Its been a while since I posted anything here so I thought it high time I got my finger out, so here is a piece I have plagiarised.

No seriously the following article by coaching expert Annabel Sutton landed in my inbox this morning and I immediately was struck by how much of it applied to affiliate marketing so much so that I contacted Annabel and asked permission to reproduce it in full here, enjoy.

The Art of Getting it Wrong by Annabel Sutton

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. (James Joyce)

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. (Albert Einstein)

When was the last time you watched a small child learning to walk?  They’ll walk a couple of steps, fall over, pick themselves up and try again.  Heaven knows how many times they fall over before they master the art of walking.  They might cry the first time they fall down — they might be a bit surprised and perplexed — they might have a bit of a chuckle — but do they give up?  No.  There isn’t the tiniest question of giving up and they get back on their feet and try again.

Just imagine, if a child stopped and thought too much about walking, he or she would probably never start.  They could spend days, weeks, months thinking about it and preparing for it, take umpteen courses, read books on how to walk but never actually do it.  Perfectionists can learn a lot from toddlers.  Not only do they put off doing things, but sometimes they’re so paralysed by the fear of not getting it right that they shelve an idea completely.  We procrastinators are exactly the same: we over-think things and over-prepare, worried that we’ll never know enough or be good enough.

Entrepreneurs and toddlers have a lot in common.  They’re both risk takers and refuse to give up.  Successful entrepreneurs often don’t become successful overnight.  In fact, they often suffer several disastrous forays into business (and lose horrible amounts of money) before they make it big.

So what can we learn from this?  Maybe to overcome the curse of perfectionism – and procrastination – we have to return to child-like thinking.  Don’t prepare. Don’t think or analyse.  Just do it.  Be prepared to fall over, pick yourself up, fall over again.  Enjoy the process, rather than worrying about the outcome.  You may not get it right the first time, or even the second – but with persistence you’ll make it in the end.

Several years ago I was struggling with trying to write the text for my first website.  I kept putting the job off because of the fear of not ‘getting it right’.  I was on the verge of giving up completely when I read a newsletter by US marketing guru, Robert Middleton, on exactly this topic.  He recalled how, many years before, he had been writing the text for his first website.  It wasn’t perfect — in fact, the look and feel of the site had changed several times since that first effort.  He had, effectively, fallen over many times before eventually fashioning the product he wanted.  The point was that he had made a start and done something.

This was a revolution in thinking for me and has helped me a lot over the years.  Accepting the idea that what you do actually doesn’t have to be perfect first time.  It can be changed. It probably WILL be changed!  Sometimes you just have to recognise that what you undertake probably won’t be perfect.  But you can always strive for 80%.  We’ll do the very best we can, at the time, and with the resources available to us.  The important thing is to get started.

Question:  Have you made enough mistakes recently?

 

© Annabel Sutton, Coaching Tips – 2010

Annabel Sutton, BA (Hons), PCC
ICF Professional Certified Coach
Author of 52 Ways to Change Your Life
Coach University Graduate
Member International Coach Federation
Tel:     44 (0)1747 871196
Email: annabel@annabelsutton.com
Web: www.annabelsutton.com

To receive Annabel’s Coaching Tips: email annabel@annabelsutton.com and type ‘subscribe tips’ in the subject line.

The Art of Getting it Wrong

When thinking of branching out into a new niche one first questions that pops up is who sells relevent products? the task of finding out recently got easier thanks to a new feature that Easy Content Units (ecu) have added to their already fantastic product.

To do your research simply log into your ECU account and click on the Product Search link in the menu, type in a key word, click search and bobs your uncle…

…and it doesn’t stop there you can filter your results by Merchant, Brand and Network.

And theres more, now you can either select and store the products you want, this allows you to make a content unit later, or if you click on the link icon a box pops up with a deep link url, a HTML link, an image link and the Html for an image with product link embedded, all nicely configured with your affiliate tracking code.

This is just scratching the surface of what you can do with the product search from Easy Content Units, give it a whirl.

Researching a Niche using Easy Content Units Product Search

Online marketing is evolving at an astronomical pace and one of the major influences in this change is Twitter, if you have any type of retail business selling absolutely anything and you don’t use Twitter to get the message out there you are seriously missing a significant audience.  One of my websites is currently getting 7% of its traffic via twitter thats over 200 targeted visitors a day extra.

The most recent innovation by Twitter is Twitter Lists, and believe me Twitter Lists are awesome. Once people have added your twitter to a list your  tweets may potentially appear all over the internet. They will turn up on websites and blogs and there is a great likelihood that they will send you a lot of targeted traffic.

Oh and a little tip (for anyone who could be arsed to read this far down) Twitter Lists make an outstanding addition to your research armoury whether you are a merchant or an affiliate make lists of tweeters in niches you are interested in and bingo instant ideas.

For example I’ve just started a list of UK fashion merchants and fashion bloggers http://twitter.com/#/list/KeithBond/uk-fashion and I expect it to prove to be a useful resource of ideas and another way of getting through bloggers block.

Twitter Lists yet another reason why your company should be on Twitter

Continuing on from my post of September 14th I move on to the second search engine secret from that document of 1999, the year when Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the highest grossing film.

Secret #2 The little known secret to getting better positioning than your competition even they have the same identical keyword.

List your important keywords more than once on your site!!

Some of the major search engines will rank your website based on the relevancy of the key words used in the search engine. For example if your site sells Ray Ban sunglasses and the words “Ray Ban” are keywords listed on your page, your site will come up when a user searches on “Ray Ban”. And the same for a competitor site with the same sequence of keywords. However if you list Ray Ban not once but several times throughout the page, your site will usually get better positioning than the site who has it listed less times than you.

Many savvy web professionals list their relevant keywords as many times as they possibly can throughout their site because of this. You can also achieve this by listing your keywords several times at the bottom of your webpage, away from your main page, hidden and out of site. Maybe you have seen this for yourself on other websites. It may take a little longer for your page to load, but the extra attention your site receives because of the higher search engine positioning should outweigh the couple of seconds of extra downloading this causes.

So how can we use Search Engine Secret #2 in 2009?

First of all totally disregard the paragraph in italics, this today is considered keyword stuffing, when the article was written Alta Vista was the main search engine and that sort of thing worked pretty well, today if you are discovered using the technique you are probably looking at a Google ban.

As for the first part, still very wise advise in my opinion, but make sure you include relevant content too, include the keywords in key phrases in your title tags and heading tags, and mention them a couple of times in the body text too, keep the surrounding text relevant and contextual and as unique as you can possibly make it.

Hopefully that will help you move up a few places in the serps, but the Google algorithm is an enigma and there is more to getting good ranking than a few well positioned key words (and I’m certainly no SEO guru), but this is a better tactic than simply listing Ray Ban a few dozen times in your footer.

Search Engine Secret #2 – Ten Years On

Tidying the garage recently I came across a document I had printed off on 6th June 1999 entitled:

“11 Power Packed Secrets For Using Search Engines To Build A Consistent, Steady Flow Of Traffic To Your Site”

Naturally intrigued I took a look through to see if any of it was still relevant, and was mildly surprised that amongst the dubious tactics which are likely to get you penalties these days were a few gems which can be adopted, adapted and utilised, over the next few weeks (months) I will revisit some of these gems of 10 years ago … * note I have edited out some of the waffle usually by putting …

Secret #1 What to “name” your site to draw traffic like a magnet.

The name of your site has a dramatic effect on the number of visitors your site receives. Let’s do a brief exercise to see how this works. Let’s say you are surfing and would like to find out more about accounting tax laws, and ways to save money on your taxes …

… take a look at the following website “titles” and determine which site you would click on first.

1. Waterman, Jewel, Rathburn Accountants Home Page Statewide Financial Management
2. Frank’s Accounting Practice. Accounting Office Reception.
3. Jealously Guarded Accounting Secrets The IRS Prays You Never Find Out!

Which one did you choose? Did you want to know more about the Waterman, Jewel, Rathburn Accountants Home Page or Frank’s Accounting Practice? I suspect like most people you probably wanted to know what the Jealously Guarded Accounting Secrets were. Of Course!!

The article continued in the same vein for a couple of pages giving several more examples.

So how can we use Search Engine Secret #1 in 2009?

At this point its worth mentioning that when the article mentioned to the “name of your site” it was referring to the <title></title> and not the url, this was originally published on www.hotyellow98.com/secrets.html (surprisingly the domain still exists although the content is long gone).

Basically the piece is telling us to be keyword rich in our page titles, today we can take that a step further and grab a keyword rich domain to suit, make sure the homepage has a good title and do the same with internal pages and posts.

Say you have a website about men’s flip flops you don’t want to choose an obscure name like Andy’s  Flip Flop Emporium andysflipflopemporium.com pick a name more fitting to what you are selling like Mens Flip Flops (obvious eh) incidentally mensflipflops.org.uk is available and there is nothing of worth on the .co.uk or .com “Mens Flip Flops” gets 9,900 exact searches according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Give your site a good title such as:

“Mens Flip Flops – Where To Buy Mens Flip Flops online”

and finally make sure your internal pages and articles have good titles too:

“Men’s Havaianas Flip Flops World’s Best Rubber Sandals”

Thats it for now hopefully I can get around to revisiting another ten year old search engine secret before too long.

If you want read more about buying domain names that are relevant to your niche take a look at the marathon thread on affiliates4u.com help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009 where Smingle (Frank Paul) gives a lots of sage advice, I suspect all his domain suggestions will be long gone but its not difficult to research your own.

PS: if you use mensflipflops.org.uk please link to my main Fashion Website.

Search Engine Secret #1 – Ten Years On

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.

Automating Internet Marketing Blogs Twitter using HootSuite

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.

Submitting just part of a WP blog to a feed reader or blog service

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.

Why people don’t get started and a simple plan that may get you motivated

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.

Why I dislike graphical emails

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.

Paid On Results Basket Data Report – a useful research tool