Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 9: Meetings, Skype, and Pure Vanity
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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!
Okay, I got caught up on Friday with lots of work, so I didn’t get this episode edited until this weekend so we talk a lot about dated stuff, unfortunately. But never fear – there’s plenty of good stuff that we cover in our sweet, sweet 30 minutes of podcast.
- We chat about the Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition meeting held at eBay.
- The countdown excitement to getting vanity URLs for our Facebook profiles, and the nice aspect of having unique names.
- The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s video featuring Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com.
- Affiliate conferences coming up, including my excitement about traveling to Denver for the first time and a long foodie aside on bagels and pizza in the now SOLD OUT (exhibitors and meet market tables) Affiliate Summit in NYC.
- Using Skype for business calls, podcasts, and actually paying for a subscription.
- Finally a big shout out to custom bumper stickers giant John Fischer of Sticker Giant for helping us out for our upcoming Getting Noticed FAST panel in August.
5 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Now
Guest Post by Nicole Munoz.
Image courtesy of jscreationzs | FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Sales are down, investors are bailing, and companies are laying people off left and right because they can no longer afford to staff full time workers. It’s been a heartbreaking process for millions of people across the country who awaken to the reality that they no longer have a job to go. But let’s take a positive look at how this can be good for everyone; businesses and the unemployed alike. Many experienced professionals with new-found time on their hands are turning to outsourcing their skills to make some extra money while they search for full-time work. There are benefits for the hiring companies as well. This blog will look at the top 5 reasons why outsourcing is a great idea.
For many of us, cutting down our expenses has become a routine part of life. Companies are no different. Once a full time staff member has been let go, there is an empty space in the function of the organization that still needs to be filled by someone. Other employees may be asked to take on the additional role, and for expense’s sake, it’s a good idea to utilize them until sales increase. However, an even better idea is to outsource! With this form of employment, a company can save on the expense of having a desk, PC, office supplies, etc. set aside for that person. Outsourced workers usually work from home and are available by phone, email, or fax which means that they are instantly accessible.
Another great reason to outsource your work is that there is a large pool of potentials ready to be interviewed at any time you need. With companies like elance and oDesk, they have freelance workers ready to start immediately. They can bid on the projects and job openings that companies post. Many times, the freelancers get paid by the project to complete projects, but they can certainly be hired on a permanent basis. Each person receives feedback after they complete a job or project, so new clients can see that they have a good reputation. Another type of outsourcing, as with StartRankingNow, employs a set of people who are always on stand by to take projects immediately when clients knock at their door. Each person is contracted out to perform certain jobs based on their skill sets.
Third on the list of reasons is convenience. It is extremely fitting, especially in this economy, to hire someone “by the project” if you aren’t prepared to hire someone full time. If you needed marketing brochures or web content, for example, you could hire an expert to get the project done right away. After everything is completed, you can get back to running your business. Expertise is another great reason to outsource your work. With a flooded job market, there are tons of specially-skilled professionals ready for the opportunity to get hired out for your projects. This economy has given companies an even better choice of qualified individuals to hire for any task they need completed!
Finally, outsourcing is a great method for hiring because project tracking is already done for you online. Due dates for rough drafts, revisions, and final drafts are all laid out by the client and adjusted as necessary. Project management is easier and faster than ever with these helpful online tools! So, don’t spend another moment worrying about how your site is ranking; find an SEO Expert to outsource
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Nicole Munoz is the owner of Start Ranking Now. She is an SEO Outsourcing, Link Building, and Social Media Expert. She also conducts SEO training in San Diego to other entrepreneurs and Internet marketing professionals.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 8: Twitter Obsession and Some Real Tools
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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!
Another two weeks has passed and we’re back. We started with a good sized agenda and elaborated into areas we didn’t expect. Despite trying to keep it short since Mike’s not feeling well, we still ran a hearty 45 minutes. Remember to drink your fluids, kids! In in this episode we discuss:
- Twitter Job Search?
- Twitter TV Show?! Twitter says not so fast.
- Blink 182 Tweet Deck
- Whatever happened to WeFollow?
- Server issues Mike’s having with GoDaddy Shared Server Hosting. Might try Host Gator, BlueHost, HostMonster, JustHost. Not ready for dedicated servers like Rackspace.
- Update on DataFeedR data feed plug-in Mike’s using
- Blogger LinkUp Update
Cribbed Content for May 29th
At first glance when starting to compile this week’s Cribbed Content, it didn’t look like much was going on. My Google Reader was kind of light, as were the other scoops and news coming across my desk. But then when I really started to dig, I found some cool stuff! Including a really easy Twitter Contest from DIY SEO to win a Kindle!
- Last week I reported that Affiliate Summit East 2009 was all sold out of booths. They’re now all sold out of Meet Market tables as well, the first time for them that they’ve sold out of exhibitor space before Early Bird pricing was done. Congrats to the ASE09 team!
- Speaking of Affiliate Summit, co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were in Dallas at the Inbound Marketing Summit speaking about monetizing blogs. Missy was kind enough to share their slides from the presentation.
- Affiliate network ShareASale is toying with an Affiliate API and has released the initial sections for use.
- Google recently changed their trademarks policy in regards to AdWords paid search ads. Search Engine Land wrote an article on how to protect your brand under Google’s new trademark policy, and Geno Prussakov also wrote an article on how this applies to affiliate marketing.
- Apparently Google mucked around with PageRank… AGAIN… and devalued Twitter profiles. Which is fine with me since I realized awhile back my twitter page was PR9 when this here blog was only PR2 (currently my twitter page is a PR3). What really irritated me was that, out of nowhere, this blog went down to PR0 out of nowhere with no real changes other than a redesign (that, if anything, should have HELPED SEO). So in my opinion Google can shove with with their PageRank racket anyway. Anyway, Andy Beard explains a few things about the change.
- I’ve seen a certain someone from a certain CPA network tweeting a lot in the last two days about making money from Twitter with CPA ads. That seems to be ALL this person is tweeting about and it’s getting on my anti-spam nerves. So instead of calling this person out, I’ll be passive-aggressive and just pass on this article for everyone: 10 Irritating Mistakes that People Make with Twitter. Thanks Nikki Pilkington for a good article right when I was thinking about it!
- I’m a big fan of to-do lists. There’s been some talk about different apps recently (I was turned onto Toodledoo and love its integration with iGoogle homepage). Nate Moller wrote a great article on why to-do lists are key to entrepreneur success that any slightly unmotivated or scattered entrepreneur should read!
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at two different affiliate marketing conferences this summer. One I applied to speak at with some dear colleagues of mine back in March after getting the idea in February, which has lead to a build up of excitement. The other came rather unexpectedly recently and I’m very happy to be speaking at both! So come hear me talk about cool stuff!
Affiliate Convention – June 18th & 19th – Denver, CO
Friday, June 19th. 10:15 – 11:15 am.
Super Affiliate Room I: Social Media Marketing
Do you Tweet? Have you found Facebook useful for fun and profit? Wade Sisson, David Snyder, and Trisha Lyn Fawver take this session through the various social media applications and teaches several ways to successfully harness the power of speaking to a massive audience of friends, followers and fellow social media users.
I’ll be speaking along side: Wade Sisson, Director of Marketing for PartnerCentric and David Snyder, Co-Founder of Search & Social
Affiliate Summit East 2009 – August 9th – 11th – New York, NY
Sunday, August 9th. 12:00 – 1:00 pm.
Classroom D: Getting Noticed FAST
Regardless what your role in the industry is, it’s important to be noticed within the industry. Learn the networking and social media techniques that make it possible.
Our panel will be moderated by Lisa Picarille, Online Marketing Consultant at LisaPicarille.com. I’ll be joined by Mike Buechele, Founder of Comic Book Fury, Jen Goode, Doodler-in-Charge of JGoode Designs, and Stephanie Lichtenstein, Affiliate Program Manager for Andy Rodriguez Consulting.
Some come on out! I’ll have plenty of good things to say and you’ll be able to meet me live and in person!
Read MoreMy Blogs Now Available on the Kindle!
So, all the cool kids are doing it, I thought to myself, why NOT make my blog available on the Kindle? So yes, I went ahead and added all my blog projects to the Kindle store on Amazon! Now for the affordable price of $1.99/month you can read my blog on your Kindle! I also added my other blogs that I rarely discuss here, so please allow me a moment to pimp them as well…
By the way, for my fellow bloggers out there, it’s free to you to add your blogs to the Kindle store. Just go to KindlePublishing.Amazon.com to sign up!
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