A Re-Committment to TrishaLyn.com
Ah, how I’ve seemed to turn my back on this website! This wasn’t my first website I ever built, but it was the first domain name I ever bough and started hosting after tiring of Freeservers and Blogger. Including the time this blog was on Blogger, I’ve been blogging here for the last 4 years. I started in August of 2007. This blog started out as a way for me to share my knowledge about professional printing, graphic design, and what I was learning about affiliate marketing. This was right after my first Affiliate Summit in Miami in July of 07 and I wanted to share what I’d learned – which was so much! I quickly started blogging more about my career and affiliate marketing and less about professional printing and graphic design. I have no formal training in graphic design – I’m just some jackass with a good eye for layout and Photoshop – so I felt I had no business telling anyone how to do anything in the realm of design.
As I progressed in my journey into affiliate marketing, people started reading my blog, and noticing who I was online. By the time Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston rolled around, I’d been asked to lead a roundtable discussion on self branding at a pre-summit event held by Affiliate Classroom. I was asked because people had taken notice.
Not to bore you, lets fast forward to today. I’ve been working in affiliate marketing for about 5 years (since late 2006). I love it. It allows me to work with intelligent people, work from home, work on my schedule, make the money I want to be making, and I don’t feel like my Theater Arts degree is a hindrance since I write a lot and use those creative writing skills – just not in the same way I used to. There was a point at the end of 2008 where I had to fight to stay in this industry, and that meant leaving my job just shy of my 5 year anniversary there, working at a start up marketing agency for awhile, then an OPM agency, until finally settling down at For Me To Coupon. And I love it, and I’m approaching my 2 year anniversary with FMTC in January. Today I’ve spoken at 3 Affiliate Summits and two other trade shows. I’ve been included in Internet Marketing from the Real Experts and written several articles for FeedFront Magazine. I walk around a conference and can’t get from one room to another without seeing someone I know or getting stopped by someone. It’s a great feeling of professional pride and acceptance.
I realized recently that through my difficulties with a couple jobs and working my butt off, I lost the desire to blog. There’s a long string of time where the only thing on my blog was Affiliate Marketing Fanatics. But I’ve decided to kick some life into this old horse yet!
To the faithful that still subscribe (or were too lazy to remove me from their feed readers, whatever) I thank you. You may have noticed a lot of guest posts lately, and that’s helped me to reinvigorate the site and renew my spark. More are in the hopper, along with some notes I took at Think Tank (yes, I know that was in May, SO WHAT?!), some notes on sessions I attended at Affiliate Summit East 2011, and some general affiliate marketing stuff.
I’m going to pare down the categories here, and redirect my energy into just a few. Please, tell your friends I’m back. Add me to your blogroll and I’ll add you to mine. Let’s DO THIS!
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 21: The Reboot Show
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
It’s been awhile. We’ve been plotting ways to reboot our podcast to make it bigger, better, and even more fanatical than before. While we’re still hammering out some concrete ideas (a little help from you, our listeners, might be nice!) we’ve decided to answer some questions. This week, you’re getting a luxurious 39 minutes of free consulting as we discuss the difference between the various blogging platforms. In in this episode we discuss:
- WordPress.org self-hosted blogs
- WordPress.com hosted blogs
- Thesis theme for WordPress
- WP Unlimited theme for WordPress
- Blogger.com blogs
- Tumblr.com blogs
- Posterous.com blogs (which we’ve been corrected about – they apparently do not allow affiliate links)
- Quick call backs to the other systems out there, like Typepad, Movable Type, & even LiveJournal.
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Or leave us a comment!
Read MoreDo Directories Help Traffic?
When I first started this blog back on Blogger last summer, I somehow got the idea that listing my blog in as many directories as possible was the way to go. I don’t think I read this anywhere but I think my theory was that as many links I could get to my website as possible would be good. I eventually amassed a very large collection of directory listings in my sidebar. The 80×15 banner was my attribution of choice, which I displayed proudly like a badge of honor.
When I made the switch over to WordPress, I kept the directory listings for awhile but I realized that I didn’t really see any traffic from any of these directories. Most of my traffic comes from various social networks & direct visitors, as it did then as well. So I decided the space was too valuable to clutter up with 20+ little directory buttons. I also felt like the only people benefiting from these buttons and reciprocated links on my blog were the directories – not me.
It’s been a month now that I’ve been on this new home of mine and I’m starting to wonder if I did the right thing. I wonder if that “every little bit helps” method I had before was correct, and I got too full of myself in thinking that I didn’t need these links anymore.
So what have you found with directories? If anyone reading has any experience with listing themselves in the many blog directories there are around there on the net I’d love to hear it – please share!
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