30 Minutes ago I’ve received two emails, one from Yahoo! Search Marketing and one from Microsoft adCenter, both saying the same thing, they just got bigger: “Microsoft® and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.”

The important thing is that they are so optimistic that they plan to bring Search Alliance to life before the 2010 holiday season to US. Oh wait! While Microsoft says just that, Yahoo is more like “we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective.” Good news is that out of two interfaces, they will be sticking to adCenter’s, and it’s good because I find it more convenient, not as convenient as AdWords’ tho.

This is hands down the best news in internet marketing world this month. Microsoft is finally on their way to make their internet services profitable, and this alliance look like a real threat to Google. Many advertisers, especially affiliates, will resort to Search Alliance after Google spit in their face, and then spit again.

Dreams out loud: Since Microsoft own 1.6% of Facebook, maybe it is possible that someday Search Alliance will merge with Facebook

You can really avoid being slapped by Google in the near future and even make your campaigns more profitable in the long term with this tricky technique.

This works very good on pre-sell landing pages, like review blogs. You simply have to remove all the affiliate links to that product, since google doesn’t like them anymore, and put a small opt-in form, like the aweber one, to grab visitor’s name and email, and after they click “Submit” or whatever, page redirects to the offer- Brilliant. Here is the example form:

Actually a lot of people used that before the slap, since they found it more profitable, and their campaigns were not slapped.

How is this more profitable? First of all, you can offer your prospects who didn’t like the product you were selling, then you can follow up with related products.

When I am promoting the same product with different landing pages, I had to face the fact that position plays a great role of conversion. Sure I’m talking about SERP AdWords Ad position, and diffence of page is not in layout ot presales letter, but in concept.

Surprisingly for me, I found that no matter what page it is, #1 position is never the best-converting one, this ofcourse depends on the niche, but to me tha fact remains. For a simple pitch page the best position is #2, and for the review landing page it’s #4, or sometimes #3. When doing a review landing page, I usually search for the hottest products, review them (usually I rewrite it from someone else ) well you sure get the idea if you didn’t know the obvious already…

So what’s the point in having #1 position if it converts a little worse, and the spot itself is much more expensive, well traffic, it’s all about scaling for the person who is at the top.

Social media is great for:

• Connecting with your customers/your prospects
• Building another channel for communication, branding & messaging
• Appealing to early adopters

Search market gives you a lot more in comparison:

• Answer a direct need precisely when it’s requested in a scalable fashion
• Gain visibility from virtually all Internet users with an interest in your brand/product/sector/content at once

And if you’re ignoring other important fundamentals of online marketing, like:

• Building a website with a unique value proposition
• Creating great useful content that people want, content is king
• Road to effective email marketing
• Finding ways to scalably acquire new users & retain existing ones
• Leveraging conversion funnels & conversion testing
• PPC

You should probably consider those marketing points before ones that are obtainable thru social media. Don’t get me wrong, I really love social media, there is a great way to build email lists (FaceBook Groups) and share experience with people (forums) and getting the experience in return!

Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Most famous and most comprehensive way of doing it is promoting the products using PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns on Google Search and Content Network (AdWords), Yahoo! (Yahoo Search Marketing), Live.com search, and so on. Actually any using any methods to get visitors to your product (they should be interested in it, otherwise it’s just waste of time and money).

Some blogs I read (you can find them to the right > ), suggest to take first steps using Facebook Ads. The point is that if you will find a product that interests users, and make a good ad campaign, with targeting, people will click the ad, facebook will lower the cost of the clicks (if the CTR is high). And most important you can get some sales/leads, earn some money and stay in profit. Okay, there is a belief that this business is not for everyone. So Me and You want to figure out whether we are suitable for it. What’s good is that Facebook, like all other companies has coupons. And I will give you one right now, it’s $100 coupon by Visa. You just have to complete this offer, and attach your business profile on your facebook profile page, and you will get $100 voucher and instructions on how to activate it in email. Here’s the link: http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness

P.S. There are more vouchers available every time, just use google search to find some. Most won’t work! Here is the link, I found 2 x $50 coupons there that work http://www.retailmenot.com/view/facebook.com

P.P.S. ALL Coupon credits have expiry date, be sure to use them or you will lose that free credit, and read 5 Killer Tips for Facebook Ad Ownage by nickycakes.