Thor's Archive
The Lincoln Police Department lets us know when a computer is stolen in our local community so we can alert authorities if it turns up in our Service Centers.
We received this alert yesterday. I am posting it here so anyone who searches for the serial number online will know that they have a stolen piece of equipment:
Please be alert for a Freedom Scientific Pack Mate BX440 Braille
Computer and related 40 cell braille display reported stolen on
9-29-08. Ser # on the computer is 4151939. If you have any
information please contact LPD at 441-7204 and refer to case number
A8-097687. Thanks, Steve Standley #337 LPD
Given here are some simple to perform, super tips on how to fix a slow computer.
Ponder before you press “Install”
It has been noticed that often the reason behind an unhealthy and slow PC is the tendency of users to install various programs they may have downloaded from the Internet or copied from a compact disk (CD). These numerous programs occupy valuable space on the hard disk and slow it down. Moreover, some of these programs may make your system vulnerable to viruses and other malicious software. So next time, before you install software you come across on Internet or CD, please take a minute to decide whether you really need that program and ensure that the program belongs to a trusted manufacturer.
Get rid of what you do not need
It is recommended that you take stock of all the programs and applications that are loaded on your computer at regular intervals. Once you create an inventory of all programs that reside on your hard disk, make a decision about the ones that you do not need anymore. Some of these might have come along when you purchased the computer, while other programs you might have used in the past but are not required anymore. Freeing up space by uninstalling these unnecessary programs keeps your PC in shape and running as good as new.
You can delete these programs by using the “Add or Remove Programs” option available in the Control Panel.
Protect your PC from external threats
Antivirus software is an important tool to protect your system from the viruses floating in the cyber world. However, many users simply ignore the requirement of a good antivirus software. It is only when they encounter a computer freeze problem or other errors that they wake up to the seriousness of the issue.
First off, you need to make sure that you have reliable antivirus software installed on your system. Then, you need to make sure that you perform definition updates at least once a week. Finally, you need to perform a complete scan of your system periodically.
Keep your System Clean
As your computer gets old, a lot of dust particles get collected inside your desktop case. This is due to the incoming air generating because of fans located inside the unit to cool down the CPU. The electric charge inside your desktop case also attracts dust particles. Therefore, it is recommended that you remove the panel of the case and clean the unit off dust and dirt. You can use a can of compressed air to clean the inside of the system. Make sure you clean your system from the inside out at least once a year.
Scan and Clean your Registry
Registry problems may crop up on your computer over time, when the registry gets filled up with a large amount of unwanted, outdated, and invalid information. To prevent and resolve these registry problems, you may opt to use a reliable and compatible registry cleaner Vista or XP tool. Using a good registry cleaner tool, you can perform several registry maintenance tasks, including registry clean up, repair, defrag, and backups that can not only help you maintain a healthy registry, but also restore it easily in case it gets damaged.
I haven't issued a virus alert in some time because there really haven't been any significant threats that were cause for alarm. This week however has been different.
This is a very technical situation, so this alert is broken into to sections - a summary and a technical description with supporting documentation. PLEASE read this and take action to protect yourself and your computer.
SUMMARY
There is a new infection spreading online that masquerades as antivirus software when it is in fact a nasty malware infection. This software goes by many names some of which are:
- XP Antivirus
- XP Antivirus 2008
- Internet Antivirus
- Antivirus 2009
These infections will cut through most antivirus software in use today with ease. The only way to protect yourself from this infection is to install the latest Norton Security software (like Norton 360 version 2).
It is important to note that it makes no difference when you BOUGHT or RENEWED your current antivirus software. For example, if you renewed your Norton Antivirus 2007 last night, you are NOT PROTECTED. You must be running the 2009 Norton version (or Norton 360) to be protected.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
Open your Antivirus software (whichever brand you prefer) and make sure you are running the LATEST VERSION. Note that this is different from the latest updates. All major antivirus companies have launched their 2009 software, so that is what you need to have. The following programs WILL NOT protect you:
- Norton Security Center (free from Time Warner)
- AOL Security Suite (free McAfee from AOL)
- Free AVG
- Norton 2008 or older
- Cox Security Suite (From Cox Communications)
- AdAware (free or paid versions)
- Spybot Search and Destroy
If you are not running the latest antivirus software, you need to get it installed fast.
Schrock Innovations will be launching a special sale on our radio show (Saturday's at 10:00 AM) to help reduce the cost of protecting your computer. We will be offering Norton 360 AT OUR COST for a very limited time to get our customer up to speed before they are infected.
We will be offering Norton 360 installed for only $89.99. There is no labor or other costs associated with the installation of this software.
When we announce this sale on the radio, we will get VERY busy. If you want to beat the rush, bring in your computer and mention this email on Friday and we will give you the discount early. IF you have any questions, feel free to contact us.
TECHNICAL DETAILS AND DOCUMENTATION
Over the course of the past few months a series of malware infections has been tricking unsuspecting users into installing fake antivirus software on their computers. Frequently users will see a message informing them that they are infected and need to scan their computer to remove the "infection." The window alerting the user looks very official like it could be a warning from within Windows itself.
In fact, the computer is not infected with anything and the user infects themselves when they install the "scanning tool." Once the infection is in the computer, it weaves itself into Windows' core files making it nearly impossible to remove. The infection is present in safe mode and regular mode, and it reroutes your internet search requests and browsing activity away from programs, tools, and utilities that can be used to remove the infection. If you attempt to install a removal program or anti-virus tool to remove the unwanted malware, it will typically disable the program before it can run or it will prevent the program from downloading the updates it needs to remove infections. Blocking these updates makes the security software worthless.
As bad as this infection class was, it still required the user to install something to infect themselves. As a result, we were able to protect our customers by educating them not to install any security software they had never heard of without calling or emailing us first. But now things have changed and users can be infected with this type of infection now simply by opening a website.
This afternoon ZDNet.com reported that a new security exploit has been made public by a research firm. This exploit effects all browsers (IE, FireFox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc...) If a user visits a webpage that is programmed to attack a computer, this exploit can be used to automatically install software on a user's PC without their knowledge. Malware makers could be using this exploit to spread the above described infections without making the user take any action at all.
This is consistent with the steady stream of customers who have visited our Service Centers over the past few days who are telling us that they did not do anything to get infected. Some reported they simply opened a funny web page that was forwarded by a family member or played a new online game. In fact, the people who are spreading this malware use these tactics to bait people into coming to their websites so the infection can be spread.
Because this is an entirely new threat classification the scanning engines on all antivirus software made prior to 2009 will not detect the infection until it has already made its way into your system. The approximate repair costs to recover from this infection amount to nearly $200.
The Norton 360 version 2 scanning engine can protect you from, as well as detect and remove this threat. If you are running any other year of the Norton software (2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, etc..) you will not be protected from this threat.
We are STRONGLY RECOMMENDING that all of our customers immediately upgrade to Norton 360.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
Schrock Innovations will be launching a special sale on our radio show (Saturday's at 10:00 AM) to help reduce the cost of protecting your computer. We will be offering Norton 360 AT OUR COST for a very limited time to get our customer up to speed before they are infected.
We will be offering norton 360 installed for only $89.99. There is no labor or other costs associated with the installation of this software.
Collin DeRuyck was one of the contestants on Top Affiliate Challenge and since the show he has been a very busy man.
He is working on some new dating websites to cash in on the numerous dating offers that exist on the web. Kris Jones from the Pepperjam Network managed to catch up with him about his current projects, him impressions about TAC and more.
You can read the interview here.
As you probably saw on the show, Collin is a passionate guy who is not afraid to tell things like they are. Congratulations Collin and keep up the great work!
By now you should know that selecting the right keywords for your posts is critically important for building organic search traffic to your blog or website.
Setting your keyword meta-data is only the beginning. The frequency you use your keywords in the text of your page is just as important. Use them too frequently, and the search engines will penalize your page for keyword spamming. Use them too little and your page may not rank as well as you would like.
So where is the sweet spot and how can you get there and stil have your content read nicely to human visitors? There are a few rules and tips you can use to get the keyword density you are looking for in some unexpected places.
Where is the Keyword Density Sweet Spot?
While it is true that the strict definition of keyword density is the number of times a keyword appears in your content divided by the number of total words in your content.
With that said, this legacy definition of keyword density doesn't cut it entirely in today's search engines. Other concepts like relative distance from other keywords can also come into play and make the difference between a high ranking and a smart search engine smacking you down.
The True Experimentation blog explains the concept of relative distance as it relates to keyword density:
For example, let’s say you use the line “We provide SEO services to businesses in the Detroit/Metro area, and throughout Northern Ohio.” The words underlined are the words that must appear together, and the exact same number of times. The words in italics are the words that need to stay the same relative distance from these underlined phrases. Within a sentence or two. In addition, we try and keep all of this in the same order.
The historic "sweet spot" in keyword density is 4-7% - that means that of all of the words in your content, 4-7% of them should be your keywords.
However, concepts like relative distance now also dictate that related words and phrases that support your keywords need to be in your content and placed equally distant form your keywords in the same order to maximize effectiveness.
How Can I check my Keyword Density?
There are a ton of free keyword density checking tools on the market that will give you a straight percentage.
A quick Google search for keyword density checkers will reveal a horde of people who have created keyword density checkers to drive traffic to their websites.
How can I boost my Keyword Density Stealthily?
Remember that search engines look at the code of your site - not the rendered pages. You want your pages to be attractive to humans, while ranking well in the search engines at the same time. While this is not a complete keyword density solution, tips like these can help you go from 3% to 4% in a pinch:
- Name your images using your keywords. You have complete control over the name of the image files you display on your website. Use this to boost keyword density. Also don't forget to assign alt text descriptions to your images that also contain your keywords.
- Add name and title property tags to HTML elements. If you still use tables, assign names to your tables that are based on your keywords. If you link to other internal pages on your website, assign title tags to the links based on your keywords. You can also add name tags to things like horizontal lines (<hr>). If you have one of each of these o your site, you have just added three keyword repetitions that your visitors may never even see - but Google will.
What to Avoid
Don't get carried away with the stealth stuff. Don't use hidden text (white text on a white background). Don't use really really small text. Seach engines can spot this stuff a mile away and may even deindex you if you use it too often.
Today at about 2:30 CST a local Lincoln Internet Service Provider was attacked by a hacker who calls himself the "holocaust Turkish Hacker."
Unfortunately, we host some websites there and they all got zapped. Anything we had on the server that was running WordPress was attacked.
I am not a security expert, but I was told that an exploit in Joomla was used to gain access to the Husker Access server and implant a number of worms.
As Schrock Innovations' programmers worked on repairing the damage, the worms systematically followed our progress, breaking the sites we just repaired. Eventually we stopped working until HA could clean the server completely.
It is interesting to note that our main production server at Binary.net was not impacted by this exploit.
It blows to have your stuf zapped because someone else forgot to update their security, but that is the danger of a shared hosting situation and one of the reasons we own our own servers for production purposes.
I just wanted to throw up a quick post to see how many other people out there have done business with eBay's affiliate program and had difficulties getting paid?
I bought a bunch of traffic from Clicksor and generated about $14,000 in eBay commissions by referring people to eBay who bid on and won an auction.
eBay is telling me that the traffic I sent did not comply with their standards and as a result they are questioning whether they are going to pay me the $14,000 in commissions I generated.
Anyone else have a similar experience?
Read this post to learn how you can get a
MacBook Air for as little as $25 - NO JOKE!
I was browsing around on eBay this morning and saw some scammy looking guy doing what he called a "mystery auction".
The concept was very similar to a blind auction where you bid on an envelope or a package without knowing the exact contents that are contained in the envelope.
I was a little bored today, so I figured what the heck. I have a bunch of e-envelopes going online on eBay via scheduled auctions over the next 24 hours. Each e-envelope contains a free gift from me ranging from $1.00 all the way up to a MacBook Air computer ($1799.99).
In accordance with eBay's rules, this is not a contest, lottery, game of chance or skill, or any other kind of gambling deal. You are bidding on an e-envelope and anything inside the e-envelope you win is simply a gift from me to you.
All of the rules are explained in the auction, but if you have any questions, feel free to post a comment here or call me if you need to.
This is a 1-day auction on eBay that will wrap up Monday afternoon. It will probably take me half a day to process all of the free gifts, but what the heck :-)
Over the past couple weeks we have been working on a new Schrock Innovations website design that will be powered by WordPress.
As you can plainly see, our current design is very heavy and somewhat "PC" (as opposed to MAC). I designed the layout for the current website and served as the "inspiration" for the color selection and design elements.
Our current website is a blend of many designers, talents, one too many Internet Marketing seminars, and a plain old lack of functionality.
Needless to say, I solicited some outside advice on the new design and these are the suggestions customers and other designers had for us:
- Schrock does a lot of enviornmentally friendly things. Why don't we talk about it on the website?
- We have a huge wall of thank-you notes from customers and non-profit organizations we have helped in the past. Why don't we take the hodgepodge of notes off the wall and put something about them on the website?
- We need more white space and less contrast
- Our logo looks like it was designed in the late 1990's (close - it was redesigned in 2002)
- Your DIY content is hard to navigate - you need to make it searchable
The list of suggestions went on and on. We took some of the advice to heart and set out to design the new and improved Schrock Innovations website that will carry our company over the next decade.
Some of the most major changes include the revised logo that maintains the original styling to a point, but incorporates lighter blues than we have used in the past.
It is flexable, efficient, easy to navigate, and most importantly, showcases what we offer - Award-Winning Service. Here is a sneak peek at the design that is being coded to a theme as we speak:
So what do you think?
A friend of mine emailed me the other day and asked a very basic question about a term that gets tossed around the affiliate marketing industry pretty loosely.
He asked me what it means to "own" a keyword or phrase. I have to admit that I have used this term here in the past without much thought about how vague it really is.
Why are Keywords Important
If you are using search engines to obtain and drive traffic to your affiliate marketing websites, SEO (search engine optimization) is very important to your livelihood.
When people use a search engine to find information, they enter words or phrases into the search engine. These words or phrases are keywords and key phrases.
The basic concept behind SEO is if you create a web page targeted toward a specific word sequence or phrase and design it in a certain way, search engines will rank your website highly in search results for that keyword.
That means when people search in a site like Google, your web page is ranked near the top of the results, gaining you free website traffic and free money if you monetize it properly.
So Keywords Determine Search Engine Ranking?
Not entirely. Keywords are one important factor in getting your web pages to turn up for certain searches. Other factors like keyword density, backlinks, content quality, and site design come into play as well.
It is sufficient to say that if you don't have certain keywords you are going after with a web page, it most likely will not rank well for anything and your site will not get the traffic you are looking for.
What does it Mean to Own a Keyword/Phrase?
When you own a keyword or phrase (grouping of keywords) that means that whenever a user enters a certain word or combination of words a particular webpage comes up in the top of the results.
People who use search engines tend to click on the top result most often, the second result about half as often, and the third result about 30% of the time. Anything below the third result position is not likely to get clicked on nearly as often, and certainly does not qualify as "owning" the keyword.
How can I Own my Keyword/Phrase
Choose keywords for your web page and keep it under 5 words total. Place those keywords in your meta keywords section of the head of your website and place them throughout the content of your website. Try not to get too spammy about it.
Next, get as many backlinks to your website as you can using keywords as your anchor text. If my most important keyword is internet marketing the I would want a link that looks like
<a href="http://thorschrock.com">Internet Marketing</a> The words Internet Marketing are my anchor text in this example. When Google sees those links, it will look at the anchor text and associate http://thorschrock.com with Internet Marketing.
In the interest of full disclosure, there is a LOT more to getting good search engine results than is contained in this post, but these basics are a great place to start. Get this right the first time and your future more technical efforts will come more easily.
If you frequent this blog, you may have noticed that we have added a new sponsor in the sidebar - Newegg.com.
Newegg is well knows as a great source for computer technology at great prices, but a lot of people don't realize that Newegg is more than just computers and parts.
Newegg is a great source for home A/V equipment, TVs, digital cameras, gaming systems, and a whole lot more that I don't have time to mention here.
Help support this blog by visiting their website and browsing around. Compare anything they have to the prices at stores like Best Buy and you will quickly see why they are successful!
Regular readers might remember that while I have no love at all for Barack Obama, I really don't have much of an affinity for John McCain either.
But yesterday John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate and in the process exposed the true negative culture of the Obama campaign.
Moments after Sarah Palin was named as John McCain's vice presidential choice (over my personal favorite Mitt Romney) Obama Spokesman Bill Burton responded with the following:
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency."
Now I'm no Karl Rove, but it seems like a stupid move for a campaign spokesman to say this when his own candidate has less than 180 working days in the US Senate, has never even held a meeting of the Senate European Subcommittee which he chairs, and has a thin resume of accomplishments overall (even Obama supporters can't dispute these facts).
On the evening that Obama was nominated as the Democratic Party Nominee, even John McCain took a break from politics as usual to congratulate him on his historic accomplishment. Watch the video below:
Like I said, McCain was not my choice and I still have a lot of questions about where he wants to lead this country. But speaking strictly from a perspective of which candidate is the better man, McCain makes Obama look like as paper-thin as his resume is.
Bounce rate is a measure of how effectively an entrance page on your website gets visitors to view additional pages on your website. An entrance page is a page that is designed to attract initial visitors such as a high-ranking page in a search engine, an index page, or any page on your website you push traffic to.
Bounce rate is very important to website that sell things. E-commerce websites want you to browse at multiple items and make a purchase. For example, lets say Amazon.com buys a Google AdWords ad and you click on the ad. Now you are on Amazon's entrance page for that ad.
If you click the back button, enter a different URL into your browser, close your browser or walk away for 30 minutes before coming back to your computer, you are a bounced visitor.
From a blogging perspective, bounce rate is still important but it means something different. Blogs contain many posts about loosely related topics that tend to rank well in search engines. If you blog about a specific topic - removing Vista from a laptop to install XP for example, visitors will find your blog for that topic, but will likely exit after they are done reading, resulting in a bounce.
Blogs and news websites tend to have higher bounce rates than e-commerce websites.
How is Bounce Rate measured?
Bounce rate is measured as a percentage. To determine bounce rate, take the number of single page views of a page on your website and divide that by the number of visitors who enter your site from a particular page and then multiply that number times 100.
If all of that is too much math for you, just install Google Analytics on your website and let Google track it all for you for free.
What is a Good Bounce Rate?
This number can vary widely depending on the type of website you run. Google Analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik is quoted in Wikipedia as stating:
"It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying."
He wrote this on his blog in May of 2007, and while some time has passed since then, the rules are pretty much the same.
Why Do You Want a Lower Bounce Rate?
The reasons for wanting a low bounce rate depend on the goals of your website.
- E-commerce websites want a low bounce rate because the more pages people look at the more product they tend to buy.
- Sites that sell advertising want low bounce rates because the more pages people view the more ad impressions there are to sell.
- Blogs want low bounce rates because it means that their visitors are consuming a large volume of content each time they visit.
How can you reduce Bounce Rate?
- Improve your content. Write good headlines and great lead paragraphs that capture your readers interest and hold it throughout your article. Use sub-headlines and bullet points to pull distracted eyes back into your content.
- The Conversation Marketing Blog suggests that you use Google Analytics to see what pages on your sites have high bounce rates and which have low bounce rates. Compare the two sets of pages and look for differences that you can remedy.
- Divito Design suggests that you spend some time on your blog's about page. People often look at your about page after reading an article on your website to learn about the author.
- OpTempo suggests you stay away from traffic gaining services like Stumbleupon, Digg, and EntreCard. While these services do send traffic, it usually bounces at an incredibly high rate.
- Improve your SEO efforts to reduce poor quality traffic. If your traffic comes from search engines, make sure that the search engines are properly marking your content so that when people find it and click it is what they are looking for.
In next week's Fundamentals Friday I will write about key word density in your content. What is it, why is it important, and how a proper keyword density can multiply your website's traffic instantly.
Ok, so I'm not the biggest blog on the Internet, but I'm not the smallest either!
Later today I am launching a new weekly post series called Fundamental Fridays. A lot of the questions I received about the Affiliate Marketing series I wrote were about basic fundmentals.
Every Friday I will write a post about a term that you should know as an affiliate marketer. Today's term will be Bounce Rate.
Look for it later today!
I was reading a post on Shoemoney.com about how he maintains such a low comment/spam ratio on his posts. He gets a ton of comments and obviously doesn't read them all, so how does he sort out what gets posted and what is spam?
One of the biggest things he points out is that most comment spam that makes it through Akismet comes from the open list of proxy IP addresses referred to as the Tor Proxy List.
In one swift motion I added every single Tor IP address to my blog's comment moderation blacklist. Here's how you can do it too:
Step 1. Open your WordPress Admin Panel (www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin in most cases)
Step2. Left click on the Settings link in the top right corner.
Step 3. Left click on the Discussion option
Step 4. In a new tab open the most recent Tor list in text format.
Step 5. Highlight and copy the complete list of Tor IP addresses
Step 6. Scroll down to the Comment Blacklist section and paste in the Tor list you just copied
Step 7. Left click the Save button at the bottom of the screen
That's all there is to it! You have just blocked a huge majority of the spammers on the web from posting a comment of fake trackback to your wordpress blog.
One of the throw away blogs I maintain runs Text Link Ads and generates about $100 a month for me. A few days back I was writing a post for that blog when I was interrupted by my two year old son. I clicked Save and diverted my attention.
I returned to the post a few minutes later and found that I had received a new email. It was an advertisement alert from TExt Link Ads telling me a new ad was sold on one of my posts.
I noticed that the link in their email was structured funny. I use keywords in my post page names, but the TLA email said an ad was placed on http://www.URLNAMEHERE.com/?p863.
That didn't make any sense. I double checked to make sure I didn't accidentally publish the post instead of saving it, and sure enough it was in my drafts folder.
This means that Text Link Ads lists unpublished drafts from your WordPress blog in the inventory they sell to their advertisers. The exploit potential here for gaming the Text Link Ads system is huge.
I am not in the business of screwing over advertisers or advertising networks, but there are plenty of people out there who are. Just look at the made for AdSense blog phenomenon.
Is the Exploit Scalable?
Imagine if some of the larger MFA players got their blogs into the TLA system and exploited this vulnerability. It would add up fast for some quick money. Many people don't run Text Link Ads on their primary blogs because of the fear of a Google penalty for selling text links. MFA blogs have already been slapped in most cases, and with Google now allowing visitors to opt out of seeing their ads and restricting the clickable areas within them, these automated content farms are just looking for another way to cash in.
How to Execute the Exploit
The exploit is simple and is actually automated by the TLA's own plugin.
- Sign up for a Text Link Ads account with your highest ranking PR website. Get approved, and then add all of your other websites added to the approved account.
- Once your blogs are approved, load up your drafts folder with fake posts that are loaded with sought after keywords and phrases (like Viagra, insurance, SEO, etc..)
- Wait a couple of days for all of your posts to get into TLA's inventory and watch the money roll in. The ad that was sold on my throw away blog was $5.70 a month for a single word that had not even been published!
Google won't get on your case as long as you never publish the fake posts. In the wild of the Internet the posts do not exist. But to TLA and their advertisers, the words are bought and paid for.
This is obviously something that undermines the TLA system, and I have notifed MediaWhiz (TLA's parent company) about the exploit. Whether they patch it or not is a completely diferent story.
UPDATE 8-19-08
Text Link Ads has emailed me to let me know the exploit has been patched.
This is the fifth post in a multi-post series on
how to dominate an affiliate marketing niche.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
Previous Installments:
Select Affiliate Marketing Offers that Will Make You Money
Research Your Affiliate Marketing Competition Before You Enter a Niche
Design Affiliate Marketing Website Content That Dominates Search Results
Selecting the Right Affiliate Marketing Domain for Your Website
All of your planning and content creation is nothing without a website that puts it all together and gets it out in front of search engine visitors.
There are more website design packages available than grains of sand on the beach, but there is one that I currently use and plan on leveraging for my niche website.
WordPress is a widely recognized and used content management system (CMS) that allows you to quickly post test and images on a website in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format.
Imagine being able to use a word-like interface to format your content and insert imahges and videos, and you have just imagined WordPress.
You can download the WordPress CMS for FREE. Once you have it on your hard drive, follow the nicely documented instructions in the readme file to upload the WordPress files to your new domain and set up the content database. (I know this is a LOT for some newbies to take in in one sentence. Trust me. Just start the WordPress install on step 1 and take it one piece at a time and you will be fine).
WordPress is awesome for a lot of reasons when it comes to affiliate marketing. You can launch several hundred articles in a relatively short period of time because WordPress takes care of the little things for you. In fact, Google is more likely to index your complete content and get it into their index FASTER because you are using a blog platform.
Get it Online Fast - Make it Pretty Later
But just because you are using blog software doesn't mean it has to LOOK like a blog. One of the biggest advantages that WordPress gives you is the ability to start launching your content immediately with the very vanilla default WordPress theme.
Later, when time and resources allow, you can have a very attractive and functional blog design created for you for a pretty reasonable price. (I use Unique Blog Designs - they are a little more pricey than some of the other options out there, but they are fast, thorough, stand behind their work and have ALWAYS been there to help me in the past. They don't flake.)
When that time comes, changing the look and feel of your website is as easy as changing a pair of shoes - literally. WordPress stores all of your content in a database and generates the pages on your website as search engines or human visitors call for them.
Changing a layout on a standard website - especially one with a few hundred pages is a real pain in the butt. But with WordPress, you just install the new template and turn it on. WordPress will start pulling the new design and plugging in your old content from the database. Its that simple!
What Have You Accomplished - A Recap
Up to this point you should have identified a niche to target, researched your niche, selected a domain, started creating content for your new website, and now you are equipped to get that information on the Internet.
There are a TON of things you can change in your default WordPress installation - too many to mention here. Some of the biggest things you should do include:
- Read this guide on WordPress SEO Tweaks
- Install the All-in-One SEO Pack
- Change Your Permalink Structure to /%postname%/
- Edit the titles of your WordPress pages so they only contain your keywords for that article
A simple Google search for WordPress SEO will reveal the plethora of things I have not mentioned here, and it is DEFINATELY in your interest to do that search and spend an evening getting educated. If you have any questions about specific things in WordPRess or SEO concepts, feel free to post them and I wdo my best to answer them.
What is Coming Tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will post about methods you can use to start driving traffic to your website and get it past the Google sandbox as quickly as possible. I will talk about methods to get fast backlinks to your website, generate social traffic, and how to use your existing successful website to propel your new affiliate marketing website to a successful launch.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
This is the fourth post in a multi-post series on
how to dominate an affiliate marketing niche.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
Previous Installments:
Select Affiliate Marketing Offers that Will Make You Money
Research Your Affiliate Marketing Competition Before You Enter a Niche
Design Affiliate Marketing Website Content That Dominates Search Results
IF you are going to play the organic traffic game, you can not ignore the SEO impact of your domain selection. One of the most basic SEO techniques is to pick a domain that contains the primary keywords you are going to gun for.
Just because affiliate marketing competition was low in the niche I selected doesn't mean that all of the good keyword domains were available. In fact, there were no domains available that didn't LOOK like keyword spam domains unless I wanted to spend $1200.
Normally when I buy domains I avoid hyphenated domains like the plague because people simply don't remember them. You might get an SEO bump at acquiring new visitors, but your odds of monetizing a visitor increase if you can keep them coming back. If a person can't remember your URL, they probably won't come back. Worse yet they may just forget the hyphens and end up on your competitor's website.
Maybe I'm silly, but I couldn't justify spending $1200 on a domain for a speculative website. I would rather spend the $1200 on content because it's a much better investment IMO. Because of that I broke down and bought a keyword rich hyphenated domain that would AT LEAST look good to the human eye in the search engine results.
Because I know that more than 92% of visitors to my number one competitor's website come directly from search engine traffic, placing the hyphens carefully was important. I want my URL to look legitimate and worthy of a visitor's click.
For example, rather than grabbing a domain like online-pharmacy-cialis.com I reserved a domain like onlinepharmacy-cialis.com. The first keyword almost looks like a category or a top level domain and the keyword after the hyphen is more specific. My HOPE is that this translates into a legitimate looking URL for a potential visitor who sees it on the search engine results page.
Where Should I buy My Domain?
I would recommend using GoDaddy.com. They are pretty inexpensive, they offer just about anything any new affiliate marketer could need (statistics packages, hosting, SSL certificates, etc...
A new domain there costs less than $10 and if you use the coupon codes at dealtaker.com (highly recommended) you can get a .com domain for as little as $6.95.
Some people reported problems with GoDaddy when the .Me domain land rush started, but I got the domains I was after just fine.
So Why Cheap Out Now Thor?
In my post about buying content I mentioned that spending $1500 was nothing if you are building a $360,000 a year machine. I still believe this is true.
However, I also know that this is a speculative business venture. For example, the $1200 I could have spent on a domain like onlinecialisphamacy.com is better spent hiring a hot acting student and a professional camera to cut 10 tutorial-style videos to ad another dimension to my content.
Keywording your domain is important, but nowhere near as important as the content the search engines (and your human visitors) find there. Always error on the side of content.
What is Coming Tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will post about how get your website built and your newly-created content posted inside it. I am not a coding guy, so I am in the same boat as most people. I will discuss what kind of website you want to launch, where you can go to get it designed, and the different options that are available at different price points.
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This is the third post in a multi-post series on
how to dominate an affiliate marketing niche.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
Previous Installments:
Select Affiliate Marketing Offers that Will Make You Money
Research Your Affiliate Marketing Competition Before You Enter a Niche
In affiliate marketing you can not make any money if you do not have any traffic. You can buy your traffic from a variety of sources, or you can go after organic (free) traffic. Organic traffic is visitors who come to your website by searching for keywords in a search engine.
Since I will not be buying much (if any) traffic, I need to have excellent content to attract visitors from search engines. When it comes to content, there are only three ways to get it:
- Steal it
- Make it Yourself
- Pay Others to Make it For You
Stealing Content
There are a lot of ways to steal other people's content, but content thieves rarely win in the long run.
Google is extremely sophisticated in determining the the source original content. People may be able to trick Google some of the time, but you can't build a long-term income machine on the back of stolen content.
Hundreds of thousands of websites have been created to do this, and they do make a little money - dollars a day. I want to build a single site that earns $1,000 a day or more. It simply can't be done with stolen content - put that one out of your mind now.
Making Your Own Content
If you do not have a budget, this is the only way to get the lifeblood your website needs to dominate in the search engines and you will need a lot of it.
There are a few suggestions that I follow when I create content. Note that I said suggestions and not rules. People on the web will disagree on the finer points of content creation, but these suggestions are pretty safe to follow:
- Each page on your website should be designed to accomplish a specific task. A single page on your website should target no more than 5 very tightly related keywords.The keyword density on a page should be targeted between 4 and 7%. Be laser specific on the content covered on every page of your website to increase the odds it will rank for the desired keywords.
- Each page on your website should contain no fewer that 350 words - even that is a little light. Search engines need a certain number of words to analyze on each page of your website so they can determine what the page is about.If you have too few words, the search engine may rank your page lower than you would have liked. You need those #1 search engine spots to make the big money, so spend the time fine tuning the keyword development in your content.
- Frequently add content to your website. There is a general belief that by continually adding content to your website, SE's will come back to re-index your pages more frequently. This means your new content gets in the search results faster and starts working for you more quickly.
- Make sure all of your pages focus on the central vertical that your website is designed to cover while at the same time adding new search keywords to your arsenal in the search engines. Don't waste your time adding pages to your website that do not focus on the central theme of your website.For example, if you have a website about rain forests, don't add a page about the Iraq war. It doesn't fit and only confuses the search engines as to what your site is supposed to be about. Own your niche. If it doesn't fit, you shouldn't print.
So far I have only focused on text content because that is what the search engines can read easily. That does not mean you should ignore video content, audio content, images, etc...
Properly tagged and distributed videos can drive new visitors to your website and add visual elements that will appeal to your human visitors once they are on your website. Don't forget to give your visitors a reason to stay on your website and consume more of your content. The more they consume (i.e. the longer they stay), the more likely they will monetize well.
Make sure you add keyword-rich alt tags to the images on your website and name them with keyword focused titles. Google will pay more attention to an image named cialis-tablets than it will to IMG0098. Help Google "see" that your content is relevant and related to the purpose of your website.
Buying Your Content
The last option is to buy your content from content creators. This is the fastest - and most expensive - way to get your website up and running with high-ranking pages in the search engines. Because I wnat to start making money in 30 days, this is the option I have selected for my project.
A great source to find content creators id the Digital Point Forums. This is one of the more active forums on the web about making money on the internet and all things related. They have a Buy and Sell section where you can post requests for work like article writing, website design, or graphics design.
I posted a request for English-as-a-first-language content writers to write 350+ word articles. I had more than 25 responses by the next moorning (some within minutes of my post). My request was actually a little odd to many of the people who responded. I wanted articles that read nicely to human eyes AND to search engines.
I got a lot of the usual "I write artikles fur u cheep. Plz consider me for bid." Obviously those people were eliminated right away. There are a lot of people who will waste your time in life, and its best to just get rid of them fast than to try and make a square peg fit in a round hole.
I narrowed the 25 down to three decent writers who followe dthe directions of including writing samples in their responses. I then tasked all three of them to write me a test article, because two of them will probably flake anyway.
After about a day, I had three sample articles - one for each of the top keyword phrases in my niche. I sent them back for minor revisions and then got email addresses and sent each of them requests for 50+ additional articles to be done in no longer than two weeks. Now I should have 150 articles to launch my website that are all highly targeted toward specific keywords and phrases, yet interesting enough to the human eye to fit in with the other top websites in my niche.
How Much Does Paid Writing Cost?
Almost all of the bids I received offered to write for between .01 and .02 cents a word. This is REALLY REALLY cheap (I charge .40 a word when I freelance). Some of the writers submitted 1200+ word articles with tons of fluff, and I simply sent them, back saying I am looking for a more journalistic (read:concise) style.
I honestly pay my writers better than what they ask for because the higher pay rate tends to show some respect for their talent and it gets my work bumped to the front of the line ;-)
They cut the fluff, which made the articles more readable to humans and cheaper for me to buy. I have a target price of about $7-$10 per article. If you do the math with an $8.50 average per article, I will be spending $1,250 on the first 150 articles for my website.
That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that my goal is to generate $1,000 a day with this website. In the grand scheme of things, $1,250 is not a lot to spend in order to get a $360,000 a year machine off the ground.
Paid Content Rules to Remember
If you decide to go the paid content route, there are a few general rules that you need to remember. If you forget these you will end up with crap content, a massive headache, and either an empty wallet or a bad online reputation.
- You have the money, so you have the control. If an article just sounds spammy (as they often do - seriously, that is how these people are paid to write every day so my request was change of pace for them) don't be afraid to send it back for revisions. Writers are like dandelions - they are everywhere and as soon as you get rid of one, another is there to take its place. Respect your talent, but get the job done right the first time.
- You are stamping the reputation of your website on this content. READ IT. READ IT AGAIN. Print it and use a red pen if you must, but if you are serious about having good content that appeals to humans, edit your writers work. No writer is perfect and they know that.
- Don't be afraid to completely reject an article. Let's face the facts. If a English-first-language writer is working for .01 a word, its only a matter of time until they can't keep up and quality starts dropping. This is where having a slightly higher payout works well. Also, by having just a few very frequent writers, your website will have the same writing style and tone across the board. Reward your talent if the site takes off. A $100 monthly bonus to someone working for .01 a word is HUGE to them, but small to the guy making $360,000 a year off their work.
- ALWAYS check your writers work with CopyScape. Some writers will plagiarize other articles on the web to crank out fast content and get paid. Be sure to let your writers know you will be using CopyScape to check their work. CopyScape looks at the content of a web page and then searches the web to see if it was copied form some other website. Your organic traffic game only works if your content is unique in the eyes of search engines. As Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify.
What is Coming Tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will post about how to select the right domain for your new website. I will cover questions about whether you should buy an existing domain or find your own. I will also discuss methods to get keyword-rich domains in competitive niches.
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This is the second post in a multi-post series on
how to dominate an affiliate marketing niche.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
Previous Installments:
Select Affiliate Marketing Offers that Will Make You Money
Before you start any new online or offline money making venture it's a good idea to poke around and see what others are doing in the niche before you jump in with both feet. By doing your homework first, you can save a LOT of time, money, and effort.
After I found a niche that satisfied my search criteria for multiple offers across several networks with good payouts, I needed to see how stiff the search engine competition was for organic traffic.
I pay $99 a month to subscribe to Shoemoney Tools (currently in beta at a discounted $99 rate). You can do some of the same research I do using Shoemoney Tools by accessing other various websites on the web at no cost. However, Shoemoney Tools has the APIs to query Google properly unlike many of the hack and slash tools on the web that get gummed up every time Google changes their algorithm. This package is worth the price for its consistency alone IMO.
First, I did some keyword research using Shoemoney Tools to identify what keywords were common for my niche. Not only does Shoemoney's keyword research tool give me keywords, but it also gives me key phrases with the words in the order they are typed by visitors. These small advantages are what can push you over the top with your SEO.
Little Competition in my Niche
Next, I did some Google searches on those keywords and phrases to identify what websites rank in the highest search engine spots for those keywords.
I was surprised to find that the niche I selected actually has little competition among affiliate marketers. In fact, all but one of the results on the first page were for sites that had little or no monetization at all. They were all genuine information websites there to serve their visitors.
This means I am going to have to really ratchet up my content to fit in with the top dogs. On the other hand, the under commercialization of the niche means that the visitors should convert more easily because they are not being bombed with offers every second.
I spent some time on each of the top competitors' websites and I quickly began to notice which sites rank for just a few keywords and which are really permeating the niche from every angle.
A HUGE Statistical Find
While I was looking at one of the more comprehensive competitor's website, I found a GOLDMINE. A lot of the sites in this niche are 1990's era information pages built with some kind of out-of-the-box website design software. The website holding the #1 result for my most critical search terms was nice enough to leave a counter link on the bottom of their home page to a public statistic page!
I now had the EXACT search terms and keywords, referring websites, traffic counts, and pages on their website that are bringing the most traffic. This information is golden because now I can create pages that directly compete with their top pages and I know exactly how much traffic I can expect to get when I beat them. I can use this information to focus my initial content generation and SEO efforts to drive immediate traffic to my new site ASAP. This is HUGE.
I used Shoemoney Tools backlink checking tool to find out that the same competitor is getting 20,000 visitors a month coming in primarily through 24 pages with only 270 backlinks elevating them in the search engines. This should be a pretty easy target to go after, especially considering the SEO on the pages I am chasing is way out of date.
I now have all of the information I need to craft a website with specific content pages that should quickly rise to the top of search engine results and draw organic (free) traffic to my website.
What is Coming Tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will post about the three different methods of creating content for your new niche website. I will cover what kind of content you need to have, how it should be constructed to rank in the search engines,and the ups and downs of buying your content or creating it yourself.
Subscribe to my Feed to Get the Whole Series Delivered to You.
This is the first post in a multi-post series on
how to dominate an affiliate marketing niche.
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My family and I are spending some time in the Colorado mountains this week, and as we move from tourist haven to tourist haven I keep getting asked what I do for a living.
All of this altitude and fresh air got me thinking about the bigger picture of what I am doing in affiliate marketing. Everything I have done up to this point has been following others into niches. I have been replicating the work that others are doing and tweaking it using techniques and resources that others don't have access to.
With that said, I have never carved out my own affiliate marketing niche and built the long-term infrastructure to make money in it. When you think about it, the majority of affiliate marketers never do that - they simply do what I was doing.
I decided it is time to make my move, so I developed a plan of attack on a specific niche. Most affiliates are looking to make quick money with little or no work. My plan is being executed while I write this, and if it works, I should be making as much as $1,000 a day in as few as 30 days. This should be long-term money that will continue to pour in as long as I tend my website properly.
If you want to see how I am doing it so you can repeat it in your own niche, read on. I am going to tell you how I identified the niche I am going to take on, how I researched my competition, and how I plan on dominating the organic search positions for my keywords to drive highly targeted free traffic to my new website. Here's the plan:
STEP 1. Scan Top Level Affiliate Networks for Pools of Offers & Payout Rates
If I am going to go through all of the work of making a niche website, I want to have lots of money making options down the road. I need multiple reasonably-paying offers for my visitors spread across multiple affiliate networks.
Top level networks like Azoogle, Pepperjam Network , Market Leverage, COPEAC, and CPA Empire do a great job of landing good offers and then holding onto them.
Some of the smaller affiliate network clients (the companies you are promoting through your affiliate marketing efforts) will place caps on how much they will pay out in a given period, so its important to have options that you can switch between.
For example, an online pharmacy offer may only pay for 1000 leads a day, so if you can send more than 1,000 you need to switch the offer you are sending to when you hit the cap.
I believe that I have identified a niche that is flush with offers from multiple clients across several networks. The niche I am going to target also offers some nice payouts ranging between $15.00 and $22.00 per lead (CPA).
There are an average of three unique offers with each network mentioned above that target my niche. I should have lots of options to monetize my traffic for the long term down the line.
So why am I going after such a high payout offer? It is true that most of the time the higher paying offers are more difficult to convert. While many affiliates go for the smaller paying offers I prefer the higher payouts.
Usually you can make $1 or $2 by having visitors install a toolbar, submit their zip code or email address, etc.. I want to go after some of the more difficult ones because the competition in the search engines is a lot less intense in many cases and you can make $1,000 a day on less than 100 leads. You need a LOT more traffic to make tat much money at $1 a lead.
What is Coming Tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will post about how to research the competition in your niche to see what you are up against in the search engines. I will tell you what keyword research tools I use, what I look for in the SERPS, and why it is important to spend some time on each of your competitors website.
Subscribe to my RSS Feed now and you can keep up on each of the installments in this series.
The Breakaway Conference in Denver is all wrapped up and it was a pretty good experience all around. Special thanks to all of the folks at CPA Empire for the welcome basket they had waiting for me in my hotel room when I arrived. There were all sorts of Colorado goodies and my family and I enjoyed them.
I spoke with Declan Dunn on a panel about Video on the Internet and I was shocked by how few affiliate marketers are actually using video to boost conversion rates on their landing pages.
At one point I asked the audience to raise their hands if they are doing anything with video on their landing pages and about 10 hands went up out of over 150 people.
I also had the chance to meet Paul from Uberaffilite briefly in person. Paul and I have been emailing back and forth about some Top Affiliate Challenge ideas for season 2, and I am happy to have his input.
I did manage to learn a few new things at this conference, but the biggest reason I enjoy going is for motivation. In the afdfiiate marketing industry there is always someone out there who is better than you. Many of the affiliates at the Breakaway Conference are the best in the CPAE network. While its always a challenge for me, these conferences are a time to shut my mouth, listen, and learn.
For those of you who are not political animals, the Democratic National Committee Convention is going to be in Denver on August 25th. We were lucky to get a room here because from next week on just about every hotel in Denver is booked full for the convention.
We are staying at the Holiday Inn Select in the Denver Shopping District instead of the hotel that the Breakaway Conference is at. I am a member of a trad organization called TradeBank and I was able to buy the room here for a week using trade dollars we have accumulated over time.
Its not a bad hotel at all. Decent service, very nice 10' deep pool, and that usual blend of Colorado rustic and updated amenities. With that said, the view out our window overlooks Shotgun Willie's Strip Club..er... Gentleman's Club.
Big as day on their marquee it says:
Welcome Democratic National Convention
Note the almost natural-looking droop of the double barreled shotgun that seems to have a curious ripple at the end of the barrel... Anyway, I digress..
We walked over to Applebees for dinner and then to Target to get some odds and ends (and of course you have to wal through the Shotgun Willie's parking lot to get there). The altitude is getting to me a bit and I didn't sleep very well last night, but I am really looking forward to meeting the CPA Empire gang and speaking on the Video on the Internet Panel.
I have been flying all over the place over the past couple months and I am downright tired of it. Nothing is better than having to take my 20" HP HDX notebook through the puffer explosives detector because it won't fit through the x-ray machine. I just love it when the TSA's drool on my system because they have never seen a notebook this big before - and of course I HAVE to take it out to show them....
So we decided to drive to Denver for the conference instead. Its about an 8 hour drive from Omaha, NE to Denver if you take your time, so considering the ticket counter, bag check and claim, security and delays it takes just about as long to fly there.
We are going to stay a few days after the conference in Denver to catch up on some family time. Between everything going on at Schrock and the wrap-up and evaluation of TAC I haven't been home much and my 2-year old son is not afraid to point that out to me :-)
We are going to be staying at the Holiday Inn Select in Denver's shopping district. I have heard its a nice hotel and the King suite looks pretty comfortable on their website.
Watch me on Twitter and if anything happens (yeah right what's going to happen? I am driving across Nebraska) I will tweet!
I haven't been posting a lot lately because I frankly haven't had time! Having a blog is cool because it gives me a platform to talk about the things I am doing to build and grow my businesses and the lessons I am learning along the way.
What really blows is when I am in the process of doing things and I can't discuss them because they are IN THE PROCESS. If I talk about them and they don't happen, I'm an ass. So without giving up the farm, here are some hints about what has been keeping me away from my WordPress admin page for nearly a week:
Schrock's Maintenance Checkup Sale
I mention in a previous post that we launched our most popular sale year last week. We are still knee-deep in computers, but managing to keep up. We are staying open extra hours, working weekends, and using every scrap of space we can to maintenance our customers' computers and get them back in their hands fast.
Negotiating Possible New Service Center Location
We are in the VERY preliminary stages of opening a new Service Center in Lincoln. Our current location is 750 square feet and we outgrew it long ago. Moving a brick and mortar business is a huge pain in the rear between logistics, customer confusion and capital expense.
Krueger Development is clearing a new pad site at 29th and Pine Lake Road just across the street from where we are at now. The proximity to our current location and exposure to 29th street and some of Pine Lake road make the site tempting. Its monthly price tag is a real challenge though. Pine Lake is Lincoln's high-rent district and moving from a 750 square foot space to a 2,400 square foot space is one heck of a rent jump.
Possibly Acquiring one of our Local Competitors
At the same time, we have expressed an interest in acquiring one of our local competitors in Lincoln. This are still pretty preliminary, but the company we are looking at exemplifies the same high-service values that Schrock Innovations has built its reputation on.
If we can manage to pull it off, the price tag for the acquisition will be about $380 per customer, but Schrock would be boosting is clientele by about 20%, gaining potential businesses and web development clients, and adding an extremely qualified and respectable technician.
Acquiring this company could give Schrock the 4th Quarter pump it would need to pull off the nearly $80,000 in capital expense that a new Service Center (done right) would bring with it. The whole thing could work out nicely for everyone involved, and I am hoping to have an additional meeting with the owner of that company when I return from Denver.
Launching New Local Media Campaign
A couple weeks ago our weekly radio show was bumped a few hours later in the afternoon because Three Eagles Communications had a radio auction going on KFOR 1240 that morning.
When we did get on the air, it was really interesting to find that we were talking to an entirely different audience than we normally do on our show. It had been a while since we ran a series of radio commercials, and with the Maintenance Checkup gearing up, this was definitely a good time to promote the $10 offer to those who might be new to Schrock.
We were introduced to a new advertising rep at KFOR named Heidi and she was AMAZING. She got us in on an awesome KFOR deal as well as an irresistible offer on Lincoln's newest radio station, The Breeze. I have always found that radio advertising gives a better ROI on computer repair services than TV, newsprint, or magazine advertising. Nothing against other mediums... Its just that none of them have ever delivered IMMEDIATE results like radio continues to do for us.
I know this doesn't have a whole lot to do with making money online or affiliate marketing or anything like that. It does hopefully explain where I have been though. I will be heading to Denver tomorrow to get ready for the Breakaway Conference later this week. Very much looking forward to that.
Unique Blog Designs has an awesome plugin for placing ads on your website called UBD Block Ad Plugin. The plugin places an easily manageable block of ads on your blog like the two you see for Pepperjam and Market Leverage in my right sidebar.
The old version of the UBD Block Ad Plugin worked great with WordPress 2.5, but a small storm erupted when users started upgrading to WordPress 2.6. These comments on the Unique Blog Designs Blog show the users desperately looking for a solution to display the ads they sold on their blogs.
Nick from UNique Blog Designs was on it almost from day 1 and despite being in bed sick for nearly a week, he managed to get the plugin revised so it was compatible with WordPress 2.6.
If you are looking for a plugin to help you organize the ads on your blog, this is definately the way to go. Thanks Nick and UBD for an awesome FREE plugin, and thanks moreover for some kick-butt service!
A number of companies sponsored Top Affiliate Challenge and most of them came away satisfied with their return on investment. However, there was one notable exception.
Those of you who read Paul's blog Uberaffiliate already are aware that Kevin De Vincenzi from XY7.com (a TAC sponsor) posted a comment about his dissatisfaction with the show.
From Kevin's comment:
We seriously considered withdrawing and publicly denouncing the show on day 2 but figured lets see what happened and it only got worse….I have emailed the shows producer for an explanation as to some of the happening I got first hand from my affiliate manager I sent there and also some contestants as of yet no response…
When we saw the comment the show was winding down and we were a little concerned by it. For some reason I never received the email that Kevin sent, so on the 15th I started emailing him to discuss the show. We were finally able to catch up tonight at 9:30 in the evening and here is what was said.
The Call Begins
This was actually the first time I had ever spoken directly with Kevin. I had always worked with Randall, one of his employees, before. I never had the need to escalate anything to Kevin's attention, so we were faceless names to each other.
The call was pretty charged at first. Kim and I were on the line with Kevin and his partner. Coming into the call I believed that XY7 was upset because the team they sponsored did poorly on the show under the direction of John Chow. I expected Kevin to be upset about the day that John had his contestants walk in on camera wearing Pepperjam shirts instead of XY7.com team shirts.
I was shocked when Kevin told me what he was actually upset about. Kevin was told by Randall that I:
- Instructed the contestants to use any means necessary to earn money - even if that meant violating the terms of an offer.
- Was actively encouraging devious behavior to put dollars in my pocket.
- Was accepting kickbacks from networks to influence the outcome of the show.
- Was Representing the contestants on the XY7.com team as direct employees or agents of XY7.com
I was floored. Now I understood why he was upset. If any of that was true I would have been just as upset as he was!
The truth is that nothing like that ever happened on the show. In fact, the day before we started filming we sat all of the gurus and affiliates down and made it crystal clear that no one was to violate any local, state or federal laws, and that they were to always comply with the terms of a network's offer. Everyone on that set was clear on those rules, and they did not change at any time during the production.
Communication Broke Down
Kevin's information was gathered from his on-site affiliate manager, Randall. Throughout the course of the show Randall expressed to me how impressed he was with the show and that he would like to audition for Season 2 himself as a contestant. Evidently he was taking a very different story back to Kevin.
According to Kevin, Randall told him that the show was active chaos. Randall reported that I was personally telling him that anything goes with the contestants. Randall used a specific instance to illustrate his point to Kevin.
During the show, Big Jason Henderson incentivised an XY7.com offer that despite an effort to get an override form the advertiser, clearly did not accept incentivised traffic. I personally told Big Jason not to run the incentivised offer.
Jason ran the offer anyway and generated about $600 in leads. The end result was that the client did not pay XY7.com for the bad leads. Further, the advertiser terminated their offer with XY7 as of the end of this month.
While all of this was going on, Randall was telling me that the client was going to pay the leads. We all agreed that it was wrong for Jason to do run the offer, but it worked out in the end (or so I thought) so the emphasis was on not letting it happen again. Jason was warned again and told me he failed to understand what it meant to incentivise an offer. I was assured it would not happen again.
So I was talking to the man who I believe is withholding a payout unjustly, and Kevin thought he was talking to a swindler who cost him an offer on his network. Anyone feel the tension yet?
The Resolution
After I realized what had happened as a result of Jason's promotion, and after Kevin realized that the producers of the show never sought to send garbage leads through his network things got a little lighter.
We both thanked each other for the explanations and the focus of the call quickly shifted toward how we could work together in an affiliate-network relationship in the future. I also offered XY7 a DEEPLY discounted rate for a TAC 2009 sponsorship.
The call that started as two pissed off guys ready to go at it ended with two business people ready to move down the road together again as partners in the future.
The Moral of the Story
We have made no secret that there are things we could have done better on TAC. We also have made no secret out of the fact that there will be a season 2 and it will be heavily retooled.
It is vitally important to keep the lines of communication open at all levels - especially in a project as complex as Top Affiliate Challenge. Kevin now has my cell phone number and I have an open invitation to speak with him whenever there is a need.
Sometimes a 9:30 PM phone call can make all the difference in the world. I'll be running some things with XY7.com in the near future. Kevin, get a credit card offer and I will knock it out of the park for you :-)
Shoemoney wrote a post about a new video service in Alpha called 12seconds.tv. Users go to the site and create 12-second videos about what they are doing at the moment.
Very short updates combined with high frequency and social community makes this service a heck of a lot like Twitter for video. They are tightly controlling the number of users as they load test their servers and as a result, the Alpha is invitation-only right now.
I sent some emails to bloggers asking for an invite before I contacted Dave Speiser with Stage Two Consulting. Dave is heading up the marketing for 12Seconds and judging by the stories on TechCrunch, and the LA Times I should have hired him to promote Top Affiliate Challenge!
Dave got me an invite in oh, about 12 seconds, as well as the promise of a LOT more invites for the session I am speaking at during the Media Breakaway Conference in mid-August. If you want an invite drop a comment and I will get you one.
I had never heard of Randy Pausch before I read a post on Ken McArthur's blog yesterday about the man.
He died today. It seems he had terminal cancer and was given only a few months to live. Rather than weeping over the hand that life dealt him, he did the only thing he could do - he controlled how he played his cards.
This man must have been amazing to meet in person. If you have some time, watch this video. This is one of the real meat-and-potatoes items on YouTube that is worth your time. This was his last lecture.
Symantec was doing free security checkups on computers at BlogHer 08 and had a free family online safety guide they were distributing as well.
With kids heading back to the classrooms in less than a month, online safety is something that parents should not overlook.
Sometimes its pretty easy to just say that your kids know more about the web than you do. The cool thing about Symantec's guide is that it gives you the rough overview and if there is an area in which you would like more information, there are links to sites that specialize in those areas.
From the guide:
We’re all trying to manage our childrens' growing
independence and doing our best to defend them and our
computers from the many serious dangers on the Internet.
We’ll go through the top Internet concerns in this guide
but if you are interested to dive more deeply, I’ll recommend
Web sites and publications that can keep you informed
as the conditions change each day.
If you have a child or a grandchild heading back to school home or away, download their free online safety guide and make sure they have their bases covered.