Print This!

We've Moved!

2008-03-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

Please go check out the new location of the blog at http://www.trishalyn.com/

Thanks!

Alternate Language Creative

2008-03-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

I was presented with an interesting dilemma last week. An affiliate contacted me and pointed out that their visitor base consists mostly of non-English speaking users.

Of course we're willing to accommodate this publisher. He's excited about the program enough to ask for the creative that his visitors will understand and connect with. Now in this case the language in question was Spanish, which I don't personally speak. So I gave the publisher the opportunity to give me the copy and we can work from there.

This makes me wonder how other affiliate managers deal with creating custom ads appealing to different demographics, languages, cultures, etc. Do they always create a few different versions of an ad for other demographics or take the requests in as they come? I guess it depends on their program and the types of publishers they have.

For the time being, I'm sticking with a case-by-case basis, although I know eventually it'll need to be automated lest I go insane trying to appease these requests. I've said it many times before that everyone needs printing, in all languages, so eventually I can see the reach of our program extending across demographics. Eventually it would definitely be nice to come out of the gate with multiple versions of same ads. Networks, if you're reading, you should work in a way to add different versions and not count against our total link count.

Alas, I'm betting that no one from any affiliate networks reads this so my plea will go unseen.

Let Sleeping Husbands & Cats Lie

2008-03-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

So what does this have to do with marketing or affiliate managing? Other than I am in these fields and wanted to share a cute picture of the cat sleeping on the husband, it's a good metaphor for inactive affiliates.

Now, the only reason our cat is sleeping on him is because he's asleep and doesn't know it. If he were awake, the cat would be hitting the floor in less than a minute. At any moment he can wake up and kick Lunchbox to the curb (yes, my cat is named Lunchbox). So since he's asleep, the status quo of the cat sleeping with him is maintained.

He could wake up at any time and the cat will be gone. An inactive affiliate could wake up to your program at any time and decide to clean house, drop your program, heavily promote your program, or just leave the cat on their lap - you never know. This is a good argument for why affiliate managers should leave inactive affiliates alone and not deactivate them. Use the "wait and see" tactics as a manager. It's actually less work for you to leave inactive affiliates in the program (but still keep track of how MANY are inactive and reach out periodically) than to continually try to weed them out. And they could end up being great affiliates in the long run.

Now, this is what I've heard EVERYWHERE, but I have to tell you - honestly, inactive affiliates annoy me. I understand their reasons for signing up then not doing anything, I really do. I've done it myself. But in my professional life, I'm a neat freak. I like to keep the program tidy and make sure that the performers are being represented and those that are asleep at the wheel are not. Additionally, the more inactive affiliates are in our program the more dragged down our EPC gets.

We're not the first company of our kind with a strong affiliate program, so trimming the fat is necessary to keep our EPC up and really stand out amongst the competition. Right now I see this as a necessary evil of the rat race. Eventually I hope that our EPCs will be good enough even with the less active affiliates to be a more wide open program.

In the meantime, just answer my email and let me help you :p

Reputation Management Made Easy - By Trackur!

2008-03-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

I wish I could tell you all that this amazing service is free, but alas like most good things nowadays there's a price to pay. This is definitely a service that's worth the coin.

Trackur.com, launched earlier this year by Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com, is an amazing tool that basically scours the web for you to find references to your keyword. I enjoyed my free trial, and am excited to see that the minimum price has gone down to $18/month. It'll be much easier to sell execs on using this service now that it's ultra affordable.

This ain't yo mama's reputation management!

Google Alerts have pretty much been the standard in the past, but once you try Trackur I promise you'll cancel half those alerts. I found SO much more on Trackur that the Google Alerts never mentioned. Trackur scours all of the web, so if something happens to get past Google's spiders (not likely but hey, it's possible) it'll show up on Trackur.

So don't let me sing the praises for it - go sign up for the free trial. It's a great tool that I'll definitely be hounding the execs here to use. And I know this sounds like I have something to gain from this post, but I don't. It's just such a great service I think it deserves more recognition!

Link Glossary: On-Page Factors

2008-03-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

On Page Factors:

Ranking criteria that can be found on a web page. These factors include: text on the page, meta-tags, keyword density, keyword proximity, etc.

A brief word about some factors. Some people don't seem to understand the importance of meta-tags, but they're vital for SEO and SEM. Meta-tags increase the attractiveness of your website to search engines. Keyword density is also a must; if you are looking to improve your organic search results for a particular keyword, you must include that word in the text on your page at least 4 times as a rule of thumb.

____
Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

Cribbed Content for March 21st

2008-03-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a weird week...long yet short. Not a lot going on but here's some highlights.

Stephen Denton, president of LinkShare, resigned. Basically he just wants to take some time off to be with his kids and family. Right on.
GeekCast 10 - hilarious as usual. Word directly from Shawn is that ASW09 is going to be in Las Vegas again...usually gets about 75% of the vote. Personally, I voted San Diego. Meh.
Clever, yet, annoying marketing idea for the week comes from Jim Kukral on The Daily Flip - get a jingle. Watch this... soak it in... punch him in the head next time you see him.
I'm discontinuing the daily quotes. They didn't add much to anything and ultimately ended up being a chore to do. Sorry to anyone who'll miss them.

On a secondary note I suggested a topic for Affiliate Fortune Cookies that Sam seemed to dig and submitted a couple questions for AskTheBlogger.com and I hope that Jim answers them. So if I get answers from Jim Kukral I'll post them and if Sam Harrelson gets around to doing a podcast on my topic, I'll share that too. I'm all about sharing what I know!

Link Glossary: Link Popularity

2008-03-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Link Popularity:

The measure the quantity and/or quality of sites that link back to your web page.

Popular links are important links. Like in High School.

____
Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

Explain the value to me

2008-03-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there are some websites that I just don't get. So this is a participation welcome post. Well, okay all of my posts are, of course, welcome to comments, discussion, and participation. But today we're going to jump into web 2.0 and the world of user generated content!

There are a couple of biggun websites out there that I just don't understand what the value of these pages are. On one hand I do understand the getting your name out there and a wide & varied web presence will generate traffic (however little). But on the other hand, there's only one of me so where do I allocate my personal resources?

Here are the websites I just don't get - someone explain it to me! Remember, this blog is dofollow so feel free to throw in a link for your trouble!

Squidoo.com - Isn't this just a big affiliate link venue?
FriendFeed.com - This seems like a lot of redundancy since the people I'm inclined to follow on friendfeed I already follow through their channels that are linked. Make sense?
Technorati.com - Is this just scrapped content heaven? Is there any value to your Technorati authority?
Mahalo.com - What is SO much better about this cultivated human powered search engine?

Viral Marketing at it's Finest

2008-03-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

ALL FREAKIN' DAY I've seen the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, Ze Frank, and others go back and forth on Twitter about joining the Very Green Team and wondered if they'd lost their natural minds. It looks like there's a color war going on... just something to pass the time. Gary explains why he's so passionate about the color green on his website:

This is a great example at viral marketing at it's finest. Sam Harrelson also posted about the phenomenon at CostPerNews. So take a page from the Garyvee book and do something viral!

EDIT: OK, Ze was kind enough to explain what the heck is going on with these color wars in his blog.

Top Six Mistakes to Avoid in Any Postcard Marketing Campaign

2008-03-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Postcards are a very cost-effective and efficient way to market your business. Combine that with their ability to generate a high response rate, and you have a tremendously powerful marketing tool.

However, it’s really important to avoid some of the most common mistakes people make when implementing their postcard marketing campaign. Here’s a list of the top six mistakes you should avoid in order to have a successful campaign.

1. Not Targeting the Best Prospects
How much of a response would the Omaha Steaks company receive if they sent marketing postcards to a subscriber list of Vegetarian Cooking? Chances are, the results would be poor. Having the best possible mailing list is one of the most important factors of a successful postcard marketing campaign. In-house lists are best. An in-house list is a list of your past and current customers. If you don’t have an in-house list or want to expand your marketing reach, you can rent a list. Several companies offer the ability to rent mailing lists, including PsPrint. You can select specific criteria for you list rentals. For example, if you are selling high-end baby items, you would want your list to include households with a certain income level, within a certain distance from you store, and in a specific age range. That would ensure a good return on your campaign.

2. Lack of continuity/repetition
Studies show that the average person needs to see or hear something four times before it completely registers. So when you plan your postcard campaign, make sure it’s not just a single mailing but an actual campaign. When someone sees your company name over and over again, it builds credibility and familiarity. It may take a number of contacts with a customer before it leads to a sale, but the eventual increase in revenue from a committed customer usually far offsets the small cost of postcard printing.

3. Sending an unprofessional, lack-luster postcard
You want your postcard to look professional, stand out, and generate a positive response. Consider sending oversized postcards, or include a personal message on the postcard. Include colors, high-quality photos or other items to attract attention and make people want to read your card.

4. Too much text/information
Brevity is the soul of wit! Keep that in mind when you develop the content for your postcard. Do not include every little detail of information. In fact, bullet points are the best way to deliver a message with postcards. Think of what step you want the reader to take and make sure you deliver enough information and enticement. You can always have more information on a landing page, in follow up communication or in a phone message. If you try to put too many messages or information, the reader will have a hard time making out any message and will not bother to read the card.

5. Not providing contact information
This might sound like common sense, but it’s amazing how many postcards do not provide contact information in easy to spot format. Provide a telephone, cell or fax number, url to landing page, email or return address. And make sure you repeat your company name next to the contact information.

6. Not seeding your mailing list
Whenever you conduct a postcard campaign, make certain that you place addresses of friends, relatives, and your address on the list. This will enable you to know exactly when the postcard reaches your intended audience. If you are mailing nationwide, be sure to include the addresses of friends and family across the country. If you don’t receive your card in a timely manner, you can follow up with the mailing list company to determine the cause.

For the latest marketing advice, visit www.PsPrint.com for more articles like this!

Link Glossary: PageRank

2008-03-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Page Rank:

A method developed and patented by Stanford University and Larry Page (co-founder of Google) to rank search engine results. PageRank gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking is based on the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a page.

Part of my goal here is to share what I'm learning while stumbling through my career with others, hence a new glossary series on link related terms. This is a brief explanation of PageRank, but Google offers more thorough information here.

PageRank tip... usually a website has to have a PageRank of at least 4 to be relevant to SEO results.

____
Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin

Direct Marketing Ideas for Easter

2008-03-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

What was once reserved for kids and candy has become one of the most profitable holiday seasons of the year – Easter! The March/April market rush makes sense, too, since Spring is in the air and people are out and about armed with pleasant attitudes – and often, tax return money. The season of rebirth and renewal is a prime time for you to kick start your marketing campaign to boost your company’s profits. Here are a few direct marketing ideas you can use this Easter.

Launch a New Product

Everything about Easter symbolizes rebirth, whether it’s in the form of religion, Easter eggs, or the appearance of green leaves and bright flowers. In the same spirit, this is the perfect time to launch a new product or service, or take an old product or service and re-brand, or re-name it, to give it a fresh look and appeal to your prospects. Of course, this leaves plenty of creative marketing ideas open for your advertisements. Imagine your new product hatching out of a pastel egg on your next postcard mailing. Make sure your new product or service launch includes a great sale to attract high potential prospects; you might also want to consider putting a coupon on your direct mailers to drive consumers to your door, which doubles as a great way to track the success of your campaigns.

Hire the Easter Bunny!

One of the quickest ways to get your products and services in front of people is to bring them to your business through an in-house promotion. Second only to Christmas, Easter provides an excellent opportunity to do that. Hosting an Easter egg hunt for the kids or hiring the Easter Bunny to spend the morning or afternoon at your store attracts droves of children – and their parents. Since you’ll have the parents milling around while their children search for eggs or stand in line waiting to meet the Easter Bunny, this is an excellent opportunity to have an entertaining, attention-getting product display or demonstration. You could also try filling plastic Easter Eggs with coupons, and have one egg with a slip for a free product or service – the Grand Prize – to get adults into the mix. Make sure you have take-home fliers or brochures available!

Advertise

Whether you’re considering launching a new product or hosting an Easter-related event, the key to success is advertising. You’ll have a lot of competition for your audience’s attention this time of year, so make sure you do it right. Hire a graphic designer or use attractive templates to design your postcards, door hangers, fliers, sales letters, and posters; and launch an effective direct mail campaign beginning several weeks before the event or product launch sale so your audience is blanketed – and reminded. Postcards are a very efficient and inexpensive way to do this, and can work hand-in-hand with other marketing efforts like newspaper advertising. For instance, you could advertise in a newspaper several weeks before your event, send a postcard the week before the event, and hang door fliers the day before the event to maximize your return on investment. A well-rounded campaign that takes advantage of the opportunities and resources available to you can do wonders for your Easter profits!

Product launches and bunnies aren’t the only ways to promote springtime sales. Try to think outside of the box when planning your Easter promotions. Each year marketers come up with new ideas to bring new customers in the door and keep loyal customers coming back. Above all, make sure you get the word out and market to the right audience to achieve the maximum ROI.

For the latest marketing advice, visit www.PsPrint.com for more articles like this!

Free Toolsday for March 18th

2008-03-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

Today's tool isn't so much one tool as it is a set of tools. A few months back while I was scouring the blogosphere for blog directories to post a link on, I found a website called Blogflux. Not only is there a directory on this site, but they also offer a pinger, polls, PR checker, blog themes, and more. All of their free services are listed right on the home page.

PR Checker

With as much credence as the online world gives PageRank, it's important to be able to easily check your page rank. This PR checker is easy to use and works for more than just blogs. I can use it to see that, sadly, I have a PR 0 or to see that PsPrint has a PR 5. It's quick and accurate, which is all it needs to be.

Polls

The polls feature works great and super easy. They are somewhat limited in how many answers a respondent can choose from, but for a free service that's not bad. You can use the Blogflux interface to keep track of various polls and the results. Here's a quick example:

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://polls.blogflux.com/poll-22599.html"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Take the poll&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://polls.blogflux.com/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Free Poll by Blog Flux&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Pinger

Any business professional, regardless of industry, would be lying if they said they wouldn't jump at a chance to save time & increase their efficiency in their daily routine. A blog ping service does just that. Instead of visiting dozens of websites one by one to let them know you've written a new blog post, the Blogflux ping service can notify 17 different services from one page and show you the status of the ping, which is a nifty feature. Last October the pinger was listed on Mashable among 19 other blog ping services. It may not be able to ping the highest number of services, but with the added convenience of all the other services that Blogflux offers, the efficiency is definitely increased.

Themes
One of the easiest tools in any blogger's arsenal is their site design, commonly referred to as a theme. A unique theme is your most immediate way to stand out from the repetitive noise of the blogosphere and stock templates. The Blogflux Themes area lets you browse and search for some less common themes to download and use for your blog. While it's not a unique theme that visitors will only see on your blog, it will stand out amongst the extremely repetitive stock templates.

Commentful
Now this is one of their neatest features. Commentful keeps track on comments, blog follow ups, and all sorts of handy tracking without having to go to your blog and Digg and a million other sites to keep track. It's a handy extension for Firefox with a bookmarklet that you just click to add. You subscribe to the RSS feed to keep updated.

Of course, these are just the more exciting features of Blogflux, but there are a few more. Go over and see what you've been missing!

Analytics Glossary: Scenario Analysis

2008-03-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Scenario Analysis:

A report showing the amount of activity at each step of a defined scenario, plus conversion rates for each transition from step to step as well as for the whole process. Examples of scenarios are check-out, registration, or application sequences.

Very much like conversion funnel, you should check all the processes on your website on a regular basis to update them and improve the user interface. The easiest way to get behind competitors in your industry is to fall behind in technology and ease of experience.

Well, that concludes my analytics glossary series. I hope you've learned as much as I have! If you have suggestions for any other glossary series you'd like to see, shoot me an email at Blog@TrishaLyn.com

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

St. Patrick’s Day Tips and Tricks for Graphic Designers

2008-03-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

As a graphic designer, it is your job to make your clients’ marketing materials truly stand out and set them apart from their competition. They have to look great to maximize their return on investment; which in turn will generate repeat business for you. If you have the basic thematic association design concepts down pat, it’s time to take your clients’ St. Patrick’s Day promotions to the next level with striking creativity that looks professional and elegant. Here are a few St. Patrick’s Day tips and tricks for graphic designers.

Stray from the Norm

Many designers stick to green and orange for their clients’ St. Patrick’s Day promotions, but you don’t have to. In fact, straying from the normal color selections help your designs become instant attention-grabbers. One example would be to make a shamrock in your clients’ company colors.

Because designers often cover St. Patty’s Day promos in green backgrounds, you can also accentuate your designs by using a white background with subtle shapes in varying shades of green throughout the promotional piece; whether it’s a postcard, a brochure, a sales letter, or an envelope. This method lends a touch of elegance and professionalism to corporate pieces and makes ‘fun’ materials stand out in a river of green.

Make it Shine

An oft-overlooked design element is foil stamping. Foil-stamped promotional materials beam with confidence and professionalism, and St. Patrick’s Day offers the perfect opportunity for gold foil stamping through associations with leprechauns and their pots of gold. You can also try outlining your letters, or adding a drop shadow, with silver foil stamping.

Cut it Up

Die-cutting is a great way to incorporate thematic association on St. Patrick’s Day. You can choose from pre-existing die-cuts or have a custom die-cut created in shape of a shamrock, leprechaun, Ireland, the Irish flag, or a pot of gold, for example. Die-cutting isn’t limited to fun, adventurous promotional pieces – elegant designs can be accomplished as well. Imagine, for instance, a promotional postcard for an investment firm shaped like a shamrock, with a blue background and white lettering.

Promotional Materials Should be Promotional

If possible, encourage your clients to add limited-time sales, bargains, and deals to their promotional pieces to increase their response. They’ll know the sale begins or ends on St. Patrick’s Day and are less likely to ‘miss the sale.’ Another example would be to hide a pot of gold in a company catalog and give a percentage off of merchandise to anyone who correctly identifies its location (of course, it should be relatively easy to find). This will encourage potential customers to browse through the catalog pages, increasing the likelihood that they’ll find something they want to purchase.

Ultimately, a successful marketing campaign depends on whether your client appears to offer what potential customers are looking for – and whether they appear to have the best product/service/price, etc. It is your job to be the messenger, so scope out your clients’ competition, unleash your creativity, and make your client out to be the best. If you keep the above tips in mind, everyone will be celebrating this St. Patrick’s Day.

For the latest marketing advice, visit www.PsPrint.com for more articles like this!

Quote of the Day

2008-03-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

If Thomas Edison invented the electric light today, it would be reported on the evening news that the candle making industry was threatened. Ralph Nader would announce a lawsuit on behalf of all the poor people who might get electrocuted. And the candle workers' union would have at least two Senators introduce a bill to lock electricity on behalf of their industry.
-Newt Gingrich

Politics are getting me down...can't it be time to vote and get it over with already?

Quote of the Day

2008-03-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

If at first you don't succeed, well, so much for skydiving.
-Victor O'Reilly

Enjoy the last tidbits of your weekend!

Quote of the Day

2008-03-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need more men who can dream of things that never were.
-President John F. Kennedy

What are you dreaming of?

Sayounara, Spottt

2008-03-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of experimenting with this blog to see what works and what doesn't in terms of driving traffic. When Spottt came along as a sort of EntreCard knock off, I jumped into the water and threw it up to see how it'd work.

I've been running it for a month and so far it is just not showing the return on traffic that I was hoping for. These are the stats that Spottt has given me:

So, with those stats my ad gets clicked on less than 1%. To be exact it's like 0.26%. That's really not very good. Now another thing I noticed is that Spottt says the banner received 25 clicks, yet Google Analytics shows me this data over the last month:

So, 1 page visit. That stayed on the site so short that it doesn't even register. Bounced immediately. On my list of traffic sources it's #105. I'm no analytics guru, but I'm pretty sure at this point that it's best to focus my efforts on, say, the top 25 traffic sources. So the real estate on my blog is actually WORTH something.

So take a hike, Spottt. I'll stick with my EntreCard love.

Cribbed Content for March 14

2008-03-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

A ton of stuff has gone on this week in the world of online & affiliate marketing. It's pandemonium.

Sam Harrelson stepped down just last night as publisher of ReveNews, a group blog about online revenue news. I'm bummed as I just started reading and I quite enjoy Sam's take, but I know I'll be keeping in touch with his endeavors via Twitter and FriendFeed and some other venues. Good luck, Sam!
The EU approved the acquisition of online marketing company DoubleClick by Google. But if you're a faithful reader of this blog, you already knew that.
AOL announced the acquisition of social network Bebo. Bebo is big overseas, which is probably why you haven't heard of it.
Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney is being a smug bastard after his mac mishap. 55 comments on this blog entry, basically all of which are asking for a hand out. I'd ask too, but who the hell am I?
Shawn Collins just posted a link to an article he wrote called Affiliate Marketing is Dead. He talks about the innovation of video and mobile affiliate marketing. Video I can get behind, but mobile seems entirely too intrusive and scares the bejesus out of me.

The end of the week has really slowed down in terms of business news. So I'll leave you with this - go to GeekCast.fm and listen to the Geek Cast with Sam Harrelson, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral, and Lisa Picarille. Hilarity & relevancy collide, I promise you.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
-Diogenes

Have you done anything lately to help educate your youth?

Mecha Googlezilla - AdManager Launched

2008-03-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

Google is quick on the draw - it was only days ago that the deal for Google to buy DoubleClick was finalized and today Google's Inside AdSense blog let the cat out of the bag.

They say it best, so straight from the horse's mouth:

Ad Manager currently addresses the ad management and serving needs of publishers with smaller sales teams and effectively complements the DoubleClick Revenue Center, which is focused on publishers with large sales teams. We're excited to add DART for Publishers to our suite of products,and we're committed to the continued development and enhancement of DoubleClick's offerings.

So basically all of the internet marketing industry's speculation earlier this week about what this means has been swiftly answered. Sort of.

It's still not clear the fate of affiliate network Performics, a DoubleClick company, and whether they'll stick around or if it'll be eventually swallowed. Personally I think it would be silly for them to absorb Performics. Instead they should pretty much do what DoubleClick did when they initially bought Peformics - just append the name.

Coming to an internet near you - Google Performics?

Brochure Printing Made Easy

2008-03-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

A fast and easy way to promote your business is by having brochures available for your customers. These promotional materials are easy to make and will give customers a way to take more information with them and look into your services when they're good and ready. Brochures are also easy to mail to prospective customers, making your direct mail efforts a breeze.

If you are just starting out in business, brochure-printing is a cheap yet effective way to promote your company.

Here are some simple steps to creating your brochures efficiently and effectively:

1. Content comes First

The most important part of your brochure is the content. Spend the time necessary to perfect your content before deciding how it will look. Your brochures should include a detailed overview of the products or services that your company offers. If possible, include prices. You want to let the reader know what your company is about in a succinct manner.

Be sure to include your company's contact information for the reader to be able to ask questions and get more detailed information. Think of the brochure as a teaser - you want them to come back for more.

Take the time to have multiple people review the content before you settle on it. You want to be sure to catch any typos, grammatical errors, or misinformation. It is important that you make a good first impression in the hands of potential customers with this brochure, so you want to make sure your content is top notch.

Once you've perfected your content, work on the layout. Be sure to follow any guidelines set forth by your printer while designing the brochure. It is much easier to work within their guides than to have to redesign something later. Be sure to include vivid, eye catching photographs that are high quality. Make your brochure informative, but do not overcrowd it with so much text that it will be a bore to read.

2. Gloss or Matte?

Many customers look to the printer to help decide if a gloss or a matte finish is better for their brochures. Truth be told the best judge of this is you the customer. Gloss finish is an industry standard and tends to make vivid pictures pop just a little more. Matte has an air of class that might be important for a classy restaurant or elite law firm. Take into consideration what type of business you are before deciding on which finish to go with.

Remember to choose your finish in line with the rest of your branded materials. If all of your business cards and sales fliers are glossy, a matte brochure may not fit in. Whether you go with gloss or matte, be sure to stick with that finish for 99% of your major marketing materials.

3. Get them Printed

Generally speaking, you will want to print a large quantity of brochures to satisfy demand. You never want to get to the point where you're out of brochures. Being out of brochures means that there are potential customers that walk away empty handed instead of walking away with your information.

When deciding how many brochures to have printed, consider how preserved is your data? If your prices or products change quarterly, you may want to be more conservative with how many you print. You always want to reprint your brochures with updated information if it changes; handing out brochures with stale information reduces their effectiveness considerably.

In most cases, printing the brochures on your home or office printer is not an option. The strain and ink usage is just not cost effective. Using a quality professional printing company is your best option to produce highly effective and professional marketing materials. Many companies like PsPrint offer seasonal discounts on brochures and very competitive pricing. Request samples and determine just what printing options you want ahead of time to fully prepare yourself to embark on the printing experience.

Remember that overall, a brochure is your best offline marketing piece, so keep it simple, keep it fresh, and keep it professional.

Analytics Glossary: Benchmark

2008-03-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Benchmark:

A standard by which something can be measured or judged. Assigning value to Key Performance Indicators (KPI) ensures your organization is measuring performance against similar goals.

Be sure you're not setting benchmarked goals for your analytics or company that are impossible to obtain!

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

You can learn many things from your children. How much patience you have, for example.
-Franklin P. Jones

Remember this hump day that patience is a virtue!

NoFollow vs. DoFollow

2008-03-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

First, the definition, courtesy of Dot Traffic Glossary:

Nofollow
A website can direct a search engine spider not to follow a link that appears on it. The idea being that the target website’s ranking will not influence the website indexed. Nofollow attribute values are most often used on sites with user generated content, like user comments and blogs.

Dofollow is basically the opposite of this. Many bloggers refer to this as link love. By allowing the search engine spiders to follow those links, you're increasing their page rank status and allowing their ranks to influence your rank. Which is not what you want if you're looking to increase your page rank, necessarily.

There's a debate raging amongst bloggers and it seems like most smaller blogs are going the Dofollow route. By spreading the link love you're helping out your fellow bloggers, who are more inclined to reciprocate. Blogroll's are a prime opportunity for this. The larger bloggers don't seem to be weighing in on the issue (at least not from what I've seen) so perhaps for a blogger with a larger audience they couldn't care one way or the other.

Since this is a bit outside my expertise, I'll admit, I posed the question to my 59 Twitterati followers for their opinions:

Shawn Collins of Affiliate Tip: "Event with nofollow in my blog comments, the comment monkeys constantly attack with their spam."

Scott Jangro of MechMedia: "I've been fighting so hard with the spammers recently, I'm starting to question my own long-time use of dofollow." He also added "I agree with Sam on the size of the blog though. Mine was until the past few days a PR6 which has me on every must-spam list."

Sam Harrelson of ReveNews & Affiliate Fortune Cookies: "I'm all in favor of spreading the love, but there are SO many gamers out there that it makes DoFollow really unsustainable." He followed up to say "Would just add that if it's a small blog, you might make dofollow work. As it grows, it's just too hard."

Of course, these opinions totally fall in line with that I've observed in looking around. The little guys are all for dofollow to get the word out, but once you cross that line you become a "comment monkey" target. Scott Jangro wrote a really reflective post about it back in February called Attack of the Comment Monkeys (don't know how I missed it from the RSS feed...).

I think one thing all bloggers and internet marketers in general can agree on is that Spam is a problem. Not only is it definitely annoying, but it also pollutes the well (as Jason Calacanis pointed out in his keynote at Affiliate Summit West last month). It makes a lot of legitimate internet marketing look bad, and it's a fine line before someone misunderstands persistent follow up and due diligence for the dreaded SPAM label.

Where do I stand? Long time readers of this blog will note that I use links a lot in my posts. Basically I do this for two reasons: 1. I like to give readers an easy reference of what or who I'm talking about. 2. It's just nice karma. This blog is hosted by Blogger, and according to their Help Center they automatically add the nofollow tag to the templates. Which is probably why I have a page rank of 0.

So I'm going to edit my template as an experiment. For anyone else curious on how to do this for blogger, there's a great tutorial online here. Let's see what happens, shall we?

Quote of the Day

2008-03-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
-Blaise Pascal

Have you?

Google Buys DoubleClick - Googlezilla Attacks!

2008-03-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

It's official! Google has closed the deal and purchased online marketing agency DoubleClick, who also run affiliate network DoubleClick Performics. There are already graphics up on the DoubleClick and Performics homepages announcing the merger. According to Performics it's business as usual and the two companies will work independently for now.

There's no word yet on how this merger will affect Google's amazingly successful AdWords or the ever growing Performics, both tools of the successful affiliate. It's easy to speculate that eventually both will be rolled into one mega-monster network offering PPC, CPA, and CPC opportunities for affiliates. Truth is that we just don't know. While that seems it would be the obvious long term goal, Google is known for innovation and could completely knock our socks off with something else in store. Only time will tell!

More blogs on the Google acquisition of DoubleClick:
Shawn Collins at Affiliate Tip
Heather Paulson at ReveNews
Om Malik at Gigaom
Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim

Analytics Glossary: Psychographics

2008-03-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

Psychographics:

Data used to build customer segments based on attitudes, values, beliefs and opinions as opposed to factual characteristics such as age and gender.

Many lead generation tools and services lump psychographics in with all of their demographics. Keep a keen eye out to watch for this both in separate categories and lumped in. It's a valuable asset to have when deciding who to market very targeted products to. Avoid the egg on your face that could occur if you try to sell heavy metal music to conservative church-goers!

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
-William Arthur Ward

Who have you inspired today?

Cribbed Content for March 7th

2008-03-07T11:21:00.000-08:00

Instead of whining about how my Trackur free trial is over, I've collected a few stories for you from around the web. Or you know.. just from my feeds :D

Apparently Seth Godin invented the Everything bagel. If you want to talk bagels with me, let's discuss egg bagels. mmmm tasty.
The affiliate marketing industry is all a flutter with a cat fight between n00b network Pepperjam & veteran Commission Junction. I think that if the accusations against CJ trying to strong arm affiliates & merchants are true... that's pretty poor form. But I'm not really taking sides; I'll wait it out and see how this unfolds.
Sam Harrelson of ReveNews hearts Twitter!
Andy Beal (I think I might just quote him weekly!) speculates that Digg is circling the drain and looking to sell. Personally I'm pretty disenchanted with Digg and I wouldn't mind it biting the big one.

I'm personally very glad to have NOTHING planned this weekend so I can rest, relax, and get some housework done. Enjoy your weekend as much as I will mine!

Quote of the Day

2008-03-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
-Charles Dickens

Can you tell I'm feeling the love this week? Or at least trying to! It's a zen thing I guess.

Pasta Pomodoro Serves Pigeons!

2008-03-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

We had company today as we ate our yummy pasta for lunch:

Yes you heard it here - Pasta Pomodoro serves pigeons!*

He ate some bread off the floor, hence he WAS there to eat :p

Analytics Glossary: Parameters

2008-03-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

Parameters:

These are located in the URL immediately after a question mark and followed by an equal sign and a return value, known as name=value. Parameters indicate to a database what page a user is viewing. For example, www.mysite.com/product/widget.aspx?=1234. Here, widget is the product and 1234 is the product identifier.

This comes up a lot when using search functions embedded in websites. Be sure if you're going to share the link with a customer or through a bulk email campaign to copy everything after the question mark. Sometimes if you just paste a link into an email or document and rely on the auto hyper link feature to add the link, it won't add anything after the question mark. Be sure to use the menus of the program to insert the correct URL into the hyper link.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Do not keep the alabaster box if your love and friendship sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them, and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier. The kind things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go.
-George William Childs

Call a spade a spade, so to speak.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors.
-Dave Barry

Happy Hump Day!

Free Toolsday for March 4th

2008-03-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Last week we were without a free Toolsday because I was toiling away in Las Vegas at Affiliate Summit West 2008... learning about more great tools! While I'm still getting the hang of those, let's talk about an oldie, but goodie.

Anyone who doesn't know YouTube at this point has been living under a rock. Half hosting company, half social network, YouTube took the internet by storm with it's collection of rare, gross, lame, and hilarious videos in February of 2005. By June 2006, the company announced that 100,000 million videos were being watched per day. The impressiveness of this number boggled the mind and there was blood in the water.

The shark that is Google smelled that blood and by November 2006, Google bought out YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Quite a pretty penny.

YouTube helped birth the video blogs (vlogs) of the current day. Videos are great for content to promote your business. They lend your brand more equity, and more and more we're seeing that quality is defined by the depth of knowledge the video displays, not the production value of sets, lights, etc. You can use videos on your website for press conferences, virtual site tours, customer testimonials, and more. YouTube is a great way to get started on the video front with their free hosting and embedding options.

I attended a session at ASW last week about Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing. Monetizing the traffic YouTube videos get is definitely the next step, and there are already businesses out there like Revver.com that are starting that revolution. The panel of experts agreed that video will be a must have on your website in the next 18 months.

With the inexpensive yet good quality video cameras on the market (like the Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder that I bought last week for under $150) there's no reason NOT to get into video. Do what you know... as long as you know what you're talking about and solving someone's problem or answering someone's question, you can do great things with a 2 minute video!

Call me... seriously!

2008-03-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

So, no one called me! My fragile little ego is destroyed! So I'm extending the contest... call the number and tell me jokes or something! Winner gets 100 Entrecard credits and some link love!

Analytics Glossary: Conversion Funnel

2008-03-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Conversion Funnel:

The series of steps that move a visitor towards a specified conversion event, such as an order or registration sign up. Funnels vary for every site, but best practice is to limit the depth a user must engage to convert.

A more common term for this is the ordering process. Here at PsPrint that's what we usually say to describe the steps a consumer has to go through to place an order. It's always a good idea to review your conversion funnel every year or so to make sure that the UI (user interface) is easy to understand and isn't garbled with useless information or unnecessary steps. Remember that the easier it is to convert, the more likely the conversion is.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
-John Quincy Adams

I need to keep this in mind more often while driving... other California drivers should heed this same warning!

Call me call me any anytime

2008-03-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

I'm in an abnormally adventurous mood today for a Monday and I've decided to give GrandCentral (by Google) a try. I'm not a big phone communicator, but this allows me to let people call me, leave a message or possibly get forwarded to my cell or work numbers, and give out a number that's not necessarily my personal cell being blast about on the Internet!

Blogger users get a leg up and into the beta testing, so I my theory is that if it doesn't work out, no harm done. So if you're feeling silly, call me up! I'll even run a contest!

Okay I don't have much, but I'll offer up 100 Entrecard credits + some link love to the funniest voice mail I receive today. Not much, but it's what I have! I'll also try to see if I can post the winner (not sure if GC has a function to export the sound file) but at the very least I'll attempt to transcribe it if not.

For the record as Michael mentioned in my comments, I don't want anyone's number so feel free to do it as an Unknown Caller or something... I promise to erase any phone numbers I get... I'm SO not interested in collecting more lol. Just throwing that out there.

Call me on the line
Call me call me any anytime
Call me my love you can call me any day or night
Call me

Quote of the Day

2008-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
-Richard M. Nixon

Start the week off with a winning attitude!

Quote of the Day

2008-03-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they've done.
-Cullin Hightower

Keep this in mind when giving credence to quotes ;)

Quote of the Day

2008-03-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like.
-Garrison Kecillor

This month really is like the Wednesday of the year... hump month. You'd think it would be June or July, but OH NO.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go?
-The War of the Roses (Gavin D'Amato)

Today's quote is unceremoniously lifted from a great movie... take some time this weekend to re-discover some awesome movies you haven't seen in years!

Day 3 of asw08 - Part 2, Fin!

2008-02-28T13:23:00.001-08:00

Of course the best way to keep readers is to create a sense of anticipation in one's blog, yet I assure you that was not my intention in waiting until today to finish my recap of Day 3. The Nevada dryness and, I come to find, altitude was not conducive to my attempts to fight off a bug that's been going around here. So I returned home from ASW08 yesterday, slept ALL day, and already feel better just being back here on the California coast with my 20 ft above sea level home and cool air.

So where was I? Somewhere around Asymmetric Warfare. This was a great panel about affiliate fraud, something I'm not entirely familiar with how to combat. I picked up some great tips and can't wait to receive a copy of the presentation from moderator Graham MacRobie. There was a TON of information, such as tips on how to prevent fraud, a list of countries to be careful of applications from (these countries are REALLY easy to create offshore corporations at so it could be fraudulent), and information on typo-squatting, tasting, and kiting (not sure if I spelled that right).

Some highlights I noted:

Know your partners & reach out to them. Staying in touch will help weed out fraud.
Check the WHOIS contact info for the affiliate domain name - will help ID fraud but also give you a chance to see if they have any other websites that your program would be a good fit for.
Do what you can to own your own typo'd websites and redirect to your official website to avoid typosquatting (costly, but probably the best way to protect your brand).
Don't assume fraud will go unnoticed.
Be wary of affiliates using redirects - not always a sign of fraud but worth a second look.
www.torproject.org - proxy site to see the affiliates website as the rest of the world sees it, just in case they have an IP rule on you so it looks legit to the manager.
Well thought out rules indicate vigilance against fraud & help to protect against it.
Networks can help protect you because they trade info about globally bad affiliates and provide a first line of defense against fraud before the affiliate even gets to you.
An audience member asked if it's better to let everyone in or to be really selective, and the panelists advised to go for an approach right in the middle. Give the new affiliates a chance to succeed as lots have potential they just need to gain experience. Reach out to the little guy & try to help rather than cutting them from your program when they don't perform.
A good way to stay in touch with affiliates without being annoying to them is to just get an agreement with them about how often they want to be contacted. One call per month can be much more effective than a weekly blanket email.
Understand how your company deals with transactional fraud before setting a policy that will affect paying your affiliates.
If you're really concerned, there are a lot of local task forces on police departments revolving around cyber-crime that can give you more information.

After that last session I packed up our materials for shipment back to Oakland and called it a day. I was still feeling ill, so I didn't make it down to the un-keynote or the road rally. Hopefully when we go back to Boston for Affiliate Summit East 2008, I'll be able to report more in-depth!

Analytics Glossary: Demographics

2008-02-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Demographics:

The physical characteristics of human populations and segments of populations often used to identify consumer markets. Demographics can include information such as age, gender, marital status, education or geographic location

Whenever you do a targeted marketing campaign, demographics are key! It's a much better use of your time, efforts, paper, and budget to send your message to consumers who will be the most likely and interested in buying what you're selling. You don't want waste precious resources sending custom hot tub installation flyers to people in apartment buildings.

Many mailing list providers (e.g. PsPrint, USAData, etc) offer many demographic distinctions to choose from when renting a mailing list to market to. It's also important to differentiate if you're aiming for consumers at large or other businesses as it makes a huge difference in what kind of list you spend your money on.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Love truth, but pardon error.
-Voltaire

We all make mistakes; the key is in admitting them and moving on. Learn from your mistakes or you'll be destined to repeat them.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
-Steven Wright

I shouldn't be this apprehensive about flying home to Oakland, but I always am!

Day 3 Affiliate Summit - Part 1

2008-02-26T16:55:00.001-08:00

Still sick, I managed to get as much sleep as I could and skipped breakfast in favor of that goal. Once I slept as much as I could without skipping more than just some food, I headed down for the Super Affiliate Strategies that Work panel. I was interested to see how this differed from the What Super Affiliates Want panel I attended at the last Affiliate Summit in Miami.

It was a great panel, and I hear it was standing room only. Rock on - my sick self managed to score a seat otherwise I never would have lasted in there. It was a great panel by Kris Jones of Pepperjam, Amit Mehta, Zac Johnson, and John Chow. It was mostly Q&A from the audience with a little bit of moderation from Kris, so lots of good stuff. Someone actually blatantly asked about black hat tactics...to which he received a pretty unbiased response from John that he was just better off in the long run to stick with whitehat tactics if he wants to be a success overall. Which makes sense to me. Since this session was Q&A style it was pretty different from last year's panel I already mentioned, which is good for me. I'd hate to get a lot of duplicate content. Some great points I picked up from the session are:

Amit looks for a niche where there's a lot of search traffic and builds a site with content & landing pages. Optimizes through SEO.
Keep working on content & adding new things.
Relevant content around affiliate links help the buyer make a decision.
The long tail search terms are more stable for long term success.
There's an incredible risk for affiliates using black hat tactics. There's an incredible amount of opportunity in white hat channels so you're better off keeping your nose clean.
John noticed that people were scraping his RSS feed and he started by sending cease & desist orders and trying to go after the culprits, but when the culprits became too many he just started throwing ads into the RSS and continued to make money off them.
Develop your business system & that's something that no one can just copy off of you.
Amit uses an umbrella domain then makes sub domains for the more specialized, high traffic stuff or registers an alias and redirects the traffic.
Social networks (resources, Facebook applications) are what's hot right now.
Yahoo & MSN seem to convert better for whatever reason than Google. Google users are more savvy.
Spaces between 3 & 5 are the sweet spot in search results. Constantly bidding for the Sponsored Results box may not necessarily be worth your time.
Day parting (bidding lower during the night) can increase ROI
Continually split test everything.
Have a great relationship with your affiliate manager and that will help you to leverage to increase commission rates or added bonuses.
Amit advocates his strategy of bidding on hundreds of keywords and spread the sales between them, while Kris advocated creating a narrower ad campaign that's very clearly related to your content.
Some good programs & tips:

Winner Alert: everyday it sends you a report with what's winning
Efficient PPC
AdWords Editor

Overall it was a great session, and in case I missed anything J. Botter live blogged from there as well.

After lunch and some hours staffing our booth, I headed to the Asymmetric Warfare: Battling Fraudulent Affiliates session. More on that later.

Analytics Glossary: Latency

2008-02-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Latency:

The average number of days between visits for a given visitor during a reporting period. For example, those who visit on average of every seven days.

You must make sure when analyzing the performance of specific marketing campaigns or sales to take the latency factor into account. Just because your campaign did poorly on sales at first does not mean that people won't necessarily come back a few days later to check out what you're advertising or make a purchase.

Remember that viral marketing inherently has a latency period for the message to spread.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

Without imagination, what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of different shapes and smells. But when the eye and mind are open to it's beauty, the bare ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row busts into a leaf, and the rose tree shakes its fragrance everywhere.
-Helen Keller

I have a not so secret fascination with Helen Keller, stemming from an appearance as a blind girl in The Miracle Worker in 5th grade. It's such an inspiring story to go from devoid of language to so literate and prolific.

Create your own inspiring story today!

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit - Suck All!

2008-02-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Almost a month ago I was granted a press pass for the Affiliate Summit. I was excited to get into the bloghaus and blog about the day as it happened. I was thrilled to walk around and network with people. I really wanted to get some great coverage of the Keynote (coverage hell, I wanted to just listen too), but... none of that happened.

Why? Because Las Vegas hates me. And there are far too many germs here. And somehow during the day on Sunday...I developed a cold. A bad one. Damn this dry air & germs!

So I didn't get up in time to make it downstairs to have breakfast AND make it to Jason Calacanis' keynote like I wanted to. I managed to grab some breakfast and share some stats about our affiliate program with my colleague here with me from PsPrint to help out and then to man the booth. I sent her out to get the table top sign made that wasn't made in time for the show. I station the booth for awhile and talk to some good people before it's time for me to head off to the morning session I planned on going to.

Oh, incidentally, for anyone who wants some GREAT coverage of the keynote, check out J. Botter's Blog.

I digress.

I attended this morning's "Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing" panel. Good stuff, although I was a bit disappointed in moderator Melissa Salas reading off a prepared script pretty much verbatim. But I really enjoyed the insight from video professionals, and it's comforting to know that content really is king, and that production value isn't as important. Woo Hoo! I was wondering how you'd go about monetizing a video, but Revver.com seems to answer that. I'll definitely be checking that out when I get back to the joy that is desktop computer (this older laptop isn't that great). I really enjoyed Gary Vaynerchuk's sense of humor & ballsy honesty. I'm excited with my new Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder

Some great points from the panel session:

Most people come on the internet for two P's - pleasure or problems. If you solve someone's problem, it's a good video.
KNOW what you're talking about. As long as you know your subject, you can produce great content.
In the next 12 months, you should test video on your site. By 18 months from now, if you don't have video on your website you may be in trouble.
Video really works to sell as it gives your brand more credibility & builds brand equity.
Depth of information is quality will translate to a successful video.
Work on integrating video into your current web experience for the most effective video experience.
The average video watched online is about 2 minutes long.
An enormous amount of video watching is done at work, so keep that in mind. Melissa added that a Click to Listen button is much appreciated by these people.
In terms of size & format, go for the best quality you can when shooting, even if it has to be compressed when uploading online. If you can afford it, shoot in HD. It's where everything is headed. (Side note - this makes me really glad that I bought my new HD mini cam! It's the one in the picture.)

Day 3 should be good - hoping for some informative sessions and to feel better.

Affiliate Summit Day 1 - Grab My Nuts!

2008-02-25T10:00:00.000-08:00

Okay maybe it's been closer to half a day of festivities for me, but my feet are killing me already, I'm annoyed with the venue, and missing some boxes that were supposed to be shipped. But with my track record, it just wouldn't be a true trade show if I had everything prepared like clockwork :)

After having some breakfast I went to set the room service tray just outside my door for pick up and the door shut behind me and I was without my key. So I had to call down to get someone to come up and open the door, but I managed to be helped by housekeeping first and got let back in AND got fresh towels. Bonus!

So I hauled down to the registration area and got my badge and went in with my colleague to set up our modest booth. We don't have a big dynamic display like most companies do; just a table cloth with our logo, a banner, the highlighters we had made to give away, and the printed materials about our affiliate program. I brought the table cloth and sales sheets with me, we found the highlighters there shipped from the vendor, and the other things we'd shipped out here - our banner, a fishbowl for a giveaway, and a sign holder announcing our giveaway - were nowhere to be found. As well, there was no table there from the convention services company.

After procuring a table and still not locating the box or getting our manager on the phone to get more details about the shipment, we set up what we had and headed to the meet market, where we proceeded to be asked to grab Andy Rodriguez's nuts & naughty nurses asked us to enter to win a hummer.

Yes, you read that right.

Of course it would have been genius if they two tables had been beside each other, but they weren't. Andy Rodriguez Consulting was handing out packets of cashews and the company that hired the naughty nurses luring people in for a chance to win an H2 didn't really interest me so I don't remember the company name. They were some kind of information source like a magazine and I remember the man at the table was also at yesterday's Affiliate Classroom Live event.

It was good... got some cool freebies (heee!) and did some light networking. My feet were soon killing me and I came back up to the room, only to find that my room key had somehow gotten demagnetized. Locked out AGAIN! So I opted to wait for security to come let me in rather than walking my tired feet all the way down to the lobby to get the card redone. I took care of it when I went out again for dinner.

So more will come tomorrow!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

The feet you step on today are connected to the ass you'll be kissing tomorrow.
-Star Jones

This should be the first rule in networking :)

Get it Together, Feedburner

2008-02-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

My feed subscriber count went from 33 this morning to 28. Is it possible that 5 people jumped ship today? By all means - but it is suspect since for the last week my count has been bouncing sporadically between the two numbers.

Get your shit together, Feed burner.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
-Plato

Affiliate Summit West 2008 kicks off today (officially!). Stopping in around 2 to set up our booth and then heading over to the Meet Market with plenty of spiffy die-cut business cards in hand! Too bad they all have my former title on them :p

Debriefing from Affiliate Classroom LIVE Training

2008-02-23T19:38:00.000-08:00

The training has been over for about 2 hours now and I've been sitting in my hotel room on the 16th floor with a brilliant view of west Las Vegas thinking about whether or not I should share my views with you on the training tonight or wait until I've had some time to absorb it and wind down more from the experience to write about it.

However I've decided in the interest of reporting to you, I should talk about my initial impressions at least while they're still fresh in my memory. I will be dropping names!

First, the event was hosted by Amit Singal from Affiliate Classroom. Super gracious guy and a pleasure to talk with. Good job Amit for a great event!

The first speaker of the day was the keynote by Ned Farra. Ned talked a bit about Zappos.com and their history. Being previously unfamiliar with Zappos, it was interesting for me from a case study type point of view.

Next we heard from Bryan Rhodes & Stephanie Harris from Shaaf Consulting on a typical affiliate manager day. A lot of GREAT tips & tricks on how to allocate your resources (i.e. time & money) where they're best served, making your job more efficient, and coping with being an affiliate manager. I think this was one of my favorite sessions of the day because they were engaging and even as fairly new to this game as I am, I could totally relate! I think this is the most actionable session for me.

Afterwards we heard from Clarke D. Walton, a lawyer specializing in internet law. Some people seemed bored by this, but I was fascinated by the legal side of things. He shared some great case studies that really helped me to understand the legal perspective of affiliate marketing.

Amit Mehta, a 7 figure super affiliate, then talked about how to recruit and keep super affiliates. Good stuff, a lot of which I'd heard before, but definitely worth while. I learned some new tricks that I'm DEFINITELY going to keep in my back pocket ;)

I admit... the next couple of sessions were after lunch, which I was rushed through and had to take with me back into the meeting room, and I was less than enthused about the content. Todd Farmer & John Vehlewald from kowabunga gave a good talk about the difference between CPA and Traditional affiliate programs. It was interesting from a publisher point of view, but not very useful to me as a manager considering our printing products and the types of campaigns we run.

Lisa Riolo talked about metrics... I wish she could have gone a bit more in depth but the overview was good. Actually, more in depth in this setting so late in the day might not have been the best idea, so I'll accept it! She did help me really understand how to make metrics more actionable.

Next up was Michael C. Jones from Pepperjam talking about affiliate marketing technology. Okay, I'll admit it - I was bored. Partly because he was using a slide presentation that wasn't included in the packet of materials we were given, contained a ton of information, and talked too fast. I'm really hoping that I can approach him via email later this week so I can get the PPT and really read it and soak it in. It was some stuff I already knew regarding coding and whatnot so nothing too ground breaking for me, personally.

Worst/Best Session of the day came from Heather Paulson. I was really interested in the topic of engaging affiliates and she started out great...then she insulted the audience. Keep in mind that this was an affiliate manager training day, so when you ask how many people have ever heard of xx tool and no one raises their hand, don't say "uh, you should" in a really condescending tone and then go on a minute long lecture. The rest of her talk kind of went sour in my mind from there. Her information was overwhelming and almost pointed to "you can't do this, hire me to do it!" without actually saying that. Maybe I took it the wrong way, I'm open to that, but it just rubbed me the wrong. I admit though, I did pick up some useful tips that will really improve my actions as an affiliate program manager, so it wasn't all bad.

Lastly Rachel Honoway talked more about the new AC Certification courses to become a bona fide "certified affiliate manager". I really want to take the courses! They're fairly reasonably priced ($1500 for a 10 module course).

Oy tomorrow is a lighter day with just booth set up, registration, and the meet market, but work is work!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-Lily Tomlin

Even though it's Saturday, I'm stuck in a 10 hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE affiliate manager training. I can haz break?

Cribbed Content for February 22nd

2008-02-22T11:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that time again... time for me to ignore my writing degree and grab content to share from other sources. It's not plagiarism... it's flattery & link bait :)

Trackur is live! My dreams of total reputation management are coming true! Now, to fulfill my dream of the company reimbursing me to buy Andy Beal's new book Radically Transparent.
Google launched a beta version of AdWords for Video. If I were a bit easier on the eyes I'd be posting AdWord laden videos left & right!
Affiliate Summit West 08 kicks off on Sunday for set up & the Meet Market. As if I haven't already mentioned this a million times.

Tonight I forfeit my own bed for accommodations at the Rio in Las Vegas to get my training on Saturday. See you there!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

The mind stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.
-E.C. McKenzie

Take some time out of your weekend to learn something new! I'll be going to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit 2008 West this weekend, so I know I will.

Getting ready for Affiliate Summit West 08

2008-02-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Twitter is alive with activity. The summit has set up a group twitter that tracks whenever someone uses the keyword asw08 in their twits. This is very cool, especially considering I didn't know Twitter had this capability!

Everyone seems to be in a rush to get things done. Jim Kukral from ScratchBack.com is MCing the keynote on Monday. He's twittered several times tonight about the video he's working on for the presentation. At ASE07 in Miami the keynote was Ze Frank, a hilarious individual, so I'm hoping for no less at ASW08.

Stephanie Agresta from Stephanie Agresta Consulting is also a speaker and author of the Internet Geek Girl blog. She's twittered off and on today about her flight information and getting ready for the trip from out east. Sam Harrelson from Affiliate Fortune Cookies has been twittering as well and he's even had to change his flight because of inclement Northeastern weather.

Of course myself, I'm twittering here and there about getting ready. I'm not lucky enough to have a nice new company supplied laptop, so I'm on my own personal laptop this weekend. I do have a press pass, so I be working on keeping the interweb updated from the blogger's room through this blog and Twitter. I'm committed despite my chunky clunky Dell Latitude laptop :p.

As a final note while I'm getting my laptop set up tonight, I encourage everyone associated with affiliate marketing in any way to check out this month's issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine. Besides there being a keen write up of the PsPrint Affiliate Program, there's a lot of great affiliate manager tips. I'll be attending the whopping 10 hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE affiliate manager training on Saturday in Las Vegas before the summit. I'm eager to get in there and take notes... is it too much to hope for actual desks? :p I know that it's at the Rio and from all the conference space I've seen at hotels in the last year, I'm sure there won't be surfaces to write on readily available, so I'll be taking my clipboard with me.

Hope to see you there! I'm considering bringing my camcorder with me to the exhibit hall, so if you've used PsPrint in the past, come on by for an impromptu video plug!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-21T18:15:00.000-08:00

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
-Abraham Lincoln

Okay I probably should have used this quote for President's Day, but it's better late than never. I'm a master at procrastination, myself. What are you putting off until tomorrow?

Analytics Glossary: KPI - Key Performance Indicators

2008-02-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

KPI or Key Performance Indicators:

Typically available in dashboards and provides an overall understanding of how the site is performing. Some KPIs include conversions, clicks and page views but are defined by the analytics user.

In my experience most dashboards can get pretty cluttered. My recommendation is to give yourself a comfortable period of time in using the program (a week, a month, whatever you're satisfied with) and then review the content on your dashboard to remove anything you haven't determined is a KPI and you don't need to review on a daily basis.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-20T11:48:00.000-08:00

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
-George Elliot

But remember to speak up when you DO have something to say!

PayPerPost - Easy Monetization

2008-02-19T19:05:00.001-08:00

I've heard many of my fellow blogging friends talk at length about PayPerPost.com. This website basically promises the ultimate dream of bloggers: get paid to blog. Of course most bloggers are out to monetize, there are some of us who aren't... but hey, I can't shy away from a couple bucks every now and then.

I've only been a member for about a week; the buzz generated from all the blogs I regularly surf was too much to ignore any longer. So far I've been lurking around and checking out the interface and looking at what opportunities are usually available. While I'm not above writing a post that's sponsored, I'm also not interested in lying about a product or service that sucks to get paid.

A girl has to have standards...

So far in looking around, I have to say that it's a good site for a writer looking for some extra scratch who's willing to sacrifice some blog real estate for it. The interface is super easy to navigate. I hate to admit that I already had to contact Customer Service with a problem, but they were super swift to get back to me with a solution. They were faster to help me than I was to check my email to see the help!

For anyone looking specifically to monetize their blogs, I encourage you to check out PayPerPost. As long as you're already writing about some great services, you might as well get paid for it.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

I personally think we develop language because of our deep inner need to complain.
- Jane Wagner

After a long weekend and a blogging break, I can't say that I have anything to complain about. But go ahead and vent to me... I'll listen :)

Free Toolsday for February 19th

2008-02-19T16:58:00.000-08:00

If you're anything like me, you want to get the word out on your business and on important press releases, articles, and blog posts. A great new tool that leverages the social media marketing scene is SocialMarker.com

SocialMarker is so easy to use it's almost not fair. Drag the bookmark to your browser tool bar and you're half way there. Whenever you come across something that you feel should be shared, click the bookmark and a new window or tab will open with the article title and link already added to the form fields. Just enter in your own text, add some keywords, and select which services you want to submit it to. Bam!

The service works like an extension within your browser. Here's my example of bookmarking a new reputation management tool Trackur.com. First I opened the Trackur website, then clicked the bookmark in my browser's tool bar. As you can see here, the website saved the last bookmarking sites that I'd checked on my last visit, as well as automatically filled in the URL and title.

After entering in some text and tags, I clicked submit and was on my way. SocialMarker stays visible in your browser and you can navigate between the different bookmarking sites using the Next, Back, Login, and Submit buttons at the top of the interface. On some sites the info may not be automatically filled in if you have to login first, but you can use the fields at the bottom to select the info you filled out at the beginning and drag it into the appropriate fields on the site.

Digg Submission shown through SocialMarker interface

I love this tool because, well, it's free and who doesn't love that! More importantly, of course, it cuts down the time I used to spend going to several different sites to bookmark something useful. I can increase my efficiency and get the word out faster than ever. Since I use it mostly to get my blog posts noticed, I can spend more time on great content and less time on getting that content out there.

There's honestly nothing to risk in trying it out since you don't have to create a login to use the service. Don't wait and go to www.SocialMarker.com to start!

Analytics Glossary: Sessionization

2008-02-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

Sessionization:

Refers to methods used to define a session (includes cookies, IP address, IP+Agent and others) telling the analytics system how to measure - or not measure - a series of page requests from the same individual or browsing machine.

In order to be able to track visitors accurately, you need to make sure you're not counting the same visitor over and over again. This is where Sessionization comes in handy. Otherwise you could be counting yourself refreshing the page after making updates 10 times and falsely inflate your data.

Be wary of your analytics software and make sure that it's not just counting page loads or else you get a grossly inflated number.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Cribbed Content for February 15th

2008-02-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Always providing you with the best hijacked content from around the web. If you didn't hear about most of this yet... you were probably playing ostrich.

Starbucks Coffee announced Free Wifi at 7,000 US locations. They've dumped the zero (T-Mobile) and got with a hero (AT&T).
Microsoft bid $44.6 billion to buy out Yahoo. Yahoo rebuffed the unsolicited offer and told them to step off. The NY Times has some good coverage of this cat & mouse game.

On a personal note this irritates me to read things like this, because I just bought myself a pro account! I don't want it to change!!

I started adding new seriest to this blog: Free Toolsdays (get it?), Analytics Glossary, and the Quote of the Day. I know, no huge international scandal but I could have included Britney Psych Ward coverage instead.

Have a great long weekend!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-15T12:17:00.000-08:00

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors.
-Dave Barry

I wrote a funny post months back about the top 10 things that improve work ethic. I think it's one of my best, so here I share it with you again. Clicky clicky!

Get Ready for the Long Weekend

2008-02-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

Are you as excited about the long weekend as I am? Probably. If you have kids though, it's no walk in the park to keep them upbeat on a cold winter weekend. But my mom had the right idea when we were little to keep us entertained. A book club!

Now a days we have the advantage of DVD clubs too like the Disney Movie Club. I could have used this when I was a kid, and I'm telling you as a lover of Disney movies even at 27, I'm considering joining myself!

The best part about the Disney Movie Club is that there's no membership fee. Basically you get the benefit of your first three Disney movies for just $1.99 each with free shipping, then get special deals on other Disney movies. For me, it's a matter of completing my collection as I'm pretty sure I already own most of the Pixar films and my favorite classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.

But go see for yourself. This is really going to help entertain ME for weekends to come, and I'm an adult! Stop thinking about work for the weekend and fulfill your American duty this President's Day: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

Quote of the Day

2008-02-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the end in an awful hurry.
- John Jenson

Are you the type of person that's caught up in the rat race or do you actively take time to slow down and relax no matter what is going on in your day to day?

Meet me in Vegas!

2008-02-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the great team at Affiliate Summit, you can now schedule appointments with exhibitors in a nifty online interface.

So if you're going to the summit, schedule an appointment to talk to me & my PsPrint colleague! Go now to http://sponsors.affiliatesummit.com to schedule an appointment! We've already got a couple of meetings scheduled outside of this super sweet interface, so be sure to get us while we're hot!

Remember the 20% off printing discount with PsPrint for attendees and exhibitors... you only get more details if you register to attend! And the word today is that the event is SOLD OUT! So get on that waiting list!

Analytics Glossary: Frequency

2008-02-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Frequency:

The number of times a visitor has visited a site during a reporting period. Average Frequency is the average of all visitors' frequencies during the reporting period. Frequency is a retention metric and part of RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis.

This goes hand in hand with bounce rate, which tells you how many people leave your website after visiting a certain page. Generating leads and driving traffic is important, but you have to make your website sticky... once they're there, make them want to stay and come back. Monitor this with the frequency data and bounce rates.

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

In Mail We Trust

2008-02-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting little blurb in the November/December issue of Revenue Magazine on page 18. In part it says:

The study said that newspaper ads were the most trustworthy, with 63% of media consumers saying they trust the ads there. Search ads were the highest-scoring online format, with 34% saying they trusted them. Banner ads were trusted by just 26% of respondents and mobile advertising had 18% of the public trust.

Basically what this says to me is that, even in an era of internet marketing, viral marketing, and SEO/SEM... brick and mortar printing is still the most trusted form of advertisement.

One of the best ways to get the word out in a trusted way is direct mail. Direct mail allows you to catch your customers when they're more alert and looking for information within their mail delivery. Consider this: when you get home from work at the end of the day and check your mailbox, you're momentarily more alert while trying to decipher what are bills that need immediate attention, letters from friends or family, and what is advertisements. But even though you're not looking for the ads, they can still seep into your consciousness during those moments.

Direct mail is inexpensive and can be completed by a number of different resources (other than your kids bribed with a pizza and armed with some stamps on a Saturday afternoon). Reputable printing and mailing companies like PsPrint take all the hassle out of a direct mail piece. Mailing lists are affordable as well, so there's no hassle in supplementing any customer list you already have with more potential leads.

Make sure to keep these tips in mind when planning our your direct mail campaign:

Make it Relevant. Target your list in a way that the consumers receiving your mail piece actually have interest in what you're selling or promoting. Use demographic parameters in renting your mailing list to narrow down who you're paying to send a piece to.
Make it Pop. Designs should be eye catching when looking through the usual boring pile of mail. Use vivid colors to make your piece stand out amid the white and manila envelopes.
Make it Clear. Don't clutter your piece with information in the attempt to let the consumer know everything about your company. Focus on a single call to action (e.g. coming into the store for more details or visiting the website for more information). Use the mail piece to say the most important thing you want the consumer to know and direct them to the most important action they should take.

Now get out there and get your mail on!

Professional Mailing Services at PsPrint

Quote of the Day

2008-02-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

A study of economics reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year.
- Marty Allen

I remember the day I found out that the new Xbox (the 1st gen) had the same amount of hard drive space as my prized laptop. What a deflating day.

Analytics Glossary: Average Lifetime Value

2008-02-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

Average Lifetime Value:

The average of the lifetime value of a visitor or multiple visitors during the reporting period. Each visitor's lifetime value is the total monetary value of a visitor's past orders since visitor tracking began.

Since I recently had a snafu with my analytics, I've decided to start this bi-weekly series of glossary terms on analytics and share some things I've learned with you about it! Take notes, children!

____
Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
- Lord Chesterfield

Food for thought there... would you rather have a laundry list of accomplishments to show for your actions or just know that you're good?

Free Toolsday for February 12th

2008-02-12T10:21:00.001-08:00

Today's highlighted free tool is perhaps an obvious one. One of the easiest things you can do to keep up to date on changes within your industry is to subscribe to news feeds and blog feeds. One of the best free readers out there is Google Reader.

The three column format is pretty clean and easy to navigate. On the left column is the main navigation with all your feeds. As seen, the ones that are bold are the ones with new content. From the home page you also get a summary of all the new content from all your feeds, so you can read from there to catch up on the latest news.

I like Google Reader because it has a lot of potential to also be a social tool. There are sharing capabilities. Just click the "Share" icon underneath a blog post and anyone on your Google friends list can see the blog posts. It's a brilliant and unobtrusive way to share. Since it's Google as well, when you want to email a blog post to someone it opens an integrated Gmail window right there... which since I use Gmail personally I love.

Google Reader also has the ability to group feeds, which is a great asset to have. I use Reader for both work related feeds that I keep up on and some fun feeds, so having different folders helps me focus on the work ones while at work and leave the fun ones aside to check on my break or when I get home. You can also alter the order in which the folders are displayed in the left column, so you can easily prioritize which feeds are the most important to check on.

This is another great feature... there doesn't necessarily need to be a feed for you to subscribe to! Bookmarklets seem to be all the rage lately, but I'm pretty sure that Google was among the first to bring this out. It's a great tool when you find yourself checking websites like a mad woman.

All in all, a great, and best of all, FREE tool to use to keep your ear to the ground within your industry!

Google Analytics Asleep at the Wheel?

2008-02-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

Or, am I?

I installed the code for Google Analytics on the 14th and the tracking data has been rockin' since I've been watching it. It's SO much better than the former interface I was using. But I admit that I wasn't very blog active last week and I looked at the analytics dashboard to find this today:

Visitor Flatline since the 2nd. Which I know isn't right... so what gives? What did I change? I changed the blog over to my own DNS late on the 30th and those few days tracked just fine. The high mark there is Feb 1... so what gives? I did change the template somewhere in there but I'm not sure what day that was...

I tried reinstalling the code and I'm not seeing a difference yet, but it's entirely possible that it's taking more time than I have patience right now.

Does anyone have any ideas? I know that I'm getting visitors (well I'm pretty sure...), I just don't know why they're not tracking at all. I obviously have a lot to learn...

Quote of the Day

2008-02-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-Susan Ertz

I wish it were still Sunday... another week ahead!

The "it" site Snapbomb

2008-02-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

It seems that on a daily basis there are more and more opportunities for bloggers to make money. I was Stumbling around earlier and found a blog post about SnapBomb from a blogger than I tend to take pretty seriously, LaTease Rikard. Usually she's pretty on the mark about opportunities out there, including signing up for the PsPrint Affiliate Program!

So I went to check out the buzz about this and it's the easiest thing I've done in awhile. The interface is super easy to understand and there's no lengthly approval process like other pay per post/sponsored review sites. I don't have a lot of experience with this as I've never written a paid post in my life, but from reading other bloggers around the blogosphere, most paid per post/review sites are a bunch of hoops to jump through. It's refreshing to see something so straightforward out there.

Now SnapBomb is not going to make you a millionaire overnight. From what I can see the starting pay rates are between $5-10 when you start out. But for prolific writers there's definitely a chance to make some extra scratch there. And I'm sure most bloggers who are attempting to make money from their blogs appreciate every dollar they can get. It's also a good vehicle for blog marketing.

I encourage anyone looking for some extra dough to check it out at www.SnapBomb.com and poke around.

Quote of the Day

2008-02-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

I had reasoned this out in my mind, there were two things I had a right to: liberty and death. If I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive.
-Harriet Tubman

What do you have a right to?

Quote of the Day

2008-02-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

New Feature Alert! Quote of the Day!

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
-Doug Larson

Have you ever found this to be true?

Cribbed Content for February 8th

2008-02-08T17:46:00.001-08:00

Other than the untimely demise of my youth by one more birthday this week, it's been a light week in my world.

My love affair with Entrecard is well known... and they had a birthday this week too!
Super Tuesday narrowed the playing field and we're down to the wire on deciding who to vote for. It's coming upon convention and running mate time. There's a decent recap posted online from NPR.
The NY Giants won the Super Bowl. Go Figure. A coworker told me today that there was apparently a college kid who was having trouble lining up student loans and grants so he bet $1000 on NY and it paid out 12-1 so now the kid's sitting in $12,000 for school. I can't find the story though (Google - you've failed me!) so someone link it if you know what I'm talking about please.
Shawn Collins, ever the Affiliate guru, has posted a video guide to Networking at the Affiliate Summit. Right on.
Save up to 50% off Postcards at PsPrint. That's right, PsPrint lowered postcard printing prices by 30-50%! We're practically giving these away, people.

That's all, folks

5 Proven Tips for Powerful Postcard Marketing

2008-02-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

Guest Article By Anne Casanova, Senior Marketing Director, PsPrint

In this high-tech business world, postcards may not be the first marketing vehicle that comes to mind when planning a lead generation campaign. That’s really too bad since with just five proven tips you can create powerful marketing postcards that are almost guaranteed to deliver a good response. And at a fraction of the cost of high-tech marketing methods.

Five proven tips:

1. Make a big impression
How many of you have looked forward to receiving a postcard from friends or relatives? The compelling picture on the front makes you immediately turn it over to read. Why not incorporate an “image” style postcard on the front of your postcard with a “wish you were here” or “wish you had this” feature on the card? Since postcards are available in a variety of sizes from 4x6 to 6x9 to 9x12 and more, and they are available on many different paperweights, you can explore this theme to develop a warm reception to your postcard.

2. Get to the Point
Postcards deliver an instant “read now” quality. In order to attract your customer’s interest, get right to the point with your main statement. The main statement should be your biggest benefit or a distinctive advantage. You need to capture interest immediately in order to maintain the “read now” advantage. If possible, customize the postcard with customer’s name, pet’s name, address… anything that provides you an edge and makes the customer feel like you already know them.

3. Do the Right Thing
Marketing postcards are most effective when they are used to generate website traffic, phone calls or sales leads. They are less effective for closing sales because they do not provide enough space for a detailed sales message. And, please don’t try to include one. It will destroy the personal nature of your message. Instead, focus on persuading the reader to visit your website, call you, or some other action.

4. Be Clear and Actionable
You have just a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention and convince them to take the action you want. So keep the message brief and easily understood. If you are using sentences, keep them short and make sure there are lines in between. You don’t want to overwhelm your reader. Better yet, see if you can reduce the sentences into short bullet points to get your message across quickly. The litmus test is whether you can understand the message with just a brief glance. Test out your message with someone whose opinion you trust.

5. Act Now!!!
You know how much people love to procrastinate. In fact, there were over 1,300 books listed on Amazon.com in regards to procrastination. So you have to give your reader a reason to respond now. The best methods include offering a discounted price for a limited time, a special bonus for the first 100 respondents, or some other offer if they respond before a certain deadline.

Postcards might not be a “high tech” innovation but, done right, they have enough gadgets to produce results.

Provided by PsPrint.com

New to Affiliate Summit? No Sweat

2008-02-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

Shawn Collins, ever the forward thinker, is taking into consideration the little guy - the first time Affiliate Summit attendee. Man I wish this has been around back in July when I went to my first Affiliate Summit!

Regardless, take a few minutes if you're going to the summit and you're not sure what all to expect and watch his power point video. He's posted it in the Affiliate Summit Blog.

Remember that PsPrint is offering 20% off printing to all show attendees, but you have to Register to get more information! Hurry up because registration is already at 85% capacity almost a month out. Trust me, if you're serious about affiliate marketing you'll be doing yourself a huge favor by attending this show.

Social Media Marketing: Wave of the Future?

2008-02-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

I figured out a really nifty thing to do on LinkedIn a few months ago... creating an HTML email signature with a link to this blog, to the PsPrint website, and to my LinkedIn profile. I was, sadly, highly amused by this function and emailed a colleague to show it off.

Colleague: Oh that is cool...I am still not 100% comfortable with online communication websites but Linked In seems cool because it's business connections.
Me: But it's the waaaave of the futurrrrre. And we're going to start social media marketing, so get used to it :p

Back in August we decided to do a full frontal attack on social media! I can't say much yet since we're still fleshing out the procedures and nitty gritty details, but I'll be taking the lead on it. That was decided back in August and we still haven't made any progress on it, other than my blogging efforts here.

It was exciting to get some new responsibilities and start working on a new project. Our mailing services is pretty automated and our affiliate program was starting to go places. I couldn't wait to talk more about it, but mum was the word at the time.

So I got to thinking about it... is social media and online networking really the wave of the future? What are your thoughts?

Cribbed Content for February 1st

2008-02-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

Ninja Marketing Tactics - Postcards

2008-02-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

These days, you cannot have a marketing conversation without the term “Online marketing” taking center stage. Online marketing is a great promotional vehicle for businesses but it isn’t the only way to market. Many entrepreneurs are simply seeking a low-cost, easy-to-implement, “tech-less” way to reach out to their customers. Well, the answer lies in postcard marketing. Even large technology companies like postcard marketing. Intuit, which makes accounting software, recommends postcard marketing to its accounting firm clients.

Why?

Postcards can be an irresistible way to get someone’s attention. Postcards can:

Generate sales leads
Promote special offers or coupons
Introduce a new product or service
Keep in touch with existing customers
Drive traffic to a website.

Almost all postcards are read and the reason is simple. Unlike mail that’s sent in envelopes, nothing has to be opened in order for the recipient to read the message. With tradition direct mail, people often look at just the envelope and decide they are not interested. And just like that, you’ve lost the opportunity to connect with that person.

A postcard is already “opened”, ready to read, and at the very least, the message will be seen by the recipient. It offers you at least 15 seconds to capture someone’s attention.

You can create, print and mail postcards without a big investment of either time or money. Lots of companies offer free design templates, including PsPrint. Or you could have a talented friend design a card for you. Printing is very inexpensive and can take as little as a day. And bulk mailing is available for quantities over 200, making the mailing price at about $0.18 cents.

The ingredients for a successful postcard campaign include:

Color. Make sure your postcard is attractive! Add a high-quality photo or other image. Children and animals are the most eye-catching according to the direct mail experts at the USPS.
Concise. Simple bold headlines work best. “Spring Fashions Are In” or “Buy one book, second is free” capture attention and get your prospect thinking of their need for your products or services.
Timely. Messages such as “50% off this weekend only” or “Your Contract is about to expire” work as a call to action.
Utilize both sides. Consider treating the front like a poster and the back to provide a few details. Make sure you leave the proper room needed for addressing and other post office regulations.
Staying power. Have you postcard serve as a coupon or gift certificate. You want to present information in a manner that makes the recipient want to hang on the postcard.

Marketing your small business does not have to be expensive—just effective. A direct mail postcard marketing campaign could be exactly what you need to help jump start your sales in 2008.

Provided by PsPrint.com

New Entrecard Features - Titillate and Excite!

2008-01-31T14:04:00.000-08:00

My favorite advertising site just got better! Entrecard just unleashed three new features on it's members, and I for one say hallelujah! Graham talks about them on the Entrecard blog here.

Entrecard Members are greeted today with three great new features that will shock and amaze.

Well... I'm not so sure about THAT but they are fun new features. The first is the changing of the inbox. Instead of being yet another column to the right side of the page, it's a nifty little feed across the top. I think this is way more efficient, but I can see how some people don't see the big deal.

Next there's a news feed... which I TOTALLY dig. I have so many feeds already coming into my Google Reader that sometimes I just have to delete ones that are mildly interested but I don't end up reading. This allows me to set different blogs as favorites on Entrecard and see their headlines so I can judge if there's something worthwhile out there to read. Since I'm on Entrecard every day it's a pretty easy way to spread out the blogs I read.

Lastly, I see no purpose in this feature except to poke fun at ourselves. They have added a nifty little drop rank feature in your blog area just to see how you rank in dropping entrecards. Again, no real purpose (it's not a competition afterall) other than to have some fun. And I, for one, at least see the importance of that.

So once again I say, rock the eff on, Entrecard!

New Diggs

2008-01-31T00:30:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone.

I finally got off my rear and changed the URL to the one on my website! Change your bookmarks/subscriptions!

http://blog.trishalyn.com

DIY is My Motto

2008-01-30T18:39:00.000-08:00

Ever heard the phrase "If you want something done right, do it yourself"? I live by this creed, I really do. I've had a bad track record with crappy groups for projects since back in middle school. I always ended up getting shafted and doing the lion's share of the work. This trend continued through high school and even in college. Guess what? Some things never change.

I appreciate that this colleague took it into their own hands to notify their team of a new program we're launching soon. And sure, it's one less thing on my task list to do. But in their haste to notify everyone of something that's not even going live until next week, they made errors in the details. Email addresses must be correct. Telling someone where to find a link when they won't actually find a link there can be more confusing even though you're attempting to clear up an issue.

This is precisely why I was going to do this notice myself once I was ready. It's one thing to take a matter into your own hands, but when you're rushing to do it and not listening to the advice I'm giving (being the resident expert on hand) and not properly proofreading your email memo...well it's not doing anyone any favors.

The moral of this story? Rushing is not always best. The most important facet of sales and marketing is the message, and the message has to be right. It's okay to put off until tomorrow that which isn't mission critical and you don't really have time to do it today. If putting something off means that it will be done correctly instead of throw half-heartedly together then I'm all for procrastination. Deadlines are important, but when not faced with an immediate deadline then quality of message should supersede speed of message.

Manage your time effectively, and be sure that there's always quality in your work. Specialization is for insects!

Extreme Measures for Links

2008-01-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

Leave it to Hugh MacLeod to put a smile on my face on an otherwise awful day.

Annoying Sales & Marketing Tactics

2008-01-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

Annoying Tactic #1: Launch a campaign without communicating it to everyone who needs to know internally.

Yes, if we told you we'd have to kill you. It's that secret! Or, just not well communicated. There's a fine line between keeping everyone in the loop and spamming everyone with constant updates. Personally, I'd rather err on the side of caution and go with the borderline spam. At least that way I never hear that dreaded phrase "Well nobody told ME that". In my opinion, the more informed the employees are, the more interested and invested they are in making the company work and grow successfully. Maybe that's just me.

Annoying Tactic #2: Contact everyone at the company you have contact info for to push a deal.

While erring to spam internally doesn't bother me, constant follow up when I have no say in a matter does. I read an interesting blog a few months ago and man does it ring true. Listen up...if I've told you that you need to talk to a certain person that's obviously not me, don't keep sending me e-mails and calling me. Despite the word "assistant" in my (former) title, I am not this person's secretary and cannot get them to call you back any faster if they are not interested or, better yet, not in the office. I've never been one to respond well to hard sales even if I was genuinely interested in the product. So back off, Salesman Steve. We'll get to you when we're good and ready.

Annoying Tactic #3: Make sure everyone you've ever met knows where you work and how they could use you.

There's a fine line between informative introductions and obnoxious introductions. If someone you meet at a show or other non-work related function asks what you do or where you work, don't be afraid to tell them. It might spark their interest and give you a wide opportunity to explain to them how great your company is without shoving it down their throat. But be careful not to be obnoxious. Princeton's WordNet search defines obnoxious as "objectionable: causing disapproval or protest". So don't leave a sour taste in people's minds about your company by announcing it off the bat when you shake hands. Yes shows are great networking opportunities, but if you go around spewing information about your company to everyone who didn't ask, they won't be likely to use you. Saturation is not always good.

Annoying Tactic #4: Miss deadlines

Missing so many deadlines that the promotion or campaign is practically a moot idea is the most annoying of all. When people get a postcard for a sale and the sale is halfway over, they tend to be ticked off about it and it really doesn't encourage them to go order right away to take advantage. I know, I've received many a sale card mid-sale and thought simply "well, that's a sale I won't be able to hit". Marketing is all about timeliness, so missing the mark is just poor form. It doesn't motivate your customers to take action and it holds back other people within your department trying to work on the same project.

Eek! Affiliate Summit Almost Sold Out!

2008-01-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

That's right, the summit is almost sold out! "As of this morning, we are at 85 percent capacity," said Affiliate Summit Co-Founder Shawn Collins. "Based on historical data, the rest of the space is going to go quick."

The keynote speaker for Monday, February 25 will be Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com. The conference will also feature Moniker's Live Domain Auctions, the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Gala, and nearly 70 expert speakers

During the Affiliate Summit 2008 West, marketers will gather and learn from one another in a cooperative environment, while attendees gain intimate knowledge and experience about the affiliate marketing industry and network with industry leaders.

The Affiliate Summit 2008 West conference will be the ninth Affiliate Summit event presented by industry veterans, Shawn Collins and Missy Ward. More information about the Affiliate Summit Conference along with a schedule of speakers and events is available by visiting &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src='https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=trishalyn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;client=affsum' width='1' height='1' border='0'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;AffiliateSummit.com. For up-to-date information about the affiliate marketing industry, subscribe to the Real Deal Newsletter - the Official Newsletter of Affiliate Summit at RealDealNewsletter.com.

So what are you waiting for! Go get your tickets today and make sure to get your butt in gear! Once you register you'll also see the offer for 20% off your printed materials through PsPrint. Get on it!

Affiliate Summit Won't Come to You

2008-01-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src='https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=trishalyn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;client=affsum' width='1' height='1' border='0'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Vegas... again. For faithful readers you'll know that after having not been to Sin City since I was six, I've been twice since August. And I'm going yet again at the end of February for &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src='https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=trishalyn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;client=affsum' width='1' height='1' border='0'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Affiliate Summit West 08. It should be sweet; AS East 07 in Miami was my first trade show attendance and it was a special and magical time. And since the show is directly involved with what I do on a daily basis, it's like going to a crash course on my job.

Luckily for anyone who saw footage of the Monte Carlo on fire today, it's being held at the Rio All Suites Hotel & Casino. Home of Penn & Teller, an excellent show if you're looking to mix business with pleasure. I saw them in August and it was top entertainment for not bad of a price.

This year Affiliate Classroom LIVE is putting on an all day training session on affiliate manager training. And it's FREE (well, aside from that $97 reservation fee to make sure you come). It's 8:00 am to 6:00 pm so that much won't be fun, especially since my husband will be joining me for part of this trip so he'll be on his own to explore :(. But at that price, how could you pass it up? There's only 150 seats, so if you're interested go make your reservation now!

Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules is also putting on an Internet Marketing Bootcamp the same day. Which sucks for me because I'd love to go to both, but maybe some kind soul would give me a verbal crash course in how it goes ;). But this bootcamp is a lofty $200. In comparison to what you're spending to attend the show that's chump change, but still hard to swing if you're a start up publisher wanting to learn the ropes. &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src='https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=trishalyn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;client=affsum' width='1' height='1' border='0'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Affiliate Summit attendees do get $50 off though. Check out the Affiliate Summit Blog for more details on how to swing that.

For anyone even thinking about going to this, I highly recommend it. I learned SO much as a beginning affiliate manager, and got to network with some great people. It's also an excellent resource for a publisher to check out all the different networks that are out there and all the best strategies and tactics for converting your website into your income. And just look outside at your winter weather then remember that Las Vegas will be warm and sunny and book your flight to go already!

Remember to take plenty of business cards as you WILL need them (we ran clean out last time). As a special, PsPrint is offering 20% off for attendees. But you have to register to get the code for the discount, so register today for the &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src='https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=trishalyn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;client=affsum' width='1' height='1' border='0'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Affiliate Summit!

Cribbed Content for January 25th

2008-01-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

As promised last week, here's my look around the web for interesting business, marketing, web 2.0, etc. stuff.

Digg changed their algorithm. No one cared except Digg diehards.
After two+ weeks, PrintSalesPro finally publishes a reprint of my All For One, One For All Printers post.
LaTease Rikard, one of my StumbleUpon friends, took some advice after my post about our launch of the affiliate program (officially) and joined up and wrote about it.
ProBlogger just today published Dropping The F-Bomb: Blogging with Naughty Words. I don't see a whole lot of repeated topics on my jaunts through the blogosphere, but this is the second article on using the F-bomb since September. The first was Scott Jangro back in September. I wonder if this is really a wide spread phenomenon?

It's been a slow week, so there you have it. Not much going on, really.

Commenting is Marketing

2008-01-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

I was looking through the nominations for the SEMMY awards and came across this great post by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. He talks about 10 ways to hurt your blogs brand by commenting on other blogs. It's all pretty informative stuff that seems like common sense to me. This read comes at a particularly pertinent time for me as I was recently asked to compile a list of blogs that we should respond to as a company.

I grabbed a few to check up on and added them to my Google Reader to subscribe. I'm very sensitive to spam and I don't want to be "that guy" (or girl, as is the case). I learned after reading Darren's post that I'm not doing anything wrong. I've been making relevant comments (of course) and throwing in the PsPrint URL when it adds to the conversation of the bloggers post.

I post Darren's question to my few readers here:

What practices would you add to the posted list?
Which would you remove from it (or modify)?
What advice would you give bloggers when it comes to commenting on others blogs?
As a blogger - do you police any of these types of things? Do you have a comment policy of any kind?