New Affiliate Discoveries

How does this sound for a productive Thursday evening?

1. Washed & Folded 2 loads of laundery
2. Cleaned out the refrigerator
3. Took out 3 bags of garbage
4. Cleaned the bathroom
5. Wrote four quality blog posts
6. Cleaned the kitty litter
7. Packed for a 5 day vacation

Here’s a trick for increasing your productivity at home, especially for those of us that tend to procrastinate…Trick Yourself!

Six years ago when I was in my last year of graduate school, I decided to by a new car. you can imagine that this was a very stressful period for me…in my last year of school, stressed out about finishing my degree, passing my exams, fulfilling my work requirements with the school, thinking about moving for my next job after school, not knowing where I would be working 6 months in the future…

I’m sure you all know what stress is about!

I’ll confess. At that time I was seeing specialist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT. I was simply overwhelmed with all that I had to do and I recognized that I needed some guidance. She helped me realize the best technique I’ve ever learned to deal with the overwhelming number of tasks I needed to complete.

Create a reward for delayed gratification.

Her suggestion was that I use my pleasurable activities as a reward for accomlishing some sort of work task. I decided that every few days, I would test drive a new car, but only after and only IF I had finished my school work and job seeking work for the day.

What an amazing experience it was! I was motivated to get some work done, and in the afternoon I took myself to a car dealership to test drive one of the cars that I had pre-selected in my research. In the end, I bought a Honda CRV, one of the best purchases I’ve made in my life, aside from my graduate education.

So now I’m off to the beach!

Fast foward six years later to this week…I’ve been workign non-stop like a dog and finally have 5 days off and I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning…how do I straighten up this mess of an apartment?

I rewarded myself with delayed gratification! the only thing I wanted to do after working nearly non-stop since the week before Christmas was sit on my couch and watch TV. But how in the world would I get packed for my mini-vacation to California?

A perfect way to start a vacation…

My little animated buddy TIVO helped me out. I watched 3 of my favorite TV shows ( a total of 2 1/2 hours of TV) but at each and every commercial break, I paused the TIVO and worked on one small item from my ToDo list. The result was that I cleaned the worst parts of my apartment, sorted my laundry and set myself off for the airport feeling organized and refreshed.

What are some of the techniques that you use to increase your personal productivity? Let me know in the comments below!

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Since my organic search traffic to my new Build a Niche Store sites has dried up due to the “sandbox” effect, I decided to try another method of traffic generation that seems to be working well for many other Build a Niche Store users.

US Free Ads is basically a classified site that has both free and paid subscriptions. The free version allows you to run only 2 ads at a time, but for only $10 a year, you can run 25 ads at a time. I am doing a 7 day free trial for the premium version at $10 a month for unlimted ads running. I figure if I get even one sale a month, at the rate my commissions seem to by paying, it will pay for itself.

It seemed like a no-brainer to at least subscribe to the free version for only $10 a year. Go ahead and check out the US Free Ads website and look around a bit.

But before you make your decision, take this into consideration…it’s not just running a classified ad that you may benefit from. The US Free Ads website really seems to do well with Google organic searches. Many Build a Niche Store users are finding their US Free Ads listings when they do a regular google search on their keywords for the ad.

So there you have it. I signed up for a 7 day free trial of the premium version, $10 a month, and I placed my first ad.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how I set up my landing page for the ad I placed on US Free Ads, and of course, I’ll keep you updated on the traffic results!

In the meantime, keep in touch by letting me know how you are getting traffic to YOUR sites. Be well!

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Hi everyone! Greetings from the sunny, but slightly windy beaches of California. I’m taking a mini-vacation, ala 4 hour work week, on the beaches of Santa Barbara, CA this weekend. In my “regular” job, I work long hours in shifts that vary from day to day and week to week. Healthcare is a 24/7/366 field so there is no real downtime. the positive side is that there is no regular schedule like 5 days on, 2 days off. So if I’ve worked 140 hours in the past 3 weeks, there’s a good chance I’ll get a whole week off without havnig to ask for vacation.

When I saw a block of 5 days off, I didn’t hesitate to book a flight to one of my favorite places, Santa Barbara, CA.

But while I’m here, I thought you’d enjoy the following great posts…

1) Uberaffiliate. OK, this one isn’t new to a lot of you, but I just discovered this site last week. Uberaffilaite is a 19 year old internet marketer who supposedly earns such a good living in terms of income, that his father who is a dentist is considering selling his practice and taking after his son! Reading Uberaffiliate makes me realize that internet marketing really is a business and not a “get rich quick scheme.” Crafts various campaigns to become profitable is a true art that requires patience and discipline, and uberaffilaite seems to have found the right path very early in life.

2) Uberaffiliate Affilate Marketing Guide - Is this cheating to include a 2nd link from the same domain name? This one is so valuable that you need to bookmark it, or even make it your homepage. Print out a hard copy of each of the articles, bind it, and put in next to your bed or in the bathrooom. You’ll have all the affiliate marketing information you need. I might as well close this blog!

3) How do you find purpose in your work? In this post, one of my Sunday Seven Favs, Carolyn Middlebrook shares a comment with us from a reader who is doing really well with his online income, but found that his life seemed empty and dull. Find out what he did to become happier by reading this post!

4) Trafficology with Income Hero. Another one of my favorite bloggers who is extremely articulate. I enjoy his graphical explanations of his marketing plans. Follow along on this one as he tries to build 2000 email subscribers in a week!

5) Remarkable Gimmicks by Remarkable Communication. I can’t recall how I stumbled upon this marketing/ copywriting blog, (mabye Stumble?), but she’s got a nice take here on marketing gimmicks vs. providing a value to your customer. Worth a read this afternoon.

6) Blog or not to blog has a post featuring 36,000 expiring domain names! I suppose that every day, names are expiring. If you are having trouble finding a domain name you like, check out this list, then go on over to GoDaddy and register the name of your choice!

7) Beginner’s Guide to making Money Online. In this nice succinct post, Conversion Matters summarizes about 5 ways to make money online. In case you are still scratching your head, give this a read.

Well folks, that’s it for this week’s Sunday Seven and I hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment and let me know how the weather is where you right now. For me? Sunny and sandy! Until next time…live well!

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Hey everyone, I’m glad you’ve been asking so many questions about Build a Niche Store.  One of my commenters asked about a previous post regarding traffic building.  Ironically, I have not been sending ANY traffic to my Build a Niche Store store through the blog that I started.

Quality Content is King

Let me clarify…it’s not because it is a bad method to drive traffic, but it requires time and attention.  I considered setting up a google alert to send emails to the auto post address for the blog.  I reasoned that it would automatically post new content to the blog without my intervention.  As long as I had a sidebar with some original content, and a link to my Build a Niche Store site, I’d be all set for referring new traffic.

Well, all it took was a single “post by email” from the google alert system to make me take that down.  Now if I were blogging for search engines only, it would be reasonable.  the news alert was indexed immediately, and I began getting organic searches for the news headlines on the site.  So for sure it’s a great method to drive traffic to the site.

But we don’t just want traffic, we want targeted traffic.

When I saw the blog post, complete with the “Your Google alert Email for 12/31/07…” right in the blog post was very distastful for me.  I’m sure there is a better way to post RSS feeds as regular automated posts, but I havn’t found it yet!

I have not totally abanadoned this idea, and of course, I could simply blog on the blogspot address as a typical blogger would do, but again, it’s about maximizing my time.  At the same time I want to provide quality content on my sites.

So I’ve decided to try another route of traffic generation for my niche stores to augment the organic search that I’m getting.

Today I initiated a new source of low cost traffic to my site that seems to be working well for other Build a Niche Store users.  Look for more details in part II. If you’re afraid you might miss it, just sign up for my RSS feed above!

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Build a Niche Store simply works. Here is a shot of my Commission Junction report from this morning. $47 isn’t going to let me retire, but these commissions are from three Build a Niche Store sites that i have set up, posted some original content to, and basically have let them run off of organic search alone.

By adding a CPC campaign with AdWords or US FreeAds for example, I could drive a lot of traffic through these sites and my sales would multilply!

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Here I sit in an airport in a small midwest town, watching the playoffs between the Giants and the Cowboys.  Luckily the free Wi-Fi is keeping me entertained, if not a bit anti-social with my traveling partners.  So here are the posts that have stood out this week…

1) Yaro Starak’s How to Start  a Business on a Budget.  This post speaks to me because i recently started a business from scratch about a year ago, and have seen it grow from an idea, to a pile of paperwork, to  a list of paying clients with word or mouth referrals.  I can only imagine what one could do with more capital, more resources and a bigger referral base. Enjoy his post and learn from it.

2)  Income Hero totally rewrote his Aweber autorsesponder series.  This is something I’ve been meaning to do, and have even written a brief review of the Aweber service here,  there is even a Free Test Drive signup form at the bottom  but I am not quite sure how to start.  I need to find a little bit of focus, and then repost my sign up form here on the website.  In the meantime, you can sign up for my RSS feed and still keep in touch.

Well…the plane is boarding, so enjoy these two and I’ll finish the sunday seven at my next stop.

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Through the emails that I get from the 30 day challenge, I learned about Frank Kern’s “Mass Control” techniques.  This is one of the marketing technques that Frank has used to multiply income by giving away free stuff!

Below are the notes I made while watching the video that I’m going to tell you about in a second…

Context:  Use of email as a communication technique.  most email usage by the general population is casual communicaiton between friends.  Pictures of cats, jokes, etc.  So get into context when using email to market to your list.  This doesn’t mean be misleading, but to simply come across as a friend, and to BE a friend to your subscribers.  Example…whenever i get an email from Ed Dale, it’s funny & lighthearted. I feel like I could write him back and tell him the funny thing that happened to me!  In fact, I have and he wrote back a quick note.  So when I get an email from Ed Dale, I pay attention, I like the guy.   You should strive to use similar techniques when you send out your own marketing emails to your list of subscribers.

Just as Frank is about to share with us the template that he uses that guarantees success, the video stops! Argh!  Marketing at it’s finest.  He reels us in by telling us how incredible this technique is…and leaves us wanting more.

Well, you can check it out here.  www.masscontrolsite.com I went ahead and used 3 of my own email addresses to get to the next video that I”m viewing now.   I’ll post an update with what I learn from the 2nd set of videos.

Oh, he also emails a 33 page PDF report that sounds like it’s worth reading.  I figure its free and I can always unsubscribe!

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What have I been up to?  Learning to use dreamweaver to customize CSS for my Build a Niche Store websites.  I’ve tried many CSS & HTML editors, and ultimately have settled to coding by hand using an editor like Crimson Editor which is nice and simple. with syntax highlighting.  But after I installed dreamweaver for the first time and learned how easily CSS code is manipulated…and how intuitively, I fell in love!  So I’ve been having a lot of fun with that. \

Now onto the Sunday Seven…

1)  Carolyn Middlebrook has released her free WordPress eBook, a project she’s been working on for the past few months and blogging updates about the project.  It’s finally here, and I’m she’s done a great job.  Congratulations, Carolyn!

2) Yaro Starak’s year end Review, How I made six figures in one day, is a great and inspiring read.   Be sure to read all three parts.

3) Income Hero has some ideas about building Membership Sites…which he predicts will be HOT for 2008!

4)  Neville’s Financial blog has a story about how Neville started his first ecommerce site in high school…that’s now earning $4000 per day!

5)  ProBlog Design helps to separate the wheat from the chaff in web design

6)   Via DayJobNuker, I learnedof Blogger Unleashed…1 month old and already 600 subscribers.  You either love him or hate him…which side are you on?

7) At Gather Little by Little, his network of financial bloggers discuss their 2007 Net worth, aparently up by 170% as a group!  That’s pretty impressive.  I’ve been tracking my net worth for about 2 years, and just a few months ago I finally got into the black.  yeah, student loans can kill you.

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Thanks for the comments and emails about my Wordtracker post a few days ago.  A sharp reader caught my inconsistency in the post…did anyone else catch it?

I included a screen shot with some KEI results showing a great potential keyphrase, Improved Search Engine Rankings, then stated it was the title of my post.  Turns out, it was NOT the title of my post…it was the title of a post not yet written!  I had been using Wordtracker for the draft post, and then decided I wanted to go ahead and write a post about optimizing keyword tags.

In the process of “meta-blogging”, I swapped the two screenshots.  Thankfully, many of you were paying attention and alerted me to my mistake.

What was the draft post about?

Improved Search Engine rankings with Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools allows you to supercharge your site development by letting you

• direct search engine spiders to your sitemap file,
• check for 404 (page not found) errors so that you can correct them,
• remove pages from search engine results,
• see where your site ranks for various keyword phrases

And lots, lots more.  I recently used Webmaster tools to locate 404 pages from an old version of the site I was working on. I had moved an entire directory to a new name resulting in about 50 404 errors!  By using Webmaster tools, I could see exactly which pages the search engine was having trouble with, and then “301 redirect” the search engine enabling it to find the new corresponding pages.

Not familiar with 301 redirects?

No worries, I’ll talk you through them in an upcoming post.  In the meantime improved search engine rankings will not only increase visitors to your websites, but also (hopefully) increase sales on your site, and increase your Profits!

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I want to thank everyone who has subscribed so far to my feed, as well as those who comment and especially those who email me directly. I am a bit surprised, but happily so, that my blog is helping many of you who are just getting started in affiliate and internet marketing.  I’m only a few months ahead of you in many cases!  Soon I’ll be posting my year end profits.  It’s not staggering by any means (by no means!), but I want to let you know what I’m doing, how it’s doing monetarily, and where I plan to go form here.

I’m going to wait  because I want to give commission junction stats some time to  catch up after the holidays.

This post is really about another “feed drive”.  See that orange RSS icon in the sidebar?  RSS is a way that you can keep up on my blog postings without having to actually open a web-browser and come to my blog.

Instead you add the “feeds” of the blogs you want to follow into your feed reader, whether it’s Google, Bloglines, etc.  It’s a great way to keep track of a large number of blogs and just read the posts that capture your attention (Which is most of mine, I’m sure. )

So go ahead and click on the orange icon, and sign up for Bloglines if you havn’t, it’s the one that I use.  It’s free, there is no affiliate program (that I know of), it’s just a great way to keep in touch with your favorite bloggers (like me!).

Will you be one of ten new subscribers to my RSS feed?

Thanks, let me know in the comments here!

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