A Healthier Diet of Content Consumption
While I have been multi-tasking on several projects this weekend I have also forced myself to do something pretty uncharacteristic of me, I have completely changed my daily information gathering routine. This plan will go into effect this next week. This is a plan that I have had for a few months now but have only recently taken the time to follow through.
My morning ritual when I start the work day consists of about 7 newspapers / media outlets that I subscribe to or read for free online. I won’t go into which newspapers or media outlets these are, but I will just say that combined they pretty much cover the spectrum and I can start the day pretty confident that I know what’s going on in the world. As far as this part of my morning routine goes, it’s not going to change that much, but once I finish the news, I usually go out and check my Google Reader to see what’s new from the blogosphere.
I don’t think that before this weekend I had any idea as to how many blogs I was following. Some of these blogs are friends, family, etc., that are not frequently updated, so I moved those and tagged those accordingly in my reader, this grouping of content sources rarely takes up any of my time.
The next area that I focused my attention on was the collection of industry related news sources, like TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. Granted, those two are keepers, but there was probably a dozen or more sources that i must have added on a whim at some point and never got around to purging them. A few of these sources more or less quoted everything TechCrunch had on their site and just added a few lines to the top and pushed it out. I asked myself which of these content providers in this category did I want to hang onto and which ones could I trash. I started pondering this and finally out of frustration, I trashed them all. Then I carefully went out to each of these sites, skimmed their last 20 or so posts and asked myself what I could live without. Once I had gone through this process I added the 8 sources that I felt like I get the most value from and moved onto my next category. One thing I kept thinking to myself as I deleted these content providers was how much faster I was going to be able to get through what I wanted to see and then get started on my day. I also took a lot of comfort in knowing that in the worst case scenario that I deleted a provider that broke a major story that impacted the industry, I would find out about it just as quickly on Twitter as I would if I had it popped up on my desktop anyway.
In the past I have followed a lot of bloggers from around the country, I classify and tags these bloggers a little differently than I do people I know from around the state that also blog, this doesn’t mean that they are by any means more relevant or smarter, it just means that I don’t interact w/ them on a daily basis like I do some of the bloggers that I follow from around the state. One of the things that I noticed while I was looking over some of these bloggers that have accumulated such a huge following is that the content they are putting out is pretty much common sense at this point (social media this, social media that, etc.). I didn’t realize it but I was even subscribed to Guy Kawasaki, lol, that’s a stretch for me. In fact, in contrast, a lot of the posts that I saw from the other group of in-state bloggers was a lot more interesting and compelling than some of the stuff that was being put out to millions of followers with a national following.
This got me to thinking, I follow a lot of interesting people on Twitter and occasionally find myself on their blogs reading posts that they tweet about and quickly I thought of about 10 or so of these folks and added them to my other group of bloggers. Many of the true “experts” as people call them are now absent from my daily reading.
Well, this morning I didn’t get to go to church w/ my wife, instead I had a few things that needed to be wrapped up here at the house today so I came in and started my morning as I normally would a business day. I guess you could say that today was the first official run since I streamlined things, and I have to tell you that i wish that I would have done this a long, long, time ago. (kicking myself in the butt right now).
Something else that I am going to make myself get into the habit of doing in the very near future is to share more of the content that I read w/ friends, co-workers, etc. Google Reader has tools built in I think to do that very thing I am pretty sure but I have honestly not used it for much more than an aggregator in the past, so if you use Google Reader, be sure to add me as a friend or whatever so we can share cool things that we run across with one another.
Blogging is Foundational, Social Media a Tool
While everyone is out spreading the gospel of social media I have found myself spreading a slightly different message lately. Now, don’t get me wrong, social media is an awesome tool for running a marketing campaign, I am on board completely with this, but it is just that, a tool. Social Media is not the answer, it’s the delivery mechanism. I feel that while everyone is serving up the social media cool-aid, we (as an industry) might not be doing our clients any favors by not preaching the basic fundamentals of web2.0, specifically blogging.
While it is true that there is no greater way to build an audience than Social Media right now, I still feel that once you have accumulated this audience you have to “entertain” them, for lack of a better word. By “entertain” I am not referring to song and dance, or anything like that. Your social media audience, whether it be on Facebook or Twitter, has chosen to align themselves with your brand for a particular reason, whatever this reason is, they obviously expect to hear more about it or interact with others about it.
Granted, Twitter offers an excellent opportunity to push content to your audience but when used by itself it only allows you 140 characters to get your message across. Now, I realize that a lot can be said in 140 characters, for instance, coupon and promotional codes can easily be tweeted, but there are always going to be instances where you need more than 140 characters. Without going into a lot of examples, let’s just say you have a new product that you are planning on releasing. You want to push this product information out to your subscribers but it’s impossible to describe with 140 characters, this is not uncommon. It’s widely accepted today to post a shortened URL linked to a blog post with details about this product such as it’s specifications, proposed release date, pricing information, etc. It is for this reason that I find myself emphasizing to clients over and over that blogging is foundational to most campaigns and not so much the social aspect. Yes, we are going to use social media to push your content out there but it’s the content itself we are pushing…
Getting Past the Idea that Blogging is Different…
While the concept of blogging is not hard, a lot of companies wrestle with it when they finally get around to implementing it. I know because I see it everyday. In fact, I have been talking with a close friend recently who has had a corporate blog for several years now and has wrestled with pushing it because he comes from the old school where it’s either published content (web pages) or white papers (pdf’s) that are both carefully worded and lengthy. After talking on the phone for 2 hours one night we determined that the whole informal perspective of a blog post is what he is wrestles with the most. I carefully worded my response to him to let him know that the whole informal thing that he is wrestling with is just the new language of the web.
Now, do I think that white papers or static content on the web is going to go away or become less important? No. I think that there will always be a place on the web for formally worded, static content.
But… just like how Nirvana came along in the 90’s and made it hard for Poison to sell records, blogs and user generated content have forever changed the way we research products and brands… (I am pretty proud of this analogy for some reason!)
Here is a real-world example, I am currently in the market for a digital video camera. I had a few brands in mind so I have naturally been on their websites to see what the technical specs were, but when it comes down to brass tacks I go out and read blog posts that others have written about these products. It is here that I get the big picture. I also don’t think that Apple shows you how to jailbreak the iPhone on their website either, but there are people who have bought the iPhone just to jailbreak it and make it do certain things that they have seen others talk about on their blogs.
With this being said, I hope you can see the point that I am trying to make. The blog is foundational and should be thought about as the center spoke on the wheel of your campaigns. Now, keep in mind that I am well aware of the scenarios where blogging is not foundational, some of these I mentioned earlier, but a lot of our clients will never find themselves in these scenarios based on their business models. It’s our job as consultants to ready our clients with the tools they need for success. It is for this reason that I am going to be pushing a few posts out over the next few weeks that deal directly with the business of blogging.
The By-Product of Social Media Becoming a Buzzword…
On a sidenote, by social media becoming such a strong buzzword, a lot of clients are inquiring about it. I think it’s good to be a realist and debunk a lot of myths regarding social media when talking to clients who sit there with hopeful eyes as you discuss Facebook & Twitter. This is one thing that my partners and I try to do when we meet with our clients and the topic of social media comes up. We emphasize that, yes, in some cases amazing things can happen, sometimes almost overnight (we have seen this first hand), but it’s important to stay grounded and not put all of your eggs into one basket. Something else that I try to emphasize that while we might not be re-assuring you that you are going to do great things w/ your social media presence, it’s extremely important to have this presence regardless, the conversation is going on anyway (probably more on this topic here…)
7 Minutes of Blogging Wisdom – #SoSocial
I was honored to be one of the presenters last night at the Inaugural Southern Socials Event #SoSocial in Little Rock. The presentation format was pretty interesting, we used the Pecha-Kucha format where you basically present 20 slides x 20 seconds each. So, each speaker gets roughly 7 minutes to do their presentation, then of course the Q&A segment. While there was an awesome turnout for the event (we even had a group from Jonesboro drive over), the atmosphere was still very engaging and there was a lot of discussion within the group.
I opted to do my presentation on Blogging as opposed to Social Media because I couldn’t think of a Social Media related topic that hasn’t been covered several hundred times already by others. In case you missed my presentation, here are the slides: (warning: one of these racier slides had a few people spewing their drinks through their noses!)
Here are a few tweets in relation to the presentation:
- arlton: Had a great time @southernsocials. Thank you @bryanjones @amybhole @cottonr @downtownlawyer. Good times with good people. #SoSocial
- jgreghenderson: Good quote "people who are afraid of social media are usually the ones in the business with the checkbook" @cottonr at @southernsocials
- tsudo: @cottonr has now visually offended the entire room
- donaldG: And @cottonr makes a good point, "I didn’t have any value to add so I kept my mouth shut." quality over quantity…
- bryanjones: I’m just gonna say it – I love @cottonr.
- tsudo: No doubt @cottonr knows blogging, great talk
- ghidotti: Ask a question in your blog; you’ll be amazed at the increase in comments and activity. @cottonr
- ghidotti: @cottonr giving the 7 minutes of blogging wisdom. This is good stuff to know in anticipation of my new blog hopefully coming soon.
- donaldG: I just saw the best presidential plea thx to @cottonr, ‘obama bring back arrested development!’ #SoSocial
- steventrotter: We made it to #sosocial! Just in time for @cottonr’s presentation. – http://twitpic.com/o6ufo
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About the Southern Socials:
Realizing the need for such a group in our area, Bryan Jones from CJRW took the lead and organized the group. Here’s a description of the Southern Socials taken from it’s Facebook Group Page:
Description: (Aspiring to be) A community of southern social media leaders. I’ve launched this group because, in the new world of the Social Web, authenticity and integrity can quickly be traded in for a paid blog post, or a false product/service review. The need exists for a group of professionals to face the ethical challenges together, and discuss standards and proper use of Social Media for PR & Marketing. Cheers! -Bryan Jones
Currently the Southern Socials is a closed group, more or less invitation only. The reasoning for this is to ensure that the foundation of the group consists only of people directly involved in strategic development or execution of Brand/Product/Service community management.
Some Thoughts Regarding the FTC Disclosure Rules
I have been out of pocket the past few weeks and haven’t had a chance until today to go over the FTC Rules for Disclosure as they apply to Bloggers. I know that this caused a serious uproar inside the blogger community, ShoeMoney (Jeremy Schoemaker) even called an emergency town hall meeting on TinyChat to discuss these new regulations. You can get ShoeMoney’s scoop here…
I have had a chance to read over the information initially released as well as the supplemental PDF explaining the rules today and for the most part I think most of us are not going to be affected by any of this. The obvious focus of the rule is to go after the fake news and endorsement sites that are out there. Personally, I think it’s going to be really tough to enforce.
There are some points that I want to bring up regarding the new rules that I think you should consider. The first being that if you receive compensation of any kind for promoting someone else’s product on your blog you had better do a full disclosure to let your readers now that. For instance, I recently reviewed a product for another company and received compensation for it. While the compensation wasn’t monetary (it was an Amazon Kindle) I still received compensation for my post. Fortunately for me, this rarely ever comes up. In the instance that I referred to earlier, I honestly was going to do a review of this product anyway and the fact that they sent me a free gift, while it was nice, it still didn’t sway my review one way or the other. Had the product sucked, I would have let you know, I promise…
In Forbes magazine, the FTC said that they were also going after employees of companies who blog as well:
The FTC also plans to crack down on company employees posing as citizen bloggers, a practice known as “astroturf marketing” because of its fake grassroots style.
As far as I can tell, neither of these documents addressed affiliate marketing, monetization, or paid links. I might be wrong, if I skipped over something, someone please be sure to let me know!! Oh, and by the way, if you are caught in violation of these rules, the penalty is $10k.
If you blog, do yourself a favor and spend an hour tonight going over these regulations if you haven’t already. Also, ShoeMoney brought up some good questions that I wanted to share w/ you as well:
I am curious where we stop? Lemme give you a few scenarios:
1) I do a paid $5000 paid post from Google about AdSense
2) I do a paid post from Google where I get paid $100 per new user I get to sign up for AdSense.Those 2 posts could be written completely different. Maybe disclosing the exact amounts paid is where we are headed?
Again for instance if a certain Google employee making 100k/yr is blogging about his company on his personal blog thats one thing. But if that same Google employee has stock worth hundreds of millions of dollars then perhaps that should be disclosed since he can single handily move the stock price up or down, do you think he is every going to blog negatively about his company. Where is this going? How in the world are they going to enforce this? I am guessing we will not see 1 case come from this.
I am Really Liking Disqus
I knew that I was going to like Disqus a lot before I installed it on my blog, but I don’t think that I realized just how much. My first observation after installing Disqus was that I immediately got about 3 or 4 comments on a few of my posts. One of the posts was several months old.
Prior to installing Disqus I had about 140+ registered users that had left comments on my blog, most using Facebook Connect and a few had registered via Wordpress. Well, just by giving my readers the ability to post using authentication from Twitter, Facebook, Disqus, and OpenID has dramatically improved the dialogue I have with my subscribers / readers. I strongly recommend Disqus to anyone looking for an enhanced commenting platform.
Twitme, LiveWriter, WP 2.8 Bug – Workaround
The other day I posted an entry about a bug that I had ran into using the Twitme plugin for Wordpress, and as I mentioned in my post the only thing that had changed was that I had recently upgraded to 2.8.1 on Wordpress.
I also mentioned that I was getting this error when I used Windows Live Writer to publish my content, which I do a majority of the time. This is the error that we were getting back while troubleshooting:
PHP Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /var/www/vhosts/cottonrohrscheib.com/httpxdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitme/twitmeShortUrl.php on line 37
I use the Twitme plugin on my site and several other of my clients sites so I have been pretty persistent in trying to find a workaround for this. If you are not familiar with what Twitme does, it basically pushes your posts directly out to Twitter when they go online. Granted there are a lot of other solutions to accomplishing this, including the manual method that a lot of people like to use but I prefer the automation as do a lot of my clients.
If you have ran into this same issue, or seen this warning message after you publish a post with Live Writer:
The response to the metaWeblog.newPost method received from the blog server was invalid:
Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server
You will want to first make sure that you have RPC publishing enabled inside of Wordpress, this can be found under Settings >> Writing inside the dashboard. If you have this enabled then try going to the Twitme >> Settings page and unchecking the box that says Use Short URL’s, this fixed the issue for me and as you can see Twitter still managed to shorten the URL before it went out.
Possible Twitme Bug w/ Wordpress 2.8
A few days ago I updated my personal blog to Wordpress 2.8 and for the most part everything seemed to be working fine but I noticed yesterday that when I published to my blog using Windows Live Writer I started seeing an error message. If you are not familiar w/ Live Writer it’s a great desktop publishing application that allows you to publish blog posts using RPC.
To use Windows Live Writer you have to first enable RPC publishing inside of wordpress but once that’s done it’s actually pretty handy for a Microsoft application. Here’s the error message I am getting:
The response to the metaWeblog.newPost method received from the blog server was invalid:
Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server
Also, when I published from inside the wordpress dashboard instead of saying at the top of the post that it had published and giving me a link to view the post online I get a white screen but no error message. I wasn’t for sure what could be causing the issue because I hadn’t seen any reports about Twitme errors with version 2.8 so I had our server admin Matt take a look at the error logs and mod security to see if we could track down what was causing this behavior and this is what we found:
PHP Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /var/www/vhosts/cottonrohrscheib.com/httpxdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitme/twitmeShortUrl.php on line 37
Again, I wasn’t having any problems with the plugin up until the point where I upgraded to 2.8 but I am leaning toward there being a bug or something with the application. Unfortunately TwitMe is not one of those applications that you can just deactivate and try to live without, it’s actually a pretty handy tool that posts your blogs to your twitter account, and probably one of the best plugins for doing that that I have seen. I was just wondering if anyone else out there is having any issues with this plugin on 2.8?
More Affiliate Marketing Tips…
A while back I posted My Approach to Monetization after I had been doing a lot of experimentation on various projects and for the most part it was well received, after I had posted this I ran across ProBlogger’s 10 tips for using affiliate programs, and I was amazed that I had a few of the same ideas. Now, keep in mind that I don’t consider myself to be an “expert” on anything because personally I hate that title, I have however been in this industry a long time but I continue to learn something new on a daily basis. I am leery of those that proclaim to know it all when it comes to the web because the web is such a dynamic animal, and it changes everyday…
I find myself consulting with more and more bloggers these days that are hoping to one day build up a following that will allow them to one day quit their day job. In most cases, Affiliate Marketing somehow plays into their dream somewhere, and far be it for me to to be the bearer of bad news, but in a lot of cases it’s harder to build sustainable income from blogging than it looks, but not impossible.
One of the things that really gets under my skin are the motivational materials that are out there teaching everyone how to quit their day job and start blogging for fun and profits, you’ve seen them. Most of the time these guys are just doing their best to get you to buy their books. Of course there are some real success stories out there, just Google ShoeMoney or ProBlogger and see what they have been able to do.
There are some things that these guys, the real experts, have in common and you have to figure them out on your own if you are going to be successful. Both have their own individual styles of course, but there are key ingredients that I think a successful blogger has to have. One positive thing is that both of these guys are willing to give back what they have learned over the years, here’s another example:
Darren’s first 10 tips, followed by 6 more that he added today…
1. Consider your Audience
It almost goes without saying – but it’s worth putting yourself in your readers shoes and consider what they might be looking for as they surf by your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be looking for related products or accessories? What would trigger them to purchase? Start with your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this approach you could end up doing your reader a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.
2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best
There are literally hundreds of thousands of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but making money from them is not as simple as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog day after day because something about you resonates with them – they have at least some level of trust and respect for you and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy something that you don’t fully believe will benefit them.
The best results I’ve had from affiliate programs are where I give an open and honest appraisal of the product – including both it’s strengths and weaknesses. The most successful affiliate program I’m involved with here at ProBlogger is Joel Comm’s e-book which I reviewed here. If you read the review you’ll see that I not only tell readers who I believe the book is for but I also mention those it is NOT for. In a sense I critique it. On a surface level one might think that this wasn’t a wise move and that I should have given a glowing review – however the sales that I’ve had through the program have proven otherwise. People want to know what they are buying first and even if they know a product has limitations they will buy it if it meets their particular need.
3. Link to Quality Products
We all like to make sure we’re buying the best products money can buy – your readers are no different to this and are more likely to make a purchase if you’ve found them the best product for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations and quality sales pages. There is nothing worse than giving a glowing review of a product only to send your reader to a page that looks cheap and nasty.
4. Contextual Deep Links work Best
When I started using the Amazon Associate Program I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (that linked to Amazon’s front page) at the top of my blog. I thought that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big – thereby making me a rich man. Nothing could have been further from reality – I was deluding myself.
I always says to bloggers that I’m consulting with that they should learn something from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like Adsense is that a reader is reading a post on a particular topic on your blog and when they see an advertisement for that same product they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site won’t be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertiser products that are relevant for readers reading particular parts of your blog.
So if you’re writing a blog about MP3 players and have a review for a particular product – the most effectively affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that links directly to a page selling that specific model of MP3 player. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages – but I find that it’s been worth the effort.
5. Consider positioning of links
One of the things I go on and on about with Adsense optimization is the positioning of ads. I tell bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar – or inside content – or at the end of posts above comments etc). The same principles are true for affiliate advertising.
6. Traffic levels are Important
While it’s not the only factor – traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people that see your well placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will make a purchase. So don’t just work on your links – work on building a readership. Not only this, consider how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where they are more likely to see your affiliate links.
7. Diversify without Clutter
Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. At the same time you shouldn’t clutter your blog up with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and could disillusion your readership.
8. Be Transparent
Don’t try to fool your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always feasible to label all affiliate links I think some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. I also think consistency is important with this so readers of your blog know what to expect. For example here at ProBlogger usually put a note beside or under affiliate links to simply let readers know that that is what they are. On my Digital Camera Blog I don’t do this because of the large number of such links make it clear by the text around the link that clicking on it will take them to some sort of shop or information where a purchase is possible (ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’.
9. Combine with other Revenue Streams
Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive things. I’ve come across a few people recently who have said they don’t want to do affiliate linking because it will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is potential for one to take the focus off the other – there is also real potential for both to work hand in hand as different readers will respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other revenue streams – but don’t let one stop the other.
10. Track results
Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics package which will allow you to watch which links are effective. Some of these packages are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what isn’t. Watching your results can help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of what positions for links work well, which products sell, what wording around links works well etc and use the information that you collect as you work plan future affiliate strategies.
Well, today I was reading 6 more tips that Darren had posted on his blog, and here they are:
11. Build Your Network Before You Need It
Perhaps the biggest thing that I’ve learned about affiliate marketing is that it works best the bigger and stronger your network is. I mentioned in my first list that ‘traffic levels are important’ – this is true, but connected to it is your ‘network’.
Whether it be loyal blog readers and subscribers, your email list, your Twitter connections, your Facebook friends or some other social network – the better your network the better you’ll do at driving affiliate sales.
It’s not just about size – the size of your network is only part of what I’m talking about here. Also important is the depth of relationship that you have with your network/readers and the amount of trust that they have in you. If you have consistently helped people and been useful to them over a long time they’re probably more likely to respond to your recommendations.
Relevancy/Focus counts – The other key part of your network is how relevant it is and how focused it is upon the topic that you’re doing promotions on. For example – I see some people on Twitter running competitions to build their follower numbers in a way that just brings in any follower that they can. The problem with this is that they end up with a large but unfocused network. I personally would rather have a smaller network who all shared the one interest than a large one who just signed up to get a prize.
Lastly, a network takes time to build – if you think you’ll be doing some affiliate marketing at some point in the future – start building your network now, before you need it. This gives you time to build the depth of relationships, trust and focus of your network before you begin promoting affiliate products.
12. Try different Mediums
I’ve alluded to this above already but one of the things that I’ve noticed over the last few years is promotions work differently on different mediums.
For example: some affiliate promotions seem to convert best in a blog post, others work best when you send an email to a list you’ve been building while others seem to take off on Twitter or other social media sites.
The key is to try different approaches, to have build up your network before you need it (see above) and to track the results for each promotion so you can check what is and isn’t converting.
13. Multiple Promotions of the same Product
I spoke about this at Blog World Expo last year in a session but don’t think I’ve written about it here at ProBlogger. Here’s what I’ve found:
If you write a single blog post promoting an affiliate product you’ll have a certain percentage of readers buy the product (the % varies a lot). If you are able to follow that up with a different type of post a few days later it can reinforce the promotion.
Here’s how I’ve done it on my photography blog:
- Blog Post 1 – a post announcing a new product, giving some benefits, sharing who the product is relevant for etc.
- Blog Post 2 – a post a few days later that is an interview with the person behind the product – exploring why they made it, expanding upon what it includes, who it’s for and giving the product context. I’d try to also include some tips or suggestions for readers who don’t buy the product in such an interview so it is a useful post for everyone.
- Email List – later in the week email out the subscriber list linking to the previous posts and reinforcing the promotion.
- Tweets/Followups – I would also include a few Tweets about the promotion through the week and would consider a 3rd blog post a week later – perhaps some reader reviews of the product.
The key is to not spam your network but to find interesting and useful ways to draw attention to the product multiple times over a week or two so as to reinforce it and give those who take a little longer to make a decision the opportunity to get the product.
14. Bonuses Work
There are many techniques that internet marketers use to increase sales of their products. I find some a little ‘cheap’ and ‘nasty’ but many do work. Two that I’ve found less offensive and/or manipulative are where you add value to the affiliate promotion by either adding a bonus of your own to the offer and/or getting the person behind the product to offer a bonus or discount just for your readers. I’ve done this a number of times on my blogs and have found that conversions are significantly higher.
15. It takes Time
A theme that regular readers of ProBlogger will recognize is that making money from blogs (through any method) takes time. While an affiliate program does have the potential to make you a lot of money very quickly – it almost always comes after a lot of work and once you’ve spent a lot of time and effort building out your network.
The early days of building your network may see very little (if any) results. I personally earned very little from affiliate marketing in my first year or two of blogging but as I mentioned above in the last year or two it’s really begun to exponentially increase – partly as a result of getting smarter with my promotions but partly just as my network grew in size and quality.
16. Timing is Important
One of the things I’ve learned over the last week of launching my own product is just how much difference there can be in the rate of sales at different times of the day and week. It would vary depending upon the location of most of a blog’s readers but for me sales have been significantly up during business hours in the USA and on weekdays. No real surprises there.
The lesson translates to promoting products – unless the product has a real focus upon the type of people surfing the web on the weekends or late at night you’ll want to time your promotions to those times of the weeks that your audience is online. Similarly – avoid public holidays – this last week even though we launched the workbook 3 days after Memorial Day in the US I suspect we lost a few sales as some people took the week off.
Disclaimer: I don’t usually reference affiliate marketing experts unless in my opinion they are truly experts, Darren Rowse fits into that category as an expert in my opinion…
Every Company Needs a Blog…
I deal with a lot of clients today that have been with me since I got into this industry almost a decade ago, and for the most part my partners and I have had a hand in developing every aspect of their web presence from the bottom up so when they see their competitors launching these things called “blogs” they naturally reach out to us for advice as to whether they need one or not. My answer 90% of the time is yes, and here is my reasoning…
Your corporate website is what it is, it’s a great resource for information about your company, products & services, etc., but a blog can bring so much more to the table. A blog is a lot more personable and interactive in my opinion, and in a lot of ways it should be viewed as a direct link between you and your consumers where they also have the opportunity to communicate their needs or perspectives on your posts. This can be extremely valuable not only in making sales but also in improving your product or service offerings.
A lot of the companies that my partners and I work with on a daily basis have blogs, and for the most part I subscribe to each of them if for no other reason than to stay in the loop with what’s going on within their organization, but it has also helped me to find additional products and services offered by these providers that are well suited for our company.
If your company isn’t providing a blog right now, you could be missing out on establishing a much closer relationship with your existing clients as well as reaching new ones. One misconception we run into is that given the fact that some organizations we have worked with might already have 20 or 30 thousand dollars already tied into their web presence, they instinctively think that adding more functionality to their site is going to be expensive, and that could not be further from the truth. Adding a blog to your existing web presence is extremely cost effective and can possibly have a larger return than any other component of your web presence if it is managed correctly…
For more information about adding a blog to your corporate or business website, please don’t hesitate to contact my partners and I for a free consultation, click here.
Darren’s 21 Blogging Mistakes…
I have to hand it to Darren Rowse again on another great post. Recently, @alisonkerr asked the question on Twitter, “What’s the most common mistake made by new bloggers? How can we avoid it?“ Since Blogging has become a buzzword that has trickled down to the “unwired society” it’s something I get a lot of questions from both existing and potential new clients about Blogging.
I have a couple of things that I usually like to share with them that I have picked up through the years of managing my own website and blog. Ironically, a lot of the advice I hand out is echoed in Darren’s response, below you will find his answer to Alison’s question.
If you currently have your own blog, or are considering starting a blog, I strongly recommend www.problogger.com as a great resource for free advice from a true expert, and if you know me, you know that I don’t throw out the term “expert” very often.
- Giving up too early – blogs take time to take off
- Putting off starting a blog – waiting until everything is just right before launching can mean you never do it
- Echoing what everyone else is talking about – say something unique and share your opinion
- Not blogging on your own domain – I know some swear by using hosted blogs but if you want ultimate control of your blog it is best to do it on your own domain and hosting.
- Irregular Posting – you don’t have to post every day but try to establish a regular rhythm of posting
- Being too apologetic – ’sorry I haven’t written for a while’ can end up being the most common type of post on a blog – yes apologize if you’ve messed up but don’t be too hard on yourself – keep investing your time into building your blog up rather than highlighting it’s problems.
- Focusing more upon Quick Traffic than Loyal Readers – there’s nothing wrong with a big rush of traffic from social media or another blog – but just as important as that is building reader loyalty. Sometimes growing one reader at a time is more fruitful than getting spikes of traffic that never returns.
- Clutter – too many buttons, widgets, navigation elements
- Great Posts but Terrible Titles – don’t short change yourself by investing hours into writing great content only to slap a mediocre headline/title onto it.
- Not Defining a Topic – the most successful blogs have a well defined topic/niche (or they target a certain demographic)
- Choosing a Topic you have no Interest in – for your blog to be successful you’ll need to blog regularly on your topic for years – if you want to sustain it choose something you have an interest in or love for or you’ll run out of steam.
- Too many Ads – I don’t have a problem with ads on a blog from Day #1 but when they overpower the content and push it down the page too far they hurt your chances of building a loyal readership.
- Being too Insular/Expecting Readers to come to You – many bloggers starting out fail to realize that the more you put yourself out there and interact with other bloggers the more chance you have of being read.
- Blogging about Making Money Blogging (as a first blog) – I’ve lost count of how many bloggers I’ve seen start blogs on the topic of blogging for money when they’ve never made money blogging. Start with something you know.
- Not Being Useful – blogs that meet needs and solve problems are blogs that people will keep coming back to and which they’ll spread news of to their network.
- Writing for Search Engines Before Humans – you can always tell when a blogger discovers Search Engine Optimization for the first time. Suddenly titles don’t make sense, keywords appear in posts for no real reason, links to other pages on the blog that are irrelevant to the post keep being used. Learn SEO – but keep your readers as your #1 priority.
- Becoming a Stats-a-holic - the lure of checking your stats is understandable and common to new (and older) bloggers – but it can become an unhealthy obsession that leads to distraction and depression.
- Link Baiting with Personal Attack – taking pot shots at other bloggers might get you some quick traffic – but hate breeds hate and the type of readers you attract and the culture it’ll breed on your blog could come back to bite you. Plus you’ll get a reputation that you might not want to live with.
- Not Knowing Why You’re Blogging – while most of us don’t really know what we’re doing at the start – the faster you can work out what the purpose of your blog is the sooner you’ll start moving toward achieving that purpose.
- Not Selling Yourself – one thing I don’t think many bloggers get is the power of blogs to sell yourself as a blogger. There’s nothing wrong with monetizing a blog with ads – but maybe a better long term strategy is to use a blog to advertise who you are and what you can offer readers.
- Thinking You Have to Know it All – one of the best things about blogs is that they’re a great medium for involving your readers in the process of learning. Leave space for others to interact, share what they know and contribute.
As I alluded to earlier, I agree with each and everyone of these blogging mistakes that Darren pointed out, in fact I have handed out each of these as advice in the past to people that have reached out to me about starting their own blog. When asked, I also provide my clients with another piece of advice:
Blogs are hit or miss and their success is dependent on a lot of variables, some of them you can control and others you can’t. For example, you might write the best content you can possibly provide but let’s face it, if you aren’t an extraordinary or interesting person in real life, the chances of you becoming the next ShoeMoney or ProBlogger are probably slim and none, of course there are exceptions, but for the most part the average Joe who blogs about his kids baseball team and their vegetable garden that gets one or two comments a week should probably feel pretty good about themselves.
The number of blogs out there that actually generate a sustainable income versus the total number of blogs out there is probably astronomical, and would be somewhat deflating for a lot of people who look at the web as their next frontier with that glassy look in their eyes (you know the type). As deflating as it might be, it’s just a harsh reality.
The advice that I give all of my clients that are looking to start a blog is simple and it applies to their expectations. Don’t start blogging for any other reason than to have fun, this way if your blog never generates a single comment, or you don’t make a single dime in ad revenue, you won’t be able to say that your time was a total loss.
