The last six weeks have seen a very interesting change in my affiliate marketing strategy — well, interesting to me and possibly to you.
Part of this was not part of my ongoing plan — getting canceled by Amazon.com, for instance.
Part of it was finally having time to update some websites that had been neglected for most of the last two years as more and more of my time was devoted to caring for Mom and then working on settling her estate.
Part of it was reevaluating products and services that I’ve recommended over the last few years and deleting links to many of them. While I still feel that almost all of them were good products and worth what they cost, I’m no longer comfortable recommending them.
And, if I’m no longer comfortable doing it, why should I continue?
So, I spent a lot of time this morning removing and redirecting affiliate links for a variety of products.
I’ve been working day and night undoing what I spent years doing — finding and linking to affiliated products on a variety of websites, blogs, Squidoo lenses, and other places on the web. I don’t know how long it will take to find and delete all of them, or if that’s even possible, but I’m working on it diligently.
So far, I’ve deleted nearly a thousand pages on my various sites and at least that part is done.
Progress is not a continuous upwards curve
No matter how much we would like to have continuous, unbroken progress in our businesses, it just doesn’t happen that way.
There are always downturns, obstacles that must be overcome, and changes that must be dealt with.
Yes, it feels like that takes us away from getting our work done, but the truth is that it IS our work.
So, even though I’ve been undoing a lot lately, I feel like I’m finally making some progress by clearing out the old chaff so I can concentrate on growing new wheat.
(No, I’m not a farmer. That’s a metaphor.)
It’s a strange idea, possibly, but I really feel like I’m making progress even though most of what I’ve been doing has been going backwards.
On the positive side, my new website for promoting select locally-owned brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC is doing well and I’ll be devoting more and more time to building and promoting Murphy Gold over the coming months.
What part will affiliate marketing play in my future?
More and more, I’m asking myself that question, and I’m unsure of the answer.
As I get pickier about what I recommend to you and have to deal with unexpected things like changes in the NC tax code that got me dropped from several affiliate programs, I find it harder and harder to recommend products and services to you.
Of course, I’ll continue to recommend Site Build It! and I’ll continue using it for my new static sites. At this time, I don’t have any plans to create any new sites and may still decide to delete a few more, but the new sites I build will be powered by SBI.
What do you think?
Those are some of my thoughts about online marketing on a hot summer afternoon.
What do you think? How’s your affiliate marketing business progressing — or not?
This is another article that shows how easy it is to start a blog, but how hard it is to continue it over time. Things change. We lose interest. We become too busy with other things.
In many cases, we become disillusioned by the lack of success we had originally imagined.
Although the same can be true for a traditional website, the difference lies in the amount of traffic that continues when we are busy doing something else.
I have static websites that continue to bring in thousands of readers every month, even when I do nothing to them for extended periods.
The same just is not true for my blogs.
If I go any length of time without posting something new to a blog, regular readers notice and new readers may perceive it as just another abandoned blog.
I know I feel that way when I visit a blog that hasn’t been updated recently. Do you?
But, and I think this is important, I just don’t feel that way when I go to a traditional website. While on one of them, I’m looking for information, not necessarily the latest thing written.
As you know, I’ve been debating the issue of blogging or building traditional multi-tier websites for some time…
I think both have promise and I can argue both in favor and against both of them.
It is much more difficult to design and build a multi-tier website that presents information in a way that is easy to navigate and update. I know, because I’ve been spending much of my time every day for the last few weeks designing a new website.
On the other hand, I can throw up a blog in a couple of hours. All I need is an inspiration, a topic, and a little free time. I know this, because I’ve started several dozen blogs, but now I’m maintaining only three of them on a semi-regular basis, and updating a few others sporadically.
When looking at the traffic stats for all my sites, I see a definite correlation between frequency of posting on a blog that just does not exist on my traditional websites. Just as in academia, with blogs you have to think publish or perish.
Easy to start - easy to abandon
The longer I do all of this, the more I realize that blogs are easy to start. There’s very little barrier to entry. Start one free on Blogger in ten minutes. Host one on your own domain using WordPress in a couple of hours (plus whatever time it takes the domain to propagate, if it’s newly registered). Cost, little to nothing.
On the other hand, when I start a new website, it’s not so easy to start. There’s planning time that nobody but me sees. I may spend months working on the design, researching keywords, researching the competition, deciding on how much information is needed to make the site viable, and designing a three- or four-tier site structure. All of this is done before I do anything else.
I may register the domain in advance, just to make sure it will be available when I want it, or I may decide upon the domain name after I know what’s going to be on the site.
How much does it cost to host one of these websites?
If I go with traditional hosting on a Linux server, my cost is nothing. I’m already paying that cost for my other sites and have both the bandwidth and storage available to host several more domains.
If I go with Site Build It!, the up-front cost will be $300 and that pays for the first year of hosting. More and more, I’m finding that I’m not interested in building a site that isn’t powered by SBI, but I’m going to leave that for another discussion.
Getting back to the main point…
With the new site I’ll be introducing in a few more weeks, I’ve already put months into getting ready for it. I paid $10 to reserve the domain name, and I’ll be paying another $300 to host it. That’s a pretty large barrier to entry from my point of view.
It’s also one thing that will keep me motivated to continue developing the site. After all that time, work, and money, I’m not going to stop working on it until it is profitable and I’m getting income on a regular basis from it.
With a new blog, I find that I’m more of the opinion of easy come, easy go. When I abandon a blog, it’s no great loss.
But, there really is a loss. I’ll lose the time I put into building it, and in the long run that’s more valuable than any money I may have invested or not. I can recover money or earn more. I can never get back the time I lost.
When I first started debating this with myself, I was clearly in favor of blogging with WordPress over building a multi-tier website. I just seemed to make more sense.
Now, however, as I spend more time doing both and look back on the results of what I’ve gotten from each, I’m leaning much farther away from blogging and towards a content-rich, structured website.
I almost hate to admit it, because I disagreed with him when he originally wrote it, but I am more and more coming to agree with Ken Evoy and what he wrote about this subject: Blog or Build?
Finally, I’m going to disagree with some of my good friends, including Mitch Mitchell and Aussie Sire. I respect their opinions and truly enjoy interacting with them on our blogs.
What do I disagree with?
I’m finding that the number of comments or the length of the discussion on a blog post has almost no correlation with income.
Yet, it takes time to monitor the comments and respond to them, so there is a cost involved without a commensurate income to offset the effort.
That doesn’t mean that I’ll discontinue comments or discussions here. I won’t. But, I’m realizing that I’m doing it more for the enjoyment, debate, and socializing, rather than for generating income.
I earn far more from my traditional sites, and after their original design and building, I spend much less time maintaining them.
The choice is becoming more clear all the time.
I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just passing along what I’m learning on this topic.
Over the years, I’ve shown many thousands of banner ads on a variety of sites, including traffic exchanges.
Now, I know some of you aren’t fans of traffic exchanges and even I don’t use them as much as I used to.
When I first started marketing online, I could depend on good banners getting a pretty good click-through rate, on the order of 1% or so. That has changed over the years and now the click-through rate I’m seeing is much lower than that, even for well-designed banners.
I still use them now and then, but not to the extent I did a few years ago. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on them until this morning.
What changed?
I was reading an article by Seth Godin that he posted on his blog a couple of days ago: On becoming a household name
Part of what he said in that blog post jumped right out and grabbed me…
Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they’ve heard of.
It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads….
On some level, I’ve felt that it was unfair to me - the affiliate - to use some banner ads, because they promoted the merchant and didn’t really help me make the sale.
When I read what Seth wrote, I realized that this may have been the purpose of the banner in the first place - to build name recognition for the merchant while I paid for the advertising.
So, how can we turn that around? How can we use banner and other graphic ads to build our own brand and name recognition?
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that for a new site I’ll be unveiling soon and I can see several ways that good graphics shown on similar sites can help build awareness of my new site and hopefully bring more visitors.
Even if I never get a single click-through from those graphics, they may do their work well if they help build name awareness of the brand.
It’s not a complicated concept, just one that I hadn’t thought of since I was so focused on getting clicks that lead to sales.
Have you ever thought of banner ads from this perspective?
In the last couple of days, I’ve gotten a couple of emails from friends asking if I’m okay. They said I hadn’t posted to this blog in awhile and wondered if anything was wrong.
The truth is that I have not been feeling very well, but that wasn’t why I didn’t write anything lately.
Sometimes I just don’t have anything to say, so I don’t post anything.
I know some people think that is the kiss of death for a blog, but I’d rather read something substantive rather than just filler, any time.
The truth is, however, that I’ve been working on my offline marketing and planning a new site for joint venture co-marketing between brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC.
I’ve been meeting with a number of business owners and talking to them about their marketing and what they want to do with their businesses this year.
Each business owner is different and I’m surprised at the number of different things they want to accomplish.
So, I’ve spent a lot of time talking, listening, and then going back home and doing a lot of thinking and planning.
It has taken a lot of work, but now I have a design for a new business model that I think will work for all of the business owners who choose to participate.
One of the beauties of the new model is that it requires cooperation among the owners in cross promoting each other, both online and offline. I think that will help all of us to do better, even in the tough economy we’re currently facing.
All of this behind the scenes work will result in much more online work over the coming months, but you won’t necessarily see much of it on this blog.
Affiliate marketing will play little part in the new site I’m developing, because it will be devoted mainly to sending new customers to existing offline businesses and reminding their current customers and clients why they like the business and why there are good reasons for going back and buying more.
Still, I’ll be using a lot of the techniques that I’ve learned through affiliate marketing.
I’ll be working with all my new clients to build individual email marketing lists for their businesses as well as building an inclusive mailing list for the benefit of all the business owners who choose to join us. Of course, I’ll be using Aweber to manage these individual lists and the new site will be powered by Site Build It!, where the new list will be powered by SBI’s ezine/newsletter module.
So, there has been a lot of thinking, scratching my head, drinking coffee, and scribbling on hundreds of sheets of paper. I’m sure you didn’t want to hear about that and I know you didn’t want to see any of it.
Eventually, hopefully in a month or so, I’ll be able to introduce the new site and do much more local marketing than I’ve been able to do over the last few years.
It’s been strange getting out of the house and actually talking to real business owners, but I’ve been enjoying it immensely.
With affiliate marketing, I rarely know who my customers are, how they found me, or why they decided to purchase.
With this local marketing consulting and new business system, I think it’s going to be fun getting to know our customers and helping the business owners effectively spread the news about why they are the best source for what they’re offering in our tiny little town in the mountains of western NC.
One of the difficult decisions I had to make was to limit my clients to non-competing business categories, which has turned out to be a good idea. Rather than trying to promote all the real estate agents in town, for example, I can concentrate on working with just one. That will make it much easier to write quality content for the new site and will help me focus on what I’m trying to accomplish.
I also decided that each client I accept has to be actively involved in their own marketing and must agree to recommend at least two other non-competing businesses for whom they will write testimonials that will be used on several other sites.
I’m finding it refreshing to work with people who want to work together in real life, and still build their own individual businesses.
It’s going to take some time to pull all of this together, but I expect it to be off and running by late summer.
We’ll see if this is a good prediction or not.
So, if all you are interested in is affiliate marketing, you’ll see that I really had nothing to say about that topic.
I’m alive and working and I’ll be writing more about affiliate marketing soon.
I’ve been going through some pretty major changes this year and real life has interfered with some of my marketing activities.
Fortunately, I have some marketing systems that run on automatic, even when I’m tied up doing something else.
Linkscout, created by Paul Antonevich Jr., is one of those automatic systems that has worked well for me for over four years.
Unfortunately, when I resurfaced about a month ago, I found that Linkscout was down for a complete redesign, and I’d been promoting it rather broadly.
So, I’ve been watching the site pretty closely since I learned it was down. The projected date for reopening kept slipping, but I can understand that. I’m sure there’s a lot of work involved in a site that does as much as Linkscout.
Yesterday, I checked, and my marketing page at Linkscout was active, again.
It looks very different than it did the last time I saw it, but the old familiar features are there.
Unfortunately, when looking at it with fresh eyes, I realized I was still promoting a number of affiliate programs and other sites that I no longer want to promote.
So, I spent a couple of hours this morning making some changes.
I deleted some of the websites I promote - well, that’s not accurate. As with any major change, there are always bugs to be found and squashed.
Deleting websites and sponsor boxes are two things that aren’t working this morning.
I did not find a workaround for the sponsor boxes, but I did find that I could hide a website without deleting it. This worked well. So, now, I’m just showing the websites I still want to promote in 2009.
One of the beauties of Linkscout is that you can promote as many websites as you want on one page, and you can even do it for free if that’s what you want.
If you don’t already have an account at Linkscout, you can sign up for one today, at no cost.
In addition to marketing your websites, there is an affiliate marketing downline builder, where you can add your affiliate codes to the existing affiliate programs you want to promote.
I noticed that there were a couple I wanted to add, but the add affiliate programs function is not working currently. Hopefully, Paul will get that working soon.
One of the problems I noticed is that there are a lot of affiliate programs in that list that I have tested and decided not to promote, some because I tried them and found no value and some that just look like obvious wastes of time without even trying.
But, I guess that’s to be expected with most downline builders.
All I can say is be careful of what you join and promote. Your reputation is on the line.
I noticed that I was promoting 66 affiliate programs, but I cut that down to 18 this morning.
One of my mantras in 2009 is “focus.”
I find that Linkscout is an okay system for free members, but it is a much better deal for upgraded pro members.
Paul calls the pro membership an Associate or Gold account.
We all know that free services are somehow subsidized by paying members, right?
If you are a free member, your site will show some of the links of the paying member who sponsored you. With the new redesign, I’m not exactly sure how that works, but I’ll be watching it to learn more.
So, what does an Associate member get for your money?
First of all, you get a lot of advertising points that can be used to bid on keywords for your websites. That makes it easier to get your pages shown when others search by keyword.
I bid relatively highly on terms like “affiliate marketing,” “internet marketing,” and other relevant terms for what I do.
I’m happy to pay for my Associate membership on Linkscout, and, if you’re serious about marketing, I think you’ll find it to be a good value, too.
While I can honestly say that I really like Linkscout and am happy with the results that I get, it is not perfect. Like all other systems, it has a few warts and things different individuals may not like.
On the whole, however, I like it much more than I dislike a couple of features, and I get good results.
I have my Macintosh set up with multiple accounts that are optimized for particular tasks. When I sign into one account, it opens with a predetermined set of applications waiting for me to get right to work. My browser’s home page on one account will be different than it is on another account. As I can identify something that I’ll be doing often enough, I’ll set up a new account and optimize it for that task.
Now, I said all of that to give you a bit of background on how I operate. This morning, I signed into my main marketing account and it loaded a text editor with a couple dozen documents open and my iCal calendar application. In this version of my calendar, I’m subscribed to a marketing calendar maintained by Aweber.com. Someone at Aweber regularly updates this calendar with interesting holidays, events, and observances, and some have some good marketing ideas associated with them.
It’s time to get active online. You’ve got 51 weeks a year to read webpages without making your presence known, but this week, be sure to comment wherever possible! DeLurk and come out of the shadows!
National DeLurking Week is celebrated the second full week of January, running from Monday through Sunday.
One of the goals of most bloggers is to start a conversation on their blog. Otherwise, it feels like we’re just standing on a mountain and shouting into a fog bank.
I’ve been lucky and have developed some friendships with other bloggers around the world. I am positive this would not have happened if we didn’t comment on each others’ blogs. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, but we always learn from each other.
In fact, making it easy for someone to comment about what I write about was the major determining factor that finally motivated me to leave my previous primary blog and develop this one. It is set up to encourage your comments and, in return, you get links to your latest blog posts and/or websites. I think that’s only fair.
So, are you planning to celebrate National DeLurking Week?
Leave a comment somewhere. Make a new friend. Learn something or share what you’ve already learned.
Now, don’t just leave a “good post” comment. Leave something substantive, something that will enhance the conversation.
Lurkers, this is the week to come out of the shadows!
I was just updating my Promote Your CafePress Store lens on Squidoo and started wondering why someone would add a link to their shop, but would neglect to reload the page and vote for their own shop so it would rise closer to the top of the list.
What would be a valid reason for this behavior?
Could it be a basic lack of understanding of how the Squidoo Plexo modules work? On most of my lenses with a Plexo module, I have it set to add the link right away and send me an email message. When I get time, I go through those messages and look at what has been added to my lenses. If something is off-topic, I delete it.
Usually, I click on the link to see what was added. If I like it, I’ll click the up-arrow on my lens and vote for it.
The more up-votes, the higher the link will appear in that list.
Now, I’ve been remiss in looking through the CafePress shops in this lens, but I’m going to rectify that omission in the next few days by visiting those shops and voting for the ones I like.
I made some changes to the lens this evening. Instead of showing just the top 25 lenses (based on vote count), the lens is now showing all of them. I also removed the option to vote down a store in the list.
Still, I wonder why someone would build a store at CafePress, want to sell their merchandise, would add a link to their store on my lens, but would neglect the simple act of voting for their store and asking their friends to do the same.
Lack of understanding? Being too scattered in what they’re doing? Lazy?
I’m not going to make that mistake.
If you visit my Promote Your CafePress Store lens, I hope you’ll take the time to click the up-arrow next to my store, John Dilbeck - Shirts, Mugs, and Hats : CafePress.com. Currently, it’s at the top of the list with only two votes! Hopefully, after writing about it, my store will stay at the top of the list, or at least near the top.
If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. I created the list with the anticipation that CafePress shop owners would list their store, and ask their friends to vote for it. I’m hoping other visitors to the lens will look at the stores in the list and vote for their favorites. Maybe the best stores will rise to the top, eventually.
Helping my friends promote their shops
Originally, I created the lens because I had friends with CafePress shops who were not selling their merchandise. Some of them had some high-quality designs, so the lack of sales must have been due to the lack of proper marketing.
Now, I know that one link on a lens will not create an overwhelming rush of customers to your store with their credit cards outstretched as they join in a mad frenzy of shopping, but it is a start.
Promote your shop
Have you taken that first step? If you have a CafePress shop, have you added a link to your store on this lens? Don’t forget to reload the page and vote for your shop.
Have you promoted your shop anywhere online? How are you attracting visitors to your shop so they’ll buy products with your designs?
Squidoo Marketing Community
A few months ago, I started the Squidoo Marketing Community so my fellow lensmasters could share ideas, help each other, and do a better job of marketing using their Squidoo lenses. There’s even a CafePress Shops group there so we can focus on discussing ways to promote our CafePress designs.
CafePress Affiliate Marketing Program
Did you know that CafePress has an affiliate marketing program managed through CommissionJunction.com? They do, and it pays pretty good commissions.
As a shop owner, I welcome sales by affiliates and I’m happy to provide part of my profits to them for any sales they make.
As an affiliate, I’m happy to accept a commission for helping to sell someone else’s items through my marketing efforts.
As you may know, my CafePress shop is located at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and I welcome anyone who would like to purchase my designs and/or any affiliates who would like to earn a commission by marketing my designs to your readers.
An even better deal is opening your shop and upgrading it to a premium shop. You’ll be able to do much more with it. Considering all that CafePress provides, the low monthly fee for a premium shop is a real bargain.
How satisfied are you with your CafePress store?
I know everyone isn’t as satisfied with CafePress as I am.
So, what’s your experience?
What do you think?
Tell us about your CafePress shop and what you are doing to promote it.
I’m interested in your experiences with CafePress, learning more about your shops and the designs you sell, and how you’re marketing your products via CafePress.
How can we work together to help each other increase our sales and make more profits from our CafePress stores?
I am a huge fan of Squidoo and use it as a major part of my marketing mix.
I recommend Squidoo for a number of reasons. The lenses are easy to build and you can always go back and modify them whenever you want. It’s free to use. They even pay you to use their free service - how’s that for a deal!
Why do they call it a lens?
Squidoo calls it a lens, actually one page on their site, because you can focus the page on a particular topic. Not every lensmaster does this, but the more successful ones tightly focus a lens on just one subject. If you want to cover multiple subjects, you can always create new lenses, and Squidoo offers several ways to help you cross-promote your related lenses.
Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?
I am happy to be a squidoo lensmaster and I currently have about 70 lenses. I had more, but had to delete almost 50 of them when one of the companies I was promoting changed direction. It’s time to start creating new lenses about the topics in which I’m interested.
If you examine this page, you’ll see that in addition to listing all my lenses, I can customize the page to link to other sites, including this blog, my Cafepress store, my Lulu store (which needs lots of work next year), my profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more.
I think you can see at a glance that your Squidoo lensmaster page is a good way to link to other sites that are important to you.
If you get serious about Squidoo, you may want to create your own lensography to list your lenses in whatever way you want to present them. Here’s my main lensography (you can have more than one): Who is John Dilbeck?
Now, remember that you don’t have to build a lensography about yourself, although it is recommended to keep track of all your lenses and to present them however you want. You can build multiple lensographies.
Let’s say that you are promoting a particular product or service and you want to have multiple lenses, each of which discusses a major feature or benefit. You can create a lens about the main topic and then link to each of the sub-lenses. Even though each page is totally separate on Squidoo, you can present them organized logically and all together. That gives you a lot of flexibility.
Do you have a blog?
If so, you need to create a lens about it.
Why? Because you can tell people about your blog, syndicate your RSS feed, and get the benefit of Squidoo’s high rankings in the search engines.
How would you like to promote not only your store and the products within it, but also be able to promote other products sold on Cafepress - and earn some money doing it?
CafePress has an affiliate program on Commission Junction, and it pays a nice commission when you sell other people’s products. However, just by building a Squidoo lens, you can promote products without having to join at CJ.
But, you’ll make more money if you sell your own products from your lenses.
I have a CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com and sell products just about every day.
I created a lens, John Dilbeck’s Shirts, Mugs, and Hats, where I link to the store and some of my best-selling items. There’s also a section where you can add a link to your Cafepress store, and I show random products from searches farther down the lens. I earn money on every sale, and you can do the same thing. It just takes a little time and creativity.
I even created a lens mainly designed to help you promote your CafePress shop. Several dozen shop owners have taken advantage of this, but few have gone back after adding their shops and voted them up higher in the list. Always remember to reload the page after adding something to a Plexo list so you can vote for it.
By the way, did you know that you can open a CafePress shop for free? Once you’re serious about it, you may want to upgrade to a pro shop. I did, and it’s basically free for me since my first couple of sales every month pays the fee and the rest of my sales are all profit. Not a bad deal.
Promote Your Favorite Products and Services at Squidoo
As you may already be aware, one of the services I enjoy promoting the most is Site Build It! I’m both a satisfied customer and a very happy affiliate.
I think one reason this lens is popular is because I help other fellow SBIers promote their sites and lenses there. If you are an SBIer and have a website powered by Site Build It!, you are welcome to submit your site to the appropriate module on that lens. If you have lenses about SBI, there is a place you can add it, too.
You’ll note that I even welcome affiliate lenses from competing 5 Pillar affiliates.
As I have time, and as more services are announced at SBI, I’ll be adding more lenses discussing the benefits of those services.
Hint: I can’t tell you any more right now, but Sitesell will be announcing an exciting new educational service in about three weeks. Stay tuned for more information. I was on a conference call about it, just this afternoon, and I think there will be people who will want to take advantage of this new service. That’s all I can say, right now.
Squidoo offers much more
There are many modules that can be added to lenses to help you promote what you’re doing and help people find what you’ve written.
They offer a Twitter module where you can show your latest tweets.
Lijit.com has a special module so people can search your content via their search engine. When you add it to a lens, you can specify which lenses to include in the search results.
By going directly to Lijit.com, you can get code to add their search to your blogs and sites, too. You can see it in action in the right column of this blog.
Want to sell products from Amazon? There are modules designed to make it easy to do just that.
It would take a lot of blog posts to cover all that Squidoo offers to help you accomplish what you want, so I’m going to stop here.
How do you become a lensmaster
It’s easy to start building lenses on Squidoo. Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it. Do it now, while you are thinking about it.
Remember, you can start simply and then expand your lens(es) whenever you want. I edited three of my lenses and republished them while I was writing this. It’s pretty easy once you learn how to do it.
Come and learn from people who are using Squidoo in their marketing mix. Share what you know. Tell us about your lenses. Promote your CafePress shops.
It’s a friendly little community, and I’m looking forward to you joining us and participating there.
What’s your opinion?
So, what’s your opinion of using Squidoo as part of your marketing mix? I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts, opinions, and comments about your experiences with, or lack thereof, using Squidoo.
In this week’s SFI Marketing Group affiliate newsletter, the grand opening date for the much-anticipated SFI store has been announced:
OFFICIAL LAUNCH DATE FOR NEW SFI STORE ANNOUNCED!
An official launch date has now been finalized. The brand new SFI store will be unveiled at 11 AM CST on MONDAY, JANUARY 5TH.
Also launching on January 5th will be an array of major, new SFI system enhancements, including:
* Dramatic simplification for getting started, becoming an EA, and more
* New training program for new affiliates
* Tons of new marketing and business-building aids
* More “internationalization”
* New and improved EyeEarn
* An improved compensation plan with five exciting new bonuses
* More incentives for becoming an EA and maintaining EA status
* More incentives for advancing through all the Team Leader ranks
* A more powerful and lucrative Executive Bonus
* Affiliate Center facelift (new, simpler navigation and menus, etc.)
* MUCH, MUCH MORE!
Stay tuned for further updates and get ready for the new year and “SFI 3.0!”
So, it’s official. We now have just over four weeks to make our plans on what we want to do to promote SFI, the new store, and the other changes we’ll see in 2009.
For the latest information on the store, including FAQs and many screenshots, see:
https://www.sfimg.com/NewStoreUpdates.sfi
(The page, above, is only viewable by SFI affiliates. If you’re interested in what’s coming down the road and you’re not an affiliate, you can join for free and learn more about the features of the new store before it is announced to the public. This new store should help all of us earn more commissions, if it lives up to its potential.)
(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)
I’m not going to repeat what I’ve already written about SFI. You can see more of what I’ve said by browsing the SFI Marketing Group category on this blog.
I have mixed feelings about SFI. I believe it is a great company and that they’re trying to help us all earn more in an ever-changing environment. They’ve tested a number of things in the last few years and not all of them worked out as expected. The announcement of this new store and the new system enhancements offer hope for the future, but I’m not going to gush about it. I’ll wait until the store opens and the new site bugs are worked out before making a decision.
I think SFI offers some great training for people new to affiliate and network marketing, and you can get this training for free. That’s one of the best things about the company; they’re working hard to help their members succeed online.
Still, even though I’m earning ongoing commissions from my marketing efforts, it’s not as much as I’ve expected, based on the length of time and the amount of marketing I’ve been doing.
I’ve put SFI on my probation list, as I’ve previously discussed. I’m giving this new program until July 1, 2009, to prove itself. If I see a substantial increase in my commission checks - and if the promise of the store lives up to the expectations - I’ll continue with the company. If not, it will be time to move on.
I respect Gery Carson and all he does at SFI, but it’s time to see more return for my efforts.
In anticipation that the store may become a huge success, I’ve started a Squidoo lens for SFI Marketing Group Store where I’m posting a teaser for now and will add relevant information after the store opens in January. (That lens has been deleted.)
I haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to do it, but I’m planning on promoting the store on multiple sites and I’ll be helping all the affiliates in my downline who are EA and above by using their links in some of the ads.
What do you think? Select any of the choices in the poll, below, that apply to you, or add your own in the Other section, by typing it into the gray box at the bottom, above the Vote button. The answers appear all mixed up because the poll is set to randomize the answers in an attempt to reduce bias. You can select one or more of the answers; please check all that match your opinons.
What do you expect from SFI in the coming six months and what are your plans to promote the company and the new store?
How can you find current lists of popular keyword searches for hot products already organized by category?
Is this an impossible dream?
Not at all.
See Shopping.com’s Consumer Demand Index for a list of all their categories. Click the category name to see a list of relatively current keywords and search phrases.
If you then click one of the search phrases, you’ll go to a page that lists the products related to that term on Shopping.com.
Yes, Shopping.com is a competitor if you are promoting popular products through your affiliate links, but look at it another way. They’ve done a lot of your keyword research for you, and they’re making it available, for free.
In addition, they group everything by category.
These pages should help you in your brainstorming and keyword research.
I wouldn’t depend on this as my only source for keywords, but it’s a nice tool if you promote the products they list or similar products.
On the other hand, if you’re shopping instead of marketing, is this a helpful page?
Who does it help most? Shoppers or marketers? Customers or competitors?
Introduction: The purpose of this post is to get all of us thinking about what we’re doing to build our businesses and what we’re doing that is just a complete waste of time. Caution, this post rambles even more than most of the other things I write. I want to solicit your opinions and hear about your experiences. I’ll ask more questions than I’ll answer. I hope you’ll think seriously about the questions I raise and join the conversation.
Now, on to the questions of the day…
If you look back on the last year - assuming you’ve been building your online business that long - have you been making progress or just chasing your tail?
You know what I mean.
We all love to watch a kitten or puppy chase its tail and run in circles until it falls over. It’s entertaining. It’s amusing. To us.
To the kitten or puppy, it’s frustrating.
If they don’t catch their tail, they get tired and quit. If they do catch it, they learn not to bite so hard the next time.
You’ve seen this and laughed. If not, do a search on YouTube. I’m sure you’ll find many hours of interesting pet videos that illustrate the point I’m making.
In fact, the very act of searching on YouTube and watching these videos is a good example of chasing your own tail. After spending minutes, or hours, doing this, what do you have to show for your time and effort? Not much.
The same principle applies to building your home business.
Are you making progress, or are you simply chasing your tail?
Are you running off, hither and yon, looking for the secret to Internet marketing success? How many websites have you visited? How many newsletters have you subscribed to? How many gurus have you followed? How many ebooks have you bought and downloaded? How many of those ebooks have you read? How many affiliate marketing programs have you joined? How many social networks have you joined? How often do you tweet on Twitter? How many friends are you trying to keep up with? How much email have you read?
Or, are you spending your time developing and promoting your marketing business?
If you’ve done your basic homework, you probably already know all you need to know to begin building your online business. There are no secrets. Much of what you need to know is available to you for free. For example, read Ken Evoy’s free ebooks, the Affiliate Masters Course or his best selling Make Your Site Sell!, which is now free to download.
But, if you don’t plan to study those books - or whatever guides you prefer - and put into action what you learn, what’s the point? If you don’t learn and act on what you learn, you’ll never build a business, no matter how busy you are.
Are you building your business or are you simply chasing your tail?
If you intend to earn a living from marketing, don’t you think it is time to learn how to build a marketing system that will work for you? A system that will help you focus on what works best and do more of it?
There are so many distractions and so many things are promoted as the best way to become successful with your online business, but most of them don’t work for most of us.
How do we stop chasing our tail and focus on what works best when we don’t yet know what works best for us?
It is especially frustrating when what works well for me may not work well for you, and vice versa.
Still, there have to be some basic marketing fundamentals that will apply to all of us, don’t you think?
Which is better? (A) Posting free classified ads on a dozen sites or (B) building your own focused marketing blog or website?
Which is better? (A) making 100 Squidoo lenses on assorted topics or (B) making 100 Squidoo lenses on different topics related to your marketing niche?
Which is better? (A) promoting a hundred different products and services or (B) promoting the top ten products for your particular niche?
Which is better? (A) talking about everything you think about or (B) focusing on your particular niche and branding yourself so others will think of you when that topic comes to mind?
Which is better? (A) promoting hither and yon hoping for one-time sales or (B) building a marketing funnel (or funnels) for your business and each of the products and services you recommend to your readers?
Which is better? (A) spending hours a day clicking on a traffic exchange or (B) spending a few days creating a new marketing funnel for a particular product, including writing a benefits-laden report about the product, creating an autoresponder series for it, writing a page about it on your website, blogging about it, creating a Squidoo lens about it, tweeting about it, and promoting everywhere that is appropriate, with the goal to get your readers to join your list and download the report you wrote.
I’m asking these questions just to get you to think about this. There are no right or wrong answers. Well, maybe some choices are more right than others, especially if you’re serious about building your online affiliate marketing business.
What do you want to accomplish at the end of the day, week, month, or next year? Do you want lots of visitors to your sites? Do you want good ratings on your lenses? Do you want lots of comments on your blog posts? Do you want lots of people to subscribe to your list(s) and download your report(s)? Do you want larger commission checks every month? What do you want to accomplish with the time, effort, and money you invest into your business?
Are you just chasing your own tail?
I’ve done a lot of that and I’m starting to realize how much time I’ve wasted, and time is much more valuable than money.
What do you want to earn as payment for the effort you put into your marketing efforts? Enough for a movie and dinner? Maybe make a car payment? Pay your rent or mortgage every month? Earn enough to quit your job? Build a business that enables you to thrive and not just survive? What is your time and effort worth?
I hope this post sparks a good conversation. What are we doing that gets us nowhere and how can we substitute better methods to build our businesses?
I know which way I’ll be going in 2009. Have you thought about what you are going to do?
What do you think will work best - for you - in 2009 as you work hard to define your niche, target your best customers, promote the best products and services they need, and increase your revenue?
I believe that Seth Godin is a marketing genius and has as good an idea as anyone about how marketing and making money are evolving.
I’ve been paying attention to most of what he has been saying for a few years and I’ve learned a lot in the process.
Today, on his blog, he writes:
Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.
The essence is this: connect.
Then he goes on to explain 10 ways to connect the disconnected.
Obviously, it’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good springboard for thinking about how you can add value by helping people make connections.
Why can’t active sign-up forms for AWeber mailing lists be added to Squidoo lenses?
Is there a solution?
Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this subject, because the ability to add AWeber subscription forms to my Squidoo lenses is very important to my plans for next year.
I don’t believe there are any unsolvable technical problems stopping these two companies from working together.
It is very easy to add active AWeber subscription forms on other sites. They provide two easy-to-use methods: Javascript and HTML forms. You can see an example of the HTML version of a subscription form on every page of this site, right below my photo in the right column. You can see an example of the javascript version of a sign-up form on the Subscribe page on this site.
In both cases, I accomplished what I wanted in just a few minutes.
Unfortunately, I’ve been looking for a way to do this simple task on my Squidoo lenses for months. I thought I found a solution last week, and it worked very well, but it is being killed by Squidoo.
I just created a new lens with an open letter to Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber.com, and Seth Godin, Founder of Squidoo.com, asking if they can find a way to work together to make it possible for us to do something that I believe will have a relatively easy solution. I also emailed each of them and invited them to view the lens.
You are invited to come read the lens and express your opinions:
Perhaps this isn’t a technical problem. Maybe it’s just a lack of motivation on the part of both companies to develop a solution. I don’t know.
Tom and Seth, I hope you’ll find a way to make this happen.
While it may not be important to the vast majority of Squidoo lensmasters, it is important to some of us - possibly many of us. I believe it may be important to many AWeber customers.
I’ve added a couple of polls to the lens and I invite everyone who reads this to come and voice your opinions and help spread the word to others who may want to combine the power of the services AWeber and Squidoo provide.
This is not a step-by-step how-to book for new Internet marketers. If that’s what you are looking for, you should probably look elsewhere.
Click Here To Order tells the stories of some of the earliest Internet marketing entrepreneurs who succeeded beyond their dreams. You may know some of their names, already.
In fact, if affiliate marketing is part of your business revenue model, you may even promote products that some of the people in this book created.
From the product description:
While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.
This edition of Click Here to Order is a 300-page paperback book. The list price is $17.95 and, as you probably know, is offered at a significant discount by Amazon.com.
Marketing on the Internet can be a very lonely business since we spend lots of hours in front of our keyboards and sometimes lose sight of what we want to accomplish because we get so bogged down in the details of what we’re doing.
Sometimes, it’s good to get away from the details and learn about the pioneers in this business. Who are they? What did they do? How did they do it? Why did they become so successful?
You’ll find some of these answers in Joel’s new book.
If you are interested in the history of the Internet marketing pioneers, and you want to learn more about how some of the best copywriters made their first dollars with online marketing, you’ll probably enjoy this book.
This is just one of the books about Internet marketing that I recommend in my Amazon.com bookstore.
Do you want to learn about Infoproducts and how to create them?
You can download, for free, Monique Harris and Ken Evoy’s excellent ebook, Make Your Knowledge Sell!.
While it won’t do the work for you, you’ll learn how to create an infoproduct of your own.
They provide great information about picking good ideas, writing to persuade, packaging your infoproduct, marketing it, and making sales.
Make Your Knowledge Sell! sold thousands of copies over the last few years, and now you can get it free. What are you waiting for?
Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of the people who’ll be featured in some future book about successful Internet marketers!
Read Click Here to Order for background knowledge of the business and how it has developed. Get inspired to do more by reading about the people who blazed the trails some of us are following.
Study Make Your Knowledge Sell! to learn many of the details and skills you’ll have to master to create your own infoproducts.
You can get started by learning affiliate marketing before you create your own products
Perhaps you’re not yet ready to create and sell your own infoproduct or service.
One of the best ways to get started in online marketing is to become an affiliate for a company with top-selling, high-quality products and services and then earn commissions by recommending them.
That’s my preferred business model, as you can tell from the name of this site.
I highly recommend Ken Evoy’s Affiliate Masters Course, and you can download a free copy here from my site.
Even if you choose to create your own products and sell them, you’ll want to know more about affiliate marketing. After all, you may create a great product and want to have affiliates helping you sell it.
He says he’ll be addressing some of that over the next couple of weeks:
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll provide some additional explanation and insights to the lists below. And since this list is always a work in progress, any additional thoughts and insights are welcome. I’m always adding and removing things as I see fit. Which brings me to one more note: many items are included here based purely on my own preferences and by no means constitute an absolute truth or necessity.
So, of course, I printed a copy of his list and I’m studying it in some detail.
For a long time, I’ve had a task on my to-do list that I just haven’t gotten around to doing: Create checklists for building a website, lens, marketing funnel, autoresponder series, etc.
Now, it’s a lot easier to put that phrase on a to-do list than it is to actually take the time to do it, so I applaud Stoney for actually doing it.
His checklist will not be directly applicable to what I want to do, but it is a great resource to help me identify what I think is important and what should be done.
That brings up the question…
Do you use checklists in your marketing business?
If you have checklists, or know of any online, I’d love to hear more about them.
When I get my checklists completed (one of these days), I’m going to make them into PDF reports you can download.
Over time, maybe we can develop some useful resources so we can do more planning and less flying by the-seat-of-our-pants.
I’m looking forward to your comments and any resources you want to share.
John Dilbeck 
