Blog World Expo Underway
From miss604’s Flickr Stream
Blog World Expo kicked off this morning and is going strong. Due to a late arriving flight, my desire to sleep overtook my desire to hear today’s keynote – the one I’m looking forward to is tomorrow with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park & Fort Minor anyway. Ran into some familiar faces right away and hit the ground running into the super blogger panel moderated by Jim Kukral and featuring Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Zac Johnson, John Chow, and Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney, who misunderstood the timing I guess and was 45 mins late 🙂
Great stuff from those guys and I was even randomly picked to win a copy of Darren’s ProBlogger
Next I stayed in the same room for the affiliate marketing panel with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit, Mike Allen of Shopping-Bargains, and Tim Jones of TheRealTimJones (yes, all familiar names if you listen to RedHatBlueHat). They had some really good stuff and brought up some tools and such that I’m definitely going to be looking into when my whirlwind crazy travel is done. Once again, more to come.
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t blogged a lot about CJU. Due to the motel I was staying at being so far away and the internet there being spotty I didn’t have a lot of time to get those written up. But I’m working on it!
If you’re stuck at home with Twitter and trying to keep up with what’s going on out here, go to Twitter Search for #bwe08 and you can see all the tweets that attendees have tagged. I’m trying to keep mine updated as I remember to use TwitPic to share a photo of something.
Read MoreCJU Course: Affiliate Marketing 101
As the first course of the conference yesterday, I’m sure there was a lot of pressure for this hour and fifteen minutes to really set the tone for the three days of Commission Junction University. Titled “Affiliate Marketing 101: Back to the Basics”, I attended hoping to maybe pick up some things I didn’t actually know considering I taught a lot of the basics to myself a couple years back. The speaker was:
- Jeremy Palmer, President, QuitYourDayJob.com
I converse with & follow him on twitter and I’ve heard great things about his last projects The Black Ink Projects and Black Ink 2, although haven’t had a chance to check it out myself. I won’t know until Thursday if this session really did set the appropriate tone for the conference or not, but it was definitely worth my attendance!
Bullet Point Review!
- Choose Your Niche
- The niche you choose should be your passion – it’s the easiest foundation to build upon.
- Know a lot about your niche to be successful.
- Develop a Business Plan
- Put together a SWOT analysis for you AND your closest competitors – their weaknesses can be your opportunities.
- Just make it a simple spreadsheet.
- Have a unique selling proposition. It’s not enough to just copy someone else, you have to see what they’re doing and how you can do it better.
- Learn about the customer persona.
- Inventory your own skills objectively – what can you do yourself and what would you be best served by outsourcing?
- Write Value Added Content
- Start writing content before you design your site.
- Content is the key to the site.
- Have 10-15 pages of content before you launch to improve Quality Score.
- Design Your Site
- You must have professional tools to create a professional site.
- Be objective about your experience and consider outsourcing.
- TOOL: 99Designs for design contests – you only pay for the winner, and you pay much less.
- Develop Your Site
- Outsourcing programming can be done on Elance or oDesk quite effectively.
- Be sure to write extremely detailed specifications on what you want the site to do and how it should be done when using outsourced talent.
- With these services you can escrow your payment so that no money is released until certain milestones are done – and done to your satisfaction.
- Test the Waters with PPC
- Google hates “rich pages” (also referred to as “thin landing pages”) where the only intent is a conversion.
- Google recently updated their algorithms and human QC when assigning Quality Scores, so be sure to read up.
- Essentially Google wants you to develop your own content: they want independent reviews, content not found directly on the merchant’s website, and the comparison of several merchants.
- Many affiliates have had good success with video reviews because they resonate more with consumers.
- Remember that Google isn’t the only game in town – test on Yahoo & MSN to discover what works in terms of keywords and ad copy.
- Test & Optimize
- Look at conversions using keywords.
- TOOLS: Tracking 202 (free), Prosper 202 (free), Optimize My Site (paid), Google Website Optimizer (free).
- Pay equal attention to conversion rate and click through rate.
- Don’t use vague or hype laden copy – it won’t convert well.
- Split test your landing pages.
- Build a Sustainable Business.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
- You want to thrive without Google just in case.
- Facebook Ads are growing with better ROI.
- Remember the viral marketing element (what can you do that people will pass on?)
- You want to be who people will think of when they think of your niche.
- Create a brand for yourself.
- Random Tips
- Some books to check out: Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin & Malcolm Gladwell
- When doing product comparisons, try throwing in a weaker competitor to enhance the value of the better products.
- DO NOT use the standard WordPress template when adding a blog to your site – make sure it looks like the rest of your site.
- Comparison pages only need to be very simple tables.
- Some books to check out: Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin & Malcolm Gladwell
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Mobile has great opportunities for merchants and advertisers, but it’s hard for affiliates. People are not (yet) likely to use mobile devices to make purchases.
- Outsourcing content? Elance is ok but Jeremy expressed some displeasure with what he’s got from that site. An audience member suggested PR Newswire and searching for keywords to find experts.
- My own suggestion is to try going to LinkedIn & looking for experts to approach for writing.
- Go where the good designers and writers hang out to find them – when you go to freelancing sites you’re getting the people who might be hard up for work and not that great of results.
- In regards to CJ, pay a lot of attention to the Network Earnings bar.
- Once your site’s Quality Score tanks, you’re done. You have to start over with a new site because there’s no way to get that back.
Jeremy did an excellent job mixing up the experience level of the information he put forth, knowing instinctively that most people attending wouldn’t quite be at the 101 education level in regards to affiliate marketing.
Read MoreCommission Junction University – Day 1
I’m down here in lovely Santa Barbara for Commission Junction University, and day one is in the can. The weather has been nice…although living in California I’m generally used to this weather, but being in the Southern end of the state there’s a distinctly different feel that I can’t quite put my finger on. But I enjoy it.
I flew from Oakland to Los Angeles on a puddle jumper, and from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on a pack of gum. Between flights and layovers and cab rides, I arrived at my motel at 12:15am. The room is your average motel fare: 70’s floral bedspread, translucent yellow cords on the lamps, inmate furniture. The room also has a mini fridge, microwave, nicely sized TV, free wifi, and a surprisingly comfortable bed & pillows – not too shabby for $77/night. This makes me glad I’m staying at a real hotel for Blog World Expo this coming weekend.
Because of the high cost of cab fare ($25+), once I got the conference hotel I didn’t want to leave until the end of the day. I ran into Lisa Picarille and Wade Tonkin almost immediately in passing after I registered and headed to the first session, which I’ll cover later. Jeremy Palmer from Quit Your Day Job lead the first “course” as CJU calls them, and Olivier Chaine from Magnify 360 led the second. On a personal note, I read his name in the program and knew the pronunciation would be something like “o-live-e-ay shayne” and was confused when the emcee pronounced it very phonetically (olive-er chain). I was disappointed in CJ when Olivier pronounced his own name at the end of his session much like I’d imagined it was properly pronounced…if you’re going to introduce someone, learn how to pronounce their name.
I digress. Both courses were informative and well done, and I’ll be posting a bullet point review of both later on. After the courses were done I took a quick break and then headed out to the CJU Expo, a small area of tables nicely held outside under umbrellas that more closely resembled the Meet Market at Affiliate Summit than your typical trade show. It was mostly merchants and different CJU programs with tables, with the exception of an OPM (Schaaf Consulting), a couple affiliates (SurfMyAds.com), and a table for the Performance Marketing Alliance.
It’s a good thing I saw that PMA table, because it made it easy to run into some familiar faces in the form of Connie Berg & Brad Waller. Also was able to say hello to Michael Brucker from RingCentral at their table, one of the organizers of the BAAMC whose quarterly meetings I attend. (By the way if you’re an affiliate manager with a company in the SF Bay area interested in getting involved and possibly hosting about 20-25 ppl for lunch some day, let Michael know).
After the expo it was zoo time with the welcoming event being held down the street at the Santa Barbara Zoo. As much as I wanted to go, my phone was practically dead for some reason and my stomach was a bit upset, so I opted to head back to my motel. Tomorrow is a day full of sessions that look pretty good, and a keynote from Guy Kawasaki…who I think may literally be giving me the nifty orange Alltop shirt off his back afterwards. More about that if/when it happens 😉
Leaving on a Jet Plane
I apologize, dear reader, as this blog has been on auto pilot lately. A lot has been going on in my world, both personal and professional, and it’s still taking a lot of time and energy to get sorted out.
The good news is, I’ll be back at the helm soon. I’m heading down to CJU tonight and then Blog World Expo next weekend, so I’m sure I’ll be super jazzed to come back to this blog in full force. Lots of travel in my future, which makes me slightly even more stressed considering I’m not the biggest fan of flying really, and I haven’t packed anything yet. Luckily, I have been traveling so much in the last year that I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping travel sized stuff always packed in my toiletries bag instead of packing the stuff I use normally. Travel size for the win!
CJU will be my first network event, and I’m excited. I was looking at the agenda last week in putting together my schedule, and I really appreciate that there aren’t really that many choices to choose from during the few break out sessions. I assume that most of the sessions are just put on my Commission Junction staff considering there’s no names attached to the sessions like other shows. The keynote will be given by Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple guy now working on AllTop.com. I’ve been following Guy on Twitter for sometime now, so seeing him speak in person will be nice. I know a few folks who’ll be there, so it should be a good time. My one regret is that I didn’t book soon enough to get into the conference hotel, Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort. I’ve heard great things, but booked too late so I’m staying nearby. Maybe next year!
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I checked out the agenda for Blog World Expo and there’s about 7-10 sessions per time block to choose from! It’s hard, because my interests vary and I know some good people on panels that I want to check out. Savvy internet marketers talking about monetization that I don’t mention nearly enough, Michael Buechele and Tim Jones. And of course there’s the usual suspects that I love – Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, etc. I’m not done scheduling for that since I have some tough choices to make in terms of which sessions to attend. I also noticed that one of my favorite musicians, Mike Shinoda, is going to be participating in one of the keynotes. I have no clue WHY lol, but I may have to throw my last Linkin Park CD into my bag in hopes of an encounter!
So, that is what’s on my plate for now. I only have part of a day in between CJU and BlogWorldExpo, so hopefully I’ll get the notes from my CJ sessions up for you to learn from before I’m off again! In the meantime, I hope you’re not overinundated with the daily definitions and happy to take a break 😉
Read MoreNeed Inspiration?
Then listen to this…
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If you didn’t have the privilege of being at Affiliate Summit East earlier this month and need a kick in the pants to get you moving, this is a must listen. Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ, gave a riveting and inspiring keynote address at the summit. Tears welled up, and people were moved to reach the highest they could – then reach 3 inches farther.
Mayor Booker has a real penchant for the uplifting, and while the speach was not directly related to marketing it did touch on some sales and marketing themes and was generically motivating to anyone. So whatever industry you’re in, this is a great listen. My summary doesn’t give justice to the actual recording, so please give it a listen!
Read MoreA Happy Blog Birthday to Me!
In my hustle and bustle lately, I neglected to realize that I’ve been blogging “semi-pro” as I refer to it for a full year. I went back to see some of my earlier posts from last August and was reminded of this one – Hats, Hats, Everywhere! Could it be that it was just a year ago that I was still managing PsPrint’s mailing services? It’s also sad to say that I was “in charge of” social media marketing – a project that never took off on the company level, but I’ve obviously been running strong with it.
It feels like it’s been much longer than just a year that I’ve been at this, but I have to say that I’ve learned so much in a year that it’s incredible. In many ways this blog as served as a gateway to that knowledge and opportunities that I’ve been given. I’ll never be able to thank this little blog enough lol.
I wish I’d discovered Google Analytics sooner so I don’t have complete data, but thank you to the 16,000+ visitors this year that stopped by. Thanks for spending those few minutes to check out what I’ve been spewing out there into the webverse. I hope you’ve come by more than once. Told your friends. Subscribed despite my trials and tribulations in getting a freakin’ feed to work properly. And come by despite going through three URL changes…
Stay Classy, Interwebs.
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