Facebook Friends, Profitting from the Recession and a Nifty Plugin
This week, guest NPT blogger Alexander Alaric wrote a comprehensive instructional piece about building leads using Facebook called “How I Got 2198 Facebook Friends With NO Profile“.
To find out how many folks are actually using Facebook as a marketing strategy, I added a Facebook Poll.
I also posted “Have You Tried One Click Installer?” about the plugin that will save you from ever having to upload another plugin with FTP.
And because I know many of you are feeling pinched by the current economy, I posted “8 Recession-Proof Product & Service Ideas for Affiliates” which will help you strategize and succeed during tough times.
Coming up next week, we’ll be talking about how to get into the minds of your visitors to sell MORE of your products and services online.
Until then, have a super prosperous week.
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I make mistakes so you won’t have to… :-)
I think I may have to change the tagline on NPT to the subject line of this newsletter…
“I make the mistakes so you won’t have to.” 
In that vein, yesterday I posted an entry to the blog titled “Another Good Reason to Write Your Blog Posts Offline“.
Fortunately, that was my only major time-wasting gaff this week. However, I’m sure you won’t have to wait long to hear about the next one.
After blogging about why I bought Joel Comm’s PLR package, NPT readers were asking how best to use private label rights articles and templates, so I posted an entry that links to a new article that answers that question.
Note too that post includes a special invitation link on which Joel’s template package is offered at the original price which is 50 bucks less than the current price. Be sure to return to that page if you navigate away to read the whole sales letter.
Anyway, I’m off to try and break something else on one of my sites … so you won’t have to.
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Blogging is a “Massive Mistake”… HUH?
My jaw dropped as I saw the subject line of an email sent out by Ken Evoy last week which read:
Why Blogging Is A Massive Mistake!
HUH?
At one point Ken states “Blogging has reached lemming status. Without even thinking, many small businesses equate blogging with having a Web site“.
Sure, call me and the 112.8 million other bloggers out there ‘lemmings’, but at least we know that a blog IS a web site. Moreover, a blog is a web site that is built to find and deliver search engine traffic… immediately.
Ping - ping - PING!
For those who haven’t started blogging yet - a Wordpress blog is a site-building platform and content management system with an online publishing interface. And because Wordpress is distributed under an open source license called the GNU General Public License, it’s distributed free of charge.
Better yet, easy-to-install (or auto-install) widgets and plugins are regularly developed for Wordpress by legions of progammer/user/contributors who see ways to enhance the software’s already stellar functionality.
By the way, those widgets are also free of charge.
Ken also wrote that blogging is:
…obviously wrong for small businesses with something to sell” and is “also the wrong choice for infopreneurs (ex., those who earn affiliate and AdSense income, without selling anything directly to customers).
Say WHAT? Read more
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Bogus agents, WP2.5, simple upgrades and more…
The latest newsletter has just been sent…
Happy April Fool’s… and nope, no pranks this year, although I see that there were a few ‘take-offs’ around the blogosphere from the one I did in 2006.
The big news for affiliate bloggers this week was the release of Wordpress 2.5, which I talked about in Chomping at the Bit for Wordpress 2.5 and Wordpress 2.5 Officially Released.
I also posted a short piece this morning about Upgrading Wordpress with Fantastico in response to a comment from Evelyn who ended up with ‘weird characters’ on her blog after one such attempt. (Evelyn, it’s not nice to talk about your visitors that way!)
There is also some blog design instruction at How to Correct Bulleted List Errors with CSS and
Have You Updated Your ShareThis Plugin?.
I took issue with something I’ve seen too much of late and posted Agent is Typing… My Eye along with suggestions for a better way of doing business.
Yanik was broadcasting Live Feeds from the Underground® where you can see Marlon Sanders and a whole raft of attendees who attended the seminar. (LUCKY them.. I’m still choked that I had to miss it!) If you missed it too, oyou can pre-order a set of the Underground® 4 recordings (DVD & Audio and workbook) before it goes on sale to the general public — or until 11:59 PM on Friday April 4!
In affiliate program news I posted Chitika Announces a New Way to Monetize Parked Domains and Sell Products to Spanish Markets through Clickbank
Because I’ll still be pretty much housebound for a while, I’ve reduced my consulting fees until May 1st. Wanna chat?
Speaking of housebound, there’s also a little blurb about last Saturday’s Earth hour in Lights Out on Google. We played rummy… what did you do?
Last but not least, I’d like to send a special thanks to Rita Ashin who informed me about a few spelling and grammatical errors on the Super Affiliate Handbook homepage. Just think how much nicer the web would be if everyone took the time to help out another webmaster… not to mention how it’s good karma too! Thanks Rita!
P.S. Stay current by getting the Feed or visit the Blog and share your thoughts, comments and suggestions in the Forum. Always love to hear from you!
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Surgery update, new video, BANS, eBay program and more…
Duh. I only realized today that I didn’t send an NPT newsletter update. Blame it on the morphine… that stuff will really mess up your mind.
First of all, for all those who inquired — I’m feeling much better. Ed sent a short but sweet surgery update and I got out of the hospital last Tuesday. (I just told the doc I was going home and he said “OK”). Shortly afterwards, I got word that the mass was benign. So now it’s just a matter of moving really slow for the next few weeks.
So, while I’ve been housebound, I’ve been blogging and made a video.
The video is a very basic affiliate marketing tutorial called “How Affiliate Marketing Works” in which you’ll see one of my sites, the products that I promote on that site, how I affiliate with merchants and how easy it is to get the affiliate link code to place in your blog.
Posts since the last newsletter include:
- PubCon Las Vegas Dates Announced
- Polling Plugin for Wordpress Blogs
- How to Exclude a Blog Category from Displaying
- Amazon’s Video Widget for Affiliates
- PPC Advertising Doesn’t Work
- Free Bootcamp DVD’s
- Where to Place Affiliate Links for Increased Backend Sales
- eBay Dumps Commission Junction
- Happy Easter Everyone!
- BANS to be Updated by April 1st
I’ll send the next update sooner, so you won’t have quite such a long list of posts to review next time.
See you next time.. and once again, thanks for all your prayers and good wishes!
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Video Newsletter: March 11th, 2008
This week’s newsletter is a video blog post - shot from the top of Giant’s Head Mountain in Summerland, B.C. The video includes a big THANK YOU to everyone for your good wishes and tips for my upcoming surgery as well as information on posts that I’ve lined up over the next week during my ‘outage’. Please forgive the sound difficulties - the wind was blowin’ dead bears atop that mountain!
Posts I made in the last week include:
- March 10: How to Find Your Feedburner ID
- March 11: Matthew Mullenweg to Speak at Elite Retreat (my apologies to Matt for having pronounced his name incorrectly in the video)
Here is a list of upcoming posts. Please note that links to the posts will only work after midnight Pacific on the appropriate day.
- March 13: Polling Plugin for Wordpress Blogs
- March 14: How to Exclude a Blog Category from Displaying
- March 15: Happy Birthday Flickr!
- March 16: Amazon’s Video Widget for Affiliates
- March 17: PPC Advertising Doesn’t Work
Thanks again to everyone and I’ll be back & bloggin’ again in no time!
Cheers,
Ros
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A Busy Blogging Week
Hmm… there’s nothing quite like being scheduled for surgery to remove a mass of unknown origin to propel one into action. In other words, I blogged a LOT this week.
After reviewing notes and listening Affiliate Summit recordings via the web, I blogged about how Jason Calacanis offended affiliates during his keynote speech. I personally thought his point was excellent - when you got past the arrogance.
I reported on Chitika’s new Related Product Unit (RPU) and that Yahoo Search Marketing changed it’s minimum bid policy on Sponsored Search keywords.
At that point, I noticed that Brian Gardner was having an contest for affiliates who promote his Revolution Wordpress themes — which then got me thinking about working on RosalindGardner.com where I ended up installing a new Premium Wordpress Themes (which I blogged about at NPT).
I stopped just long enough to read success stories about sites that sell fitness, tea & gas station equipment and then started blogging again.
I blogged about how much I enjoyed using my Flip Video Ultra Camcorder and embedded some new videos along with my 3-month old godson’s first YouTube video taken at Sun Peaks Resort where we cross country skied last week.
I took a little poke at some U.S. based online merchants who really need to start thinking beyond their borders, and at the discourteous jerk in seat 12F. Of course, I won’t have to worry about rude passengers as my March and April conference plans and appearances have been cancelled.
From now until I go under the knife, I’ll be drafting a series of helpful posts to be regularly delivered during the first part of my recovery.
But I really hope that that there will be an Internet connection in the room so that I can just keep on bloggin’…
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NPT Digest: Freaked, Focused and Cheesed
Yes, this week I’m freaked, focused and cheesed.
First, I’m freaked out about the fact that my old diabetic cat, Vic, is going in for surgery on Friday. Nothing brings Ros to her knees like thinking something might happen to one of her pets.
So rather than freak, better that I put my focus elsewhere …
Most readers’ comments on the “Poll: What is Your Biggest Internet Marketing Challenge?” indicate that lack of focus is their biggest stumbling block.
So, while thinking about that this week, I posted 2 articles by Brian Tracy (super motivator mentor whom I’ve been following since I was about 18), Taking Action and Preparing for the Future that could give those of you (me too) some incentive to focus on the task at hand.
At the bottom of both articles is a link to a FREE CD offer. You can choose from more than 24 titles including Unlock Your Potential, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, Goals and Simplify Your Life. Good deal.
And what am I cheesed about?
Well, it looks like Derek Gehl has beaten me to the punch. My next book was supposed to be about creating your own infoproduct, but on January 24th Derek is launching an all-in-one information publishing “business in a box“ that walks people step by step through the whole business-building process and gives them ALL the tools they need to create and market their own info product.
If building your own infoproduct in 2008 is one of your goals — then you’ll definitely want to be on their ‘First Movers’ list. IMC’s products are always comprehensive and excellent value for money.
On the blog and in the articles section, this week I also posted:
- Can I Use Auctions to Sell as An Affiliate?
- How to Make Money as an eBay Affiliate
- Akismet: Catching 1500 Spam Comments per Day
- Niche Marketing: The Case Against Mall Sites
You’ll also notice that all the blog categories are now listed at the bottom of each page… all 48 of them!
Last but NOT least, if getting traffic from social marketing is your primary focus in 2008, then sign up for the SMARTS coaching program before they shut their doors in a couple of days.
OK, now I’m going to focus on playing with the cat.
Cheers,
Ros
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NPT Digest: My All-Time Favorite Software and more…
I hope all of my U.S.-based friends enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that everyone had a great weekend. Since the last NPT digest, I posted 7 entries to the NPT blog, a couple of new articles and 1 video.
There’s some affiliate program news, including SO Glad I Checked the Junk Mail…, Amazon Affiliate Program: Holiday Promotions and Ingenio Acquired by AT&T.
If you’ve ever been concerned about giving your email address out to some unknown entity, GeurillaMail is a service that gives you disposable addies that last for 15 minutes.
Wordtracker is continuing its discount promotion through to the end of November Promotion.
If you’ve been waiting for video production software, and don’t already have Camtasia Studio loaded, you should definitely jump on Camtasia’s offer to Download Camtasia Studio 3 for Free. I paid $319 for that software back in March of 2005 and now you can have it for nothing. Sweet!
Too, be sure to take a look at the video about my all-time favorite software. It’s a wonderful little productivity tool that saves me bags of time and costs peanuts.
Last, but not least… you can still “Rename the Office Bear: Win a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate“. There is no limit to the number of suggestions that you can make… just make them one comment at a time, please.
Til next time — Promote and Prosper!
Rosalind Gardner, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, software, Camtasia
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NPT Digest: Unexpected traffic, windstorm, Adtech and more…
As if a visit to New York wasn’t exciting enough, things got even more exciting when we got back home from our trip.
But we now that the power has been restored and more importantly, the Internet connection — I was able to catch up on my blogging.
Phew!
I blogged about a slightly bizarre experience at Pearson International airport while enroute to New York, the AdTech conference, our walks about town, and what we discovered on the homefront after the recent windstorm in Penticton — you may have seen my street on the Weather Channel.
While uploading some pictures for the travel blog to Flickr, I discovered an unexpected way to get traffic from that service.
I also posted about two inspirational stories and a site makeover at Beef, Bedding and Beyond.
Lastly, I invite everyone to Rename the Office Bear (seen in my home office video tour) for a chance to w1n a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate.
Til next time — Promote and Prosper!
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