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

Building a Successful Affiliate Website

Here is the chronological order of the success of Shopping-Bargains.com.

Created by Mike Allen

• 1995 Graduated College with Master Degree
• 1996 Made first online purchase
• 1997 -99 Learned about powerful coupon code ** Google is born ** Search engines are not very effective
  
• 1999 Shopping-Bargains.com is born ** Used free hosting ** Quickly moved shared hosting ** Joined two affiliates amazon.com and netgrocer ** joined 2 networks bfree and linkshare
  
• Learned in 1999 ** Meet the customers needs ** Quality webhosting is vital ** Affiliate marketing exist ** Content management is a lot of work ** Affiliate income is not automatic ** This hobby had potential ** Start setting goals
  
• 2000 - 2003 ** Joined Commission Junction ** Share A Sale ** Performic (bought by google) ** Added more retailers and content ** Moved to table layout and upgraded ** Aquired shoppingbargains.com (without dash) ** Trademark easier with dash (- ) in URL ** added first part time person ( this person did data entry only )
• Main Lesson 2000 - 03 ** Affiliate marketing works ** Merchant communication is great ** Manually updating content is painful (35,000 products - redesign site) ** Search engines become really big now ** search more accurate ** online advertising is very effective too ** This not hobby anymore and becomes a business ** need help ** become a LLC business ** Building the BRAND and investment in the company is vital
• 2003 - 04 ** The big migration ** Dynamic content ** Database driven ** Dedicated server is acquired ** Build database in Cold Fusion ( looking back I wish I did it in PHP instead) ** Standardize Layouts ** Navigation ** Read Quit my day job - Jeremy Palmer ** Started to interact with the affiliate industry ** Use Abestweb.com for resource ** Involve more with affiliate managers (building relationships)
• Main lesson learned 03 - 04 ** running a business is expensive ** I must focus on content, not developement ** Quality sites are trusted more ** web layout + usability really matter ** Read the book "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug ** Affiliate income fluctuates widely ** Search engines don't like change
• 2005 - present ** More industry involvement ** Advisory boards / service ** won several awards ** Blogging ** Added more retailers ** Created newsletter >> Like mail chimp for segmented list and not expensive ** Social Media - Blogging, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Some use of Video ** Tools to use - for me to coupon.com - popshops.com (all the affiliates in one spot) - google custom search (With Google Custom Search, you can harness the power of Google to create a customized search experience for your own website.) ** Business enhancements - hired more part time people ** New revenue stream - slotting (where you put perferred products on your site and get paid for it) - google ad sense, chitika
• 2005 trends noticed ** Buiness cycles and trends produce big impacts ** Search Engines algorythmes change and it effects bottom line ** Media mentions and Social can be huge ** the ecomony impacts conversions ** Legal issues arise the bigger you get ** Infrigment and typo must be addressed ** content must be protected ** more tools - open office, aff meter , affbook.com, ** go to trade shows - affiliate summit, search engine strategy, pubcon
• Suggestions to think about ** Find a problem to Solve ** Offer creative solutions ** think long term ** build your own brand ** Invest in education ** Expect to fail
• To see the whole PDF hand out < go to >

Thank you Mike... facebook/com/mike.shoppingbargains or twitter.com/mta1
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins bahamas

ShareASale - SFIMA - Other Speaker

More notes from a few speakers today.

Carolyn Tang - Share A Sale an affiliate network
This network is one of the hottest in the industry - everyone is raving about its integrity, honesty, and payments.

Big affiliate site that work within their network, FatWallet.com >> Tim Storm ( started 5 years ago and has 80 employees)

Stats to keep up on:
Raw Data

1. Impressions
2. Clicks
3. Number of Orders
4. Sales$$

Derived Data

1. Conversion Rate
2. EPC >> Earning per click
3. Returns

Jay Berkowitz 10 Golden Rules
The types of Affiliate that are out there.
SEO >> Natural and Paid
Email >> Building List
High Traffic Websites
Shopping / Bargins / Coupon
Information products pages
Lead Generation pages

You might want to see this video from Tony Robbins
In this interview I meet with two very successful students, Frank Kern and John Reese. Both of them are self-made multi millionaires who made their fortunes by selling products on the Internet. What’s particularly interesting about both of them is that neither had any “real” education. Neither one finished college and they both went from being broke to becoming wealthy.

Andy Rodriguez Consulting
I thought of Johnny Hawaiian contacting this guy. If he reads this, you might want to follow through with him.

He said a supper affiliate is someone who earns at least $10,000 a month commission.
He helps companies both with finding Affiliate Networks or Growing the Affiliate business
Tools her recomended
Wordtracker >> with word tracker you can see the cost for 1 year
Syntryx >> Find affiliates for any products

andy@andyrodriguez.com

Sites to look at:
Affiliate Tips Blog by Shawn Collins
ABestWeb is the world's largest affiliate marketing forum with 60,000 members and over 943,000 posts
Affiliate Summit conference
Geekcast - pod cast about affiliate marketing
Quit your day Job
Shoemoney.com >> Not my favorite but they showed at the show where they have a photo of this guy with a check from google adsense for $132,000 for a month check. Pretty impressive. Look at the check.
zacjohnson.com - Super affiliate blog
ReveNews Blog - Discussion of Online Advertising, CPA, SEO, Affiliate and Next Generation Marketing

More to write about>>
God Bless,
John
dolphin swims miami

Trust Agents - Affiliate Marketing SFIMA

Hi Everyone,
Wow, I went to inspiring Internet class today about affiliate marketing, which was up my alley.

The first speaker was Juliene Smith who wrote the NY times best seller Trust Agents
His books and speak was about building channels and talking to many people
Blogs > Facebook > Twitter

• Building a strong Channel of People can last forever
• Controlling your future means controlling your channel platform > your network
• Emailing will help communicate to your channel of people
• Building tribes is critical
• Social Capital > facilitate the exchange of the groups
• You need to be part of every conversation
• Create websites that are visible and indexable
• Make sure you have the inside language with your group >> connection with your group >> Buzz words that ever talks about within your group
• Your offering >> Differentiate from the Crowd
• Pattern Breaking >> Be a human artist >> so your crowd can remember you
• Understanding leverage >> Social Capital = Financial Capital >> Keep the friction friction low
• You need to be the lead dog of your group. When you are the lead dog, you have less competition >> Similar to network marketing pyramid - You at the top and the rest of your group below you.
• Habit of fear won't let you take risk to be the lead dog.
  

Chris Brogan Blog advises businesses, organizations, and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships

Book to Read:

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant (Hardcover)
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (Hardcover)

2 Website for me to look startcooking and startcooking blog

More notes to come.
God Bless,
John
swimming with the dolphins in Miami

Your offering >> Differentiate from the Crowd

Linked In Seminar

Hi All,

I went to the SFIMA meeting last night and it was a good meeting because the main speaker was talking about Linkedin, which on the Social Media scale is hardly talked about.

I sat with Mike Monahan, he is the Internet Marketing manager for a cruise ship portal site, called Cruise One. He mentioned a blog that was really successful, call foursuitcases.com, it about a family that is traveling the world. They are a member of CruiseOne and he said they have a huge following on the blog. You might want to check it out, pretty cool.

LinkedIn Meeting Notes:

A place to find people and place to be found.

Not a substitute for meeting people face to face. Building Relationships!!!

There are 10 Application for Linked in. I never knew.

Linkedin has grown, from 18 million user in 07 to 44 million in 08

The average income of a user in linked is $110,000

This biggest nugget I got from this speaker is this....
All Social Media you should have a strategy before starting, don't go into it blind.
His strategy is
Part A - Pressence on the Social Site.
1. Strategy >> 2. Brand >> 3. Profile
Part B - Participation
4. Execution >> 5. Connections 6. Key - Coordinate this social site with your other marketing efforts

Brand questions to ask yourself

1. My company (or you) is known for_______?
2. 3 Adjectives to describe you or your company?
3. Describe your expertise.

Profile
Profession Discription of yourself in profile - Make you and your brand very descriptive.
7 Elements of linkedin profile >> It important to get this completed properly. If you don't you wont be ranked on Linked in.

What makes your profile complete?

• Your current position
• Two past positions
• Your education
• Your profile summary
• A profile photo
• Your specialties >> Add Key Words here to get ranked better!!
  
• At least three recommendations

To increase Participation
Join Groups
Send out Invitations >> Don't spam
What are you working on Now Section >> kind of like twitter -- Don't over use

Before growing your connections with others, make sure your profile is 100%

You can grow your connections quickly by importing your email list into Linked in

Final

• Spend 10 - 15 minutes a day on Linked in
• Define strategy
• Be clear on what your expertise is
• Proffessional description
• Value Links
• Power of Summery

Speaker Website - LinktoProsper.com

Last thing - One guy told me from the last meeting about twitter, a guest ask what is the next thing to come along we should watch for. The speak said Google Wave Check it out.

God Bless You All !!!
Johnny Mac
Swimming with the Dolphins Miami