"When Pinterest Met Affiliate Marketing" By Tricia Meyer

Finding Pin Sources:
Who is pinning from your site and what are they pinning? What is being repinned?
http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com/

What's a Cookie?

No, not chocolate chip.

A cookie is a small data file that certain web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain various types of information, including a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you've visited, and traffic patterns.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies; however,  browsers can be manually set to refuse cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent or you can flush your browser of cookies from time to time.  If cookies are disabled or refused, you may not be able to access all areas of some sites.

Is it Good? Checklist for Persuasive Landing Pages

After writing a landing page, ask yourself the following questions to see if it passes the test of effective copy:

Does my landing page....

• Have a great headline?
• Tell a good story?
• Offer proof?   (Testimonials/etc)
• Make the benefits of purchase/action clear?
• Create curiosity?
• Anticipate objections/doubts and counter them?

Other Suggestions.

• Be concise
• Use action verbs and colorful adjectives. (People are moved by emotion)
• Educate/inspire. Nobody likes hard-sells. 
• Use a confident & authoritative tone

Model after the best.  Practice.  Develop over time.  Test.

5 Top WordPress Plugins for Affiliates

If you are new to using WordPress, the following free WordPress plugins can help you take your affiliate websites to the next level with functionality:

1. All In One SEO Pack – Absolutely necessary for EVERY WordPress and affiliate site. This plugin optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
   
2. XML Sitemap Generator – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. If you are looking for maximum search engine rankings, this plugin is also a MUST HAVE.
   
3. WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog. This is a more sophisticated paging system for more complex affiliate websites.
   
4. WP-Affiliate – Easy affiliate link masking and more. This is necessary if you want to cloak your affiliate conversion URL’s.
   
5. WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page. Perfect for review sites!

Source: The Affiliate Theme

Humanize Your Website With Live Chatting

People just want to be heard.

To be seen.

To know that they matter.

They want to be in relation to real people, not stuffy avatars, or typical cookie cutter scripted videos.  ~And that includes on your website!


Here's an idea: how about adding a chat widget to your website so you can engage in real time with new visitors to your site?   It's immediate, real life contact.  And if you're not available, there are even some  services that can pick up the slack and do the initial chatting on your behalf; gathering vital contact data and questions and forwarding them to you via email for further followup.

For example, when you become aware that someone is perusing your site, a chat could immediately launch:

"Hello!  Thank you for visiting my site, it's a pleasure to see you! My name is Annie, may I have your name?

And if it's someone chatting on your behalf, their goal should also be to secure contact info. so you or someone who represents you can followup.  For example,

"Before we proceed, may I have your phone number and email address in case we get disconnected?"  

Or, 

"The next step would be for me to have one of our team members contact you to answer additional questions and off you additional support. "


You could ask, "Would you like to be contacted?" or "Would you like to be put on a mailing list?" Or even better: 


 "I'll be happy to send you an information packet (or report, etc) via email." 


And finally, to seal the deal and develop rapport and further connection,


"Thank you for contacting me. Please take a moment to watch our informational video here____"

This is a great example of creative lead generation, leading to better ROI  (return on investment), and conversions.

Try it out!  Lemme know me know what you think!  :)

What is An Alt Tag? (Or Alt Text?)

Alt Text is HTML that gives some alternative text with images.  It's often overlooked or not used at all, but it's an important and useful tool for improving SEO results. 

* It gives more info on an image or an image's hyperlink
* It can be helpful for folks with disabilities
* It can be helpful for text-only browsers
* It can help people with slow connections navigate a site while images are still rendering

How to Pick A Niche

Confused about what direction to go? Where to start? Here's a quick breakdown based on content from Yaro Starak:

First,

1. Do Keyword research to find out how many searches are going on
• Goal: Over 1000 searches a day 
2. Check  Google search results to see how much competition there is
   
   • Goal: Less than 10,000 competing pages

Starting Your First A/B or Multivariant Experiment

Google outlines in detail how to design and set up your first Website Optimizer experiment, the different types of testing, and how to interpret experiments' results.  There's also a video walkthrough of the experiment setup, Website Optimizer User Guide which covers much of the same process.

What is a "rebill"?

A "rebill" is.....
a service, or  subscription that is billed on a continuous, ongoing basis.   Rebills are often associated with "free" trials that later bill customers until canceled, (in example: acai berry, colon cleanse, e-cigarettes, teeth whitening, male enhancement, penny auctions.)

Netflix is an example of a "legitimate" company that uses a rebilling system. 

How Do I Install a Wordpress Theme?

[By shames at intogeek.com as per the recommendation of BlueHost Support via chat at 2am this morning.]

This process can seem daunting at first, but after you learn how to do it you’ll find installing a theme to your wordpress site is quite easy. All you need to start this is a wordpress site, and a theme .zip file already downloaded to your computer. If you don’t have a theme file to install yet, you can find many just by searching google.com for ‘wordpress themes’. Here are the steps to install a theme:

Protect Yourself! How to Make The Ultimate Password

How To Protect Your Password:
[Per BlueHost]

• Memorize your password, do not write it down
• Do not share your password
• Do not use the same password you use on other services (gmail, Yahoo, etc)
• Avoid using one password for all your logins
• Avoid logging in from public computers
• Change your password frequently
• Be wary of allowing your password to be remembered by browser plugins or other utilities

Tips for choosing a password:

• Avoid dictionary words
• Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters
• Use a combination of capital and lower case letters
• If you use a word, try to combine multiple words, or use "made up" words
• Avoid familiar items (names, phone number, etc)
• Avoid common passwords and generic sequences (ie. "password", "admin", "123456", etc.)
• The more characters you use, the safer (use at least 8)

Virtual Assistants (VA's) on ODesk

Need help? Technical expertise? Don't have time? Limited resources?   ODesk may be a service you want to look in to. 

Basically, ODesk allows you to do more with less, and help out a contractor along the way.

 The following resources can be found using their services:

What Does CPM Mean?

• CPM is a phrase used in relation to online advertising and marketing related web traffic.   
• CPM means clicks per thousand impressions. 
• Where does the M come from?  The M in CPM comes from the Roman numeral system.  (M means 1,000!)
• CPM shows an affiliate how much money they are making per thousand impressions.  
• Or, if you own a website, and want to sell an advertisement space on your website, you would typiccaly sell space per thousand impressions. So, if you are charging say $4 CPM and you want to show your ad 10,000 times, then you would charge $40.

What is a CPA offer?

CPA is the abbreviation for "Cost Per Action" meaning, sales are not required to receive compensation as an affiliate marketer.  An "action" could be something as simple as filling out a form with a name, a zip code, an email address.  Or perhaps signing up for a trial.  Once THE ACTION is completed, the affiliate receives commission that could be from a few cents to hundreds of dollars.

Companies can promote their products and services through CPA offers facilitated by CPA networks and executed by CPA affiliates who can direct target traffic to the offers using a number of methods: email marketing, video marketing, cost-per-click, etc....

6 Biggest Affiliate Moneymakers

Per an affiliate manager at RevupNet on Feb 21, 2012 the affiliate publishers that actually make significant money are:

1. Major Coupon sites, like retailmenot, and savings.com
2. Major Bonus sites like Upromise and Ebates
3. Major Loyalty Shopping Networks: like Cartera and DBG
4. Major Product Comparison Sites: like TopTenReviews
5. Cheators: Affiliates that cheat and bid on merchants trademark terms in Google search, pretending to be them
6. Niche content sites that have high SEO ranking on particular product related keywords

What is PHP?

PHP is the acronym for   Hypertext Pre-processor.

PHP is a scripting language that is embedded into HTML.

PHP contains HTML with embedded code that does "something".  It's enclosed in special start and stop instructions and is executed on the server, then sent to the client. The client receives the results of running that script, but won't know the underlying script.  

What is FTP?

FTP is the abbreviation for File Transfer Protocol.

FTP is used to exchange files over the Internet (a TCP-based network).
Meaning,
FTP is used to download files from a server using the Internet
and
upload files (like a webpage) to a server.



The FTP technology works like HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) for transferring webpages from a server to a person's browser

 
and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) for transferring electronic mail across the Internet in that

FTP uses the Internet's TCP/IP protocols to enable data transfer.


TCP/IP is the abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
TCP/IP was created by The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency to interconnect defense department computer networks. The Internet, an international Wide Area Network, uses TCP/IP to connect institutions across the world. 

Words, Lets be Friends.

OMG!  Say wha? Slow down!  Speak English! Doooood.  What does THAT mean?!      #commonlyheardphrasesinmyhead 


When it comes to learning about affiliate marketing & monetizing content, one of my biggest sources of aggravation has been the inundation of new wonky terms.  Like cracking any field, this voyage comes with an entire set of acronyms and industry specific lingo that must be learned as if it's a second language.   There's so much that authors take for granted or consider common knowledge, that for a noob like me, it can be pretty #facepalm provoking.  But, alas, I know it's just a part of the process.

#sigh

Often times, I've found that to make meaning of posts, I had to decode sentence by sentence, literally googling terms and abbreviations one at a time.  It became clear that starting a list of those terms would be a good idea.  That way I could refer back to it later, pop-quiz myself,  and

Start Monetizing Your Blog Today

"Start Monetizing Your Blog Today" all-women panel discussion at the Affiliate Summit West 2010, which took place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas.

Panelists:

• Carolyn Tang:  Director of Affiliate Marketing for Groupon, Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year 2010.  Carolyn formerly led client services team at ShareASale.com affiliate, managed affiliate programs at Orbitz, CollectiblesToday.com and MyPoints.com. She is an adjunct lecturer at the Loyola University of Chicago. She has earned a MBA from Loyola & MSJ in Journalism from Northwestern.
• Trisha Meyer: Lawyer turned affiliate, makes pop culture sites for fun.
• Kristin President and owner of Madhatter Affiliate Manager, manages affiliate programs