Have you listed your business at Brownbook.net?
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Directories, Promote Yourself
Brownbook.net is a directory where you can list your business for free.
Before today, though, if you wanted to claim your listing, so that only you could edit it, and add more information to it, you’d have to pay a fee.
As of today, however, Brownbook is now TOTALLY FREE.
I recently learned of Brownbook and added a listing for Dilbeck Marketing a few days ago. Today, I claimed the business and started adding more content to the page.
It’s another link to your business and shows up pretty well in the search engines.
Act on your dream!
JD
An innovative use for banner ads
Filed under: Advertising, Attracting Visitors, Marketing, Promote Yourself
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?
Act on your dream!
JD
Are you getting the most from your Squidoo lensmasters profile page?
Filed under: Promote Yourself, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Twitter
Did you know that Squidoo made a big change in August 2008 when they greatly expanded what you can show on your lensmasters profile page?
Have you updated your profile to take advantage of the new features?
As an example, take a look at my lensmasters profile page. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
There is a lot more information there than what you would have seen a couple of months ago and much of it can be customized by you.
Depending upon what you choose to show, your profile may show more or less than mine.
Some of the content is automatically generated by Squidoo, however.
Basic information, such as a list of your lenses and the number of lenses you have created, favorited, and ranked, and the members of your fan club, is shown automatically on your profile.
You can add additional information such as your bio, lenses you want to feature, and links to your blogs, other websites, and social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. Other links can include your CafePress shop, eBay store, and more.
That’s a lot of information that can be shown on one page, and Squidoo even creates an RSS feed for your lenses, although there seems to be a problem with the correct link right now. When I clicked the RSS icon in my browser’s URL box, it took me to an invalid feed, but there really is an RSS feed of all my lenses that can be read in a newsreader and/or syndicated on other sites.
If you haven’t updated your Squidoo profile, what are you waiting for?
That’s an important page. It is already linked to from each of your lenses and from any lenses you’ve favorited. You should be linking to your Squidoo profile from your other sites and blogs, too.
I didn’t really like it the first time I saw it, but after reading Megan Casey’s SquidBlog post, New lensmaster bio page, live now!, I realized there was much more than what I was seeing initially.
Somewhat later, I found her lens, How to rock your lensmaster bio page, and learned how to make my profile page even better.
More sites, including Squidoo, are helping you link to your Twitter profile so you can grow your list of followers and also notify them when you’ve updated a lens or are reading one you want to recommend.
With some extra work on your part, you can include these updates using tools provided by sites such as FriendFeed.com or MyBlogLog.com.
With the use of RSS feeds and tools like Twitter, it is becoming easier to write once and publish (or promote) your content on multiple sites.
Even if you don’t add all the bells and whistles to your profile page, you should be promoting it wherever you can to get more exposure to your lenses.
But, why stop there? It will only take a few minutes to customize your profile and bio and get much more use from the page that Squidoo has provided us.
Act on your dream!
JD
Chris Brogan has just released a free ebook on personal branding
Filed under: Blogging, Books, Business Networking, Promote Yourself, Social Networking
I like to read what Chris Brogan has to say about lots of topics including personal branding and social networking. I’ve learned a lot from him and he’s reminded me of things I already know, but haven’t been thinking about lately.
Today, he released a free ebook on personal branding called Personal Branding for the Business Professional and it is available as a free download. You don’t even have to give your email address to get a copy.
I just finished reading the book – it’s only 15 pages – and it has some good tips about building your personal brand and expressing it on your blog, website, and the social networking sites you prefer.
This book is definitely worth your time to download and read, if you are interested in building your reputation and promoting your personal brand.
Act on your dream!
JD
This is a good time to think about promotional products and marketing your business
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Promote Yourself, Promotional Products, Squidoo Lenses
If you own or manage a company, now is a good time to think about using advertising specialty products to promote your business.
Always remember, if you don’t use promotional products to market your business and the products and services you offer, you’re giving your competitors a free pass. Some of them are definitely promoting their companies with products featuring their name, address, phone number, website, special offers, and possibly their company logo.
My mechanic doesn’t have business cards, but he does have ball-point pens with all his contact information. The car towing business a couple of miles away gives out small calendars that are just the right size for keeping in your car.
What are you doing to thank your customers for their business and to remind them on an on-going basis that you are still in business and would be happy to serve them in the future?
Seasonal marketing opportunities
In the USA, Thanksgiving is a good time to show your customers that you are thankful for them and their business.
Most companies send out corporate gifts, cards, calendars, and other advertising specialty items in December, just before Christmas. If you thank your customers in November, just before Thanksgiving, then you may get more of their attention because you’ll be competing with fewer other businesses.
Some of us think Thanksgiving is a better time to thank your customers than Christmas and it avoids all the other issues and stressful days that many people experience in December.
Christmas gifts are a traditional time to show your appreciation, too. Gifts of food, candy, cookies, cheese, etc., are popular.
Giving gift baskets to your best clients and customers is a tradition that seems to be growing in some markets. They are appreciated when those clients have holiday parties of their own, and everyone loves a snack during the holidays.
This is also the time that many companies give products with their logos to individual customers to thank them for past business.
New Years Day is also the start of a new business year. Calendars are great for reminding your customers about you.
Most companies don’t wait until January to give out calendars, however. Most start distributing them in November. September is a good time to place your order for calendars, because many companies offer discounts on calendar purchases in early September.
Put your company logo and contact information right into the hands of people who have already purchased from you or who fit the same profile as your best customers.
While promotional products are popular year-round, they are especially popular in the last four months of the year.
Now is the time to think about your marketing plan and how you want to thank current customers and how you will prospect for future customers in the coming year.
There are many places where you can purchase promotional products and some have affiliate programs that pay well.
I have a Squidoo lens, Promotional Products, with links to VistaPrint and Branders. You can purchase by clicking on the links on that lens.
VistaPrint
VistaPrint started out by offering inexpensive full-color business cards, but they have expanded their services considerably over the last couple of years.
Today, as I write this, VistaPrint is running their end of summer clearance special and you can save substantially on items you can use to promote your business.
If you do nothing else, you should take advantage of their free offers.
Branders
Branders is more of a traditional promotional products company and you can get your company logo and/or other contact information on thousands of popular products.

If you have an affiliate marketing business, you can apply as an affiliate at their websites. VistaPrint uses Commission Junction to manage their affiliate program. Branders manages their own affiliate program.
Promote Yourself
Every company needs to promote itself. There’s no doubt about that.
At the very least, you need to hand out business cards to all your prospects and customers. I’ve bought thousands of business cards from VistaPrint and I hand them out like they’re free. Actually, they can be free. Click the VistaPrint graphic link, above, to find out how you can get free advertising products from them.
What are you doing to promote your business?
Act on your dream!
JD
Are you looking for a list of great social networking sites?
Filed under: Attracting Visitors, Blogging, Business Networking, Promote Yourself, Social Networking
I have found that participating on social networking sites has helped my business grow and I’ve met some great people in the process. Some have become real friends.
It takes time and effort to network effectively, so don’t think it can be done in a few days or weeks, and don’t try to do it more quickly by using software to speed up the process.
If you sincerely want to network with other like-minded people and you’re willing to take your time and socialize with them – not just spam your ads towards them – then you’ll find a great list of social networking sites on Kelly Stone’s blog:
Want A List Of Social Networking Sites?
I just found Kelly’s blog and I’m finding lots of topics that interest me there.
Yes, I found her through social networking.
I saw her on a Recent Visitors widget on my Squidoo Marketing community and followed the link back to her MyBlogLog profile where I found her blog’s community and then visited her blog.
It sounds like a lot of effort, but it took only a few minutes.
Along the way, I joined her blog’s community and added her as a contact at MyBlogLog.com. Then, I subscribed to her blog via email so I won’t forget to keep in touch.
Have you been using social networking to help build your business and make new friends? It takes time, but it works.
I noticed that she didn’t have a link to www.apsense.com, which has a Google PR of 4, and an Alexa rank of 45,857.
I like Apsense, but haven’t had the time to play in their sandbox lately. It’s one of the things I intend to do more of in the near future.
If you’re not already a member, I’d like to extend an invitation to join Apsense and network with me there.
For an example of what you can do on Apsense, I would like to invite you to visit my profile and business center on the site.
If you would like to network with me on some of the other major social networking sites, please see the links to my profiles on the About page of this blog. I look forward to meeting you. We can probably connect most quickly on Twitter and MyBlogLog, because I’m more active on them than the others.
If you are active on any of the major social networking sites and would like to network with the readers of this blog, please leave a comment with links to a couple of your profile pages. While you’re doing that, I would enjoy reading about your experiences in social networking and your major areas of interest.
So, on which of the social networking sites have you pitched your tent?
Act on your dream!
JD
Congratulations to Aweber on their 10th Anniversary
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, Marketing, Promote Yourself
This month, Aweber celebrates the 10th anniversary of providing quality autoresponder services to their clients, one of whom is me.
Happy Anniversary, Aweber!
If you don’t already know, Aweber is the industry leader in providing mailing list maintenance and delivery services.
They started out offering autoresponder services, and now they offer that and much more, including helping you manage your newsletters and email syndication of your blog posts.
I use Aweber to handle several mailing lists, with more coming soon, and the subscription form in the top-right column of this page allows you to subscribe to the posts I publish on this blog so you’ll receive them right in your email inbox.
Aweber provides unlimited autoresponders with unlimited messages and you can broadcast to the lists, too, should you want.
Aweber works closely with the largest ISPs to insure that your double-opt-in email messages are delivered and enjoys the highest delivery rates in the industry.
If you want to follow-up with your prospects and customers, I recommend Aweber to you. It’s the service I use.
Here’s to your continued success, Aweber.
Act on your dream!
JD
Two Squidoo Titans unite to build your lenses for you
Filed under: Attracting Visitors, Marketing, Promote Yourself, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Writing
Do you want to get started in social networking, but don’t have the time or expertise needed to do it yourself? Now, you don’t have to. You can have your lenses built and promoted and then transferred to you, all in a couple of weeks or so.
Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile – experts on Squidoo – are now at your service.
Who are they?
Here’s part of what Tiffany has to say about herself and her qualifications…
I know how to get into the Top 100 LensRank, how to create content both Googlebots and human traffic devour (since I’ve been the top ghostwriter to many famous marketers over the past 6 years), and how to use group participation to garner traffic! I’ve achieved lens of the day for an instant flood of traffic and I’ve earned tens of thousands of dollars using Squidoo as my traffic funnel to products and services alike.
Seth Godin (owner of Squidoo) even blogged about my Squidoo success on his own blog! Plus, I’ve been bestowed with Giant Squid Status!
Lewis talks about his qualifications and says this (and more)…
He’s a Citizen Squid Alumni (one of the 6 original lensmasters chosen by Squidoo HQ to work on secret Squidoo projects). He is also a retired SquidAngel (one of the 12 human elements of the Squidoo algorithm).
He has achieved Lens of the Day THREE TIMES, which is more than anyone else, so he knows exactly what it takes to make a great lens. In total, his lenses have spent over 600+ days in the Top 100 LensRank list, and he has achieved the elusive Lensrank 1.
And he has created over 500 lenses and groups across various Squidoo accounts, so he’s no stranger to the ‘Create a Lens’ button! Lewis is also a Giant Squid. Oh, and he recently won the ‘I Love Squidoo’ competition.
Even if you don’t know anything about Giant Squids, Squid Angels, or Citizen Squids, you can appreciate the talents of anyone who can compete with over a quarter-million people building lenses on Squidoo and still get in the top 100 of all lenses based on a number of criteria that isn’t known outside the people who own and manage Squidoo.com.
Anyone who can achieve what Tiffany and Lewis have, obviously know what they’re doing.
They’ve been developing their skills for building Squidoo lenses for a combined total of over four years and almost 1,000 lenses.
Now, as someone who has built about 70 lenses and who has been working on it a couple of years or so, I can tell you that there is a difference between building a lens – which anyone can do – and building a lens that ranks highly, attracts visitors, promotes your business, and earns money.
I’m a Giant Squid, too, but I haven’t achieved the kind of success that Tiffany and Lewis have. I’m still working on it, however!
Now, you don’t have to develop the skillset, do the research, write original content, build the lens, and promote it. You can outsource these tasks to a couple of specialists who will combine their talents and do it for you.
As they say…
So – you want to get into social networking, but don’t have room in your busy schedule to navigate a new site and set up your system of socialization?
Who has the time, knowledge and skill to set up a Squidoo lens, write 100% unique content, bookmark it at social bookmarking sites, add tags, blog about it, post it to Twitter, and generate some backlinks, to give it the best chance possible at pulling you visitors from Google and other search engines to funnel them to your main site as customers?
As a successful business owner, you already know the value of outsourcing tasks that require special skills, qualifications, and talent. That’s why you have a lawyer, accountant, copywriter, and other specialists on your team.
If you want to develop a better presence on the web, you should consider hiring Tiffany and Lewis to do it for you, in as little as two weeks.
Don’t put this off. Go right now and see what they will do to build your lens for you. It doesn’t cost a single penny to click the link and see what they have to say.
Act on your dream!
JD
PS. On the other hand, if you prefer to learn new skills and do your own promotions, you can build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free.
Click the link to get started. Don’t get stressed out about your first lens. Build it on something you love and learn how Squidoo works. If you like it, you can keep it. If not, you can delete it and use what you learned to build a real lens.
Feel free to play with the first one just to learn how it all works.
Writing and Self-Publishing section added to bookstore
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Affiliate Marketing, Books, Lulu, Marketing, Promote Yourself, Self-Publishing, Writing
Ever since I read Make Your Knowledge Sell! several years ago, I’ve known that I wanted to write a series of reports and ebooks with several goals in mind…
- To share the knowledge I’ve learned over years of researching affiliate marketing and from the daily practice of it
- To enhance my reputation as being someone with integrity who offers good advice about online marketing
- To provide information that will help you avoid the pitfalls I’ve traversed and to make more money with affiliate marketing
- To do more of something I enjoy doing: writing
About a thousand years ago, Nicki Fink and I wrote a textbook we used for teaching our students how to use Macintosh computers and several of the more popular applications that were in use at the time.
Knowing nothing about writing a book, we just did it.
Our first couple of editions were printed on a laser printer and we did all the collation and comb-binding ourselves.
When we finally approached a publisher, we had a pretty good book that was helping our students learn how to use Macs by completing a series of projects.
I submitted the entire book to Addison Wesley and instead of getting a rejection notice, as everyone had advised me to expect, we got an offer from Addison Wesley and Benjamin Cummings.
Addison Wesley wanted to get it into print quickly and Benjamin Cummings wanted a complete rewrite along with reviews by several colleges and academies before publishing it.
We made the mistake of going with Benjamin Cummings and added about another year to the project in addition to having several disagreements with the editor about the direction we wanted to go with the book.
Eventually the book was published and we received a few thousand dollars in advance royalties.
I was happy to have a published book that was helping some people learn how to use their Macs better, but the entire experience was less than satisfactory. I swore that the next book I wrote would be self-published.
Now, in the 21st century, a lot of things have changed. Books and reports can be released as ebooks and offered in downloadable PDF format. Tools and applications for doing this are becoming more popular and affordable.
Additionally, if you take the time to format that PDF ebook correctly, you can have it printed and sold at places like Lulu.com, CafePress.com, and many other print-on-demand publishers.
(I’ve started a Lulu.com storefront where I’ll be promoting reports, ebooks, and books in the coming months, as I have time to research and write them. Currently, there is one free downloadable copy of my Act On Your Dream! newsletter.)
Since writing and self-publishing have moved up higher on my to-do list, I researched these topics on Amazon.com this evening. As a result, I’ve added a new section to my Amazon store for Writing and Self-Publishing Books.
I have an older copy of Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual and I’m looking forward to buying and reading his latest edition.
Most people who dream of being a writer don’t know that writing is only one part of the job. Perhaps more important than writing a good book is promoting and publicizing it. If nobody knows about it, you won’t sell very many copies!
I added a few books about writing non-fiction, but most of the books in the new section are about promoting, publicizing, and networking. After all, if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably interested in affiliate marketing and other topics related to online marketing, so I’m sure you will find books of interest in this new section of my bookstore.
I’m always interested in your comments and recommendations. If you know of an excellent book about writing, self-publishing, or promoting books, I hope you’ll share with us.
Act on your dream!
JD
Where do you promote your blog?
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blog Directories, Blogging, Business Networking, Forums, Promote Yourself, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter
You’ve taken the time to research a topic for your new blog and decided there should be enough interest to make it worth the effort.
Then, you created the blog, chose a theme, modified the theme, selected plugins and widgets, and now you are ready to write great articles on all the topics you researched before starting.
Right?
Hopefully, that was your approach.
I think most bloggers throw up a blog and then look for something to write about. I know I did that on some of my first blogs.
I was a lot more focused and took more time to research what I was going to do before I started this blog.
Either way, now you have a blog, you’ve been writing on it for some time, and you want people to find you and read what you have to say.
Ideally, they’ll also post great comments so you and your readers can learn even more about the topic of the article.
So, where do you promote your blog?
There are lots of ways to promote your blog, and I’m sure you know of many that I’ve never used. I hope you’ll share them with us.
Let’s start with some that work well for me.
Create a lens about your blog on Squidoo
My main place to promote my blog is on Squidoo. For instance, I created a lens especially for this blog at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.
Syndicate your RSS feed on your other blogs
I syndicate the RSS newsfeed from this blog on several other Squidoo lenses and some of my other blogs, such as you’ll see in the sidebar of my Marketing With Squidoo blog.
Create a community for your blog on MyBlogLog.com
I also registered this blog on MyBlogLog.com and created a community for it at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.
There are several benefits of creating a community for your blog there. First, it syndicates your RSS feed as headlines on the page. Second, it makes it easy to increase your business networking as people join your community. Third, they offer widgets so you can see who has visited you lately. This makes it easy to visit their sites and/or make contact with them on other social networking services.
You can see this in action towards the bottom of the left column of this blog. Look at the Recent Visitors widget. If you hover your mouse over the visitor’s face, you should see a fly-out that lists the blogs and sites for which they have created communities on MyBloglog.com. It also makes it easy to join their communities and increase your business networking.
About half-way down every page on this blog, in the right column, you’ll see a section called “New with John Dilbeck.” In that section is a widget provided by MyBlogLog that shows my latest activities on this blog and other sites and blogs I author. It also shows what I’ve been doing on several networking services such as Twitter, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and others.
It has taken a long time to set all of this up, but now, whenever I do something on one of my blogs, websites, or forums, that action is recorded in the RSS feed and is automatically syndicated on multiple other sites. I get visitors from a wide variety of sites as a result.
You can see another example of this at work on my profile page at the Squidoo Marketing community I created. In the right column of the page (and every other page of the site), you’ll see the Recent Visitors widget for the MyBlogLog community I created for that social networking site. In the center column, you’ll see the wider widget from MyBlogLog that shows my activities on my sites and the social networking services I use regularly.
Syndicate your blog’s RSS feed as widely as you can
Syndicating the RSS feed from your blog on multiple sites is a good way to get your writing noticed by both new readers and the search engines.
Should you tweet your blog on Twitter?
I use a plugin called Twitter Tools to post an announcement about new blog postings to my twitter profile.
At first I was unsure about this and created a Squidoo lens called Should You Tweet Your Blog? to learn what other people think about the idea of automatically tweeting new blog posts. I’d welcome your opinions and feedback either on that lens or by leaving a comment here.
Link to your blog on forums and in comments on other blogs
I’ve talked about my blog on various forums and in comments on others’ blogs.
Be sure to add value when you post to the forums or comment on someone’s blog. As long as you’re adding to the conversation and helping others, the link to your blog will be welcome, or, at least, tolerated.
If you just jump in and write a post or comment about your blog that doesn’t add any value to the discussion, it will probably be deleted. At the very least, you’ll look like a spammer, and I know you don’t want to do that.
One good place to list your blog is in the thread started by Michael Galante on the ConquerYourNiche forum, Share your active blog here. I’ve found several blogs there that I’ll be reading and I’ve subscribed to a couple of their RSS feeds.
Another good place to link to your blog, especially if it is related to Internet marketing, is in the Members, show off your blogs! thread on Lynn Terry’s Self-Starters Weekly Tips forum.
(By the way, I’m one of the moderators of the SMO: Social Marketing & Social Media section of Lynn’s forum, and I invite you to come and share your knowledge and experiences about social networking with us.)
I have links to this blog in my signature file on a number of other forums where I’m active. Each post I make to those forums will link back to this blog.
Make good comments on other blogs
One way you can promote your blog is to make good comments on this one.
WordPress, by default, uses “nofollow” links so the search engines won’t follow links to the site you list when making your comment.
I’ve installed the DoFollow plugin so you’ll get some linklove when you post a good comment here. I also installed CommentLuv, which will try to find the last post you wrote on your blog and will link to it below your comment.
Additionally, SezWho is active on this blog and it will keep track of the comments you make on blogs with SezWho installed. It’s a pretty cool tool and I think we’ll be seeing more blogs using this nice tool as time goes by.
I hope you’ll make use of the rating feature SezWho provides to express your opinion of what I write and the comments others leave. By rating what we say, it will go into the multi-site comment aggregator that SezWho maintains and we can raise (or lower) our reputation based on the quality of our writing.
Now, I welcome substantive comments that are on-topic and I look forward to talking about affiliate marketing with you in any discussions that develop here.
However, I’ll delete your comment if it doesn’t contain anything worthwhile or is off-topic. So, don’t bother leaving a comment that says something like, “you have a good point,” or “that’s great.” I’ll delete ‘em in a heartbeat.
Don’t spam something I write with an off-topic comment full of advertising. Poof! Gone.
But, if you write something about the topic that adds to our understanding of your viewpoint or which offers links to on-topic resources, then I welcome what you have to say.
Do you comment on blogs?
My friend Mitch posted an interesting article called Why Don’t More People Comment On Blogs? on his blog a few days ago.
Do you have any thoughts on that subject?
In Summary
I mainly use Squidoo lenses, Twitter, a community on MyBlogLog, sig files on other forums, and comments on blogs to promote this blog.
How do you promote your blog?
Act on your dream!
JD



