Posts Tagged "WordPress"

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 21: The Reboot Show

Posted on May 3, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

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:

Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Or leave us a comment!

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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 14: Eric Nagel in the House

Posted on Sep 11, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

Once again, our schedules just were not fated to correspond this week.  So we enlisted the help of good ol’ Eric Nagel, the king of awesome business cards, to co-host with me.  Watch out Mike – Eric may give you a run for your money!  It was a good conversation, a bit more focused than some.  And in Eric’s honor – no intro music!  It’s a short & sweet episode coming in at 42:30. In in this episode we discuss:

  • CJ Keyword Links expiring – how will this affect affiliates?
  • Affiliate Day on Monday September 14th
  • Twitter changed it’s Terms of Service, and strangely announced it via email.
  • WordPress getting hacked last week and some discussion of upgrading WordPress, plugins, and WordPress MU.
  • CJU, ShareASale ThinkTank, Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate Convention all on the West Coast – no love for East Coast!
  • The phenomenon of Poken, custom logo Poken, and more business-like Poken coming soon.
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Goals for 2009

Posted on Jan 1, 2009 in Career |

There seems to be a rule in blogging that on January 1st, any self-respecting blogger will take a few minutes to wax poetic on one of two topics – a recap of their year previous, or an outlook on their goals of the new year ahead.  All the cool kids are doing it, so I’ve decided to jump into the mix.  I’m not doing anything better today, so why not? :p

I’m going to opt for the latter, and set forth some goals for my 2009.  Some more important than others, but listed in no particular order.

  1. Work out the technical kinks on my blog.  I’ve got some issues with the CSS on this theme regarding spacing in lists, so Id like to either learn enough about CSS to fix this or find a new theme that I like as much as this one.  I also had a problem upgrading to WordPress 2.7 and had to revert back, so I’ll figure out what the heck was causing that & upgrade.
  2. Post every day.  Even if it’s just a quick note about how work is going or something interesting I saw online that day.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to post crap, but just a bit more current things than necessarily waiting until the end of the week to mention some things in my Cribbed Content post.
  3. Get back to doing the Free Toolsday and Saturday Shopper features.  I enjoy doing them, I’ve just been slacking.
  4. Write more guest posts & accept more guest posts.  I’ve been given the opportunity, so I should collaborate with fellow bloggers more than I do.

That’s really it.  If I set a lot of lofty goals, I’ll never finish them all.  So these few are here.  Keep me honest on this and we’ll friends.  Check back here in a year to see if I succeeded!

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BlogWorldExpo 08: Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers

Posted on Oct 16, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 6 comments

I was looking forward to attending this panel despite knowing that I probably knew all there was to know on this subject, because I knew two of the panelists.  Boy was I wrong – it just goes to show you that there’s always something new to be learned when attending trade shows! The panel consisted of:

I was proud of the boys – despite having a crowd of general noobs to affiliate marketing they did an excellent job and really threw out some solid information.

Bullet Point Review!

  • Blended ads look nicer and work better.
  • PopShops has a WordPress plugin that’s super easy to use.
  • Remember to work the ads in creatively.
  • Think and plan for the long term.
    • Your blog is your brand.
    • Be the expert.
    • Share your space.
  • Affiliate marketing is a great start but doesn’t stop there.
    • Be careful – advertising the wrong way can tarnish your image.
    • Think like a business and set goals.
    • Craft a business plan and follow it.
    • Look for other retail opportunities (your own affiliate program?)
  • There’s lots of opportunity for creativity.
  • Most people don’t know it’s an affiliate link and most don’t care (when using text links).
  • .htaccess redirect helps clean links up – fairly simple process.
  • 50%+ of subscribers come by email.
  • Utilize social media to build readership and establish yourself as an expert.
  • People have to get there before they can click.
  • MaxBlogPress, OpenX are good free ad serving plugins.
  • Ninja Affiliate 1.5 is a paid plugin that automatically ads contextual links to keywords you enter in.
  • Peel away ads (page ears) also work well
  • Target your ads to your audience.
  • Yahoo! Answers works well to help establish yourself within your niche as an expert.
  • Don’t venture too far outside your niche.  You want to upsell and compliment your blog.
  • The first thing you’d do?  Tim says sign up with the affiliate networks.  Shawn suggested doing a Google Search to get a feel for your competition.  Mike advises to make sure your site works and that content is up before applying for the affiliate programs – the merchant has to want you.
  • Spend the $10 on a domain & it’ll get over the first threshold when affiliate managers review your application.

I don’t have any notes from the Q&A portion of the panel because a lot of it was specific to those bloggers asking the questions – they wanted to know specifics.  Personally I don’t think a Q&A session is really the time for that but I understand the desire for people to take any opportunity they can get to ask a question of an expert!

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Affsum Session: Content That Kills

Posted on Aug 11, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 2 comments

By writers that kill!  But it’s important to remember, as noted in my notes below, that content isn’t just the written word.  It’s pictures, videos, widgets, everything. The panel consisted of:

Overall it was a great panel, and Lisa did really well as a moderator despite unfortunately loosing her voice between last night & this morning.

Bullet Point Review!

  • People want to write but they’re generally intimidated when they don’t have the “education” to do so.
  • Passion & a unique voice are key.
  • Ask yourself: how am I going to constantly update the readers & provide something new?
  • Know your audience and craft your message.
  • Ask your users for submissions.
  • Contests are great – sometimes merchants will give you freebies to give away for the exposure & talking them up.
  • Readers can tell the difference between reviews that are genuine and reviews that are written just to make a buck (hint: usually they’re overly talkin’ them up).
  • Content isn’t just the written word, it’s also pictures, UGC, videos.
  • Engage your audience & it will create content & ideas.
  • Ask questions to engage readers.
  • Be sure your ads contribute to your overall message – example given was a site for memorials for loved ones who’ve passed on with a banner ad for a popular dating service.  Message FAIL.
  • Design does contribute to the content, and can make it “seem” better.
  • The design sets the tone for the content – a good example is TheDailyCandy.com – the design is fun & so is the content.
  • Have some content that’s controversial…sometimes it gets more hits.
  • Ping.fm is a great aggregate that lets you post across MANY social networks at once.
  • Create an affinity with your audience.
  • How do you get help?  Ask knowledgeable family members, friends, users, and a professional outsource if necessary.
  • What makes content the most compelling?  Angel says be organic & open, be yourself, have some humor, & give a takeaway.  Overall, be consistent!  His example was Chrisbrogan.com.

Points brought up during the Q&A

  • Keep video to 2-3 minutes max to keep attention – unless you’re damn compelling.
  • Stories are better than iteration of tech knowledge.
  • You need to get specific with your niche.
  • Promote new blogs to the readers of your current blog.
  • Passion resonates.
  • Archives need to be accessible and easy – if I just found you & really like your blog, I’ll want to see what you’ve written about before.
  • Effective to use analytics to understand how your audience interacts with you.  It helps narrow down the sweet spot of your topic.
  • Use WordPress plugins to your advantage to highlight the most popular posts.
  • ShareThis is a great tool.

It was totally great!

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Ball: Dropped Stress: High

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 in Career, Conferences & Networking, Rambles | 2 comments

Ball: 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.

  • stressed outI’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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