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Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Rosalind Gardner

Super affiliate, blogger, and speaker, Rosalind is best known for her affiliate marketing training in the Super Affiliate Handbook: How I made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peoples' Stuff Online. You can connect with her on Facebook.

Get a ‘ScooterSqueezeâ„¢’

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Going to Affiliate Summit in July? Well here's your opportunity to do some good and get some warm fuzzies in return.

The Affiliate Summit organizers are holding a charity fund raiser through AffiliateHug.com. All monies raised through this effort will go directly to the March of Dimes, a non-profit health organization that works to prevent premature birth and other serious threats to infant health.

For an online donation of $20.00, you'll get a certificate entitling you to one (1) ScooterSqueezeâ„¢ and a “Freshly Squeezed” commemorative t-shirt. Better yet – buy 5 for $75.00.

What's a ScooterSqueezeâ„¢? It's one of Scott Hazard's world-famous hugs. Here's what Connie Berg of FlamingoWorld had to say about hers…

“Soft and squishy and warm like a melted marshmallow, that is what a Scooter hug is. Like potato chips, no one can have just one! You haven’t been hugged if you haven’t had a Scooter hug!”

Hug certificates can be redeemed at the Affiliate Meet Market on Sunday, July 8, 2007 during the Affiliate Summit 2007 East Conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

Click here make a donation and get your own ‘ScooterSqueezeâ„¢'.

ShoeMoney Parody Site Hilarious

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I had a rip-roaring good laugh this morning that woke up the rest of the house after visiting Linda Buquet's ‘BootMoney a ShoeMoney Rip Off – Friday Funnies' post and following the link to BootMoney's site.

The whole thing is absolutely hilarious, filled with bogus domain name picking tips, a really nifty Keyword Generator and a foundation for affiliates who suffer from ‘BMS' (Bad-Marketing Syndrome) which apparently is very similar (but not related to) PMS.

But I am most impressed by his car.

Let's hope that if and when he starts giving training seminars for affiliates that he'll take everyone outside and let everyone bask in its beauty. Better yet, he should offer a contest and give the winner a ride! 🙂

Oh boy! I might have to sign up for THAT one!

Free Hosting is BAD for Business

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Don't even think about using a free hosting service to host your professional affiliate site!

Not unless you don't mind someone else's ads plastered all over your site and a domain that looks like:

‘http://freewebhost4u.com/~yourname/yourfiles/‘

e-YUK! That's just cheesy and it doesn't give your visitors a good first impression.

You want your site to look professional, and the first way to give a professional appearance is to register own top-level domain name, ie. ‘http://yournichesite.com'.

Another good reason to have your own top-level domains is that many merchants don't allow affiliates who use free sites to join their affiliate programs.

Once you've registered your domain, you'll need a hosting service in order to store your site's files.

I've run the gamut of hosts from good to bad. ‘Bad' is when they go out of business without any forewarning and your sites just disappear – which is a good case for keeping all your files carefully stored on your computer for quick upload.

My sites are hosted on an Enterprise VPS server at WebSite Managers.

A dedicated server would be overkill for your first website, so I recommend that you sign up with BlueHost.

The reason I like both those services is that they use the Cpanel interface with Fantastico.

Fantastico allows you to install a large number of different programs with the click of your mouse.

At the time of writing, there are over 50 scripts loaded into Fantastico for quick installation on my server.

Program types include blogs, content management, customer relationship, discussion boards, e-commerce, FAQ, guestbooks, discussion boards (forums), hosting, billing, image galleries, mailing lists, polls, surveys, project management, and site builders.

Installing blogs, forums and other software is easy with Fantastico!

Installing a WordPress blog takes under a minute. I just type in the name of the folder (directory) in which I want to place WordPress and the software creates a new folder. Then you choose a name for your blog, as well as a username and password for administrative functions.

Click on ‘Finish' and presto! your blog is online.

Love it!

Start your business right with a GREAT web hosting service like  BlueHost.

10 Reasons to Start a Discussion Forum

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Riches, fame, glory … OK, that's perhaps exaggerating somewhat, but running a successful forum can certainly make you very popular and bulk out the wallet considerably.

Here are the ten best reasons to start your own discussion forum:

  1. Meet People – Do you love to garden, do wood-working or build model airplanes? Visit a forum on any niche topic and you'll meet others who are also interested in that topic.
  2. Share and Learn – Help others by sharing your knowledge and learn from those with new and different experience.
  3. Increase Branding – Repeated posting is a great way to get your name out there.
  4. Enhance Credibility – Become known as an ‘expert' by providing thoughtful answers and suggestions to questions posed on the forum.
  5. Boost Traffic – As you become more widely known as an expert, your name and URL will be mentioned elsewhere on the web, which then brings more visitors to your site.
  6. Improve Site Ranking – More visitors means better page rankings at Google and higher search engine listings at all the major search engines – which in turn means MORE traffic still!
  7. Create Information Database – Any product or service sold generates a set of commonly asked questions. Post answers on your forum and then send people directly to the specific answer on your site. Having them go to your site will also help boost your page rank and bring in still MORE visitors!
  8. Reduce Workload – Regular forum participants will answer questions that others have posted, thereby reducing your workload.
  9. Gather Information and Feedback – Need new ideas for products? Post your own questions to find out what your forum visitors most want and need – then use that information to:
  10. Promote Products – Display ads for products related to your forum visitors' interests at the top and bottom of every page. Ads can be for your own products or for merchants with whom you are affiliated. Post new messages when you have a new product that your visitors will be interested in.

Those are just the obvious reasons – I'm sure you'll discover many more benefits when you become master of your own forum.

Start Your Own Forum Today

How to Start a Discussion Forum ToolkitIf you want to start your own forum, you may have questions like:

  • Which software should I use?
  • Would it be better to utilize an off-the-shelf forum service?
  • How much will I need to pay (or can it be done for free)?
  • Even once established, how should I go about promoting and driving traffic to my new discussion board?
  • How should I moderate or control my forum?
  • What ground rules should I set?
  • Can this really turn into a worthwhile or profitable tool for me?

Get your questions answered by Michael Green, owner of the world's biggest Internet marketing forum.

Michael has created the web's first ever eGuide tutorial which shows you precisely how to establish your very own online Discussion FORUM. Discover everything you need to know in order to create and draw visitors to your very own FORUM today at How to Start Your Own Forum or Discussion Board Over 82 sources of FREE forum software included.

Adsense Arbitragers to Lose Accounts

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According to Jennifer Slegg over at Jensense.com, webmasters with MFA (Made for Adsense) sites are getting emails from Google stating that their business model is unsuitable and that their Adsense accounts will be disabled as of June 1st.

WOOHOO!!! YeeHA!!! and it's about time!

FYI – Webmasters with MFA sites send quanitites of inexpensive pay-per-click traffic to their sites for the sole purpose of having visitors click their Google Adsense or other contextual advertising network ads such as the Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN). The business model is known as arbitrage.

These sites contain absolutely no content. No informational articles, product endorsements, news or anything else a good affiliate / publisher would place on their site.

Here is a graphic image of a site that came up after searching for ‘running shoes' at at SearchFeed.

This is only a portion of the page, but the whole page consists of nothing but Google Adsense and other links fed from contextual advertising networks. The navigational links point to more of the same.

So, why am I gleeful that these guys are getting shut down?

Well, as someone who uses the Internet to shop, these sites are absolutely useless and a total waste of my time. It gets increasingly frustrating when you click on one of the ads on these pages and end up on another arbitrager's site. Groan. (I've made it a policy to never click on these ads.)

From an advertiser's perspective, these guys cost me money by bidding on keywords for which they provide no useful content. With them gone – it should be easier to bid higher positions without additional cost.

Furthermore, I haven't put my Adwords ads on Google's content network for ages because traffic from the arbitragers' lousy sites is complete garbage. When people click any ole link on a site just to get off that site – that hardly qualifies as targeted traffic. It simply burns up your PPC advertising budget in a hurry and you get almost nothing in return.

Basically, once the arbitragers' Adsense accounts are terminated and I know my ads will show up on decent sites that offer great relevant content, I'll start placing my ads on the content network again.

We'll see what happens.

Online Sales to Soar in 2007

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The State of Retailing Online 2007, a study conducted by Forrester Research, Inc., forecasts that online sales will soar again this year.

According to report, 2007 online sales (including travel) are expected to rise 18 percent to $259.1 billion. Sales excluding travel will reach $174.5 billion. This strong growth will come off of an impressive performance in 2006. Online sales last year rose 25 percent to $219.9 billion. Excluding travel, online retail sales rose 29 percent to $146.5 billion, representing six percent of total retail sales in 2006.

Apparel has taken over the top spot in terms of online sales volume. Online clothing sales are forecast to hit $22.1 billion in 2007, and 10 percent of all clothing sales are expected to occur online in 2007.

Why such dramatic growth?

“Retailers are doing such a great job online that in some cases it's easier to find and buy clothing on the web than it is in a store” said Scott Silverman, the executive director of Shop.org. Free shipping policies, more merchants and making the buying process easier are also responsible for the increases.

Computers, autos and auto parts, and home furnishings round up the top 4 online retail sales categories. For more information about the study (and more niche market selection ideas), read the full National Retail Federation press release.

Got Bills?

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Of course you have bills!

But, this post isn't really about your bills. It's about your merchants' search policy and restricted trademarks.

By using “Got Bills?” in the title of this post, I may be in violation of LowerMyBills affiliate search policy, as ‘GOT BILLS?' is a ‘Restricted LowerMyBills TMs'.

Here is a portion of the LowerMyBills.com search policy:

There are many ways for affiliates to market LowerMyBills.com. While we encourage entrepreneurial creativity among our publishers, we would appreciate your adherence to the following regulations regarding our affiliate marketing practices.

The email mentions specific promotional techniques and Restricted LowerMyBills TMs to avoid, including:

  • Linking to our site directly from any search engine.
  • Using triggered-event headlines such as “Get a $600K mortgage for $300 a month”
  • MORTGAGE QUOTES. FAST. EASY. FREE.
  • EASY COMPARISONS. MORE CHOICES. BIGGER SAVINGS.
  • LOWERMYBILLS.COM
  • LOWERYOURBILLS.COM
  • GOT BILLS?
  • BILLPAY PLUS
  • LOWERMYBILLS.COM

If it seems ludicrous to worry about using the phrase ‘got bills?' in the title of a blog post simply because it is one of my merchant's registered trademarks; you may have missed my ‘Affiliate's Corner' column in Revenue magazine in late 2006.

In it, I wrote about the struggle I had to retain affiliation with a credit card merchant after being accused of allowing their trademarked terms to appear in comment spam on one of my blogs.

That accusation was completely ludricous because I didn't own the ‘suspect' blog, and their failure to do proper research cobmined with a ‘guilty until proven innocent' approach wasted so much of my time that I could not in good conscience continue to promote their product. BTW, I get more junk snail mail from this bank than all the others combined. How's that for ironic?

Anyway, if that merchant took issue with blog comment spam – how might your merchants react if you post their trademarked terms in your blog titles? Is that an infringement of their policy?

The point is that if you don't know — ASK.

Read your merchants' search policies, ask questions and abide by the rules if you want to continue your affiliation. Most reasonable merchants will send you a warning – however, as you now know, not all merchants are so reasonable. 🙂

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