Employment911

New Contest: Increase your Sales by 20% & Earn a $20 Gift Card

fred — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:15:00 GMT

Would you like to earn a $20 gift card? Would you like to get a bigger affiliate commission check?

Well, we have a new contest for you: Increase your Sales by 20% & Earn a $20 Gift Card.

How does it work?

It's easy: increase your affiliate sales by 20% in March, compared to your February sales and you will be eligible to earn one of our $20 gift cards - the winners will be drawn ...

This means that not only you might earn a $20 card but in addition, your will earn 20% more commissions in March.

Since this contest starts in one week, I would recommend you start preparing for it now so that when March starts, you are already ahead of the game. To help you win, here are some easy ways to increase your sales:

place our top-selling resume writing banner or link on your home page
promote our resume writing service to your mailing list, in your newsletter.
upsell our resume writing service to your customers.
If you have an employment site, place our top-selling resume writing banner or link on the pages featuring the job descriptions.
Create a page presenting our services.
Use PPC advertising to promote the pages where you have our ads.

Also, make sure to read the following posts, which include some great tips on how to earn big commissions:

If you have any question, feel free to contact me ... and Good Luck!!

Making Affiliate Sales with an Opt-in List

fred — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:43:00 GMT

While most affiliates post links and banners to websites to make affiliate sales, another great way is to build an opt-in list. For example, if your site is about accounting, you can get people to sign up for your list by telling them you will offer them news about their industry. What you can also do is offering them some kind of freebie in exchange for signing up - for example an accounting-related e-book.

Once people are on your list, it's pretty easy. Not only can you send them a series of auto-responders after they sign up but you can also send them broadcast messages. Make your messages sound personal, like you were talking to a friend. Give them some tips, solve their problems. Obviously, somewhere in your message promote your affiliate offer but make sure it is something your subscribers might be interested in. For example, an accounting site could promote our accounting resume writing service.

Finally, while some marketers do not hesitate to just send promotional messages to their list, you might want to mix things up by also sending them some good articles or news; this will minimize the number of people unsuscribing from your list.

How to earn more than $4.50 per click with our affiliate program

fred — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:18:00 GMT

So if you read this blog or our newsletter regularly, you might have noticed that I always use the earning per click as conversion rate, which is calculated by dividing your affiliate commission $ by the number of clicks you send our way.

There is always a dozen affilites that can pull off earning more than $1 per click and if you read my previous post, How to be a successful affiliate, I gave you a blueprint on how to do it.

While most of our top affiliates get their traffic mostly from organic rankings, there is a method that people have kind of forgotten but still works: Using PPC traffic to make sales. To give you an idea, there is currently one affiliate who is earning more than $4.50 per click by mostly sending Adwords traffic to a page that presents one of our service. That affiliate did his homework and is only advertising keywords that generate sales so that he doesn't spend a lot of money and gets high Return on Investment thanks to laser-targeted traffic. Here are two things you should know:

He is advertising with Adwords in a midly competitive market - so yes Adwords still works ...
As for knowing the right buying keywords, there is two ways: first you can use the Adwords suggestion tool and if you dig around, you will figure out what they are. Second, you can just look at our landing pages, since I optimized them for those buying keywords ...

No Affiliate Links = No Affiliate Sales

fred — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:09:00 GMT

Before I get started, I hope you guys read my previous post, How to be a successful affiliate, because there is really all the ingredients you need to make sales.

Now let's get back to the title of this blog post. By this I mean that if you guys don't put any affiliate link on your sites or don't promote them to your mailing lists, you will never make any sale.

Why am I saying this? Well even though it might sound obvious, there are plenty of affiliates who sign up with our program and never put any link up. Lots of these affiliate sites have potential and by not putting any resume link up, they are losing on affiliate commissions, most especially as resume writing sales are currently going strong.

So once again, I'm recommending to those who haven't done so yet to put some links up. Just putting our best selling link or banner on your site won't take more than a couple minutes ... So you have to ask yourself "is spending a couple minutes copying and pasting a banner on a page and ftping it worth making a few hundred $ in affiliate commissions every month?" ...

How to be a Successful Affiliate with the 2009 Employment911 Affiliate Program Recap

fred — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:03:00 GMT

Let's have a look at what happened last year and what lessons we can learn from it.

First, I am glad to announce that once again, your affiliate revenues increased in 2009 and it's looking good - to give you an idea, your affiliate income doubled in two years! This means two things: First that some of you guys did a great job at promoting our services to highly qualified traffic. Second that our affiliate program is working well and that our landing pages have strong conversion rates - and just to let you know, I am always testing and tweaking our pages so that your sales conversions increase.

Now let's look at conversion rates (calculated by dividing your monthly affiliate revenues by the number of clicks you sent us):

The highest conversion rate for an affiliate last year was $4.74 per click.

A couple affiliates had the highest conversion rates for at least 3 months.

This is telling us two things:

If you focus on getting visitors that have a need for our services, you will make easy sales, work less and won't waste money and effort on unqualified leads.

If you do intelligence work when it comes to keyword research, you are 100% sure to succeed.

As for the most successful affiliates, here is some interesting data that you can use, whether you are starting your website or updating it:

2 of the top 5 affiliates are in the Federal employment field

1 of the top 5 affiliates is a resume service review site

55% of the top 20 affiliates are job board sites

65% of the top 20 affiliates are industry niche sites

30% of the top 20 affiliates are content-rich informational sites

Regarding the types of resumes you guys sold the most, here is what you should know:

47% of affiliate sales were Federal resumes and other documents needed for government job applications.

33% of affiliate sales were standard entry, mid-level and executive resume sales.

7% of affiliate sales were engineering resumes.

6% of affiliate sales were finance resumes.

3% of affiliate sales were nursing resumes.

2% of affiliate sales were military to civilian resumes.

2% of affiliate sales were resumes for temp and seasonal jobs.

So here you go … with all the data I just gave you today, you should have enough information to become one of our most successful affiliates and earn big!

January Affiliate Program Sales

fred — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:45:00 GMT

Hello, I got back from vacation a week ago, as you might have noticed on Twitter and just wanted to give you an update about current sale trends. While I will give you soon more details about how the affiliate program performed in 2009, here is some information that might help you increase your sales:

As expected, affiliate sales increased sharply the weekend following new year's eve, which means that people are getting back to looking for a job - new year resolutions are contributing to this as well.

As for what's selling, here are the details: What is currently selling the most is our regular professional resume writing package, whether it's entry level, mid level or executive resumes. Federal resume writing is also selling but, for the time being, it's pretty modest as most jobs haven't opened yet - remember government jobs have strict deadlines. There are also quite a few finance resume and military resume sales.

If your site isn't specialized in any industry or field, I would recommend promoting our top-selling resume writing banner or link (remember putting it on your home page guarantees you a 20% commission rate, instead of 12.50%). And if your site is specialized in any of the fields listed above, I would recommend promoting the appropriate links, which you will find in your affiliate account.

Holiday Vacation

fred — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:56:00 GMT

I just wanted to let you guys know that I will be on vacation from December 11th to December 28th, spending the holidays with my family in Europe. So if you email me while I'm gone, I will only be able to answer your messages when I come back on the 29th.

In the meantime, you might notice that sales might get slow these next couple of weeks. This is actually normal and happens every year during the holiday season, as this the time when people focus their spending on Christmas gifts. The good news is that however business should be booming after January 1st as not only companies start recruiting but job seekers also go back to looking for jobs as part of new year's resolutions.

So I would suggest taking advantage of the next couple of weeks to prepare your site for the job search rush that will occur in January - I can tell from experience that resume writing sales will jump as soon as the new year begins.

That's it for now! Have a great Holiday!

Going on vacation

fred — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:22:00 GMT

I just wanted to let you guys know that I will be on vacation from November 13th to November 22nd - in case you are wondering, I am heading to Peru. So if you email me while I'm gone, I will answer your messages when I come back on the 23rd.

In the meantime keep up the good work and keep promoting our resume writing services as, with unemployment remaining strong, we have several affiliates earning more than $3 per click (conversion rate) ...

Follow us on Twitter to earn big $

fred — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:05:00 GMT

Just a reminder that you should follow our affiliate program on Twitter. Why? Because not only I give you updates about what's going on every day but most importantly I give you insider tips about what products and services are selling ... in real-time - this is very important as, since some of these resume sales are seasonal, depending on hiring trends and application deadlines, you will know what is currently selling and what you should currently promote to earn big $.

To follow us, click http://twitter.com/employment911af

Bing and Yahoo joining forces

fred — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:10:00 GMT

So it's finally official: Bing will provide organic search engine results for Yahoo while Yahoo will provide PPC ads for MSN's Bing. This is good news for three reasons: First ranking organically with Bing is easier than with Yahoo. Second, since Oveture has high conversion rates, this will allow you to increase your sales since it will also cover MSN's traffic. Finally, this will mean you won't get as much dependant from Google anymore as with Bing and Yahoo joining forces, you will get a new bigger source of easier traffic, which will be almost as important as Google's.

So I would suggest you start optimizing your site for Bing right away so that you take advanatge of both Bing and Yahoo's free traffic ...

Affiliate Sales Increasing in August

fred — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:40:00 GMT

While I've noticed that some of you guys were on vacation these last few weeks , I however wanted to emphasize that it is time to get back to promoting Resume Writing heavily, if you are interested in earning big affiliate commissions.

I can tell you from experience that Resume sales usually start increasing sharply in August - to give you an idea, sales increased by 32% in August 2008, compared to the previous month. This trend will of course continue the following months so it is recommended to start working on this right away to maximize your profits. Not only will you be ahead of the game as lots of marketers usually wait until September to promote employment offers, unaware of the potential there is in August, but it will help you be all set for the following months as well. In addition, since Internet marketing is about testing, it's not a bad idea to start testing new strategies these following days and if you find that something works better, then you can have it already implemented when job search season part 2 starts in September.

Latest Trends

fred — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:01:00 GMT

First I want to thank you for having been patient these last few days. We experienced technical difficulties, which were coming from external factors and our IT department had to work hard to fix and then update everything - which is why parts of the site had to be taken down temporarily. This makes following us on twitter even more important as I was updating our followers on the status of our work - if you're not following us yet, click here

In terms of affiliate sales, I can tell you that the affiliates that have been having the highest conversion rates lately are sites about summer and temporary jobs, which is obviously a seasonal trend. Since we're in early July and there are almost 2 months left for summer jobs, you still have the time to create a section on your site to promote resume writing to summer job seekers.

You might also be interested to know that there has been an increase in military conversion resume sales last month. Another specialty that has been having strong sales is Finance resume writing, while our best link and banner have also proved to perform well. I guess this should give you an idea about what to promote right now ...

Finally, for those playing the PPC and SEO games, I can tell you that traffic and conversions coming from MSN ads and search results have been increased sharply, which is the result of the launch of Bing. I guess it's time to realize that Google isn't the only player in town anymore ...

Why it's a good time for affiliates to promote Federal resume writing services

fred — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:32:00 GMT

If you pay attention to what I write in the affiliate newsletter, you might have noticed that Federal resume writing is one of our best-selling services and that most of our Federal affiliates are doing pretty well. If you haven't considered promoting Federal resume services yet, I would strongly suggest you create a section about Federal jobs on your sites as, how the following data can attest, Uncle Sam is going to keep hiring:

The defense department is going to open around 19,000 positions
The Veterans Affaire will recruit for 9,800 jobs
Homeland Security will seek 7,000 new employees
Social security will hire 3,200 candidates

With these numbers in mind, you can even center your pages around these departments to get even more qualified traffic, which should increase your Federal resume sale conversions.

As a reminder, you will find all the affiliate Federal links and banners in your account.

And if you're not affiliated with us yet but want to promote Federal resume writing, join here ...

Affiliate Success Blueprint

fred — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:18:00 GMT

With a lot of our affiliates doing extremely well, I wanted to give you a blueprint to give you a chance to replicate their success:

Our most successful sites are for the most part sites that target job seekers from a certain profession - for example sites specialized in engineering, healthcare, finance, IT, Federal, Military, summer jobs, etc … - and know how to attract qualified visitors to their sites. These sites do not need to have huge traffic; most of them are actually pretty small sites but they have done their keyword research home work and focus on attracting traffic for these keywords, whether it's through SEO or PPC ads. Here are a few steps you should follow, if you want to be successful with our program as well:

1.   Find a professional niche you are familiar with
2.   Do some keyword research to find out which searches job seekers are doing (use Google keyword tools and any free keyword tool available)
3.   Develop content for these keywords - you can even hire writers to do this
4.   Create pages optimized for these keywords
5.   Place our affiliate links and/or banners that are specialized in that niche
6.   Promote your site organically with link building and through advertising with PPC if you have a budget for it

Finance Affiliate Program Sales

fred — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:24:00 GMT

I've noticed an increase in Finance Resume sales these last few weeks so I wanted to share this with you. Finance is one the employment sectors that might get back to increase hiring quickly, despite the recession; Knowing that our Finance resume writing sales are currently going strong, they should even grow higher as more finance jobs open. I would therefore recommend to any affiliate site appealing to finance professionals to promote our finance resume writing service to their visitors - finance resume affiliate links and banners are available in your account under "Finance/Accounting".

As for those of you who haven't joined our program yet but are interested in promoting Finance resume writing, you can join here.

Summer Jobs are Hot

fred — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:57:00 GMT

With summer getting close and students getting ready to graduate, the demand for summer jobs has been increasing sharply. As a result, I have been noticing an increase in resume sales coming from affiliates specialized in summer and temporary jobs.

Since this is a niche with not much competition, this is a good opportunity for affiliate marketers looking into getting new markets. All you would need to do is creating a section - or site - with a few articles on the subject so that you can attract organic traffic and sell resumes (we provide links that you can find in your affiliate account under seasonal).

While this a pretty big and untapped market, make sure to act fast, as your site or pages should be up and running within a few weeks - you don't want to wait until August to get started as it will be too late!

Bidding on trademark terms

fred — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:53:00 GMT

Those of you using Adwords to promote their site might be interested to learn that you will be able to bid on trademark terms, starting June 15th. This means that if you have a page about resume services, you can now bid on the names of popular resume writing companies to send traffic to your site. You can also bid on your competitors' names, which should allow to reach new clients. To find out more about these new changes, check out this Adwords blog post.

Bonuses offered with resumes

fred — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:46:00 GMT

Some of you might have noticed that we usually give away several bonuses to your clients when they purchase a resume. These bonuses vary from one week to another, as we usually change them every Friday.

If you are pre-selling our services on your site, this is not a bad idea to mention that we offer these bonuses with every order. And if you want to know what they are, all you need to know is check our landing page - for example, this week on our resume writing page, we are giving away 2 e-books, one about Interviews and the other one about Federal job applications. I can tell you that our customers enjoy these e-books, which are pretty extensive how-to guides on various subjects. So feel free to mention them in your copy and it might increase both your click-rhough rate and sales.

Accounting and Finance resume sales are up

fred — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:50:00 GMT

Affiliates - or potential affiliates - that are in the Accounting and Finance fields might be interested to know that our accounting and finance resume sales have been increasing lately. This shouldn't come as a surprise, knowing that some of these big finance companies have been shutting down or laying off lots of employees lately. So if you're in these fields I would strongly suggest promoting our accounting or finance resume services as soon as possible - you will find your banners and links in your affiliate accounts.

Site is back up

fred — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:46:00 GMT

Some of you might have noticed that our site was down for a couple days. We had to do some in-depth maintenance work on the site but everything is now back to normal; we just have to update a few more things here and there. Thanks for your understanding and sorry about the inconvenience.

Nursing Resume Sales increase

fred — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:01:00 GMT

Because there was such a high demand for nurses, nursing resumes were not as important as resumes in other industries. In some cases, nurses were even able to get hired without handing a resume. As a result, even though there was a high volume of online searches around the topic "nursing resumes", nursing candidates were not that interested in getting their resume done professionally since their chances at getting a job was pretty high anyway.

With unemployment being pretty high, I have however been noticing a shift in trends, the number of professional nursing resume writing packages sold having increased considerably these last few weeks.

So if your site focuses on nurses or health care professionals, make sure to pick up nursing affiliate links in your account to make nursing resume sales as well. And if you have a nursing site and are not affiliated with us yet, join here to get started.

Using the right Resume Specialties for your sites

fred — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:34:00 GMT

I've noticed an increase in the variety of types of resumes sold lately, which means we are selling resumes to professionals from all industries, from accounting to management, IT, engineering, sales, military, Federal, etc ...

If you check your affiliate accounts you will be able to find special links and landing pages for all those resume specialties and I wanted to point out that you need to use these links in a certain manner to make sales as, too often affiliates misuse them.

First, the links have to be related to your website. For example, I see a lot of affiliates placing on their sites resume specialty links that have nothing to do with their content, which is useless. For example, if your site is a city directory and you only put links for accounting resume writing, chances are you won't make much sales as your site won't attract specifically accountants. In that case, just put standard resume links so you can appeal to professionals from every industry.

Second, I see lots of affiliates specialized in the fields we're covering not using these links. For example a site about engineering will use our generic resume links instead of our engineering links. In that case, that site will have less sales than if it were placing engineering links as the latter will be more appealing to their engineering visitors.

Finally, if you have an employment site that features separate channels for different industries, make sure to place the appropriate resume link in each channel, instead of putting the same generic resume link in all the channels.

About affiliate tracking

fred — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:27:00 GMT

I was answering an e-mail from one of our affiliates and I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify something about the affiliate tracking. You might have noticed that all your affiliate links include your affiliate ID. As soon as visitors land on our site through your affiliate links, whatever they will buy or sign up for will be tracked under your account even if they navigate throughout several pages of our site without your affiliate ID showing up on the follow-up pages. In addition, we use cookies that last 10 years so that, even if your visitors come back at a later time to order something without going through your site, you will still get credited for the sale. As a side note, this is therefore essential that you never modify your affiliate links so that you don't take the risk to damage your tracking.

Engineer Affiliate Program

fred — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:23:00 GMT

I know I mentioned several times that engineering resume sales are currently going strong but I also wanted to let you know that there is so much demand for engineering resumes that one of our engineering affiliates is actually in our top 5 affiliates.

So if your site attracts engineers, make sure to place engineering resume writing links on your site - you can get your links, buttons and banners here, under engineering. I just e-mailed some of these links to our engineer affiliates and if you need some links as well, feel free to e-mail me.

Also if you run an engineering career site and are not yet affiliated with us, join here to get your links ...

Installing a Job Search feature on your site

fred — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:41:00 GMT

I know I've been mentioning our Job Search box a few times, whether it's in this blog or in the newsletter but, with the jobless claim being at its highest in 26 years, now is the time to install our Job Search feature on your site.

Not only, this will be useful to your visitors and increase the value of your site, but you will also get commissions for it. First you will get paid from $.25 to $.50 per lead whenever your visitors post their resume for free on our site (and we get hundreds of them a week). In addition, since we follow up with them, you might earn commissions for services they buy as well.

To get your job search box, just log onto your affiliate account and click "Static Banners" / "Job Search Box"