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