21st Century Affiliate Marketing

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

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

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.

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

Yesterday, while looking for something (I don’t remember what), I looked at my lensmaster bio page at Squidoo and was surprised to see that it didn’t look anything like it did the last time I saw it.

What!?

I don’t like surprises and I generally react negatively when one of my pages changes without my knowledge or approval. So, I didn’t really like the new appearance of the page.

But, I tried to keep an open mind about it.

I went searching for more information about the change and found an active thread in the Lensmasters Lounge at SquidU.com.

Then I found Megan Casey’s post on the SquidBlog: New lensmaster bio page, live now!

That’s were I learned that what I was seeing was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential information the page could show.

I immediately edited the profile page on my Squidoo dashboard, and you can edit your profile, too:

http://www.squidoo.com/member/profile

I was able to add links to my blogs, websites, social networking profiles, and more. There’s even the ability to feature up to five of your favorite lenses right in the middle of the page.

It took all of a few minutes and now my lensmaster bio page is much more useful to me and I hope to any readers who find it.

I still don’t like surprises, but I do like the features in our new bio pages.

Have you updated your profile, yet?

Act on your dream!

JD

Aussie Sire asked a question on one of my twitter update posts and suggested that I rewrite my reply as a blog post. I think that’s a great idea.

He said:

Hi John, I had a look at your Squidoo page and I must say it is very impressive. I have heard of Squidoo and lenses and such but never really looked into them. It seems like another blogging platform but I assume there is a difference?

Hi Sire, thanks for the kind words about my Squidoo page for this blog:

21st Century Affiliate Marketing

Squidoo is not a blogging platform, but it works well with blogs. I try to build a Squidoo lens for each of my blogs for one specific reason: I can syndicate the RSS feed on the lens and Google likes Squidoo lenses. That means that some people may find my blog indirectly via the lens I create on Squidoo.

Squidoo is more of a simple webpage builder and they call each page a lens because the object is to focus on a single topic per page.

You may understand Squidoo a bit more if you read my lens at:

Marketing With Squidoo

That lens syndicates the feed from this blog, my social networking community for Squidoo lensmasters who enjoy marketing, and my blog specifically about marketing with Squidoo.

It also links to other lenses that have information about marketing using Squidoo.

You can build as many (or as few) lenses as you want and it’s always free. In fact, if you build lenses that attract visitors and get clicks, you can earn money from your lenses. Some very few people earn over $1,000 per month; a few dozen lensmasters earn around $100 per month; and most of us earn less than that. Your earnings come from sharing with Squidoo the commissions from Adsense and Glam ads on your lens.

I get a welcome deposit from Squidoo into my PayPal account every month.

Since you already have several blogs, perhaps you could start by building a lens about the main topic of one of your blogs.

You can get started here:

Join Squidoo and start building your own lenses.

But, I earn much more than the payment I get directly from Squidoo, because I promote affiliate links on my lenses and don’t have to share the proceeds from those commissions with Squidoo.

I also promote my CafePress shop on a few of my lenses and link back to some of my websites on other lenses.

So, I use Squidoo both as a traffic generator and as another profit center. It’s also great at cross-promoting lenses, blogs, forums, websites, social networking sites, and other web presences that share common themes and topics.

If you have a blog and you’d like Google to pay more attention, you may want to build a lens about the blog’s main topic and syndicate your RSS feed on the lens. You can also recommend books and other products from Amazon.com.

You can even recommend products from CafePress without having to join their affiliate program, but you’ll be sharing the commissions with Squidoo. It’s worth it because the CafePress module makes it so easy to promote the products you like on CafePress. There are thousands of shopkeepers selling their designs on CafePress and you can select from millions of product/design combinations.

Once a lens is built, it doesn’t take a lot of work to keep it current, and your blog’s feed is automatically updated on the lens on a schedule you can choose, i.e. every hour, every six hours, etc.

Another thing you can do to build interactivity into your lens is to add a guestbook, set up polls, start a duel (conversation/argument), and there are other modules that are of interest, too.

There are a lot of things you can do with Squidoo easily that are more difficult on a blog. I think the two of them work very well together.

Again, you can learn more, if you’re still interested at:

Marketing With Squidoo

I hope that helps you get the idea of what you can do with Squidoo.

One other lens you may want to visit is my lensography, where I write about my lenses, link to some of my blogs, show my Twitter tweets, and more:

Who is John Dilbeck?

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to do my best to answer them or refer you to another site with the answers.

I almost forgot. There is a social networking aspect to Squidoo where you can meet other highly-motivated lensmasters and help cross-promote each others’ sites, lenses, and blogs.

For example every time you add a quality comment to another lensmaster’s lens, you’ll get a link back to your lensmaster page.

Then there is the ability for a visitor to your site to join your fan club. Whenever you post a SquidCast about your lens, people in your fan club and anyone who has marked that lens as their favorite will see the SquidCast on their favorites page at Squidoo.

You can even get a chicklet to show how many fans you have and it links to your lensmaster page:

A lens is like a blog in one respect. Each time you publish your lens (after the initial build or whenever it is updated), you can send what is called a SquidCast, but which is really a posting that is added to the lens’ RSS feed. Then you can ping that update to spread the word among the large RSS aggregators.

Of course, the SquidCast is also shown on the favorites page of your fans and the people who favorited that lens. It is also promoted on the Squidcast Twitter feed.

So, there are a lot of reasons to include Squidoo as an integral part of your marketing mix, even if you are a blogger or webmaster, already.

And, don’t forget, you don’t have to join Squidoo because you want to make money. You can build your lenses on the topics of your choice, so tell your stories, publish your poems, or show photos of your kids and pets.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Act on your dream!

JD

If you don’t already know it, I’m a huge fan of Site Build It!, Ken Evoy, and their 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

I’ve joined and tested hundreds of affiliate programs, and the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program remains at the top of the list.

You can earn generous commissions from each sale, and recurring commissions from each annual renewal. This is true lifetime commissions, and the folks at SiteSell go out of their way to make sure you are credited for the sales you make.

It is a two-tier program, so you can earn residual commissions each time someone you refer to the affiliate program makes a sale.

SiteSell offers outstanding training, a regular newsletter for affiliates, great promotional tools, dedicated affiliate managers, and free members-only forums.

The 5 Pillar Program remains one of my highest paying and most reliable income streams.

Have you joined, yet?

It’s free, you know.

Come learn more about the Site Build It! 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

If I were going to recommend only one affiliate program, this is it.

Act on your dream!

JD

My friend, TeaLady, has a great lens on Squidoo that presents lots of information about the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

If you are interested in the Olympics, visit her Olympics News lens for up-to-date news, photos, and much more.

Don’t forget to rate it and leave your comments!

Well done, Pat.

Act on your dream!

JD

If you are a Squidoo lensmaster and you want to continue to improve the quality of your lenses, I recommend reading Victoria Neely’s Squidoo Diary.

She has been posting a series of tips that I believe you’ll find useful. At the very least, maybe they will give you some ideas on new things you can do to improve your lenses, attract more visitors, and earn more income.

I just discovered this blog a few hours ago, and I’ve already found several suggestions that I’ll be using to improve some of my lenses.

Act on your dream!

JD

Earlier this morning, I learned about SquidTop.com.

According to the SquidTop lens, Squidtop - Blogs for Squidoo Lensmasters, “Squidtop is a blog platform built on the Wordpress system that allows squidoo lensmasters to create their own blogs to promote themselves, their projects, and their lenses.”

Well, that sounds just like me. I love promoting myself, my projects, and my lenses, so I immediately signed up for a new blog there: Marketing with Squidoo.

Since it is so new, there isn’t much there yet, but there will be as time allows and inspiration motivates.

Marketing with Squidoo will be concerned with marketing with Squidoo lenses, specifically. There may be a little overlap now and then with this blog.

I’ll be promoting my Squidoo lenses and our Squidoo Marketing Community on the new blog.

Act on your dream!

JD

After installing TweetMyBlog a couple of days ago and testing it, I found some things I like and dislike about it.

While I still feel comfortable recommending it as a useful tool that works exactly as advertised, I’m not sure it’s the tool I want to use for notifying my Twitter followers about new posts on this blog.

So, based on a recommendation by thefluffanutta, I’m now testing Twitter Tools to see if it does a better job of what I want.

So far, I’ve tested three widgets to show my Tweets in the blog’s sidebar. I’ve used the code provided by Twitter, the widget from TweetMyBlog, and the Twitter Tools widget. Of these three, I think the Twitter Tools widget is much better.

This post will be the first one that is automatically tweeted by Twitter Tools, so I won’t know what I think of it until I’ve used it more.

I’ve expanded my Squidoo lens, Should You Tweet Your Blog, a great deal today. Now, rather than just focusing upon TweetMyBlog, I’m thinking more about the process of automatically having your blog post to Twitter whenever you post to your blog.

Is this a good idea or not?

So, I’ve added several new polls and another duel where you are free to express your opinion. I’ve also added a Plexo link list so you can link to your blog, in addition to the link list that was already on the lens for linking to your Twitter profile.

If you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll visit Should You Tweet Your Blog and post your opinions and comments.

I’m still not sure which tool I’ll use to tweet my new blog posts, if I use any at all.

I may revert to tweeting manually. I don’t know, yet.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter.com lately. The better I fine tune the people I’m following, the more useful information and interactions that I get from my friends on Twitter.

I followed quite a few people, and now I’m pruning the ones that don’t really match my interests.

I’ve been trying to tweet more often, but I don’t really want to say anything unless I think it may be useful for the people who follow me.

When Squidoo added a feature that lets us tweet when we update a lens, I started using that as judiciously as I could. I certainly don’t tweet every time I update a lens. I do try to tweet the release of a new lens, however.

Then, I learned about Tweet My Blog, a new plug-in and widget recently released by John Merrick and Soren Jordansen.

I downloaded and installed it on this blog and everything was smooth and easy to do.

So, I’m testing it here, but haven’t decided if it should earn a permanent home, yet.

In order to get more feedback and opinions, I created a new Should you tweet your blog? lens on Squidoo.

If you are interested in tweeting about new blog posts, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and visit the lens. I would appreciate any feedback you’d care to make.

Act on your dream!

JD

On July 17, 2008, Gery Carson announced the introduction of the SFI Marketing Group “affiliate to affiliate” (A2A) system.

Now, SFI affiliates can meet other SFI affiliates all over the world, or in their local neighborhood.

Hundreds of affiliates have already registered and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some people that I hope will become friends over time.

I wrote more about this on my SFI Marketing Group Affiliates lens.

One of the drawbacks at the moment is trying to find people I know who have already registered. There is no feature for searching by screen name and there are no plans for being able to search by actual name, so, unless someone you know tells you their profile page link or the screen name they chose to use with A2A, it’s going to be difficult or impossible to find them.

To make this easier for me, I’ve added a new module on the SFI Marketing Group Affiliates lens so you can add a link to your SFI A2A profile page - if you want to.

While you’re at the lens, I hope you’ll answer the polls, participate in the duel, and leave your comments or feedback.

Act on your dream!

JD

I just created a new 21st Century Affiliate Marketing lens on Squidoo to work with this blog.

By cross-promoting between this blog and that lens, more people will eventually find their way to read what I have to say about affiliate marketing in the 21st century. I’m syndicating the RSS feed from this blog on that lens.

I’ve been running my affiliate marketing business for several years and I’ve watched the nature of the business change. Now, there is much more competition, more things to divert your attention and drain your bank account, and, also, more quality affiliate marketing opportunities for you.

There are also a lot of “me, too” products that don’t add anything worthwhile to what’s already available. One of the struggles is to provide quality information and insight that’s not available everywhere on the net.

The area I choose to target, which is very highly competitive, includes tools and resources to help affiliate marketers promote their products and services online. It’s a hard niche in which to compete, but my interests lie mainly in building a home business and helping others to do the same.

I’m sure you can make more money, more easily, by concentrating your affiliate marketing efforts in other less-competitive niches. In fact, I know that’s true, but I’ve not been able to find a niche that interests me nearly as much as this one.

So, I’ll write about things I learn about affiliate marketing and pass them along to help you.

I’ll also be pointing to other high-quality affiliate marketers and they’ll help you, too.

You won’t find me promoting the latest “flash-in the pan” product just so I can reach into your pocket and take money out of your wallet. That’s just not my style. I know I’ll earn less by not being a ruthless promoter of all things, but I think I’ll live better with myself by only promoting products and services that I know are worth buying.

I’ve tested hundreds and only promote a few.

So, I welcome your comments here on this blog and on my new 21st Century Affiliate Marketing lens. Go to the lens and vote in the polls and have your say in the duel. I hope you’ll take the time to rank the lens and leave your comments. You’ll need to be a logged-in Squidoo member to participate on the lens.

It’s a brand new lens and I’ll be updating it considerably over the next few weeks.

Also, I’ve been testing several dozen blogs and I’ll be closing most of them. This blog will become one of my top two blogs and may eventually become my primary blog.

Currently, my primary blog is John Dilbeck and Friends and is powered by Manilla from Userland Software, which was the best platform I could find when I started it. However, over time, WordPress has overtaken it and offers more features and easier customization, so I’ll be evaluating if I should move my primary emphasis to this blog.

I updated this blog to WordPress 2.6 earlier today and like what I see.

I also added a new plug-in called Tweet My Blog which should post an update to Twitter whenever I post a new article to the blog. This post will be the first test of the plug-in and I’m not ready to promote or recommend it at this time, but it looks promising.

That’s one of the things I can’t easily do with my older blog.

(You are invited to follow me on Twitter.)

So, this may be a time of transition and consolidation for me as I close other blogs and websites and concentrate more on what works the best to build my marketing business.

Maybe some of what I learn will help you build your business, too.

Although I’m a social liberal, I’m a fiscal conservative and I hate wasting my money. You probably hate wasting your money, too.

The object of affiliate marketing is to earn money, and the goal is to earn more than you spend - preferably considerably more.

The art is to evaluate and recommend appropriate products and services to the right group of people.

Now that my multi-year testing and experimentation phase is coming to an end, I look forward to working just as hard, but focusing my efforts more on high-quality products that produce reliable revenue rather than testing everything that comes down the pipeline.

I welcome your comments and questions, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll do what I can to help you find it.

Act on your dream!

JD

I just re-opened the Squidoo Marketing Community on Ning.com.

As you may know, I created six communities and worked on them for half-a-year before I had to close them.

Of all the them, I believe the Squidoo Marketing network may be the most useful and flexible, so I am in the process of recreating it and I’m paying the monthly fee for premium service and control of the advertising. Now, we’re able to link to what we want, as long as it is related to marketing with Squidoo.

Come read my latest blog post on the community to learn more about why I made this decision.

Why did I re-open this Squidoo Marketing community?

I hope to see you there.

Act on your dream!

JD