For some time I have been pulling in the rss feeds from some of the very best UK affiliate marketing blogs and publishing them in an aggregated form on Internet Marketing Blogs, I set this site up simply for myself to use in January 2007 although I suspect one or two others do find it useful.

Last Saturday I decided to set up IMB with its own twitter @affiliateblogs, I mentioned it to my good friend Purple and he suggested automating the tweets by putting the rss feed through HootSuite, somewhat skeptical I took a look to see what was involved. It couldn’t have been easier to set up the account and plugin in the rss from IMB, maximum setting is 5 automated tweets / hour, so I put it on that, can always throttle it back if it seems too intusive or spammy.

Thats all there is to it, and so far it has gone pretty well, @affiliateblogs has picked up 300 followers in the week and at time of writing there have been 400 clicks through the twitter links.

The stats that Hootsuite provide are pretty good too here is the full week by click and location;

It also lets me know which blog articles have been most popular;

All in all a satisfactory first week, the jury is out whether I use similar automation on other projects but there is a fantastic potential, just hope Hootsuite keep an eye on their users to prevent it getting too spammy.

Ever wanted to submit your wordpress blog to a reader or blog service or even subscribe to someone elses blog, but felt that too much of it was off topic?

Well with wordpress it is possible to just submit or subscribe to the rss of individual categories.

All you do is navigate to the category you are interested in and add feed after the url.

For example;

Say on this site you are only interested in the Affiliate Marketing category

1. navigate to the appropriate category http://www.keithbond.co.uk/category/affiliate-marketing/
2. Add feed to the end of the url http://www.keithbond.co.uk/category/affiliate-marketing/feed and subscribe in your favourite reader.

Incidentally if anyone has a UK affiliate blog or a blog which is pretty general but does contain one category with an internet marketing / affiliate marketing slant let me know and I will add it to Internet Marketing Blogs which also has of yesterday has a twitter account @AffiliateBlogs which tweets new articles as they are published, this is set to a maximum of 5 per hour so you shouldn’t get over run although at busy times the odd one may slip through the net.

Another service to add the affiliate category of your blog to is the blogs section ofaffiliates4u.com simply click on the My Profile link at the top of the page and navigate to the blogs section and add your blog (or category) feed url.

Do you want to get on in affiliate marketing but can’t get take that first step? If so its possible you fit into one of these categories:

• Are you in your comfort zone? If you are perfectly content with how things are at present you will find it difficult to make changes.
• Do you only look at the now? If you merely think about the task you are on with and not how it can affect your life you will have difficulty getting on with it.
• Are you plain lazy? If all  you want to do is slob out in front of the TV don’t expect to suddenly become successful.
• Do you lack motivation? If you cant see any reason for doing the job you have been set or have given yourself to do you will go out of your way to avoid doing it.

All of the above are reasons for standing still and if thats what you really want its fine by me, however seeing as you are reading this maybe you do want to get on in life. I cant really help if you are happy with your lot or are just lazy however if you fit into one of the other two slots I will try to give you a shove in the right direction.

If you are involved or want to be involved in affiliate marketing your first step pick a subject you are enthusiastic about, otherwise you will fall at the lack of motivation hurdle, a great source of ideas and inspiration can be found here help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009 I must warn you that at the time of writing this the thread is 1100 posts long, however there are some gems in there.

OK you have your chosen subject, (eg “Fishing”, “Tibet”, “Fishing in Tibet”)what would you like it to lead to, for example are you going to build a website, write a blog, simply run pcc.

Decide how much time you are going to devote to the project, and if necessary work out a time slot you will dedicate to working on it.

Research the subject, not only content but merchants and products you can promote.

Before going any further are you still upbeat about what you have planned? If not go back and pick something else or else lack of motivation may kick in, otherwise carry on reading.

Set a target how many words / articles etc a day you are going to write, be realistic no point trying to do too much all at once.

Schedule in rest periods, give yourself a break do something completely different for an hour after 2 hours work, (or half a hour every hour if that suit you better).

Look at the bigger picture what do you want to achieve, make it measurable and attainable

Wrong ~ I want to be rich (very nice but doesn’t set up any success habits)

Right ~ I am going to write 3 articles a day and in 12 months be an acknowledged resource on Fishing in Tibet. (this helps keep you going seeing the bigger picture rather than just the task in hand)

The ultimate goal is in most cases to earn revenue from your project however without motivation and without looking ahead and seeing the bigger picture you are unlikely to get very far.

This formula works for me most of the time although I do sometimes shoot off at a tangent or some other project will take over, it may not work for you however feel free to give it a try it may just be the kick up the pants you have been looking for.

I like content to be sent to me by merchants, all content is good, if its not unique I am getting pretty adept at rewriting it, however when I receive an email and all the text is included in a graphic it poses problems, I can’t cut and paste into my word processor to do the rewrite, which often means no matter how good the product I don’t get round to writing about it.

Don’t get me wrong pictures in emails are great, they stand out and get noticed however when…

… there is nothing I can use as a base of an article.

So merchants if you like your shiny graphical emails thats cool, but if you can send  out a text version too you may get more promotion.

OK yeah some affiliates will just copy and paste the content as is on to their websites and say job done, but the true content affiliates will say “hey I can use this”, a rewrite (thats what the thesaurus is for) and a bit of embellishment and hey presto a piece of fairly unique content.

I have mentioned in these two articles some of the ways I beat bloggers block, Wagging The Long Tail For Blogging Ideas and 5 Ways To Beat Bloggers Block.

Another great research tool one which looks at historic orders is the Paid On Results Basket Data Report, here is a quick overview.

Log onto your POR account and click Basket Data in the reports menu and you get a report something like this.

Hovering over the title of the product gives a thumbnail pic and some product data.

Clicking the product title reveals a sub-menu:

• View monthly performance for this product
• Visit the Merchants website
• Create Product Links

Options 2 & 3 are self explanatory click option 1 reveals yet another useful report:

Suffice to say all this data is excellent, it reveals the type of product that is selling, this in turn poses several questions:

• do I promote the best sellers more?
• should I try and increase the exposure I give to other products?
• are the best sellers products I have written most about?
• why is x product not selling even though I spent a lot of time and effort pushing it?

etc etc, hopefully you get the picture and I’m sure you will come up with many questions and ideas of your own that can be generated from this extremely useful tool.

While the POR Basket Data Report is a powerful tool not enough merchants are using it, so far you can get reports for:

• Dead Good Undies
• Ducti
• Everything But The Music
• Freemans
• Grattan
• HQhair
• Kaleidoscope
• Magscriber
• Miller Brothers
• Millet Sports
• Pressies 4 Princesses
• Prezzy Box
• QED-uk
• RedSave
• The Funky Hair Group

I hope a few more merchants realise its worth in the near future.