AFFCON Affiliate conference notes Miami Dec 9 - 10

Hi Gang,

Here are some notes from the AFFCON Affiliate show last week. I really liked this show. It was smaller and got to talk to many people. The speakers were really good too. The best part is that affiliate get to go to the show for FREE.

Thursday's Notes:
The Key Note speaker - Steve Denton from Pepperjam
That affiliate marketers are the ones that are changing the way shopping is done on the internet. Some examples, PriceGrabber.com, About.com, Daily Candy, Pronto.

Check out iguiders.com - This site will help you with your shopping experience. This site is geared to help you think through the process. A funnel sort of thing.

Click Rates for niche sites 9% CTR for holidays and 5% CTR for non holidays

40% more sales from Nov - Dec. June you need to start planning for Christmas. FREE shipping is huge for conversion.

Mobile Marketing

• 91% over 13 years old have cell phones
• 97% Text messages help brand
• 95% text messages are opned
• Cell phones are 20% of the search traffic by 2012

Paid Search
Google Instant - Help you discover the long tail key words
Yahoo and Bing don't have instant yet
Facebook is the biggest display network
Facebook you can go through your limit quickly
Facebook is great place for niche sites and display adds.

Try Google Wonder wheel for related key words. To get some help on this, go to this blog.

You can make your Key Word List using the Google Wonderwheel function.

Top Adword points

1. Not utilizing negative keywords enough. Don't show your compitition
2. Poor Ad Word group orgainization
3. Sending traffic to homepage
4. understanding quality score
5. Always test / evaluate
6. Not using the content network properly
7. set and measure goals
8. Getting an adwords education - Ad Words Learning center

Facebook / Linked in
500 million users a day
Images are very important in the ad
Budget and Scheduling - Start small and work your way up
Very targeted if you want.
Facebook Lite << Check out
Facebook Landing Pages >> I am not 100% sure where this


Google URL Builder << Check out

Linked in Ad - Very Targeted. You can get your ad in front of CEO, Ad exect

You would use google URL builder to use to build targeted ads with Adsense or Linked in.

Twitter Ads are coming soon.


Web Design

• Create Phone numbers for specific landing pages to track calls.
• Put an active life style logo - Get people engaged
• Logo is important
• ***City First for Key Words. Miami Swim with Dolphins vs Swim with Dolphin Miami
• Seomoz  ****; Check out site
• Make sure you back up Wordpress
• Webpagetest.org *** Look at this
• *** Need to change out the Goolge Search code has changed
• Make sure your copy write up to date.
• Make sure your 404 pages are correct.

Landing Pages
Trust - Help with Conversions
4 pillars of Trust
1. Appearance - Professionalism, Sparseness and neatness, Organization and Clarity
2. Assurance - Trust Marks, Forms of Payments, delivery, is data secure
3. Authority - The company we keep - Put down other company we are associated with. Better business bureau, so forth.
Tools to test, Site Tuner.com
Attention wizard.com
4. Consensus of Peers - Similar to Panora.com, Facebook.
Pull facebook into your site, facebook open social
Check out See Why.com, Code Baby.com,

Friday, December 10
Using the Industry for Good
Building a story for good. Make sure to tell your story
Leverage on the 3 elements
1. Education
2. Capital
3. Hope

Good Return Model, this company Soap for Hope has done this. 100% of profits to fight poverty. They get a return after 1 year of the profit loan. They are a for profit business. Very interesting!! Check it out.

To impliment
1. What am I passionate about?
2. Find a Business, non-profit?
3. Integrate this non-profit into your business
Don't fudge, be transparent

Daily Work + Giving = Leverage

1. Advisors, you might need to find help when implementing this
2. Believe and have hope to be successful in this

Google Analytic

• *EPC - Earning per click 
• *CTR - Click through rate
• *Average Order Value
• *Conversion Rate - Most important metric - Good conversion rate is 2 - 3 % 
• *Reversal Rate (what gets returned) - Important

Web Strategies Blog

Social Media Metrics ** A must read book

Tools to use:

• Google Alerts for your products
• Feedburner Stats
• Page View Comments, Retweets, Page Rank
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Insights
• Google Trends ** Very cool, check out
• Inbound Links
• Tweetreach ** the teacher really like this
• Google URL shorter tool

What to do with your Google Analytic

• Need to load the New Script immediately - You can get the new code and replace the old code
  Campaign Source
• Goals
• Visitors on your sites
• Trend Segments, which browser they come in from, screen resolutions (pc vs handheld), above the fold, speed connections, traffic sources, search engine
• Filter make sure to use to figure out the segments.
• On Click Tracking Code for Affiliates

If you went to the conference too, please post your notes here and pass it on to other affiliate friends.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Years to you all!!
God Bless,
John
Hawaii Oahu Swimming with the Dolphins

James Martell Q&A

Hey Gang,

I thought I would share my notes from tonights Q&A with James.

He primarily talked about Pubcon which is a huge SEO conference in Las Vegas. They always have the latest on SEO.

Well  here goes,....
They talked a lot about Scrape Box, Which is Google Long Tail Key word collector. You need to check it out.

Manage Flitter - Managing your twitter account

Co Tweet - Managing your social accounts, facebook, twitter, about conversions.

Content for Social
* More you talk about yourself the less people will follow you.
* More people follow Positive messages
* Personalize your talk
* Tweet click rates and facebook increase on weekend
* Share cool information
* People want to be first with information
* people are always looking for news and humor
* people love to be part of the crowd
* retweet other people's comments
* Tweet your blog posts
* Try to build an audience

Matt Cutts from Google talked and this where google is focusing on.
1. Local Search
2. Mobile
3. Social

Google did say when you comment on a blog post, you will get credit from google. Good for PR.
Google is looking for twitter retweets with your website in it.

Video SEO
Make a video that does not stink!!

Buzz at the show, These sites
Four Square.com to advertise your area
Facebook places
Gowalla.com
Google Buzz

Local Search drives more business

The guy that runs Pubcon spoke and told the audience, this year, he stopped paying about $70,000 in google ad sense (he did this for the last few years) and went totally social, twitter, facebook, and blog, and sales were up 30 % from last year. Go Social!!!

I hope you enjoy this guys, remember, write a response in this post and google will give you a back link. DO IT!!
Have a great weekend!
God Bless,
John Mac
Swimming with the dolphins Tortola

November 4th Update

Hey Guys,

I have not written in a long while but here a few things you might find of interest.

If you want to listen to James latest podcast
Affiliate Buzz #172 – 7 Tips for Turning Your Passion Into Profits with Affiliate Programs

Info for you.
Top 20 WordPress Plugins

If you would like to go to the Affliliate Summit in Las Vegas, there is a contest for FREE Gold Pass.
< About Contest > This is from Shawn Collins who is in charge of the conference.

Quick Tips
1. Adding Photo Captions are huge. Most people don't read the content but skim and they read the photo captions!
2. Know your demographics. A cool website to help quantcast.com. Check it out. Type in a website and you will see the demographics. Check out

Have you seen my latest Hotel review? Pier House Key West , Check out the video we did. How do you like it?

I hope all you guys and gals are doing well. Post a response on the blog if you can.
God Bless,
John Mac
swimming with the dolphins

SFIMA Meeting and More

Hi Guys,

Its been a long time since I have posted anything but today, I went to the SFIMA meeting and James Martell's Q&A, so I have few things to blog about.

SFIMA meeting
This might be a home run for me, I will see. One of the making guys I was talking to mentioned that he and his company uses this service, http://www.usertesting.com/ and it very reasonable. You will get invaluable feedback. Check it out.

The main subject tonight was Email marketing. Two office depot women talked.
Get back to basics.  They still get tons of business from email.

• Reinvent your company to your customers
• Open Rates
• Target your emails
• Asses your email
• Personalize your message

What you are trying to achieve? Loyalty and Retention >> office depot goals
Html vs Text email? You must have text for Mobile devices. So text is a must.

Office Depot uses http://www.cheetahmail.com/corp/

They both speakers use and read daily the http://www.retailemailblog.com/

From James Martells Q&A tonight
Share A Sale Think tank, http://www.shareasalethinktank.com/About.aspx If you get accepted, all your expenses paid for except flight.

One of James Students: http://all-things-aviation.com/featured/original-aviator-sunglasses/ he is ranking really well for this key word, Randolf Aviation Sunglasses. He has done a nice job with the site.

These blogs list other blogs that have Do Follow in their comments sections. Great for Back Links.
http://www.feverishthoughts.com/do-follow-bloggers/
http://dmmbg.com/d-list-2.html/comment-page-1

James really loves this service for Comments on your blog. http://comluv.com/

Anyone want to hear the recap of the Affiliate Summit East,
http://jamesmartell.com/affiliate-buzz/a-recap-of-affiliate-summit-east-2010-in-new-york-city/

Hey guys, please make sure you comment this blog. You can put your back link in the comment. It will let me know that you read this and it will great to hear from you through the blog. Use it!

Keep on Going and God Bless,
Johnny Mac
swimming with the dolphin grand cayman

Latest Affiliate Class

Hi Guys,

I thought I would put some of this information on the Blog from James Martell's last class.

1. Two of his students wrote an ebook about making money with Amazon < Check it out > I am going to get it and see what it says. I will post if it is worth it.
2. James Free Video on Improving conversion for 1400 Key Words. < Check it out >
3. James Free Video of creating content inexpensively. < Check it out >
4. Paid Word Press Themes templates Socrates WP Theme & Yukon theme. The Socrates is for Affiliate people. It looks cool.
5. Jame's wife Arlene has created a site and has a new control panel look. James really likes this navigation.

http://www.epilepsymoms.com/control-panel.html

 

I hope this helps someone.
God Bless and Love,

John

 

Site Critique

Hi All,

Here is Site Critique from James Martell. Simple Italian Website

Also, another cool site the 100 Greatest Headlines ever written. You might want to use of these.

God Bless,
John
Swimming with the Dolphins Grand Cayman

New Ideas from James Martell

Hi Guys,

I just got through with my live James Martell Class.

Some interesting stuff....

• Clickbank.com may be an interesting affiliate network to check out.
• To build content, go to Youtube and put your key word you are searching. Take Youtube video and write a story about it. Take the video code and add to your content. Geat way to get interest and easy content.
• Buzzom.com it Tweeter and Facebook posting management tool.
• James has a tweeter account for each of his niches. The buzzom tool helps him manage all the accounts.
• James using two part headline for Articles. Example Uses Key Word then the Title to attract. Like >> Managing Credit - What you Don't know Can Hurt You ( Video)  - the key word was Managing Credit
• One of the guys mention this guy for Google Adword classes Perry Marshall
• A website to buy and sell website Flippa.com. When James sold his formula Revenue per day X 1 1/2 years.
• Matt Cutts from Google Video about Page Ranking
• A Free Affiliate Conference that coming to Florida next year.

One of our internet mastermind members is moving, Alex. He was a great addition and I wish him well on his move to California. May God Bless him and his family on this new journey!!
Alex, you will be missed in South Florida. Hey gang, we now have a place to stay in Cali, yeah!!
John
swimming with the dolphins Grand Cayman

Super Mega Optimal SEO

Hi All,

Here are some suggestions for Back Links to your site. Click the links to see the site. If any of you use any of these sites for back links, please put a comment on your successes.

1. Public Relations

• PRweb
• Business Wire
• PR.com
• PRnewswire

2. Classified Ads

• Craig List
• Oodle
• USFree Ads
• Backpage
• Ebay Classified

3. Video

• Youtube
• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• Viddler
• 5min
• Dailymotion
• Meta Cafe

4. Content Development

• BlogCatelog
• EzineArticles
• BuzzleEdit HTML
• GoArticles
• Idea Marketers
• ArticleAlley
• Amazines
• Google Knol

5. Getting Social

• Delicious
• digg
• stumbleupon
• mixx <<  Company located in Pembroke Pines
• redditt
• facebook
• myspace
• orkut
• bebo
• hi5
• twitter
• plurk
• plazes

6. Directories

• Dmoz
• Yahoo << Paid
• business.com
• bestoftheweb
• goguides
• joeant
• rubberstamped
• skaffe
• sitesnoop
• gimpsy
• internet public library
• massivelinks

Using Word Press Template

Hey Gang,

I just thought I would share a few notes about my new website, Florida Vacation Travel Guide.

The process was a little longer than I thought. My original thoughts were going to build a site from scratch but finally came to my senses and built a site with Wordpress.

I used a template that my friend and webmaster, Carlo, from CWP internet. He helped me install, teach, and modify the template. Allen, from Cruzan concepts did the header image and graphics. It was a great team effort and it came together. The site took me about 8 weeks to get up and running.

If you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you.
God Bless,
John Mac

Summit Driving ROI with Search and Social

Hi All,

Long time, I have not written in a long time. I was at a seminar about a Search and Social from SFIMA.

I was writing by a wild man and my notes are not the best but here it goes.

Mitch Joel talked about Social Sites....

• Banner advertising is going down, not many clicks. This past year, the clicks on Banner Ads have gone down to 2% from the total of 1.8 billion user online.
• Why is normal advertising going down because of social site and customer reviews. People are trusting people not advertising.
• Information is everything. He talked about yelp.

• You need to start really value your relationships.
• More Grandparents than High School students on Facebook
• Facebook is so popular because the user can share, socialize, collaborate, and most of all create.
• 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customers reviews.
• Reviews = Trust. Let your customer talk on website about your products. Be transparent to the world.
• Make sure you know who you want to put your meesage in front of. Be part of Groups that you want to be in front of. Facebook groups...
• 50% of youtube audience is over 34
• Canadians watch over 15 hours a month of Youtube videos. Pretty amazing, considering the average video is 4 minutes.
• Google said that 20% search is NEW each day. So new key words groups are created everyday.
• You don't control your homepage, Google does.
• Now, you need to get in front of your customer versus where you were looking for customers to find you.

Facebook ads are very targeted audience.

We are not marketers anymore, now we are publishers.
1. Accept the change
2. Build and share
3. Move towards open and sharing
4. Its attitudal versus generational
5. Do something now? Be sure you know why?

Your stories should be one to many - Social
Give Value up Front and be Simple

Ten Golden Rules - Jay Berkowitz
To see the outline go to http://presentations.tengoldenrules.com/  He has some great outline and very smart guy.
* He sadi to get your Facebook Vanity User Name, Twitter Name, Linkin Name. It is going to be hot commodity.
* the Facebook Like it button is going hot. Look for the Like it Widget to add to your site.
*Location Networking 4 Square
* My personal use - Pay per Post to make money to blog
*Youtube is great product sale person
* PR Web to promote your video
* Create a community >> Jay created one http://www.internetmarketingclub.org/
ning.com is low cost community network
*Google is looking for "Recency"  and site speed.
*Wine Library TV is has become huge hit on youtube

***************************************************************************
For John
Gorilla Marketing Idea - Make Bookmarks and put in books and magazines to promote your website. For example, travel website, but the book mark in travel books and magazine in a bookstore.
Travel Blog to check out http://amateurtraveler.com/
****************************************************************************
Next Speaker

• Facebook is visited more than google
• Get a strategy - Need a plan to drive revenue - lead generation
• Make engaging and sharable content. Is your content good enough to share?
• Offer exclusive content
• Listen to your user. Listen to what they want. Are people talking on your page? Do they have complaints or praise? Get Feedback. Ask Questions?
• Focus on Groups.
• Buy Buy is doing a good job communicating and reacing the right audience.
• Fan retention
• Engage your fans in conversation

Next Speaker
The theory of facebook's Likeability
Engagement = Media X commitment
Facebook has started Likeability. what is it? Is about personalization.
How it works - Photos, Albums, Accessable
Look at Facebook Plug ins
Predictions
1. Personalization will be mainstream
2. Graph Based Commerce - Facebook shopping site
3. Geo and Mobile - Location is big and new facebook feature
4. Insight mining is going to be huge
5. Facebook ads will be everywhere. Big shift in advertising
Embrace Likeability or Else
1. Accept that notion of privacy and identity is going to change
2. Empowers consumers
3. Better analytics and measures

Next Speaker
Before going Social
Set Goals
Get a Strategy
Start campaign
Tactic >> Social >> Facebook
Build your brand

Build content First with Youtube, Photobucket, Blogs >>> Then build facebook, linkin, Twitter >>> Invite Existing Customer to Engage >>> Marketing Intergration (email, mailers, advertising)

Talked about Youtube
Video >>> Make a PreRoll and Make a Post Roll for the videos I make.
He said to use Corel Pro X3
He uses a Flip Camera

A Guide to SEO

Hey Guys,

Here is another class I saw at the Affiliate Summit. It was young guy, Joshua, and owns FullSpeedSEO.com and really liked what he said. Check it out.

How Do I Increas My Ranking

• Analyzing Your Niche
• Dominating the Niche
• Tracking your Progress

Who Do I need to Optimized for?
Unless you have compelling evidence not to optimize for Google, its best to do what they like to see, and let the other catch on.
Searches

• Google 66%
• Yahoo 16.2%
• Bing 8.8%
• Aol 3%
• the rest 7%

Picking a Domain Name
If you have not bought a domain name, Use Google Keyword tool to try to find highly search versions of your main keyword.  Use the Global Search and Use EXACT match.

If you already have a domain name that you are not willing to change, that's alright. Domain name is only 1 of about 200 ranking factors. Remember sites like, ebay, Aazon, and Zappos all rank for keywords not in their domain.

Don't makeyournametoolong.com

A wellplaced dash is fine, like expert-changes.com but avoid-lots-and-lots-of-dashes.com

If you are geographically centric business, it much easier to rank Houstonfloorpolishers.com than floorpolishers.com

Is your website optimized? (boring)

• Main Keyword in title tag
• H1 . H2 Tags
• Meta Description tag

Do you have a site map?
Keywords in the first 250 words of text.
Pro tip: A CMS (content management system) like wordpress will do almost all of this for you. Wordpress has been known to follow google advice closely. <<<<<

Optimizing Wordpress
Google Sitemap Generator
All in One SEO pack << talk about this before
Popular Posts (for last x days)
Lose the Default theme
Woo Themes ($20 / month)
Page.ly - managed wordpress hosting with premium themes ($15/month), upgraded, patched, and backed up.

Page Optimization

• Use Google Keywords tool for additional terms you might want to rank for. Use the broad match option.
• Use in the Google KeyWord Tool the ~operator before you google queries for related ters. le ~dog, ~collars
• make sure you page loads fast, consult google webmaster tools
• Increase time on page via "related posts" or Additional Products at the end of pages

Off Page Optimization
It is better to have 1 really popular website than 30 "zero" page rank sites.
To become a Authority Site: Relevant Links and Authoritative links coming to your site.
Don't be freaked out about page rank. Its a macro metric. Its better to be "0" PR with lots of visitors.
Focus on building a profile of high quality one way links
Trust your list ranking, not y our page rank.

Where Do I Get Links?
Guest Posting
Social Bookmarking (Digg, Stumbleupon)
Various Profiles (youtube, slashdot,etc)
Twitter aggregators
facebook fan pages
Sites you make (mini nets)
Link Bait >> this is any media that gets people excited, in any capacity, about the content of that media, and inspires them to link back to it so their discourse on the subject is relevant.
Examples >> Contests, Viral Videos, Creative Web Applications (mobile apps), be evocative
From Matt Cutts "Link baiting sounds like a bad thing, but expecially if its interesting information or fun, it doesn't have to have negative connotations. I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and still be wonderful "bait" for links."

Link baiting is the reason your website needs a blog.
This is reason you should probably have mini net made about your niche.

Link Building
Blog Comments
CommuntLuv - Dofollow plugin for WP
Look for "footprints" if you find something
Social Media
Submit Great Content. Diggers are snobs, rightfully so.
Your twitter followers will want to blog/link great content, give it to them! Don't mislead them with your profile though. I personally hate lots of off topic tweets.
When all else fails.. look where your competition gets their links. Yahoo.com site: theirDomain.com
Sitesnatcher <<<

SEO Tools
Rank Checker - Free from SEOBook
SEO information on SERPS >> great for assessing competition in a niche
DoNotFollow Fire Fox Plugin
CODA Development Software

Thats it for what it is worth. Also, Alex, reported to me you could not post on these blog post and I fixed it. Please post and put your website in the post. As we read, one way links will help and this blog is a tool to help you!!

God bless,
John
Swimming with the Dolphins in Miami

Affiliate Direct Links from Email

Hi Guys,

You may not know this but I thought I would share this with you. I had created an email where I put the affiliates link directly from the email to the affiliate company, Viator.  It was part of my strategy to earn more money. I was wondering way, I only got about 10 sales all last year. We send out 1000s of emails a month. So I was expecting so much more.

When I went to Las Vegas and I talked to the manager of Viator. She told me that in the Viator agreement, I could NOT email direct links to viator. She told me its in their agreement statement with me, but I never read it. I wasted a whole year without any sales from them. So came back and I started to create Activity landing pages for each location so the customer would have to go there first and then click to Viator. Well, I created, Things to Do in Dominican Republic page and it worked. I got my first sale this week. Believe me I was very excited.

But when I was in Vegas I asked the manager of Expedia if it was OK to direct link from emails and she said it was OK.

Just thought I would share this with you because I lost a lot of sales ( i think) because of this mistake.

God Bless,
John
PS Curtis copeland told us at the meeting, to upload photos 960 pixel

Masterblaster Monthly Meeting

We had a good turn out last night, John - Neyrot Photography, Me - Swim with the Dolphins Miami, Rich - Fish Oil Direct, and Curtis - Copeland Photography.

We had a good time talking and eating for a little while, My wife Shakira, from Remax Fort Lauderdale, gave us some good eats and then we moved to the office to discuss the internet and business.

Some points:

John Neyrot.
He showed us his new website, http://neyrotproductions.com/ This is his first website he is building from Dreamweaver. The learning curve was hard for him because he was a MS frontpage user for years and now switching to dreamweaver. Its taken him about 2 weeks of reading and watching videos and now he is getting the hang of using dreamweaver. What do you think of his site? This site is to promote him better and for his salesperson to sell him better.

Also, John showed us a big written and photo spread in Moves Magazine. I looked online for the article but its not there yet. It was a great spread about 10 pages.

John Mac
Asked for some help in Wordpress. Curtis and the guys gave feed back on uploading photos to wordpress. Wow, I have been doing it the hard way a long time.
We also talked about the plug ins for Wordpress. The one everyone needs is Askismet for spam. I showed the Flickr plug in and we discussed about flickr. Flickr is social / photo sharing site and we were discussing the pros and cons of the putting the photos there. We agreed that putting a watermark on your photo was worth it.

Curtis mentioned about Disqus (a social blogging tool he uses). I looked at the site but I really don't understand yet. Hopefully Curtis can explain more in future about his site.

We also talked about setting up a Gravatar for your blog. That is something I would like to do. A Brand for my image. Maybe Curtis can talk about this more too.

Curtis
Discussed about his struggle from switching from his website to a wordpress  and buying a template. We all encouraged him to move forward with wordpress.

I think that is it. If you guys can add anything, please do.
God Bless you all and see you in two weeks.
John

Affiliate Summit - Monetize Blogs for Affiliate Marketing

Hi guys,
We had a panel to speak on monetize your blog.

• Ben Spark - Does a photo blog - Tim Jones  - Murray Newlands 
• Some of the basics of blogging - all the panelist use Wordpress - This is the leader
• Make sure you set up Permalink Settings on Word press. This is where By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links. A number of tags are available, and here are some examples to get you started.
• Word press has plugs in you should use.
• All in One SEO
• Google XML Site Maps
• Broken Link Checker
• Best Posts Summary
• Word Press Stats
• WP Super Cache
• WP-DB Back up
• Askismet << a must for spam
• WP Contact Form III
• E-Mail Respond
• Disqus
• Tantannoodles Photo Updates from Flicker  
• Tweet this << Automatically send out tweet posts
  
• There are so many plug ins for word press
• Guest Posting is a big thing in the Blog world. This where you post on someone else's blog your material and you get the back link to your site. If you get this, this could be huge for your google ranking.
• Try to find at least 10 blogs and have all 10 blogs try to link to each other
• Try to Link to Deep pages within the blog
• To Monetize your Blog, you can
• Affiliate Networks - Pepperjam, CJ, Linkshare, Share A Sale 
• Intext Solutions - Skimlinks, VigLinks, Kontera 
• Widgets - Chitika  
• Pay Per Post
• CPA Networks - Azoogle,
• CPM Banners  - Ad Brite, ValueClick 
• Product Feeds into Site - Add Plug in Pop Shops << A lot of people are doing this
• Just for me >> Pop shop Data Feed for a regular site
• Other programs for Making Money >> 
• Click Bank >> Which sells digital Books and Products - Very High pay out
  
• How to Plan and Grow
• The Tighter the Niche the Better
• Build the Community
• Valuable Content
• Build for the Long Term - Remember, its your readers site. Let them build it
• Consist value for the reader
• Movement to Video - You build a lot of trust with Video
  
•  Building the Blog
• Recommend to get customizable Template 
• Paid - Unique Blog Designs 
• Paid - It seems a lot of people are using this service >> Thesis 
• Example of Blogger that had success
• Tricia Meyers - She was a lawyer, now full time as a mommy blogger. twitter >>@sunshinetricia, tricia@sunshinerewards.com, blog>> www.tricia.me
  
• When she finds a hot topic, she gets the key word, domain, server, and wordpress development within a few hours
• She showed her Twight Blog 
• This blog is all about selling stuff
• Banners
• Look for Merchants from Affiliate Networks
• Hot top Banners 125 X 125
• Customize 120 X 600 works well
• Static Banners
• Auto Update Banners
•  She does a lot of product reviews
• She uses the Pop Shops - plug in for word press >> for product feeds
• She really like Ebay affiliate because you can almost find anything there. She suggested to sign up with Ebay directly because you can get better widget and tools.
• Also with Ebay, you get paid for every new member that signs up
• She uses a PHP Plug In from Ebay that automatically pulls in products to page - the latest aution items - 5 items
  
• She uses Widgets from Amazon - Also uses the Share A Sale Widgets
• Other ways she is making money
• Video from Share A Sale
• Golden Can >> Coupon Data Feed
• CPA Network Ads
•  Uses www.coupons.com     

This is the area I was most impressed with. Everyone is Blogging. The show focused a lot of attention toward this group of people. I plan to be one too!!
God Bless,
John
Dolphin Blog 

Tricia responded to email I sent to her and I want to put her answer in my blog post.

Here are the answers to your questions:

1. You mentioned that you got your wordpress free templates from a program / company called thesis. I searched and searched and could not find anything on this. Can you help me where to find these free templates? It’s actually not a free theme. If you want a free one that is decent, you might want to check out Cutlines (it’s what I have on the Twilight site). The one that I mainly use is DIY Themes Thesis. http://diythemes.com/  I paid the $164 to be able to use it on as many sites as I want as long as I stay a developer.

2. When you said at the mentor session, you can turn around and build a blog in 1 hour I was really impressed. I just want to make sure the steps you do are....

Topic >> Find Key Words to Build >> Get Domain >> Buy Server >> Find Wordpress Template >> Build Site and Content >> Promote Sight  To launch the site in an hour, I have a couple of cheats. One is that I already have my server. And the Thesis theme. So I just 1) find my topic, 2) buy the domain, 3) install WP on the domain along with my “set” of plugins that always use, 4) customize the keywords and the colors/logo. The first couple of times it definitely took me longer because I had to learn which plugins I wanted to use and how to customize Thesis. Now it’s just second nature. I also then link to it from my main blog so that Google will find it within 24 hours.

Tricia Meyer

MeyerTech, LLC

www.twitter.com/sunshinetricia

www.tricia.me

www.sunshinerewards.com

 

Affiliate Summit - Building Communities and Self Promotion

Hey Gang,

As I am really week in this area, this class was a good reminder of how building communities are really important. The Speaker Site - Help a Reporter

• Listen to your cusotmer - Best way is with Facebook and Twitter
• Follow on twitter - See what people are saying
• Listen before Tweeting
• Ask your customers how they would like to get your information
• Tell about yourself
• Free Pizza to get people to talk to you
• Your job is to get others to talk about you and your products
• When using Twitter >> Make sure you only tweet useful information. Website to see, your website to see
• Your goal is to get people to retweet your tweet (informational post)
• Is your information valuable and relevant
  
• Don't use the word " I " in your post. Use more " You " in the post. 
• Your goal is to get at least 50% or more of your tweets retweeted
• Your customers will drive your content = Money
• In the future - Search is going to be the recommendations of others. Are people recommending you and/or your product?
• Raving Fan is a book that talks more about this subject. You should read it.
• Relate to your customers - Facebook / Twitter on a regular basis
• How do people remember you - Tony Bennet stood up for the women
• Go to your computer and follow your twitter
• On twitter, make sure you have followers than you following
• Have your friend and Employees Tweet. Have them tweet about you.
• # Tags are about the same group on Twitter

Well, I can not delay anymore and need to get involved with Facebook and Twitter. I hope I can manage it but other do, so why can't I.
God Bless,
John
Find more Florida Adventure Travel Here!!

Affiliate Summit - Get Motivated

Hi Gang,

They did have a motivational speaker and I though would add his notes.
Individual Success:

• Get over yourself - Don't be so self centered
• Avoid Self Sabotage
• Always Move Forward
• Fail your way to success
• Doubt kills success - A good Success website - Chris Brogan
  
• Just do it
• Get productive or perish
• Distractions kill
• Tips on removing distractions
• Shut down time - No phones, No Twitter
• Reward yourself when you get accomplish task - nice lunch
• Go to the library for quite
• Be remarkable
• Misplace jealousy
• Tell the Truth
• No overnight success
• What have you done?
• Hang around successful people
• What is your signature product
• Doers get what they want and everyone else gets what they get
• Are you a loser or a failure? Loser is bad , Failure is Good = means you are willing to fail and try
• Fail Hard, Fail First, and Move on
• Negativity Kills - Remove negative people across the board from your life

Then he started to talk about the web and being successful there.
Web Success:

• Why people go online:
• Solve Something
• Get Entertained
• Your job is take about the consumers "Pain"
• Simple wins always on the web - Look at Google
• Easy site
• Problem Solve 
• Branding
• Do you sell what you think you sell? A product or Feeling - Swim with dolphins or do I sell adventure or happiness or smiling
• Website to help your business be more efficient - 37 Signals  
• No one reads anymore, everyone scans a website.
• A good book to read " Don't make me think - Steve Krug "
• What are your customers thinking
• Your customers have short attention span
• How does your website stand out
• People want bargains
• Are you giving some sort of discount?
• He showed a company called CrossFitCleveland.com and they are a fitness company and they promote by all these means.
• Email Marketing - Constant Contact
• Meet Up 
• Flickr
• Facebook
• Plugged In Cleveland
• You Tube
• My Space
• Crossfit
• Linkedin
• Twitter

Its always great to get motivated because I needed this talk because I spent a lot of time in prayer the days before whether I can make any money doing this affiliate stuff. But I feel God gave me peace and I ready to start again. This talk confirmed it.
God Bless,
John
Ready to Swim with the Dolphins in Miami

Affiliate Summit - Website Reviews

Hey Gang,

I went to a few classes on Website review. It was a lot information and I am sure of all the lingo, but here the notes in this area. Maybe it will help you. They had a panel of speaker and they dissected many websites in front of the audience. Here are the points I was able to get from these sessions.

• Too much CSS code
• 404 code need to be the correct error redirect
• Loading too long - should load on regular DSL 30 seconds or less
• Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check accurate back links << Cool tool
• Use Google Webmaster tools. You can check speed load time here
• the use of No Follow tags on your site. They talked about this a lot. I really don't totally understand. I know you put this code around links that you don't want google to follow. I am not totally sure what links you would not want google to follow. Also, I don't know what this code looks like. Does anyone?
• They talked about 301 redirects and doing this correctly
• Be carefull not to have to many out bound links on a page. Using "No follow" tags
  
• Be careful about your webmaster, if you have one, imbedding outbound links without your knowledge
• Recommended to use Click Path to see which Key Words are converting
• Meta Descriptions are #1 things to keep up with
• To find all your pages that are being index on google >> Site:Your URL
• Talked about whether you need to put your price on your site or not. A / B test results
• Recommended to use SEOMOZ for Seo Tool. It has FREE and Paid Tools
• Use Fire Fox Web Developer Tool bar plug ins - No sure which one
• Make sure that you are using your tags correctly

I hope this make sense to you.
God Bless
John
Looking for great Florida Vacation

Affiliate Summit - Day 1 Mentor Class

Hi All,

Shakira and I are in Las Vegas at the affiliate summit. We are learning a lot and I am going to post the notes as they come in.

Mentor Program
During the this session, we had a change to talk to member that officially called mentors that can help newer affiliates.

I focused toward two people who I thought could help me.

One women focused on the social side and I going to make notes about my discussion with her.
* With Facebook, you need to create a business fan page.
* Once you create the fan page, you can find a Badge code from Facebook where you get code to put on other sites to get people to sign up as a fan.
* The key to make Facebook and Twitter you need to automate where you can.
* When you blog post, the RSS get posted on Facebook automatically.
* Twitter - socialoomph.com This helps you schedule your tweets automatically
* twitterfeed.com  Where your blog post goes automatically
* Tweetdeck.com TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. This will show you tweets and group in the right tweets grouping.
* When sending a tweet message, @name this message goes to the person tweet account and is public. d before the tweet name is direct. # name is before staying within the same group.
* TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed. TubeMogul tracks rich, standardized analytics far beyond "views," including per-second audience dropoff, audience geography and much more.


Well we are off to the Share-A-sale under the star party. Will have more post soon.
God Bless,
John

Start of 2010 Meeting Notes

Hi All,

Well, here we are and ready for a great new year. Tonight we discussed a few things.

1. Rich was explaining about his websites and how he building his business through network marketing companies vs. affiliate companies. He explained to me why he likes the networking side of his business.

Here are two examples of network marketing site he has:
http://www.fishoildirect.com/
http://usapetstoday.com/

• The big thing is that he is in control of his customers.
• He gets to see his order. 
• He gets to see which product the customer order. 
• He makes residual income from all his customers.
• Commission can be really high, especially on the first sale.
  

What you get with Affiliate companies.

• You do get to sell products you want to sell, your hobby or passion.
• You do get a 60 day cookie on the customer computer if they do buy again from that company.

I am going to the affiliate summit in Las Vegas next week with Shakira. Shakira is getting introduced to the affiliate buinsess and we are going to see if we get blessed with some great ideas and companies to work with. Lets see if Shakira gets excited about the business too.

Rich and I talked about a game plan when I go to the conference.

• I need to find companies that are willing to send to me a customer receipts to I can see my sales.
• I need to find a company that is willing to share with me what there top affiliate websites are doing, blogging, website set up.
• I need to find a company that is willing to share with me what are the top 10 products are selling through affiliates.

Lastly, we viewed a video from Allen Victor, one of our internet mastermind member, has done a great FLASH commercial for his natural soap buinsess. Check it out. Here are a couple of notes that Allen told me. He used a voice over service, Voicetalentnow.com. The voice service did a great job and it was reasonably priced. The only challenge with the voice over, they only give you so much time so that changed the amount of time he made the video. I still think it came out great. Check it out.



We have decided for the next Skype meeting, January 21, we are going to do a Video Skype meeting. So I need to get a video cam. If you plan to join us, please get a video cam.

God Bless and see you guys soon.
John
Swimming with the Dolphin Tortola