Attract Blog Traffic Archives - Page 2 of 25

How to Kill an Affiliate Partnership with Just One Facebook Link

May 11, 2015 By Rosalind Gardner

So, I was booking a trip to my hometown of Toronto to surprise my 100-year-old mother with a visit on Mother's Day. (If you've followed me on Facebook for any amount of time, you'll know that this effort goes beyond the beyond.)

I'd chosen a hotel that I've stayed at often over the years. As the best pricing is most often available by contacting them directly, that's what I did, BUT while I was on the phone with the hotel I'd, I was checking Hotels.com for their pricing and discovered that their price was $9 a night cheaper which amounts to more than $10 per night when you factor in taxes.

After going back and forth with the hotel manager – who refused to honor the Hotels.com pricing – I booked online through Hotels.com.

After the runaround, I thought I'd let my Facebook friends know about the tack I'd taken to save over $100.

Being a good affiliate marketer, I grabbed my Hotels.com affiliate link from CJ, then went to Bit.ly to have it shortened.

Right after posting, I returned to the CJ site noticed the following Hotels.com affiliate marketing restrictions posted very clearly just below the ‘Get Code' area:

Restrictions:

We do not pay commission on packages, flights or any other line of business except completed hotel stays.
Affiliates are not allowed to promote Hotels.com via Twitter, Facebook or Facebook Advertising without written approval.
Toolbars, browser applications and/or extensions are not permitted. Publishers wishing to utilize such tools will be evaluated on a case by case basis by Hotels.com.

YIKES!!!

You can bet that I deleted that Facebook post immediately and fervently hoped no one was the wiser. 🙂

I know the rules and restrictions imposed by those advertisers that I promote most frequently, and most allow me to post direct links on my Facebook account.

But because I don't promote Hotels.com very often, I just assumed the same was true for their program.

As always… ASSUME… Makes an ‘ass' out of ‘u' and ‘me'… mostly me.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot.

ALWAYS check your affiliate program restrictions so as NOT to restrict your affiliations.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

280+ Words and Phrases to Avoid Spam Filters

March 23, 2015 By Rosalind Gardner

Do you ever wonder how many of the emails you send to your newsletter subscribers get caught up in spam filters and junk mail folders?

While checking my Gmail today, I was surprised to see how many marketers' messages – to which I subscribed – were in the spam folder.

A quick scan down the list and it was easy to see why Gmail deemed those messages to be junk… they were rife with spam trigger words and phrases.

Here's a partial screenshot of what I found. I've circled and blurred the names of marketers (and affiliate networks) and placed rectangles around the spammy words and phrases.

I particularly like ‘buy parajumpers online', don't you? 🙂

You'll notice that exclamation points, ALL-CAPS, and mentions of money (income, sales, millionaire) and medicine are all big no-no's.

Here's a list trigger words and phrases that get caught in spam filters and that you should try to avoid using in your email marketing campaigns.

100% Free
18+
21+
$$$, $$ or $
% (as in loan rate)
100% satisfied
4U
Accept credit cards
Account Balance
Account Error
Act now! Donâ€™t hesitate!
Additional income
Adults only
All natural
Amazing
Application
Apply Online
As seen on _____
Auto email removal
Avoid bankruptcy
Bargain
Be amazed
Be your own boss
Become a member
Best price
Big bucks
Billing address
Billion dollars
Bulk email
Business opportunity
Business proposal
Business relationship
Buy direct
Call free
Call now
Can't live without ____
Cancel at any time
Cannot be combined with any other offer
Cash bonus
Cashcashcash
Casino
Cents on the dollar
Check or money order
Claim now
Claim your _____
Claims not to be selling anything
Claims to be in accordance with some spam law
Claims to be legal
Claims you are a winner
Claims you registered with Some Kind of Partner
Click below
Click here (link)
Click to remove
Compare rates
Compete for your business
Confidentially on all orders
Confirm your address
Congratulations
Consolidate debt and credit
Copy accurately
Coupon
Credit bureau
Credit card offers
Credit score
Creditors
Cures baldness
Dear friend
Different reply to
Dig up dirt on friends
Direct email
Direct marketing
Discount code
Do it today
Don't delete
Drastically reduced
Earn per week
Easy terms
Eliminate bad credit
Email marketing
Erotic
Expect to earn
Extra income
Fantastic deal
Fast Viagra delivery
Financial freedom
Find out anything
For free
For instant access
For just $ _____ (some amt)
Free
Free access
Free cell phone
Free consultation
Free DVD
Free grant money
Free hosting
Free installation
Free investment
Free leads
Free membership
Free money
Free offer
Free preview
Free priority mail
Free quote
Free sample
Free trial
Free website
friend@ (in return address)
Full refund
Funding
Get It Now
Get paid
Get started now
Gift certificate
Great offer
Guarantee
Have you been turned down?
Hidden assets
Home employment
Human growth hormone
If only it were that easy
In accordance with laws
Increase sales
Increase traffic
Instant cash
Insurance
Investment decision
It's effective
Join millions of _____
Laser printer
Last Chance
Limited time only
Loan
Long distance phone offer
Lose ____
LOTTO
Lower interest rates
Lower monthly payment
Lowest price
Mail in order form
Marketing solutions
Mass email
Meet singles
Membership information
Message contains disclaimer
Millionaire
MLM
Money back
Money making
Month trial offer
More Internet traffic
Mortgage rates
Multi level marketing
Name brand
Natural
New customers only
New domain extensions
Nigerian
No age restrictions
No catch
No claim forms
No cost
No credit check
No disappointment
No experience
No fees
No gimmick
No hidden charges
No inventory
No investment
No medical exams
No middleman
No obligation
No purchase necessary
No questions asked
No selling
No strings attached
Not intended
Offshore
Offer ______
On sale
Once in lifetime
One hundred percent free
One hundred percent guaranteed
One time mailing
Online biz opportunity
Online pharmacy
Only $
Opportunity
Opt in
Order now
Order status
Orders shipped by priority mail
Outstanding values
Over 18
Over 21
Pay less
Payment details, i.e. Payment declined
Pennies a day
People just leave money laying around
Please read
Porn
Potential earnings
Price drop
Print form signature
Print out and fax
Priority mail
Prizes
Profits
Promise you _____!
Pure profit
Real thing
Refinance
Removal instructions
Remove (in quotes)
Remove subject
Removes wrinkles
Requires initial investment
Return on investment
Reserves the right
Reverses aging
Risk free
Round the world
Safeguard notice
sales@
Satisfaction guaranteed
Save $
Save big money
Save up to _____
Score with babes
Search engine listings
Search engine optimization
See for yourself
Sent in compliance
SEO
Serious cash
Serious only
Shopping spree
Sign up free today
Social security number
Special promotion
Stock alert
Stock disclaimer statement
Stock pick
Stop snoring
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
Strong buy
Subject to credit
Supplies are limited
Take action now
Terms and conditions
The best rates
The following form
They keep your money â€” no refund!
They're just giving it away
This isn't junk
This isn't spam
Trial offer
University diplomas
Unlimited
Unsecured credit/debt
Urgent
US dollars
Vacation offers
Viagra (and other drugs)
We hate spam
We honor all ____
Weekend getaway
What are you waiting for?
While supplies last
While you sleep
Who really wins?
Why pay more?
Will not believe your eyes
Winner
Won
Winning
Work at home
You have been selected
Your income
XXX

Yes, that is a very long list of spam words, but you don't have to remember them all.

You can use SpamAssassinâ„¢, the spam filtering tool provided by Aweber. It automatically checks your message and displays key areas that appear to be spam and are caught by the filter.

Aweber advises that any message with a score below 5 is OK to send.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Pinterest Banned Affiliate Links

February 15, 2015 By Rosalind Gardner

Update: After Pinterest banned affiliate links, they had a change of heart. Learn about Affiliate Links on Pinterest â€“ Know the Rules.

Thousands of bloggers, perhaps tens of thousands, are raving mad because a major source of affiliate revenue, Pinterest, banned affiliate links on their platform.

In an email to its ‘Power Pinners' late last week, Pinterest stated all affiliate links, as well as all redirects and trackers, would be removed from the site.

Particularly hard hit are affiliates with links from two popular affiliate networks, RewardStyle and Hello Society, which are being specifically targeted.

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal on Friday, a Pinterest spokesperson stated, â€œWe observed affiliate links and redirects causing irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior.â€ The spokesperson also said, â€œWe have noticed their Pinner behavior going downhill,â€ and â€œthis has caused slower delivery of Pins and less relevant Pins in peopleâ€™s home feeds.â€

According to Pinterest, no pins will be deleted. The past Pins will still show up and be clickable, but the tracking links will be stripped.

So, those who were using tracking links from bitly.com just for tracking will have their links stripped.

Why am I NOT surprised Pinterest banned affiliate links?

Ask yourself WHY as a Super affiliate marketer of 17+ years (15 years full-time) experience – did I NOT devote time working Pinterest, or add a section to my coaching programs about ‘how to monetize Pinterest‘?

Because the writing was always on the wall.

I've only come across one blogger who was smart enough to mention the ‘additional step' affiliate bloggers need to do now in light of this turn of events at Pinterest — that they'll have to link back to their own sites — and they actually lamented that fact.

Ah, pity, theyÂ (affiliate bloggers) areÂ SO HARD done by. However, that's exactly what they should have been doing to make a secure full-time income as affiliate marketers – basic online business stuff that I've been teaching since 2003.

For those of you who remember what happened to affiliate marketers who played the “Google Cash” game – direct linking to merchants from Google Adwords (and Google was PAID for those links) – Pinterest was bound to follow suit sooner or later.

Pinterest has disallowed Amazon affiliate links for years, yet some affiliate blogger / marketers put their heart, soul, and all of their effort into monetizing Pinterest through direct linking to their merchants, despite the obvious sign of impending doom.

Do I feel for them?

Sure.

I'm sorry that they were fooled into buying into some shyster's ‘How to Make Money on Pinterest‘ B.S. program and wasted all that time and effort, rather than learning basic affiliate marketing business principles which, at very least, include:

Build your own blog / brand

Provide added value

Link back to your site from third-party venues

Build a list

Create a relationship with those on your list

Care about your readers

Market to those people as if they were your friends and family

The message is and always will be – work to build a business (emphasis on WORK).

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question, or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

The Best Day of the Week to Send Email

January 20, 2015 By Rosalind Gardner

In response to the ‘How often should I post to my blog?‘ article, John A. asked:

how did you decide to send out notifications on Tuesday, rather than, say, a Saturday or Sunday, when logic says more people would be at home?

That is such a great question and the answer is pretty simple.

The majority of my readers reside in North America – the U.S.A. to be precise – where weekends tend to be sacred. Both Saturday and Sunday are holy days, and for those who don't observe religious days, weekends are still primarily devoted to family.

I've received some very negative feedback on the few occasions that I've sent email on a Saturday. And don't forget, my Saturday (Pacific time zone) easily turns out to be a Sunday for my many friends in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

The argument against sending emails on the weekend is corroborated by a GetResponse 2013 survey which determined that weekend open and CTR (clickthrough) rates were considerably lower on weekend days than during the middle of the week.

They further highlighted that Tuesdays enjoyed the best open rate and Fridays had the best clickthrough rates for emails sent on those days.

Having said all of that, so much depends on YOUR readers and the niche in which you work.

You can get to know your contacts' habits by doing a little research after you send an email.

Simply check the open and click reports for your past emails to see if there are any patterns.

The best advice I can offer is to test to see what works best for your readers.

You could do an A/B test – send out the same email to 2 different groups at different times – or, test over a period of a couple of months to get to know your readers' preferences somewhat more organically.

By the way… You ARE building a list using a bonafide autoresponder service like Aweber or GetResponse aren't you?

If your answer is ‘NO' or ‘not yet', PLEASE check out the following 3 articles:

Basically, if you're NOT building a list, you're NOT building an online business.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

How Too Much Automation Annoys Your Twitter Followers

October 29, 2014 By Rosalind Gardner

When it comes to social media sharing, following and/or marketing, I'm not a big fan of Twitter and rarely login to my Twitter account.

As someone who enjoys writing for the purpose of sharing information and to entertain, Twitter's 140 character limit leaves me somewhat cold… and quite frankly, despite being Canadian born and bred, I really DO hate being cold.

I therefore sought all forms of automation to avoid Twitter and automated my Twitter account to receive comments and articles that I post to my blogs, my Facebook acounts and Aweber broadcasts using various applications such as Twitter Feed as well as Facebook's, Twitter's and Aweber's own post to social media applications.

UGH.

Here, in the screenshot below are the results of that automation…

Yes, you're seeing that right – FOUR identical entries from 4 different automation applications.

DUH ME!!

If you are a keen Twitter user / follower, seeing repeated entries for the same content from the same person is quite likely to irritate — and irritating your followers is NEVER a good plan, at least not if you want to build a following on social media.

So… once I saw this gigantic faux-pas, I basically killed all the applications that posted here, there and everywhere to all my social media accounts.

What I'm doing now, is taking the time to re-write and post entries that are dove-tailed to each of my social media accounts, including:

Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Linkedin

Since making that change just a short time ago, the number of followers on my various social media account has actually increased, whereas their numbers had remained rather stagnant before. We'll see what the future brings.

The point is, do NOT make the mistake I made by using too much automation to post to your social media accounts.

Take a few extra minutes to craft individual entries for each account to build followers on social media.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

How to Put Your Local Business on Google+ and Maps

September 8, 2014 By Rosalind Gardner

As a local business owner, it's not enough for your website to be listed in Google's natural search results. It must also show up in Google's business listings which are available through Search, Maps and Google+.

My friend Jo GagnÃ© recently asked for my help to increase traffic to her business website, BodiesonPower.com (BOP). Bodies on Power is an award-winning fitness center here in Penticton, British Columbia.

To find out where her site placed on Google's listings, I did a search for ‘penticton yoga' and this is what I found…

That's right – nothing in the local business listings.

While her site did show up in the natural listings, I had to scroll well past the initial fold to find it.

That's not a good place to be when her major competitors all had their businesses properly listed on Google.

So, I set her up with a Google My Business listing in less than half an hour. Here's what I did.

Through her Google account, I created a Google+ personal profile page for Jo.
I went to Google My Business (US) (Canada) to set up the listing for her studio.
I created her Google+ Business page by entering the name of her business, address, telephone number and hours of operation. I also uploaded profile, background and other pictures.
I verified the listing using the phone method. I alerted the studio that they would be receiving a call from Google with a set of numbers they would need to record and pass back to me. I entered the verification number the studio gave me and the listing was finalized.
For good measure, I wrote a review of her studio. 🙂

That took me just short of an hour to complete. Shortly afterwards, the Bodies on Power website showed up in the local search and business listings on Google.

Now, when I search for “Penticton yoga”, Bodies on Power at least shows above the fold. YAY!

It also shows up on the Google Map.

Showing up on Google Maps is very useful, especially in a resort town such as Penticton where our population quadruples in summer and there are no doubt plenty of visitors who would want to drop in to a fitness class.

Better still, the Bodies on Power listing in natural search now includes a ‘local listing indicator' which appears alongside the business address and phone number, as well as links to Google Reviews and the Google+ page.

Last but not least, Jo's business now has a pretty Google+ profile that shows up beside her natural search listing.

The beauty of this is that for those of us who use Google Maps, directions to the place of business are just a click away.

So… now all we have to do is get Jo's webmaster to install a Google +1 button so her visitors can/will leave reviews, endorse the Bodies on Power content, and re-share Jo's Google+ posts across the web.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

P.S. At the time of writing, the BOP website is under significant revision. Please do not comment about problems with the site. They will be fixed. 🙂

Your On-Page SEO is Missing a Few Factors

July 29, 2014 By Rosalind Gardner

Oh boy, here's another example of Internet marketing spam / scam that I received as a blog comment…

Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keywordâ€¦.wait thereâ€™s even more Now what if i told you there was a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? Thatâ€™s right AUTOMATICALLY, just watch this 4minute video for more information at. Seo Plugin

Let's dissect this…

Here's the author info:
- seo plugin
- 0 approved
- SeoOptimizationxxx.com/x
- nhsfkpqf@gmail.com
- 23.231.7.41
GREAT name and email address for a ‘professional' SEO service, eh?

Those are the easiest first clues to to spam blog comments.
Then, this scammer doesn't know how to use a blog comment form to save his (or her) life, or the English language for that matter.Yes, you can read through the text and make sense of what he is saying, but that doesn't negate the fact that the scammer isn't actually an SEO professional… or a professional who is competent in the English language.
The advice is completely bogus, i.e. ‘nice keyword density of 3-5%'. Duh. As always, my advice is to write for humans, not search engines. The search engines ‘get it' when you blog regularly about a consistent theme. They also ‘get it' when you try to write to an algorithm… to the point that you will be penalized for trying to manipulate your rankings.
ThereÂ is no such thing as a ‘simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? Thatâ€™s right AUTOMATICALLY'.

Nope, sorry, I hate to burst your bubble, but there is not such thing as a plugin that does ‘all the on-page SEO.

REAL bloggers do their own on-page SEO by crafting titles, tags, heading tags, image alts, slugs and everything else manually to stay in Google's good graces.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

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280+ Words and Phrases to Avoid Spam Filters

Do you ever wonder how many of the emails you send to your newsletter subscribers get caught up in spam filters and junk mail folders?

Email marketing made easy.

The Best Day of the Week to Send Email

How to Put Your Local Business on Google+ and Maps

Your On-Page SEO is Missing a Few Factors

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