For example, maybe you submit press releases to PRWeb. Well, they have an RSS feed just for your releases. Why not add that RSS feed to your site home pages at IGoogle / MyYahoo / MyMSN, add it to all your social networking profiles if you can. You can add RSS Feeds to Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Ecademy and FastPitch. I’m sure most of the other major social networking sites will allow you to do this too!

Other third parties that have RSS feeds include EzineArticles, Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, and Hubpages. Again, there ar many more that will have RSS feeds with your content within them.

There are many more places that these that have RSS feeds. Next time you are using one of these sites check to see if they have a personalised RSS Feed for your submissions, then promote it.

It will give you another little boost in the rankings and expose your content to a wider audience, plus very few people are doing it, so anything you can do to gain a slight advantage.

Once you have set these up to go, the next time you submit new content, the RSS feeds will update and notify all these services of your new content.

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a. Find the time to write
b. Find topics to write about

Here are a few ideas to help you get the creative juices flowing.

Use your social network

Ask questions on LinkedIn or Yahoo Answers to evoke some feedback. Ask questions around your niche or topic of interest. In this way you can then incorporate other opinions and you may get ideas back that you never thought about

NewsNow

NewsNow is a news service aggregator which allows you to search hundreds of worldwide news feeds in one place! They have a great archive of news too, so why not carry out some keyword searches to find out what is happening in your industry or dig through the archives to find some little gems you could use as the basis of an article or story. Stories tend to be very seasonal so look at stuff from the same time last year and you could get some useful ideas to pan for the rest of the year.

Blogs

Look at other people’s blogs either by visiting or using their RSS feeds to find out what is going on in your industry.

There are just three ideas. I have also shared three more ideas on my other blog that you could use for your business too:

http://www.jayblogger.com/need-content-but-not-sure-what-to-write-about/

This should give you plenty of ideas for web content and free up time so you spend it writing rather than thinking.

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Aggregation by definition is the ability to search in one place, every product available and find the best rate for you. There has been lots of talk about the coverage of these services and one would have thought that most of these sites would now be approaching 100% coverage and offer the same range of products.

So how do they then differentiate themselves? By adding their own discounts onto their panel of products thus creating “unique offers”.

This is a good thing, yes?

Well, no. It now means that theoretically at least you will never get the “best” rate from an insurer using a single comparison site as they are all offering their own discounted versions.

Say for example, you searched for an AA car insurance product, you could get one rate direct, then one rate from an aggregator site to find the best version.

But now, you will have instances, in order to see who has the best rate, you will have to search all the aggregators too as they will all have their own discounts. Therefore you could end up having to do 20 odd searches or settling for a rate that you will never know if it was the cheapest rate for exactly the same product.

Will not end up being good for the consumer in the long run.

It was suggested very “tongue in cheek” on the InsuranceAge Forum that there should be an aggregator of aggregators and the more of this unique discounting that happens, the more that could very well be a necessity.

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This new limited subscription service provides a range of monthly articles which can be used by insurance and mortgage brokers, and financial advisers to populate their websites with quality content which in turn will help generate more traffic.

Jason Hulott, director of Speedie Consultants, the finance and insurance content provider, says: “The new website service is a fantastic way for the small broker to level the playing field and be able to compete online. By leveraging a limited membership and an online delivery system we are able to reduce the individual cost to the broker.”

He adds: “We are excited about this new service as it means that we can now provide our content service to a larger number of companies who want to drive more business to their website. This service allows companies to add quality content however they like. It also provides them with enough content to build a blog or provide a newsletter for their clients.”

The membership - which is open to 50 clients only in order to keep the content exclusive - comes complete with several marketing and promotion guides.

For more information – and to pick up ten free samples of content to be used however you wish - visit www.thecontent.co.uk

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The system will allow any registered company to receive and deliver a monthly HTML Email newsletter to their clients.

The system also allows you too:

• communicate with your existing client base on a monthly basis
• educate them so that they are able to make better informed decisions
• generate new business leads
• build a targeted audience
• ability to cross sell
• provide an easy system built into the email for clients to request more information

You don’t have to lift a finger other than send a note out to your list to say the newsletter is ready! We provide all the content, the design and include your logos and cotact details.  We also have a intuitive form that will send you and only you enquiries via email form your customers.

As it is HTML you will be able to create a permanent archive so the newsletter will work for you all the time you are registered with us.

If you would like more information as this becomes available please send me a quick email at jason@speediepr.co.uk with “Insurance Newsletters” in the Title.  It is not just Insurance Brokers though, we will have Mortgage based and IFA based newsletters too!

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Clearly, these big insurance companies either came in at commission level that was not sustainable in the long term or they currently do not see affiliate marketing as a viable marketing spend.

Sadly, my gut is telling me and has been telling me for a while that the former is true. These companies came in to dominate market share. Which affiliate in their right mind is not going to promote something that could earn them £100 per sale.

So up the commissions went from a sustainable £20 to £40 per sale to £70 to £110 per sale.
And don’t forget the affiliate network could take 30% on top so a £100 commission becomes £130. £130 on a car insurance premium of £280! There is certainly not enough margin for a insurer to sustain that model.

As we can see with all the big players pulling out completely, the exercise for them is over. But is this giving affiliate marketing a bad name.

“Well, if all these brands are pulling out, maybe it isn’t working!” some would say!

I think from the industry point of view, insurance affiliate marketing is still a great way to attract business and branding for no cost. The only costs are when a sale is made, so you are totally removed from risk.

There is a caveat here and that is buying leads. Lead affiliate marketing does have its issues so I would advise anyone coming into this space as a new player to think long and hard before coming in on a lead basis.

That said, will any of the smaller players be brave enough to stay. What can the smaller broker do to get into this game? Well, there will be a huge vacuum left by the big players leaving the market,
After all, not all affiliates are PPC based, some have huge networks of sites they need to continue to monetise.

I think the smaller players in the market need to start courting these affiliates. And I don’t think it is a commission thing. At this point, I think affiliates would be happy with some form of longevity from their merchants.

Promoting a sustainable programme should be on the agenda for most affiliates so merchants give them what they need. Some security. Affiliate Marketing is alive and well and now the dust has settled from the mass stampede of the bigger brands leaving the market, it should now return to business as usual.

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If you find yourselves in this position, what can you do to try and maintain web traffic levels while reducing your costs? Here are two ideas for you to implement in your business.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is still one of the best low costs ways to drive traffic to a website, position yourself an authority in your field and can give you multiple search engine rankings.

Writing article content around you secondary level keywords can elicit some quick rankings and traffic from Search engines. These articles only get submitted out to a few quality articles sites and a small list of niche article sites that you would need to build.

The articles need to be informative and not a sales pitch. You can then add in a small advertorial section with links to your products in a section called the resource or about the author box.

General Article Sites include:

www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
www.buzzle.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.articlealley.com

In order to find a list of good quality niche sites, visit Google and carry out some searches for Article directories that include your major keywords.

For example:

Type these into Google….

insurance “article directory”
finance “article directory”

will bring up some good little sites that you can add articles to. But don’t just use Google, try Yahoo and MSN too, there could be some real goldmines in there too!

We suggest that you do not use the same content on your own site.

Niche Websites

Build a niche website around one of your main products. In this way you can drive as second site up the rankings. Using Wordpress as a Content Management system allows you to deploy a good quality, low cost website that is easy to manage and update.

Also being a focussed site allows the search engines to easily rank this type of website.

Using Wordpress gives you lots of flexibility and allows you to crate a site that is search engine friendly, can allow visitors to leave comments and allows you to syndicate your site content via RSS.

Wordpress also has lots of free or low cost “plugins” that allow you to build a sitemap to automatically update the major search engines when you publish content, you can add social marketing functionality to allow users to hare your content on the major social sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

It also comes with a huge community of designers who have built free and low cost templates so you can have a design made for you or pull a free version off the shelf.

Both these techniques can allow you in the short to medium term to divert some of your marketing spend from Advertising spend in order to build activity that works for you continually not just on a one off. With articles and niche sites, you are building Internet assets for your business.

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The course includes:

• How to use free article strategies to get highly ranked in Google

• Learn the best techniques to double the conversions from your Pay Per Click Marketing

• Use basic optimisation strategies to get the major search engines to rank your website highly

• Discover the 3 different types of sitemaps to drive traffic, help users, and the search engines navigate your website

Visit the site here: Insurance Marketing and sign up. It is totally free!

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Their study found that 53% of consumers say that they currently research their home insurance online, with 47% saying that they are extremely likely to purchase through the Internet in the future.

Global Reviews also looked at the leading websites across the industry to create a benchmark of best practice against which they assessed under various categories including ease of use, information available to prospective customers, customer support, application processes, overall content and the quality of the online tools.

This research shows that consumers are very comfortable quoting and buying online when it comes to their finance and insurance purchases. Providing these types of facilities on your own company website is a very good way to tap into this growing market.

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Now this is knowledge that I have assumed people would know up until this point but clearly not. So this brief article will give you some idea where to hunt out those all important relevant Affiliate Programmes.

Brokers seem to be trying to find new and different ways to increase their revenue streams due to the pressures in the current market climate. Hopefully, by adopting some of the online options available, they will be built into a sustained model, and not used as a knee jerk reaction to the markets. Used online, in newsletters, on blogs, and mini sites, affiliate marketing can be a very powerful technique and a good income earner.

In term of finding programmes for IFAs, insurance and mortgage brokers, it may be that you are looking for a travel insurance offer or maybe you are a commercial broker and want to offer some personal lines to your email list. Using an affiliate relationship online is a good way to test the water without too much effort. If you have a good level of response to your mailing you may want to explore different more direct options.

Most affiliate networks will have access to proven email creatives if you ask for it, which you can then just send out to your list.

Affiliate Networks

There are several large Affiliate network companies that manage Affiliate Programmes on behalf of their clients. There are lots of different networks out there but in the main there are probably 10 or so in the UK that are useful to finding Affiliate deals suitable for your business.

Commission Junction (Worldwide)
Tradedoubler (European)
Buy.at (UK)
AffiliateWindow (UK)
DGM (UK and AUS)
OMGUK (UK Finance Programmes)
Affiliatefuture (UK)

In House Programmes

You can also look at websites that you would like to work with and see if they have their own Affiliate Programme. Most will have a link somewhere on their site for “Resellers” or “Affiliates”. If not, drop them an email to see if they have a Programme you could join. If they don’t, move on and find someone else.

You could also try searching in Google or using one of the many Affiliate Programme directory sites such as:

www.associateprograms.com/directory
www.affiliatescout.com
www.top-affiliate.com
www.affiliatefirst.com/uk
www.affiliate-scheme.co.uk

To find out more about a Programme before you signup you may be able to find some comments by searching in Google or ask questions at an Affiliate forum. In the UK there is really only one affiliate forum worth mentioning:

www.affiliates4u.com/forums

Are there any good brands out there that I can use?

Some good quality Brand names have programmes including:

ASDA Finance, Budget Insurance, Esure, Credit Expert, Halifax, NatWest, Norwich Union, RBS, More Th>n, HSBC, MBNA and many many more….

Affiliate Product Ideas for Brokers to Use

Personal Loans - Alliance and Leicester
Credit Cards – Capital One, MBNA, RBS, Halifax, Barclaycard
Utility Switching – Uswitch, SimplySwitch
Current Accounts – HSBC, Alliance and Leicester, Barclays, The One Account
Savings Accounts - HSBC
Business Accounts – NatWest, HSBC, Direct Line, SimplyBusiness
European Mortgages - Barclays

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