Cribbed Content for December 22nd
The holidays are upon us finally! I suck and forgot to post this shorter version last week! Hanukkah started on the 21st, and Christmas is around the bend this week! Do you have sugar plum fairies dancing in your head yet? Here’s a few interesting things from this past week to keep your feet on the ground until you’re off for the holiday officially!
- Are you an affiliate? Take the AffStat Survey Here and let your voice be known in the industry. This coming year the results will be made available through FeedFront Magazine rather than by purchase.
- Speaking of FeedFront, publishers Shawn Collins & Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit have put together a compilation cover complimenting their story about the women of affiliate marketing. Yours truly is on the cover in the lower right hand portion, sharing space with some truly awesome and amazing women that I both adore and admire!
- ShareASale hosts a great party at every Affiliate Summit, and this coming January for Affiliate Summit West 2009, they’re hosting an 80s prom themed “Under the Stars” party. Righteous, dude.
Who would you donate $5000 to?
I’ve been asking this question of myself for a long while tonight, after reading about the contest that John Chow is having, sponsored by tiny url service XR.com. In his contest, he’s giving the winner $6000 – $5000 will be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice and $1000 will be given to the winner directly to do with as they wish.
XR.com is a great service that allows you to shorten a URL and create a custom extension. For example, if I wanted to shorten the URL of this post I can enter it in at XR.com and create http://xr.com/donate5000. The beauty of signing up for a free account with XR is that you can keep track of all these redirected tiny URLS so you can use them repeatedly. That URL went from 62 characters to 17! It’s perfect when you’re not allowed a lot of characters to work with, like on Twitter.
The $1000 isn’t that easy either. My gut immediately says that I want to buy Guitar Hero World Tour & use the rest of the money for the Bahamian cruise I’m taking with friends in February. But then there are bills that could be paid off. Hand-me-down furniture that could be replaced. But since I’ve already committed to this trip, I believe I’ll use it for the cruise bills. That way I don’t have to put too much on my credit card.
Back to the donation to charity. A few worthy causes come to mind immediately – The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fund, American Diabetes Association, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Make a Wish, the list goes on. These are charities that I believe in and believe that they could do a lot of good things with $5000. But, maybe I should stick with something closer to home? Make my community a better place, eh? So I did some Googlin’ for local charities, and I wasn’t overly impressed by anything. It also occurred to me that deciding to donate to charity based on a quick read of a mission statement isn’t very responsible.
So I’ve decided to donate the money as a way to give back to a non-profit organization that did so much for me in my youth – Girl Scouts of Northern California. Specifically, I will donate the money to a fund that helped me continue my membership for 12 years, go to summer camp in the sierras of California, and attend many other trips and activities that provided vast opportunities for me to learn new things and grow into a confident young woman.
The Opportunity Fund provides financial assistance that helps girls go to camp, covers their Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. membership, and allows them to participate in Girl Scout activities regardless of their families’ financial resources.
I can’t think of a better way to give back to an organization that gave me so much. This donation will give young girls the opportunities to expand their horizons, built their internal strength, and learn how to be better citizens in this global community.
That’s what I’d do… so I’m hoping that I win so I can fulfill that desire to give back.
Who would you donate $5000 to?
Read MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Paid Inclusion
Paid Inclusion:
- Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine’s index in exchange for payment.
The most common cases of paid inclusion happen on directories. While they allow almost anyone to submit a link, users are offered a paid solution that’s guaranteed to get their links in front of more users in a more prominent location. These links are also given more weight in terms of IT resources to make sure they’re coming up in all possible keyword searches rather than just a few or one.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Cribbed Content for August 15th
it’s been a crazy week, but a lot has been going on in the business world (not to mention my world lol)
- CVS Pharmacy bought small California chain Longs Drugs this week for $2.9 billion. Growing up with Longs, I’ll miss seeing the name around but they’re not one of the better stores so I don’t see it as a loss.
- AOL jumped into life streaming with their acquisition of Social Thing this week as well. I’ve never used Social Thing much, but I definitely won’t use it if it just gets pulled into their system.
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston wrapped up – I’m slowly getting all of my coverage posted. The next time I go to the show I hope to have a better laptop with a better battery and better wireless card so I can blog from the sessions instead of taking notes and blogging later. So much for live & current coverage!
That’s really about it this week since I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to antyhing outside of the summit. I did pick up some good tools, so the Free Toolsday column should be back soon!
Read MoreNow Published! Affiliate Manager Communication Strategies
Issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine is hitting mailboxes as we speak, and will be distributed at Affiliate Summit East next week. I’m happy to say that an article I wrote has been published! Now you can read all about a great strategy to keep in contact with your affiliates as a manager. Check out my article on page 12 of the magazine.
If you can’t wait for your hard copy (as I couldn’t) you can download just my article here. Or, if you actually want to read the whole issue, you can get it here. There are a lot of other great articles this time around, including a look at ABestWeb.com founder Haiko de Poel Jr, coupon code woes, and avoiding NY state tax nexus.
I hope to write another article for FeedFront soon, I just need to rack my brain for some ideas :). If you’ll be going to Affiliate Summit East, we’re sure to have a blast. Remember to take lots of pictures – the gang at FeedFront is holding a contest and YOUR picture (or mine!) can win the coveted cover position for the 3rd issue of FeedFront. Not only does the winner get the bragging rights of having their photo on the cover of the magazine, but you also win a full conference pass to Affiliate Summit West 2009 happening in Las Vegas January 11th – 13th.
Read MoreBall: Dropped Stress: High
I have good news, and I have bad news. Hopefully this will explain why I’ve been asleep at the wheel here.
First, the good!
- TrishaLyn.com is now available as a mobile compatible site! Just point your smartphone browser to www.trishalyn.com! Thanks to Shawn Collins & the Geek Cast crew for mentioning this nifty plugin in the last episode and Shawn specifically for sending me the link.
- Speaking of Geek Cast, I was mentioned two weeks running. Apparently Scott Jangro and I will be the only audience members for their Geek Cast Live show from Affiliate Summit, and Lisa’s counting on me to help keep the boys in line. Ah, good times will be had I can FEEL it!
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 is SOLD OUT and takes place in a little over a week. I’m excited to be hitting Boston again and finally meeting some of these people I’ve been networkin’ with online since the last summit.
- Affiliate Classroom Live! is also in about a week, so I really REALLY need to get my act together and formulate some talking points for the round-table discussion I’ll be leading.
Now, the not so great.
I’m sad to say that after almost 2 years my beloved supervisor is leaving our company. I’m going to miss her tremendously as she’s been a complete pleasure and joy to work for! To be honest, I’m taking the change harder than I should because of….- I’m moving! Just from one city here in the East San Francisco Bay Area to another, nothing major. It’s just that I absolutely detest packing and moving. Luckily my husband acknowledges that I’m a weakling and useless in the actual heavy lifting, so I’m on packing and unpacking duty.
- With the change in my supervisor leaving, my job responsibilities are changing as well. I don’t think I can say much right now, but involves some shifting in terms of my focused projects within the marketing department.
Obviously the combined changes of job responsibilities, moving, taking a long weekend vacation to celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary, and taking off for several days to attend Affiliate Summit East are all a bit overwhelming. I hope to be rejuvenated after my vacation and be able to jump back into the swing of things with some excellent coverage of Affiliate Summit!
If you’re giving away stress balls at the summit, save one for me!!
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