Susanne, I know you just started using Cinch. Could you tell me more about it? I’d like to know how you decide what topics to talk about and record, and what you think the best ways are to have your recordings heard by the masses and maybe go viral?

I just started using Cinch.fm as a result of a comment by Connie Ragen Green here on this blog. She looked at my to-do list for week one of our challenge and suggested I include some sort of audio content to allow readers to hear my voice. One of her recommendations was to use Cinch.fm as an easy way to get started with a mini-podcast of sorts.

Think of it as Twitter for audio. You have a profile on the Cinch.fm site and can record short little audio clips directly from the site or even from your phone.

The next question of course is what do you do with them and it’s something I’m still figuring out. People can follow you on the Cinch website and listen to your audio clips. You can also link directly to your profile page and individual audio clips.

A third option is to share them on your own sites by either embedding them or using a sidebar widget that shares your most recent recordings.

Here’s a clip I recorded yesterday about Passive income:

I also like the idea that I can promote my audios via Facebook and twitter.

I’m still at the point of just getting comfortable with audio, so for now I’m recording little tips and ideas as they pop into my head. I like the fact that I can share something much quicker than sitting down to write a blog post about. Most of my podcast ideas so far have come out of other things I’ve been working on including blog posts, articles and the guest blog posts I’ve been writing.

In the coming weeks I want to get a lot more strategic about how I market and promote these little audio clips. I don’t see a huge following directly on the Cinch.fm website which makes me think that the best way to get my recordings heard will be to share them through my established networks which include my blogs, Twitter, Facebook and my email lists.

Sharing some audio tips here and there via those channels should go a long way in promoting my clips while at the same time adding another dimension to the conversations I have with my readers and followers.

As far as getting clips to go viral, my strategy has always been to share great, helpful information and then work on getting the ball rolling by telling others about it. If you can get enough momentum and the information is worth sharing, it’ll start to take off and go viral.

I hope that answers your questions Peggy and has gotten you interested in audio podcasting and Cinch.fm. Do you think you’ll start using it?

P.S. Of course you can also listen to any clips I record directly on my Cinch page. If you’re a member as well, let’s connect there.

I’ll tell you a secret… I’m still a little intimidated about asking someone to post a guest blog post from me. I’m fine writing here (because I’ve done it for 2 years), but I’m still not really confident that what I have to share is “good enough” for other awesome blogs.

There are a couple of things I’m doing that will make it easier for me to approach blog owners about guest blog posts and also things that will make it more likely for me to get the “Yes”. I’ll share them with you here:

Tip #1 -Start With Who You Know

Start by thinking of two or three people that are in the same niche as you. These could be people you’ve met in person, exchanged emails with or even met on social media sites. The point is that they already know and like you and are a lot more open to the idea of posting your guest blog posts.

One of the first people I approached this year about this was Peg Baron. We’ve known off each other for quite some time and finally met in person in August. She was delighted to accept a guest post from me and it’s already live on her blog here.:

Take Advantage Of Your Entrepreneurial ADD

Eventually though, you’ll run out of friends to bug about guest blog posts. Then what?

Tip #2 – Approaching Big Players

Your next step is to identify some big players in your niche. The term “big players” is relative. If you have a brand new site, you don’t want to go after the biggest blog. Instead look for sites that are a little more popular than you are. Get to know the blog and start commenting on there regularly. Find out if the blogger has social media profiles on sites like Facebook and Twitter. If so, start to connect there. Last but not least email him or her with your guest blog post proposal, keeping tip 3 and 4 in mind as you do so.

Tip #3 – Make It Super Easy

We are all busy and love the idea of having a quality guest blog post to use on our site. We’re even more likely to put it up there if it’s super easy. Format your blog post before you send it. In fact, have it all written and done before you start emailing the blog owner. I like to send the completed post to them in my first email. This avoids the hassle of going back and forth. Make sure you include all links and images properly formatted so it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the blog post.

If I already know the blog owner and know they like and trust me, I’ll even offer to post it myself if they set me up with logins for their blog. Don’t bring this up when you’re first approaching a bigger player, but it’s an option to make it even easier for them down the road. I just posted a blog post for my good friend Nicole Dean in draft mode this way. It’ll make it easy for her to log in later today and schedule the blog post to  publish next week.

Tip #4 – Make It Profitable

Last but not least, make the blog post profitable for the blog owner if you can. If you have your own products and an affiliate program in place, that’s a no brainer. But what if you don’t have a product? Look through your guest post. Can you mention an affiliate product or the owners product and then use their link? If so, do that. Otherwise start thinking outside the box. Does the blogger have a list? Send them there. If nothing else, mention another good related post on the same blog and link to it.

Keep these simple tips in mind and then just start asking for people to post guest blog posts for you. Practice helps us overcome the fear of failure and being self-conscious. That’s why I made it my goal for this month to write and submit 50 guest blog posts. I figure by the time I’m done with that, I’ll be very comfortable with the process. As an added bonus, I should see quite a bit of extra traffic and subscribers.

P.S. Tomorrow I’ll be answering Peggy’s question about how I choose what blogs to guest blog for. It’s part of our cross blog conversation and will fit in nicely with what I’ve shared with you today.

Take a look: http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/funnel

If you’re not quite sure what to work on this week, or this months, I recommend installing this plugin, reading through the included pdf and listening to the audio tutorial. Then fill in the blanks and come up with your own fleshed out marketing funnel. From there you should have no trouble at all to create your to-do lists for the coming week. Just start with one missing element of your funnel and get to work.

P.S. I’m not sure how long this plugin will be available for free, better get your copy while you can

http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/funnel

Idea #1 Sometimes you can write a wordy comment in answer to someone’s blog post. Turn that into an article. Start by summarizing the original blog post in your own word and then work in your comment. You often don’t have to do a lot of writing to get a nice informative 400 plus word article out of a comment you’ve left on someone’s blog.

Idea #2 Other times you write a lengthy answer to someone’s email question. That can make a great article or blog post too. Here’s an example of a blog post I wrote last week that started out as an email reply:

Yahoo Site Explorer Is Gone

This could just as easily have become an article. In fact, I may spend a few minutes today and turn it into an article (by adding a bit to it and rewriting the introduction) and then submit it to a few article directories.

Idea #3 You have a report you’ve written in the past, or have PLR rights to a report. Take a section out of the report, add a few more details or further explanation and you’ve got an article. The same goes for information products you’ve created. I’ve taken small sections of ebooks I’ve written and used them as articles and blog posts. It’s a great way to drive extra traffic to the sales page of your product.

Look around at what you already have and think how you can repurpose it into an article. That way it does double duty without taking up more of your precious time.

P.S. Articles aren’t the only thing you can create from repurposed material. I create all sorts of content and reusing something I’ve already written is just one of them. For more tips on content creation shortcuts take a look at this Affiliate Shortcut Report.

Let’s start with one of the obvious reasons why you want to set up a sales funnel that includes both your own products and affiliate offers. By offering your own products, you can approach other info product owners and arrange JVs (Joint Ventures). Here’s an example…

Let’s say I have a short report on Content Creation (which I do), and one of the methods I talk about involves using PLR. I recommend Nicole Dean’s Easy PLR articles on the backend. Do you think she’d be willing to promote my report? You bet she will :) Not only does she make a commission on the sale of each report, but she also ends up selling more PLR. It’s a win-win JV.

One of the reasons I like offering paid products and building a list of customers, is that they tend to be more seriously interested in what I have to share. I enjoy interacting quite a bit with them via email, blog comments and on social media sites. It’s often the freebie seekers that end up taking up most of your time if you’re not careful. Working on paid products and building a strong sales funnel helps you avoid much of that (and gives you the extra cash to hire someone to take care of emails and such).

Since I enjoy interacting and helping my customers, there’s another big benefit of having a sales funnel. When someone buys one of my reports, I know what they are interested in and need help with. From there I can make recommendations about blog posts they should read, videos they would find helpful and of course I can recommend good affiliate products that will help them take the next step. Again, it’s a win-win.

If you do all this right and take good care of your customers, you’ll end up with some great testimonials from customers.

And there’s one more thing … all of this will gain you more credibility and trust in your niche. You’ll stand out as the expert who has lots of great info to share in your area of expertise.

Initial sales are great, but the backend is even better. Sure the extra cash is nice, but the rest of the benefits you get from building up a nice sales funnel are even better.  :)

P.S. Ready to give this a try? A simple way to build a list of customers and a sales funnel with a strong back end is to start with a small info product. 

How To Create Small Info Products To Make Affiliate Sales.

Inside the report I outline my simple 5 Step process for creating these short info products (reports, videos or webinars) and how to go about promoting affiliate products throughout the process. This is the EXACT system I use in my business and it’s responsible for a big chunk of my affiliate income.

Download your copy and get started right away!

Tonight, Nicole is doing a webinar with David Perdew of NAMS about Outsourcing. It’s geared towards  people who have started to see success and are making a living online.

But what if you’re not at the point yet to make a full-time income? You’ll still benefit from the webinar and will be able to implement some of the things Nicole suggests. I wish I had started outsourcing a lot sooner that I did… it would have gotten me to that full-time income a lot faster.

You can register for the webinar here.

If you’d like access to the recordings (along with tons of other stuff), you can join My NAMS. Use coupon code MyNAMS85 to get in for 85% less.

36 Things You Need To Know Book Launch Webinar

The second Webinar will take place tomorrow night at 7pm EST. You’ve heard me talk over the past few weeks about a book I was invited to work on about 36 things you need to know to get started as an affiliate marketer. The book just happens to launch tomorrow and most of the authors will be on this special 1 hour webinar. We’ll be talking about our best tips for getting started and becoming successful in this industry.

You can sign up for the webinar here.

Take a few minutes to register for each of them. Listen tonight and tomorrow night. I like to keep a pen and paper handy to make notes on things I can use in my business right now. Write down what action you can take tomorrow, next week or next month to grow your business. Then put what you’re learning to work for you.

P.S. Look for an email from me tomorrow about the Book Launch.

Most of you also know that one of my closest friends is Nicole Dean from Easy PLR and Nicole On The Net. We’re constantly chatting on instant messenger and one of the most productive things we do is share out to-do lists with each other. We end up challenging each other to get just one more thing done before picking up the kids from school, heading to the store, calling it a day etc.

This process usually works pretty well for both of us, but we both need a little extra motivation. Nicole has been in a bit of a funk and I’ve been super busy this week and am starting to feel a little burnt out. So… being the smart and slightly insane women that we are, we decided to take things one step further and share our to-do lists with you. The idea here is that once we’ve committed to something on our blogs, we’ll hopefully actually get it done.

That’s part of the story, the other part is that we are hoping to inspire you to get more done and share your tasks and accomplishments with us by commenting on our blogs.

Ready to get started? Go on over to Nicole’s blog and read her post “A Peek into My Days” Yes, right now… I’ll wait (and that link will open in a new window so you won’t lose your spot over here :) )

Great, now that you’re all caught up, let me tell you about my day.

1) Got up, drank too much coffee and got my daughter of to school.

2) Tweeted a bit and posted on Facebook about my new Daily Affiliate Tasks membership site.

3) Answered some follow up questions on Basic SEO after doing a webinar on the topic last night. You can read about that here.

4) Worked with the amazing Tracy Roberts on setting up affiliate tools for Daily Affiliate Tasks (which means I told her what I needed and she did all the actual work … did I mention she’s amazing?)

5) Wrote a blog post about a free report and set up a contest around it.

6) Talked to some of my awesome online friends about donating prizes for the contest.

7) Wrote and Sent out a mailing to one of my lists about the contest and two great PLR offers.

• By One Get One Free  on All PLR from All Star PLR
• 20% off on all orders over $25 from Easy PLR

8) Made some good progress on a chapter I was invited to write about an upcoming book. More on that very soon.

9) Writing this blog post.

It’s now 2:06 pm and I’m about to head out to pick up my little girl from school.

Most of the things above were on my to-do list for today … a few extra ones snuck in there once I had the idea for the contest (which was a spur of the moment thing).

There isn’t too much left for the rest of the day, but here’s what I’d like to get done …

1) Finish writing the book chapter and send it off to the editors.

2) Prepare for an audio interview tomorrow.

3) Write a blog post for the new Daily Affiliate Tasks Blog

4) Wrap up some awesome bonuses for DAT members.

5) Relax and spend some quality family time.

That’s it for me.

Nicole, when and how are we reporting on what we actually got done?  I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on taking most of the weekend off. Shall we pick this back up on Monday morning with new task lists?

Now it’s your turn … what’s left on your to-do list for the rest of the day?Leave us a comment either here or on Nicole’s blog.

*****

Update: Nicole and I were just talking on IM and we’re going to do updates directly in the comments section. This way you can get email updates if you’d like. Just leave a comment and click the little “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” thingy.

I figured I’d quickly check the rankings and see if we were still anywhere to be found in Google. I wasn’t expecting much since I’d paid absolutely no attention to this post after getting it to rank almost a year ago. What I found was surprising:

The second listing is for a Facebook note about the blog post (that also happens to link directly to Tracy’s blog).

Here’s what the Facebook note looks like:

The question is … can we get Facebook notes content to rank on a regular basis and drive targeted traffic back to our niche sites this way (along with growing our Facebook circle of influence).

I’m doing some testing but for now, let me show you how to quickly and easily create content on Facebook notes via your blog’s RSS feed.

I recommend you start by creating a Facebook page about your blog or niche website. While you’re editing the page, go to the Apps section and enable the “notes” app. Go to notes and look in the left-hand sidebar. Toward the bottom you’ll see a  section called “Subscribe” with a link to your pages RSS feed and right below it a link called “Edit Import Settings”.

Click on it and you’ll be able to import your blog’s RSS feed into your Facebook page’s notes. I recommend you set your blog’s RSS feed to only show a summary to encourage readers to click through to your blog.

Of course you can also share unique content (in other words, new stuff you’re writing) via Facebook notes along with articles. I’m setting up some tests this week with articles I’ve written in the past and will report on the results within the next few days.

If you have any experience with Facebook Notes, I’d love to hear about it.

P.S. To see this Facebook notes content import in action, visit my Daily Affiliate Tasks Facebook Page here. While you’re there, I’d appreciate a “like”.

Grab a cup of coffee and spend a few minutes (2:36) to watch this:

If you’re ready to learn more about making the most of these sites and extend your social media influence, grab your copy of the Social Media Sunday.

It’s a short report on one of my favorite new tools – Hootsuite.

Using Hootsuite To Manage Your Social Media Engagement (PDF)

And speaking of social media …

Ellen Britt has put together an amazing package of resources to learn more about this topic. She’s convinced several big names (like Connie Green, Jessica Swanson, Denise Wakeman, Christine Gallagher to name a few) to give her access to some of their best products on social media and she’s packaged them together into the ultimate learning tool.

And for the next few days, you can get an incredible deal on these courses (valued together at well over $2000)… but hurry, the price goes up every day!

P.S. I grabbed the Social Media Ice Cream Sunday package yesterday and still can’t believe how much I got. I’ve started working my way through the course and am VERY impressed. Unless you are already a social media guru, you can definitely benefit from this.

I love the fact that it includes ebooks, audios and videos so I can keep studying no matter where I am… I was listening to some of the audios while driving and am about to go sit outside with the pdf versions loaded on my kindle.