New website to go live this week

July 5, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Western North Carolina 

This is only tangentially about affiliate marketing, so you may or may not be interested in reading it.

I know of quite a few people who regularly post about how much, or how little, they earn from affiliate marketing, Google Adsense, and other related advertising and marketing methods.

I’m not going to name any names and I’m not trying to embarrass or put anyone down. That’s not at all the point of this post.

What I want to do is to offer an alternative viewpoint, for a change. Maybe you’ll agree, maybe you won’t, but I welcome your comments.

I am not loving affiliate marketing right now.

I’ve stated previously that I live in North Carolina and that Amazon.com dropped me as an affiliate a couple of weeks ago. I’m not going to talk about that here – see my recent posts if you’re interested.

What I am going to talk about is how many people are putting in a lot of work for dismal returns. I’ve done it myself, in some cases.

Yes, the opportunity to earn an excellent income from affiliate marketing exists, but most people do not achieve it. Some people earn tens of thousands of dollars per year, and others earn pocket change.

I’ve been fortunate to do okay with affiliate marketing over the years. I never got rich, but I could pay the bills and afford to stay home and take care of Mom when she needed it.

After she died last November, I’ve been re-evaluating my affiliate marketing business.

For the last six months, I’ve been brainstorming and planning a new set of websites for promoting select local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC.

The cornerstone site will go live this week, but it will take several months of hard work to reach its potential.

I have to thank affiliate marketing for the skills that I’ve learned over the years that will make this new site successful. In some respects I won’t be doing much different than I’ve been doing over the last decade.

However, in one particular respect, it will be very different.

I’m getting paid up front.

For years, I built websites, communities, forums, and blogs to talk about a variety of things, with the goal of monetizing them through potential affiliate marketing commissions.

I did all the work, posted the links, and paid for everything – all for free.

Then, I hoped someone would find the sites, be persuaded that something was what they were looking for, and then purchase through one of my links.

As a result of all this work, I would receive a commission on the sale of the product.

Maybe.

Sometimes.

Not always.

Still, I earned enough to keep going – but I’m a frugal kind of guy.

Earlier this year, I realized that my circumstances had changed. Expenses were going up, income was coming down and that’s never a good pair of trends.

When your outgo exceeds your income,
your upkeep will be your downfall.

I cut my expenses to the bone and started looking for a new business model.

Now, I’m almost ready to go live with the new site.

What is significant is that in the month of June 2009, alone, I earned more from the new site than I did from affiliate marketing for the past several months combined. In fact, if I leave out commission checks from Sitesell for commissions on sales and renewals of Site Build It!, I earned more last month from this new site than I did from affiliate marketing all year.

(Google Adsense ads also played a significant part in my revenue this year, but that’s not affiliate marketing.)

Based on some testing I’ve been doing, I know that I can help these local brick and mortar businesses attract more customers and I’m going to help one of them in each business category. I’m not going to work with national chains or franchises, only with locally owned small businesses.

One of the things that drives our local economy is real estate sales and it is by far the most hotly contested and competitive environment in online marketing for our town.

Last week, I agreed to work with one local real estate agent and I won’t work with any more. Remember, only one business per category.

Some people think I’m cutting my own throat, but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing.

Several other business owners signed up, too.

So, with no live site, and working with only a mockup, my new sales rep generated more income in one month than I have from all my other sites combined, some of which have been online for over a decade.

That’s the beauty of getting paid up front.

I don’t know if I’ll abandon affiliate marketing

I haven’t made this decision. I know that I’m dropping underperforming merchants and Amazon.com dropped me. I expect others to drop me because I live in NC.

Depending upon how things go over the next several months, I may decide to concentrate entirely on promoting local businesses in the small mountain town that is near where I live.

There are two thoughts on this.

One: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your income streams.

Two: put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket! I believe it was Thomas Edison or Andrew Carnegie who gave this advice.

I’m not entirely sure which direction I’ll be going on this.

I’m tired of working for free or nearly nothing

I do know that I’m tired of spending all my time and creative energy working for companies that don’t pay me for the work I’ve done.

Most limit the length of the cookie, the size of the commission, and have all kinds of loopholes to make sure I don’t get paid – and that’s if other affiliates aren’t stealing the commissions that are rightfully mine.

I’m tired of it.

With the single exception of Sitesell. They go out of their way to make sure that anyone who purchases from me remains a lifetime customer and I get paid in the future for every renewal and additional purchase they make.

It is the only affiliate marketing relationship I have that has increased in revenue over the last several years, including this year when I saw dramatic drops in my income since September 2008.

There’s a reason. Whether you like to hear me say it or not, Site Build It! works, when we follow the guidelines and take the time to build our sites properly.

Some say that it’s crazy to pay $300 per year for all that SBI offers when I can put up a WordPress blog for practically nothing. But, I’m disagreeing more and more with this.

That’s why I’m powering this new site with Site Build It!

It offers everything I need at a very reasonable price of less than a dollar per day.

You see, I intend to build a real business, not a hobby.

And, to do that, I’m going to help other real businesses attract new customers, bring back existing customers, and earn more money.

In the long-run, what they pay me will be a bargain.

And, to top it off, without even having a website yet, while working from a mockup I created, my new sales rep was able to generate more than enough income in June, alone, to pay for a subscription to Site Build It! several times over.

I don’t give actual numbers for my traffic or income, so don’t bother to ask. That’s between nobody but me and the IRS.

Will it work?

Only time will tell.

I’ll go live with the site this week, but it will take several months of hard work to make it – and the offline marketing that will go along with it – as successful as I’m hoping it will become.

I’m confident, however, that this is going to be effective and that we’ll have local business owners happy to renew over and over again. I’m looking for long-term relationships with them that build over the years, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make it happen.

I’ve learned something very important from Ken Evoy. Plan your business and then implement it over time. Always under-promise and over-deliver.

This is the very opposite of all the breathless, excited hype that is all-too-prevalent in many areas of Internet marketing.

What’s the future of this blog?

I don’t know.

It’s not looking very bright, though. And neither is the future of several other blogs and websites that are devoted to my affiliate marketing business. I already know that several will be shut down as soon as I can get to it, because it isn’t worth the time and effort to repurpose them.

This blog may survive, but only time will tell.

What do you think?

Is affiliate marketing going to play a big part in your business plans for the rest of this year and into 2010?

Do you feel like you’re getting adequate compensation for the work you put into it?

Act on your dream!

JD

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I now have three primary blogs

February 10, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, John Dilbeck, Western North Carolina 

If you’ve been reading this blog for any time, you know that I’ve been struggling with my blogs and websites and how I’m going to focus my efforts more in 2009.

You’ve also noted, I suspect, that some of the posts I have here don’t really relate to affiliate marketing.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve created a new blog and resurrected another one, and now I have my three primary blogs set up for real work. There are a few more things I need to do, but they are ready to go.

21st Century Affiliate Marketing

This blog will be focused more tightly on affiliate marketing. I won’t be talking as much about Twitter tools, social networking, and similar topics, unless they can be tied directly to being a more effective affiliate marketer.

John Dilbeck And Friends

I’ve moved my John Dilbeck And Friends blog from it’s former home at johndilbeck.editthispage.com to it’s new home at JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com and now it is powered by WordPress.

This is the blog where I’ll be talking about social networking and other things in which I’m interested. It will be a general purpose blog, but I don’t plan on talking about politics or what I had for breakfast! ;)

Murphy, NC 28906

Finally, I’ve resurrected my Murphy NC 28906 blog, updated it to WordPress version 2.7, changed the theme, and added some bells and whistles. It will be used exclusively for talking about people, events, organizations, businesses, and things related specifically to Murphy, NC.

Because of more pressing issues, I neglected that blog for most of 2008, but it will be much more important to me in 2009 and in future years.

Before too long, I’ll be reintroducing my Murphy NC community and a announcing a brand-new website for promoting local businesses on the Internet.

More focused on my two primary goals in 2009

With these changes, I think I’ll be able to segment my efforts and focus on my two primary goals for 2009:

1. Continuing to build my affiliate marketing business and making it more profitable.

2. Promoting local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC. I’ll also be doing much more offline marketing consulting with local business owners.

I hope this will make this blog more interesting to those of you who are interested in affiliate marketing.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Twitter Grader – find local Twitter elite

January 13, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 7 Comments
Filed under: Communities, Social Networking, Twitter, Web Services, Western North Carolina 

This turned out to be an interesting morning. I just spent several hours doing something that wasn’t even close to being on my to-do list, but it worked out well.

It started out innocently enough.

Brian Hawkins left a comment and I went to visit his blog. I was reading his Extreme Ezine Makes The Grade post and it reminded me of Twitter Grader.

After visiting Brian’s profile page on Twitter Grader, I went and had a look at my Twitter Grader profile page.

I had been there sometime in the past, but never really paid a lot of attention to the site. I’m somewhat leery of sites that tell us how much our sites are worth and how we rank for whatever they’re covering.

This morning, however, I stopped and really looked over my profile page.

One thing I noticed is that the link next to the “Full Name” label is a link to my Twitter profile. That certainly makes it easy to follow someone.

I also noticed that it had a link to the Twitter elite in Murphy, NC. Of course, I had to visit that page.

When I visited the page, it turns out that I am the Twitter elite in Murphy. I’m the only one listed on the page. I guess that’s one of the benefits of living in a small town.

It’s also one of the benefits of listing your town and state in your Twitter profile, if you live in the USA. I’m not sure how it works if you live elsewhere.

It also is a good opportunity for others who live in Murphy to establish their presence by starting to use Twitter regularly.

I wondered who would be listed as the Twitter elite in Asheville, NC.

I found a list of 50 people and visited each of their Twitter profiles. I think I followed about 20 of them.

This is a good way to find other proficient Twitter users in your local area and to meet the ones with similar interests.

But the twisting path I followed this morning continued along to places I’d never seen.

One of the Twitter elite from Asheville had just joined a Twitter Group for Asheville, NC and I went to take a look at the group.

When I noticed the #asheville hashtag code for the group, something clicked.

If you’ve been following my blog for the last few days, you’re already aware that I’ve been looking at ways to use Twitter to promote what’s happening here in Murphy, NC. I’ve been experimenting with the #MurphyNC hashtag.

So, I read the FAQs at TwittGroups and decided to create a group for Murphy.

There was only one thing to do before creating the group.

In December 2007, I created a half-dozen communities on Ning.com, but closed all of them in June 2008 for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that it really pays to read the terms and conditions of a site before putting a half-year of effort into it.

When I was fully aware of the terms, I resurrected one of the communities for Squidoo Marketing and have been enjoying sharing with others in the community for the last six months.

One of the other communities I’d started was for Murphy, NC. This morning, I checked to see if the subdomain I’d previously used was available. It was, so I reopened the community.

Then, it was time to create the TwittGroups group for Murphy.

All of this took a few hours and it opens the door to much more work in the near future, but part of this was already in my plans for this year.

I’m not going to do anything with the Murphy community on Ning until I line up one or more businesses to sponsor the site. For the last few years, I’ve been promoting the area and some of the businesses for free, but it’s time to stop doing that.

As soon as I’ve lined up at least one sponsor for the site, I’ll start rebuilding it.

This time, however, there will be more tools thrown into the mix, including Twitter.

If you are in Murphy, NC, and you are a Twitter user, come and join the group for Murphy.

If you’re not in Murphy, you may find that Twitter Grader and TwittGroups may be tools you’ll want to try out, especially if you’re promoting a local area.

As with all experiments, part of this may prove to be worthwhile and part may be a waste of time. I won’t know for sure until I’ve worked on it for a few months.

Thanks, Brian, for linking to your TwitterGrader profile page. It made for an interesting morning!

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is Twitter a microblog or a party line?

January 1, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 28 Comments
Filed under: Business Networking, Communities, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Telephone, Twitter, Western North Carolina 

I have discovered that there are very few people in Murphy, NC who are using Twitter.

As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I can educate my friends and neighbors in this little mountain town to use free Internet services to promote their activities, interests, events, organizations, and businesses.

I’ve experimented with websites, blogs, forums, communities, and more, and none have gained traction, yet. Perhaps I’m just a bit ahead of time on this, but it may also just be a matter of finding an easy-to-understand analogy that will attract people to creating new conversations online.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we’ve been trained for decades that promotion and advertising are mostly one-way announcements and not two-way conversations.

To promote an event, we buy advertising on the radio or newspapers. If our area and event are big enough, we may even promote it on TV.

These are examples of one-way announcements. We tell, and hope someone listens, hears, and does what we want.

With the widespread use of the Internet, however, this is changing.

Now, we can have conversations, inexpensively or free, and these can lead to that most-wanted form of promotion, word-of-mouth recommendations.

Those of us who practically live online don’t really understand that most people don’t spend all their time thinking about websites, blogs, forums, social networking, and all the other things that we devote our time and energy to on a daily basis.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I asked someone for his email address and he wasn’t really sure. Now, I don’t know about you, but my email address is so important to me that it has been indelibly imprinted onto my brain.

I’ve spent years making it easy for people to email me. In fact, I get hundreds of emails every day and usually send a dozen or two. How could I not know my email address? It seems almost impossible.

Yet, many people don’t depend upon the Internet for carrying on conversations and talking about what is important to them.

I can spend a half-hour or so writing a blog entry or a new web page about something that is important to me, and I can make it available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. It’s practically free.

Even when I consider how much I pay annually for domain names, webhosting, email autoresponders, page rotators, banner rotators, and other similar services, it all adds up to less than a couple of thousand dollars per year. How much newspaper or radio advertising can I buy for that?

A blog post or web page has an indefinite life-span. I know that I’m making sales from information I put on the web years ago, not just from what I wrote yesterday or today.

Currently, a search on Google for “John Dilbeck” returns over 8,000 results and “johndilbeck” returns over 35,000 results, so there is a lot of information out there created by me or talking about me. This is just a small sample of all that I’ve put online over the last several years.

A radio ad has a life span of seconds. A newspaper ad has a life span of days. Even most promotional products have life spans of weeks or months.

What is the life span of a tweet on Twitter?

That’s hard to say.

If we’re online and watching our Twitter stream, it seems as if most tweets have a life span of seconds, almost like a radio spot.

But, that’s only part of the story.

Think of a major event or thing and search for it on Google. You’ll find hundreds or thousands of links to what you searched for, but you already expect that, don’t you?

Now search for it on Twitter.

Did you know that all those tweets are still available? Did you know that all the hyperlinks are preserved and are still active? Did you know that the search engines follow those links?

Want to know what I’ve been saying on Twitter, or what people have been saying to, or about, me?

Does that give you a different idea about the life span of a tweet?

Now, what happens if we take this knowledge and use it to try to build a conversation.

That’s one of the things I’m going to be doing in 2009.

This year, I’m going to concentrate on two things:

1. affiliate marketing

2. promoting the people, events, and organizations in Murphy, NC.

I am dramatically narrowing my focus and hope I can build higher revenue from affiliate marketing and gain better traction in promoting what’s going on in Murphy.

I’m not going to become a news organization. I’ll leave that to the newspapers and radio stations in town. After all, I’m interested in marketing, not news.

While testing it, I’ve done it for free for several years. This year, I’ll charge reasonable rates for what I will do, and those rates will be much less than what it would cost for using traditional advertising.

Still, I like doing things for free on the Internet and I’ll help people in my community learn how to do that, too.

I think Twitter can play an important part in doing all this.

Earlier, I said that it takes a good analogy or model so that people can easily understand how to join in online conversations. Things that are simple for some of us can be confusing to others.

For example, take the idea of Twitter being a microblog. Those of us who blog every day can understand that, but if you don’t know about blogging, is it a good model to use?

You may not be an old geezer like me, but I remember when several people used the same phone line. This was called a party line. At any given time, someone may have been talking on the phone, but you never knew who was listening.

Later there were private lines and now cell phones, but in the very early days, we had party lines.

Here in Murphy, this is a good analogy to use for Twitter. Why? Because it’s an ingrained part of the local culture. There is a popular program on WKRK radio called PartyLine, and it is hosted by Bill Yonce on weekdays and Tim Radford on Saturdays.

Listeners can join the conversation by calling the program and talking to the hosts. They can chat about what’s happening, offer what they want to sell or ask for what they want to buy, or just pass the time for a few minutes. A few years ago, when Mom was healthier and still able to get around well, she would always have PartyLine playing on the radio as she worked in the kitchen.

So, for the people who are much more comfortable with offline communications, perhaps a party line is a better analogy for Twitter than is a microblog.

You can listen to whomever you chose on Twitter, so it’s not like some giant chat room. You can fine tune the group of people you listen to so that you get specifically what you want. Anyone can choose to listen to you, or not, too.

Substitute the word “follow” for “listen” and you have a good understanding of Twitter.

Then, you have to think about how these groups of followers overlap, intersect, and diverge. For example, John may follow George, but not Jane. Perhaps Jane follows John, but not George. If George tweets about something interesting, John would learn about it – potentially – but Jane probably would not. However, if John then tweets about it, he would be extending the reach of the conversation beyond George’s followers/listeners. In traditional marketing, we call this “word of mouth.”

In reality, George may tweet about it, and John may post the information on a blog, lens, forum, website, or some other presence he maintains on the web. All of this can be done in a remarkably short time, with little effort, and negligible expense.

Who knows how far the information will spread?

So, while Twitter may be thought of as a party line, it potentially has a much wider reach. It brings another meaning to the old saying, “a little birdie told me.”

Unlike a party line, however, you can’t just talk as long as you want. You are limited to short tweets of 140 characters or less. You can tweet all you want, but each one is short and generally focused.

How much does it cost? Nothing.

So how is that going to help me promote Murphy, NC?

Well, there’s the rub.

There are so many tweets every day on Twitter that a few about Murphy would easily get lost in the crowd.

That’s where the #MurphyNC hashtag comes in.

By tagging all tweets that are specifically about something or someone in Murphy with that code, it is easy to search for them. It is also relatively easy to syndicate those search results.

Currently, there are few tweets with that hashtag, but I’ll be working to change that, over time.

This morning, I am testing syndicating these #MurphyNC tweets on my Squidoo lens for Murphy, NC 28906.

It didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.

I could not get the lens to show the feed, so I ran it through Feedburner.com and created a new feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MurphyNC-TwitterSearch

Squidoo can read and show that feed, with no problem. I wonder if it is because the Twitter search feed is in Atom format rather than RSS.

Another problem to consider if you want to syndicate hashtag searches on your lenses is the fact that Twitter uses relative anchor addresses in the content, instead of absolute URLs. This means that the #MurphyNC link in the content will not link directly to the Twitter search page. This will give you unintended results, depending upon where you syndicate it.

To get around this problem, I’m syndicating headlines only on my Squidoo lenses. If someone clicks the headline, it will take him/her to the status address for that particular tweet. Since this is shown on the Twitter domain, the hashtag link in the content will point to the right place.

It will be impossible to syndicate a real-time conversation on Squidoo, because the minimum update time for an RSS feed is 30 minutes for a Squidoo RSS module. At this point, that’s not a problem, because I’m the only person doing it and all my #MurphyNC tweets have been tests up until now. However, if it ever gets popular, this would not be a workable solution for syndicating the feed.

Although doable, this may not be the best way to syndicate a conversation on Squidoo.

I’m open for suggestions, because this is something I want to do on multiple lenses, as well as several blogs and websites.

Why am I talking about this on a blog that is about affiliate marketing?

This question is easier to answer. It’s because readers of this blog are generally more technically sophisticated and are used to online interactions. It’s also because I earn money from affiliate marketing even on my local pages for Murphy, NC.

And, Twitter is already helping me earn from my affiliate marketing efforts on my Squidoo lenses and blog posts.

This has been a long-winded way of asking your opinion of how to describe using Twitter to talk about a town or city. Is it a microblog or a party line, or something else entirely?

What model or analogy would you suggest to make it easier for offline-oriented people to join in online discussions using Twitter? Do you think Twitter is really effective for this?

Act on your dream!

JD

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What do you know about using hashtags in Twitter?

December 30, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Twitter, Western North Carolina 

As you may, or may not, already know, I’ve decided upon two main areas for my marketing activities for 2009.

1. Affiliate marketing will continue to be the main thing I do and I’ll probably devote about 75% of my time to this.

2. Promoting my adopted hometown of Murphy, NC, and the people, events, and businesses here. This will probably take less than 25% of my time.

For the last several years, I’ve been testing several websites for my local town and county. I wanted to learn how much effort and time it would take to keep them current; how much interest there is from local residents and business owners; and how effective they would be in achieving my marketing goals.

I have answers to some of those questions, but I’m still seeking more answers.

I’ve decided to focus on Murphy, NC in particular and not on the whole county. Since there are only two towns in the county, that means I’m not going to be covering activities in Andrews, NC. I’ll leave that to someone else.

Now that I’ve made that decision, I’m looking for a simple way to tie blog posts on my other blogs to Twitter in a way that it makes it easy to find everything related to Murphy NC without introducing tweets about people named Murphy and other tweets that include NC, but are somewhere else in the state.

I thought this would be relatively easy, but I’m learning that it isn’t.

I’ve tested using the hashtag #MurphyNC when tweeting, and I can reliably pull out just the tweets that use it. While I should be able to consistently use it, I’m wondering how much effort it will take to get others to use it, too.

By adopting a local hashtag, those of us who may be interested can easily search for the tag and Twitter will even generate an RSS feed (in Atom format) that can be syndicated on my Squidoo lenses and blogs.

This will also eliminate the tweets that casually mention the town, but aren’t really related to what’s happening here.

I’ve tried using the advanced search options at Twitter to find only tweets that contain #MurphyNC OR “Murphy, NC” OR “Murphy NC”, but the search still returns tweets that mention Murphy or NC even though I’m looking for exact matches to three terms.

So, I’ve been wondering whether it makes more sense to syndicate just the tweets that contain the hashtag or to use more criteria which would result in tweets that aren’t really related.

So far, I prefer searching for just the hashtag, even though it would mean I’d have to educate others to include it – which shouldn’t be much of a problem since there aren’t many people tweeting in this area.

This concept can be applied to other topics as well, such as when mentioning specific products and services, but that may involve stepping on the toes of others who are using obvious hashtags already for other purposes.

Here’s an example of a search for just #MurphyNC and another for “Murphy, NC” OR “Murphy NC” OR #MurphyNC and you can see the differences in quality of the search results.

Who knows? Perhaps I’m trying to solve something that someone else has already solved.

Do you have any experience with this? Can you offer any advice?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Healthy Coffee House – Murphy, North Carolina, USA – Save on drinks and overnight stays

January 21, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Advertising, Nice Offers, Western North Carolina 

Healthy Coffee House (Murphy, NC US)

Come visit the Healthy Coffee House, Bed & Breakfast, and Bakery.

Have a drink on us!

Buy one, get one free any drink in the Healthy Coffee House.

Stay one night, second night half price.

Free wireless internet service.

Expires: This coupon expires on January 24, 2009.

Restrictions: One coupon per week per customer

Click the “Get Details” link below. You will go a new page where you can have the required coupon e-mailed to you instantly. Then print out the coupon and redeem at:

Healthy Coffee House
215 Peachtree ST
Murphy, NC 28906, USA

Questions on this offer?

Contact: Healthy Coffee House via Phone: 828-837-1515

Get Details and Money-Saving Coupon

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