21st Century Affiliate Marketing

I just noticed that Twitter Tools, a plug-in that I’ve come to rely upon, is not tweeting about my new blog posts.

In fact, it appears that it hasn’t been working for the last couple of weeks.

I’ve been using Twitter Tools for some time on several of my blogs and have come to rely upon it. I wonder what’s happened.

One more thing to look into and see if I can fix.

What about you?

Do you use Twitter Tools? Is it working for you?

Act on your dream!

JD

I am always looking for others in my area who are using Twitter and other social networking tools.

There aren’t many people in Murphy, NC who use the service, but a few more are coming online every month.

Today, I found a new tool at ChirpCity.com that helps find other local Twitterers.

Here’s the ChirpCity page for Murphy, NC. I found a few new people to follow there. I’ve bookmarked this page and will revisit it regularly.

If you see this and you are interested in Murphy, NC, you are invited to join us at our new Murphy, NC online community.

Act on your dream!

JD

A few days ago, Tim Linden, owner of the StartXchange traffic exchange, created a fun script to see if he could help us reach new followers on Twitter.

I had a few spare minutes, so I gave it a try. As a result, I’ve gotten nearly 100 new followers on Twitter and I’m in the process of meeting and getting to know some new people - hopefully, some of them will become friends over time.

As part of the process, I also ran across several people who have been friends for years and now we’re Twitter friends, too.

Late yesterday, I added a couple of items in the right column of this blog. Right below the form for subscribing to new postings, you’ll see an image that shows the number of people following me on Twitter. Right below that is another graphic showing how many fans I have on Squidoo.

Since working through Tim’s script, I’ve picked up nearly 100 new followers, but not all of them came from there.

I make it a point to follow everyone who follows me, and it took maybe an hour or so to follow the folks who followed me the last couple of days. That’s not much of an investment in time, especially if I meet some new friends, reconnect with old friends, and learn something here and there.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to continue following them. If someone posts too much drivel, does nothing but advertise, or is rude, I’ll stop following them in a heartbeat. However, I don’t mind if someone posts links to their blogs or websites, as long as they also post more general tweets that help me learn something about them.

I’ll also drop someone if they tweet dozens of times every day. I may have time to enjoy Twitter while I’m waiting on other things, but I’m not that interested in anyone.

All in all, it was an easy thing to do and produced excellent results.

Are you looking for more people to follow you on Twitter?

Learn more about it. Go to Tim Linden’s blog and read: Twitter Me Fun

Let me know what you think.

Act on your dream!

JD

I have been using Alex King’s Twitter Tools WordPress plug-in to automatically tweet about new posts to this blog to my Twitter account.

When I set it up, I was new to both Twitter Tools and to Twitter. This plug-in offers an option to also post a daily index of Twitter posts to the blog. I chose to implement that option.

A few days ago, while looking critically at this blog, those Twitter posts stood out like a sore thumb. Most of them are entirely unrelated to affiliate marketing and I don’t think they belong here, even though it is now my primary blog.

So, on October 8th, I turned off the option of indexing my daily Twitter posts on this blog. Coincidentally, I got tied up doing some time-intensive things that just didn’t leave me with time to blog, so nothing has been added here since then, about a week ago.

If you subscribe to this blog via email, then you haven’t heard from me for a few days.

Most bloggers think that is a terrible thing to do, but I disagree. If I don’t have anything worthwhile to talk about here, I just don’t say anything. Most bloggers think we should write at least one thing every day to keep the readers in the habit of visiting our blogs. I just don’t accept that.

When I have something to say, or have news related to affiliate marketing that I want to pass along, I’ll write about it. Sometimes, I’ll post several times in one day. Other times, such as last week, I won’t post anything at all.

The daily index of Twitter posts violated that idea.

So, now they’re gone.

(The crowd cheers wildly!)

I’ve been doing some research on several things that I’ll be talking about, soon. I hope you’ll find them of interest for you and your affiliate marketing business.

What do you think? Did I make the correct choice in no longer blogging my Twitter tweets?

Act on your dream!

JD

Lynn Terry has a great discussion going on her blog post and comments at Twitter: Are you IN or OUT?

It took me a long time to see the value in Twitter and that only came after I found the right group of people to follow. Along the way, I’ve followed a lot of people and unfollowed quite a few.

Now, I’m following some very interesting people who are interested in blogging, Squidoo, CafePress, affiliate marketing, and other things that interest me and are a major part of my business.

In fact, I learned about Lynn’s post because of a tweet from one of the people I’m following. Cool, huh?

If you’re interested in Twitter and want to join her conversation, jump on in.

Twitter: I used to be OUT, but now I’m definitely IN.

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

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