Affiliate Blog » Tips

Sphinn … it's all the buzz today and I'm reading about it everwhere I go to catch up on today's latest and greatest.

According to Linda Buquet at 5 Star, latest and greatest is an appropriate phrase to use when describing Sphinn.

If you are into SEO, PPC and Internet Marketing you just may want to take "Sphinn" for a SPIN. (That's the pronunciation BTW.)

Many are saying this will replace the now defunct Threadwatch, but with all the social functionality this site has, I say it will far surpass it.

I was wondering what Danny Sullivan was up to these days and now, I get this awesome surprise from the master of webology.

Danny brings us all up todate on his SearchEngineland Blog with the new changes and other changes coming in the near future.

When Search Engine Land launched last December, I talked about liking the name in part because it sounded like "a community, where people can meet, talk, discuss and network." I promised to upgrade the site to help a community thrive. It took much longer than the original "month or so" I envisioned to make this happen. But today, we're happy to unveil our new social site, Sphinn.

And what specifically is Sphinn?

Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

Now what Marketer in their right mind wouldn't like the sound of that?! Hey Linda, thanks for the ping on Sphinn. I'm really looking forward to watching this grow. 

              

How do you make sense of the Internet noise that's coming at you from all directions?

According to Seth Godin's Squidoo.com…

Searching online should really be called poking online. Because that's what you do. You poke around. You poke in Google and you poke at some ads. After looking at a bunch of links and pages, then, finally, you get it. You understand enough to take action—to buy something or make a decision. The thing is, this takes a long time.

Squidoo's goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search. Squidoo's goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity. And Squidoo's goal as a community is to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them.

Their goal at Squidoo is to leverage the power of personal recommendation online.

That's an awesome goal, but my first visit to Squidoo left me muttering, "Huh?" I couldn't figure out how it worked. It's like being a PC user in a Mac environment with all the cute names for everything, but I just wanted to get in, do it and play. Instead, I had to do something I hate to do … I had to read the directions.

Squidoo has what they call Lenses. I call them web pages or blogs. They're listed in Lenserolls … so, in my mind that's something like a Blogroll. I came across a Lense that helped me a lot How To Squidoo.

Lensrolling is a way to share the love and create your own personal lens network. List your friends' lenses, relevant lenses on your topic, or even link to other lenses by you!"

Another must read page is thier Squidoo FAQ. There you can read about Modules, which according Squidoo are…

Modules are the building blocks of lenses. A module makes it easy for a lensmaster to point to links, images, blogs or even things to buy. Some modules are curated (you enter all the links and content manually) and others are automatic (you configure the inputs and then the lens draws on RSS feeds to update your lens without any work from you). Similarly, some modules are commerce-oriented and others are just content based.

See how this is like learning a whole new language?! But it's well worth the trouble. PC World calls Squidoo one of the top 25 websites to watch, so clearly reading the directions is going to be well worth your time.

Once you're up and running on Squidoo, you'll want to read the Hot Traffic Tips and Advice from Top Squidoo Lense Masters on how to drive that traffic to your Lense (aka web site).

Do You Squidoo? Try it!

              

  Imagine being able to post your articles, your datafeeds, and your RSS feeds to all of your blogs no matter what the blog's software platform is. That's the power of Content Farmer!

I've looked around the Internet at a few blogging softwares like Content Farmer, but haven't found one that does datafeeds as part of it's bag of tricks. That's huge!

At slighly more than $200, Content Farmer will serve as a single source dashboard to all of you blogs, making the process of operating several blogs that much easier.

Content Farmer works with WordPress, b2evolution, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, Nucleus, Live Journal and Post by Email.

I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of Content Farmer as part of your afiliate marketing strategy. It does far more than I've listed for you here, so at the very least get yourself educated about it.

 

              

I logged in to my phpAdsNew the other day to do a little work with my banner ads, and darned if if hadn't gotten cracked. I hate those guys. They cracked in and damaged the database more or less … enough that I needed to repair it.

Then I thought to myself, why repair when I should upgrade. I pulled up my link to phpAdsNew, and I discover another surprise … and this one was pleasant.

phpAdsNew is now called OpenAds … and it's got a whole new look and feeling going on. It's definately worth checking out!

I visited their new blog to see what what was up with the new digs, and learned…

We are the world's largest adspace community! Our open source ad serving software is used by more websites than any other, worldwide. We're celebrating this with the launch of our new website, www.openads.org, and a commitment to the open source community.

I grabbed a copy of OpenAds 2.0 for my new install. I decide to scrap the old one and start over fresh. They also offer another version of OpenAds that used to be Max Media Manager. So, be sure you pick the one that's right fo your needs.

Then show a little love for the new OpenAds with a banner on you blog or website … like the one I added here.

Hey guys,  feel the love in this room … add me to your blogroll?!

              

Affiliate Blogger posts and articles are all over the Internet as resources and helpful tips for the success of other affiliates, but this blog … my Affiliate Blogger blog … is my home-base where I bring all those tools and tips together in one place.

I also have the Affiliate Guild, where I offer a ton of educational materials for new affiliates and tools to make the process easier. A lot of those tools are totally free, as are most of the affiliate classrooms and materials.

My personal goal is to help others get started in Affiliate Marketing, and not have to learn the hard way like I did.

Things are much easier these days, and then again with all the changes in technologies happening so freaking fast … maybe in some ways it's harder. That's why I take the time to create thoughtful posts as the Affiliate Blogger … to try and help you stay up with the trends of Internet Marketing.

One of the biggest trends is the movement towards more use of video, and especially interactive video. I've found an awesome tool for you and gotten a great reduction in the pricing to offer as well. It's not free, but it's close to it.

The tool is called Screen Show Pro and it's an inexpensive screen capture tool similar to Camista. Only difference is that Camista will cost you $299 and Screen Show Pro will cost you $29 …  this is a keeper!

I'm using Screen Show Pro to build my interactive videos for my various Internet businesses. I'm liking it a lot!

After I made my videos, I joined the new interactive video community site called FreeIQ. It's free to join and gives both a venue to distribute your videos, as well as your products, services and affiliate links.

FreeIQ is full of helpful and informative educational materials and products … many of which are for free.

Visit my FreeIQ website … http://freeiq.com/bobbiegrennier to learn more about all of this because the Internet is quickly moving towards a video rich world and you need to be a part of it to be successful.

No longer is content king. Now it's all about entertainment and video education.

              

I get a lot of emails from all sorts of Marketers. I don't post that much about those emails because, well frankly most of them are just spammy crap.

Once in a blue moon I'll get one that's really got some merit to it, and then I'll share it with you.

Your readership is valuable to me. I value your attention to the posts I blog about, and it's that attention that's given rise to the post I'm doing today.

There's a lot of discussion that we're heading into a new age of Online Marketing, pushing Permission-based Marketing to its limits.

A fairly well known marketer named Rich Schefren has released a new report called Attention Age Doctrine. This report outline's his predicitions for the near future of Online Marketing.

Like you, I said to myself … Oh great, another get rich quick scheme being hatched. I don't know about you, but I'm so sick of those tired old pitches full of hype and BS.

I decided to sign-up for Rich's free report and see what he had to say. I was expecting the same old song and dance, but that's not what I got. I was plesantly surprised.

Oh sure, there's a bit of that hype and zeal that marketers use, but there's also some meat to this dish … and it's worth the read. Very much worth the read.

If you look at Rich's list of clients, it's a "who's who" list of the top online marketers. Rich has been around awhile and has spawned some of the most widely used marketing strategies online to date.

Many of these online marketers are still doing business using traditional techniques, but they are listening to Rich's counsel and I can see how many of them are heading in this new direction that Rich's report outlines.

For the last month Rich has been writing his new Advisory report. It's called The Attention Age Doctrine.

The Attention Age Doctrine talks about the new environment of the Internet and where the Market is heading. I think he's dead-on in his analysis.

Unlike his Internet Business Manifesto Trilogy, this advisory will be available only for a limited time.

My advice … reserve your copy now: The Attention Age Doctrine.

              

I met Marc Chase in a affilaite focused forum. He's an Affiliate Manager trying to fire up a new affiliate program for MyCreditGroup.

Marc's got some strikes against him, as he's got a spanking new affiliate program in a niche that's flooded and really hard to rank in.

Marc's Affiliate Program is in the Finance niche with a focus on Credit Repair, Debt Settlement and Mortgages. It's one of the toughest to break into, and most expensive to participate in.

I know this niche very well as I used to own a business that generated leads for Merchants as large as Bank of America. I used to earn upwards of $50 per lead. That's per lead, not per sale. Money was good way back then, but not anymore if you're new to the game.

So, when I saw Marc's post announcing his offering to the affiliates … I saw some really good things and I saw a few things that could be better.

Marc's post read something like this…

We've put a lot of effort into building a flawless reputation before launching our affiliate program.
We put just as much effort into creating support for our affiliates. 

Some Features:
- Multi Tiered: $50.00 per 5% second tier
- $1000.00 bonus per 100 sign ups
- Additional bonuses of 500.00 for second conversion
- Huge industry and we are hands down the most trusted.

We're even working on health benefits (lots of details of course)

The affiliate page can be found here:
The Best Credit Repair Affiliate Program - My Credit Group

Feel free to research our company thoroughly and you'll see the effort we've put into ethics and integrity.

If you have any questions, or suggestions we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you in advance
Marc Chase

• They're listed with Dunn and Bradstreet.
• They have a flawless seven year old BBB record, which in that niche is unheard of.
• They are registered with the Attorney General and Secretary of State.
• They offer the affiliate a lot of incentives.
• They offer the affiliate revenue potential for the client's many possible trasactions.
• Their payout for sales seems generous.
• They offer a second tier opportunity.
• They don't compete with the affiliates.
• They are very responsive to their affiliates.

What I didn't see caused me to ask Marc a few questions and offer some suggestions:

• I wanted to see a short form for affiliates to put onto their websites to generate sales easier.
• I wanted to see a 365 day cookie set because in this niche clients take a long time to sell to.
• I wanted to see a first-in cookie so that affiliates who really work it can benefit and not have to worry about cookie theft.
• I wanted to know what states they could service, because this niche has lots of legal limitations.
• I wanted to know who owned the company.

Marc was prompt to respond to all my questions, and lightning quick to supply all the elements I suggested. He also gave me some more insights into his company and their ethics:

Debt Settlement. Its rather lengthy so I'll paint some broad strokes
1) Greed - average fee is 14% we charge 8%. It still makes a ton of money. I dont understand 14%.

2) Because we have a credit repair mentality, credit scores are first things we think of. So, while client is saving their "settlement" money, we keep the debts tied up with validation, method of validation, FCBA requests etc. What this does (not always) is prevents them from marking the accounts late while they are saving. Goal being to get them debt free and preserving their credit.

3) Greed again: Settlement companies get paid on the total amount of debt settled. Many debts that arent even necessary to settle are included because its more commissions. We work on repair first (where applicable) if we can get something removed, then its less the client has to pay. Again, still a ton of money.

4) We always attempt to pay for deletions (credit repair mentaility). Collection agents usually just care about money and will delete the tradeline entirely as long as they get paid.

Again, settlement companies don't do credit repair, so those things aren't their concern. Since we want everybody to eventually turn to a mortgage, it is in our best interest to perfect their score no matter what service we're providing.

I am impressed with company's business model, and after chatting with Marc, I'm also impressed with their attention to details and customer service for their affiliates.

I decided to join their affiliate program and if you have finance sites that focus on CPS more than CPM/CPA, this would be a good affiliate program for you too … very ethical todate.