going to implement it.

With the rest of the changes to our affiliate program, we followed the same guidelines. We took your feedback and came up with the best possible changes based on that feedback.

Moving Forward…

As the months go by, look forward to many other exciting changes that will benefit your AWeber affiliate campaign.

We hope you enjoy the new changes to our program thus far. As always, if you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us.

This should be an exciting year for all of us!

I have been able to correspond with a lot of our affiliates lately about my introduction as affiliate manger, the upgrades to the affiliate control panel, as well as feedback in general. The information I have received from you has been very helpful.

The one thing that is alarming, however, is the fact that 8 out of about 10 affiliates did not have a signature ad in their email. The signature ad is “prime real estate” for your AWeber affiliate campaign and should never be overlooked by an affiliate.

Let’s take a closer look at the many benefits of inserting a simple signature ad into all of your personal and business emailings.

What Are The Benefits of a Signature Ad?

A signature ad is several sentences inserted underneath your name with every email you send out. It’s like an email business card that’s placed in all of your email messages. Using the signature can boost your affiliate productivity and earnings considerably.

The many benefits of using this often neglected tool are:

• Free Advertising – It costs nothing to put an automatic signature
  in your email
• Efficiency – Its quick and simple to insert a signature file in most
  email programs
• Automation – Your ad is inserted automatically in every email you send
• Recurrence – You signature ad is viewed many times over the
  course of your campaign

There are almost limitless uses of the signature file and it should be included in every email you send.

What Should My Signature Say?

Your signature file should contain a short description of what you are promoting along with your affiliate link. It should be short and to the point (about 2 or 3 lines) and give the reader a reason to click on your affiliate URL.

Your signature should be catchy as well. A great example would be the following:

Unlimited Autoresponders & Newsletters

99.34% email delivered. Free support.

http://www.aweber.com/?YOUR-ID

We provide many more examples in our Affiliate Tip for Signature Ads. You can explore that resource for many more examples of effective signature ads. You can also use your imagination and come up with an ad that will appeal directly to your particular customer or client niche.

Other Uses For a Signature

Your AWeber signature ad does not have to be limited to just email messages. It can be used anywhere you can reach and individual or group of people with text or HTML. You can get very creative with its uses, but some great places to start are:

• At the end of messages in forums
• Facebook, myspace and other social media messages
• Blog comments
• Product or service reviews

You can post your signature ad to any group or message board that will allow you to.

Please verify with the site rules or administrator before you place your AWeber signature ad in any discussion room or service. This will insure you are not spamming and that your affiliate signature ad is not in violation of any rules of conduct.

For more on spam, check our Spam FAQ.

How Do I Create a Signature Ad?

If you do not know how to insert a signature into your email client program, here are some easy to follow instructions for most email services.

If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us. Our customer solutions team would be more than happy to assist you.

The other day I saw an interesting YouTube video, created by AWeber affiliate John Chow. It was a quick demonstration of our recent Twitter integration.

The 2 minute video explained what our Twitter integration does, plus it gave simple instructions on how to use it. At the end, John included his affiliate link (and yes, I did click on it ).

With the growing popularity of online video, I think screencasting should be in the arsenal of all serious affiliate marketers.

Let’s take a look at how posting videos on YouTube can drive traffic to your affiliate website, and boost your sales.

What Do I Need To Get Started?

Getting a video up and running on YouTube can be done quickly and easily.

All you will need is screencasting software, your imagination, and you will be ready to become the next George Lucas.

Some screencasting programs I recommend are:

• Camtasia – Created by TechSmith. Costs around $70 to $146
• Imovie – Normally bundled with all new Macs and can be used right away.
• The Jing Project – The Jing Project is free, and is also created by TechSmith.

After finding a screencasting program that works for you, you’ll then be ready to work on the content of your video.

What Should My Video Be About?

Remember, the aim of your video should be to show how AWeber can potentially increase someone’s business productivity.

Make sure your content is brief, easy to understand and gives the viewer a good reason to visit Aweber via your affiliate link.

If you are an AWeber customer, a great idea could be a video about a feature that has really helped your business grow in the past.

Some other useful subjects for your videos could be:

• AWeber’s RSS to email feature, and how it can convert blog subscribers to newsletter subscribers.
• One of our new analytics features and how it can add value to an email campaign.
• Adding web form features such as a light box, a subscriber count chicklet, or sending downloads.

With the many features of AWeber, you should have no problem finding one suitable to publish as your next screencast.

How Do I Publish My Video On YouTube?

Founded in February 2005, YouTube is now the most popular video sharing site on the internet. Anyone can sign up for a free account and get started right away.

Once signed up for an account, you can very easily upload your file using ( YES! ) a video tutorial on how to load videos into YouTube.

After your video is loaded, it can then be easily seen alongside the over 150,000 daily uploaded videos.

This is a great way to give your affiliate campaign more exposure and increase your affiliate click-throughs dramatically.

Good luck and happy screencasting!

Not an AWeber Affiliate? There’s no better time to start than right now.

Sign up for free today!

Your feedback regarding AWeber’s new features has been very positive over the past several months. Thank you for your enthusiasm!

In addition to the new features we’ve released for customers, we’re very happy to announce that we’ve revamped the affiliate control panel! The brand-new interface allows you to manage your affiliate campaigns even more effectively.

With these exciting new features within the control panel, you will be able to:

• Enhance the look of your affiliate web site with new AWeber banners and ads.
• Better track your campaigns with easily readable, downloadable affiliate statistics and reports.
• Navigate more easily through your affiliate account with a user-friendly layout.

Let’s look at a few highlights of the new affiliate control panel:

Stylish New Banner Ads

Well, you’ve been asking for them, and they are finally here!

Choose from 21 different banner ads that will add color and excitement to your affiliate website.

To see all of the new banners, go to the “Banners” page of your affiliate control panel.

You will then see HTML code for the banner. This contains the clickable banner image with your affiliate URL embedded. Simply copy that code and paste it into your website.

User Friendly Control Panel

In the new streamlined control panel, you can now move around within your affiliate account much more efficiently.

After logging in to your account, your affiliate ID and URL are both easily found at the top of your control panel. This allows quick access to your affiliate information.

Plus, navigating through your control panel is now a snap! The easy to find tabs help you quickly find your resources and account information.

Also, the new color scheme and layout will certainly help you locate the many tools and resources AWeber has to offer affiliates.

New Look for Affiliate Stats and Reports

As an AWeber affiliate, it’s important for you to have good records about the visitors to your affiliate URL as well as your sales and sub affiliates.

This information will be a lot easier for you to understand and track using the new chart styles we have provided for you. To see them, go to the “Tracking” page.

This simple new design will display your AWeber affiliate stats at a glance.

More to Come?

Even though this is our initial roll out for the updated affiliate control panel, there will certainly be more additions to come.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact us and we will certainly respond to any feedback or questions.

If you are not an AWeber affiliate, what better time to get a new campaign underway! Sign up today!

Ron Givens is the new affiliate manager for AWeber Communications. Look for more affiliate marketing material from Ron and the rest of the AWeber team in the upcoming months. You can also follow Ron on Twitter.