Thinking Of Podcasting
I was hanging out with my friend Kelly McCausey at NAMS in February and had a chance to chat with her about starting a podcast for one of my niches. I think it would go over really well, and I am ready to take the plunge.
I’ve known I should offer a video or audio podcast for this particular market for a while. In fact, I’ve had several requests for it and have enjoyed participating in other people’s podcasts. Here are my top three reasons to get started this week:
Are You Archiving Emails To Your List?
I was working on one of my favorite passive income strategies this morning … adding more autoresponder emails to my lists. I like to use a combination of free content and offers to paid products and in the process did a search for one of the key terms for one of my niche sites. In the process I found an old archived Aweber email one of my affiliates had written back in 2011. It ranks for one pretty good keyword, gets traffic and make her affiliate commissions. All without any extra work on her part. Here’s a screenshot of the page:
Connecting, Expanding and Improving – NAMS 9 In Atlanta
I am at NAMS 9 in Atlanta and am having a great time. There’s lots to learn, lots of experiences to share and of course it’s nice to “talk shop” with others who get it. If you are here, please come say hi. I’d love to connect.
I’ll tell you a little about my experience here in a minute, but first…
… If you are not a part of the NAMS family yet, one of the best ways to get started is the My NAMS member area. There you can learn from all the different instructors that teach at the NAMS workshop, interact of the forums and learn about all things affiliate and internet marketing. You will also learn more about the live NAMS workshops that are held twice a year.
MyNams is the online community I wish had existed when I got started with online marketing and creating niche website. It would have saved me years of figuring out how to do this online thing and gotten me to the point I am today a lot faster. Through the end of the weekend, you can join MyNAMS for $19.95 per month. Sunday night, when NAMS 9 officially ends, the price goes back up to $47.
Back to the current conference though. I’m enjoying hanging out with my NAMS friends, connecting with new people and learning quite a bit in both private conversations and the many sessions going on this weekend.
Some of my biggest takeaways so far have come from Nicole Dean’s session on Passive Income. She focused on how to generate more income from your online business without improving traffic or conversions. I made lots of notes and am already tweaking and changing things on a few of my niche sites. Those small improvements will make a big difference to my bottom line over the course of the coming months and years. Some of them were very simple tips like utilizing error pages, and improving autoresponder messages, others where things I never thought of doing. Let’s just say I ended up with a huge to-do list from that one presentation alone.
I’ve also met some very interesting new people that I hadn’t had a chance to meet in person before. I’ll be telling you more about some of them in the coming weeks. Some of them are great connections for my niche sites like Natalie from TheNewRawYou.com, others I’m excited to learn from to build my business in the coming year.
NAMS is a wonderful way for me to connect and reconnect with colleagues, potential partners, figure out who I want to learn more from and of course expand my reach for AffiliateTreasureChest.com.
I wish you could have been here this weekend, I would have loved to connect in person. The next best thing is to join the MyNams community and get ready for NAMS 10 in August. Hope to see you on the inside.
Is Your Site Ready For 2013?
I’m back and ready for 2013. How about you? I spent a little time at the beginning of this year, getting my sites (including my niche sites) ready for the New Year.I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve done with you today.
1) Copyright Info And Dates
Let’s start with something cosmetic. Take a look at the copyright information at the bottom of your websites. Does it say 2013? If not, go in and get that taken care of. It may seem like a small thing, but it shows your readers that your site and the content on it is current.
Here’s what the bottom of my blog looked like a few days ago:
There’s an “Official Day” For Just About Anything…
Did you know that today is “I Love Yarn Day”? I didn’t either until about an hour or so ago. I’m a knitter and I love yarn. I was taking a break from work and came across some very pretty yarn… of course I ended up buying it. Then I bought a couple of cute patterns on sale. I was starting to wonder why today of all days, I came across all this “yarny” goodness when I read a forum post about today being “I Love Yarn Day” (along with a coupon offer for two more great patterns).
Why am I babbling on and on about knitting and yarn on an affiliate marketing blog? I have a point, I promise. If there can be a special day for buying yarn, there can be and “Official Day Of…” just about anything. Think about one of your niches. See if there is already an official day of (organizing your home, dog training, book reading etc.) If there is, plan some special mailings, content and promotions around the event. If there isn’t a special day, week or even month yet, create your own.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Post Idea Sheet – Friday Freebie
Happy Friday!
I was at my daughter’s school all morning for Grandparent’s Day (her’s couldn’t make it and I didn’t want her to have nobody show up), so it was nice not having to come up with my own Friday Freebie for you. A big Thank You goes to my friend Nicole Dean for coming up with this one for you.
It’s a blog brainstorming sheet. I downloaded mine right away and am keeping it close for those days when I’m not sure what to blog about.
You’ll get over 100 Blog post ideas. These also make great title suggestions for articles, short reports, emails or even entire books and info products. I’m sure once you read through the pdf you’ll come up with all sorts of great uses for these.
Blog Post Brainstorm (You’ll be redirected to Nicole’s site… click on the link at the very top to download the pdf).
The ideas, or you could call them title templates are general enough that you can make them work for just about any niche. I was reading through them just now and jotted down all sorts of ideas in various niches including:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Cooking and Homemaking
- Parenting
- Gardening
And that was after just spending a few minutes… Keep this one close by and pull it back out anytime you’re sitting in front of a blank screen and don’t know what to write about.
Blog Post Brainstorm (You’ll be redirected to Nicole’s site… click on the link at the very top to download the pdf).
Enjoy!
P.S. I’m curious… Is it harder for you to come up with blog post ideas, or do you have more ideas than time to write posts?
Do I Need To Spend Money To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
It’s time for another great affiliate marketing question and this is one that I hear quite frequently both in email and whenever I talk to someone in person that’s interested in getting started with affiliate marketing. The question is:
Do I need to spend some money to get started with affiliate marketing?
The short answer is no, you don’t need to spend any money at all. In fact if you come across a so called “affiliate network” that requires you to pay to be able to promote their products it’s most likely a scam and the only one making any money is said affiliate network.
Any reputable one, be it a whole network or a single individual with an affiliate program for their products, will allow you and encourage you to promote their offers for free. You do the marketing and when they result in a sale, you get a cut of the profits.
Read the rest of this entry »
How To Close Your Blog Posts
Two of the biggest challenges for me when I sit down to write a new blog post are how to start it and how to close it. The starting part is mostly a matter of coming up with the first sentence or two. After that I get into the writing groove and the rest is a matter of filling in the outline I usually start with. That is until it comes to closing the post. Here’s the thing… you want to close strong and leave your readers with something meaningful.
For me it boils down to three different types of closings depending on what I want to accomplish with the blog post. Which brings up a good point. Make sure you know before you start writing what you’d like the end result to be. Do you want to engage your readers? Do you want to inspire them? Or do you want them to take a specific action like joining your newsletter list or buying a product via your affiliate link?
The Three Different Ways To Close Your Blog Posts
The three ways to close your post are to either engage, inspire or call your readers to action. Let’s look at each of them in more detail.
Read the rest of this entry »
How To Write Your Kindle Book This Weekend – Friday Freebie
Happy Friday … are you ready for a long Labor Day weekend? I am definitely looking forward to not having to get up at 6am to get my daughter ready for school. Instead, I’m planning on spending the weekend writing my next Kindle book.
How would you like to join me? I have just the thing for you as this week’s Friday Freebie.
How To Write Your Kindle Book This Weekend
Click on the link above and opt in. You’ll be redirected to a page to download the pdf report. There are also some helpful videos that make the entire process as easy as 1-2-3.
Does it work? Sure does… or I wouldn’t spend my weekend working on the next one :)
Here’s proof:
Read the rest of this entry »
Archive Your Email Content And Use It To Build Your List
Happy Wednesday. Today I have another great list building tip for you. It’s something I’ve been doing for quite some time in several different niches. The basic idea is simple … take your email content and archive it on your website. Next, add an option box to the archive page and invite readers to sign up.
You can see an example of one of my archive pages on the right. This accomplishes a few different things:
- It gives your readers one easy spot to go to to catch up on past issues.
- Having the content online makes for great “search engine fodder”.
- It gives potential subscribers a chance to check out your content before they sign up.
- It gives you another reason to send up follow up emails to let readers know about the content. Of course those messages are also a prime opportunity to promote a related affiliate product.
- Last but not least, you should of course monetize your content. As these new pages attract more free traffic you’ll see a spike in your affiliate income and number of subscribers.
Here’s another good example.
Read the rest of this entry »
