VernonGirl

What are your website objectives?

An Internet presence should begin with a website.
Here are some objectives that your website can accomplish:

*Attract new customers
*Reduce the time to market of certain products or services
*Make announcements to current customers
*Reduce paper and postage charges by using email
*Inform and educate clients about products and services
*Service existing clients
*Advertise your business around the world
*Advertise your business locally
*Increase the value of your company
*Increase your company’s credibility
*Improve your company’s image
*Help you and your staff spend less time on the phone with customers
*Attract new employees
*Show examples of your work
*Replace your brochure with quicker information fulfillment
*Replace service manuals
*Help your customers locate key personnel
*Promote upcoming events
*Attract entrepreneurs to business opportunities
*Offer on-line product purchases and/or product knowledge
*Demonstrate that you are great corporate citizens
*Attract shareholders
*Open a new communication channel to media
*Explain who you do business with (partnerships)
*Book appointments or reservations
*Take applications

Establishing credibility is one of the most underestimated powers of a good website…and a dangerous one for some consumers. A colleague of mine – a webmaster – told me about his pawn shop client who has a website. If you walk into the guy’s store, you see carpet that hasn’t been changed for 30 years and dust that’s at least that old, too. Yet, he has the most incredible website – with nice graphics and professional design, great information and a sophisticated shopping cart system. (That’s because my colleague, the webmaster, designed it for him.) His customers from around the country who buy products off his site will likely never know what a pigsty his store is. His website is first-rate and that is all they will ever see. (Boy! You gotta be careful with Internet blind dates if this principle applies!)

Think of it the opposite way. Sometimes you are better off to pull an ugly website off the Internet if it creates a bad impression of your business. One of my clients had a large website for their Optometry business when they hired me to help them update it. It was so outdated we pulled it off immediately and posted a single page that said: “We are currently renovating our website to serve you better. Please enter your email address and we’ll notify you as soon as we launch our new site.” The former site just didn’t reflect the quality of their service and products and so they were better off not using it at all.

To meet your objectives of what you want to accomplish with your website, here are some items to include:

*Frequently asked questions
*Company structure and staff, along with phone numbers and email addresses for all key personnel
*Products
*Services
*Prices
*Hours
*Locations and contact information, including physical addresses
*Directions or maps on how to find your stores
*Testimonials
*Warranties
*Employment information
*Business or franchise opportunities
*Vision/mission statement or corporate philosophy
*Number of years in business
*Upcoming events
*Community involvement and sponsorships
*Newsletter
*Shareholder information
*Search tool – especially if your website contains lots of information
*Portfolio (for designs, plans, art work, etc.)
*Listings (real estate agents)
*Reservations (accommodation)
*Vehicles (used and new cars)
*Book your appointment (vehicle maintenance, dental, etc.)
*Activities (travel, tour companies, event company)
*Packages
*Mortgage calculator (mortgage broker)
*Site Map – for larger sites
*Applications – financial industry
*Partners (companies you work with)
*Resources (links to helpful sites)
*Promotions
*Customer Care
*Awards

Realistic Expectations…

 “A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice.
How low can you stoop?”
--Donald Trump

The owners of a manufacturing company came to me to help them develop a website. They did not have a marketing budget and were struggling to sell their quality wooden fireplace mantels into the state of Washington. They thought that if they had a website, residential home developers would phone them to buy wooden mantels.

It is a myth that a website is the overnight answer to your marketing problems. Like a brochure, your website must be designed, published (or in the case of a website – launched), distributed (emailed or advertised in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon) into the right hands, read (or seen), have a ‘call to action’ and target a willing participant who acts on the call. If you expect new business from your website, it needs to be promoted properly, measured for effectiveness, maintained and kept ‘fresh’.

For most people, giving birth to an effective website requires a substantial investment in time, planning and money. Although most websites take from three to six months from concept to launch, a nine-month investment in your website baby is not unrealistic if you expect a quality result (unless you have a superior marketing company to project manage for you).

Websites also serve certain marketing functions. Getting new overnight business from them is definitely not one. There are pros and cons to consider before deciding to put the website bun in the oven!

Website Advantages

*A great way to get information into the hands of your customers immediately
*Can be updated immediately
*Can present information statically and dynamically
*Are interactive – providing you with valuable customer feedback
*Are visual and can include audio
*Have unlimited space (very affordable)

Website Disadvantages
 
*Require frequent maintenance
*Can be costly to set up – both in time and money
*Are somewhat of a mystery – kind of like your car if you’re not a mechanic. Your webmaster, like your mechanic, has a lot of power and knowledge and you are subjected to trusting him or her.
*Have continual yearly and/or monthly fees including hosting, domain name renewal and maintenance

Consider Your Timeline…

 “If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.”
--Lee Iacocca

A typical website project, from design to launch, takes at least three to six months. The majority of the time is spent gathering ideas, images and text. Set a timeline for yourself and your web design team upon starting this project. Here is a check list that will help:

1.    Gather information, plan your site, and develop a bid document
2.    Have three design companies bid on your project
3.    Choose a design company
4.    Meet with design company to begin your project
5.    Wait for initial design concept
6.    Review the home-page and sub-page concept. Provide feedback.
7.    Review the home page and sub page again, give the web design company the go ahead to develop the remainder of the site.
8.    Wait for the design company to incorporate all of your images and text into the site.
9.    Review the completed site, test links, proof read, and provide feedback.
10.    Wait for the designers to make final adjustments to the site.
11.    Review the final design and sign it off. Have meta-tags (we’ll explain later) programmed into the site.
12.    Launch the site.
13.    Submit the site to key search engines and announce it to media and customers.
14.    Get your backup and passwords from the design company and make your final payment to the web design team.
15.    Promote, Promote, Promote!
16.    Track your success.
17.    Keep it fresh!

Patience and planning are key to making your website project a positive experience.

Don’t get e-screwed!

 “There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.”
-Adlai E. Stevenson

When your gut feeling tells you that the prices are ridiculous, they probably are. Continue reading and you’ll know whether you’re paying a fair price for the services you are about to receive!

Budget…
Establish a budget to determine what you can afford. Most website designs start at $900 and up. This cost does not include your domain name ($25 - $45/year), hosting (from $180 per year and up), database ($1,500 and up), or e-commerce ($3,000 and up). Other charges can include maintenance ($40/hour and up) and promotion ($100 and up).

When considering your return on investment, determine ways that a website can save or make you money if it:

*Eliminates or reduces the need to print brochures or catalogues
*Cuts postage and faxing charges
*Cuts time for stuffing envelopes and packages
*Cuts long distance phone calls to customers or staff
*Saves printing charges for brochures, catalogues, annual reports, owner’s manuals, etc.
*Saves personnel time speaking with customers
*Saves personnel time searching for information
*Brings new customers
*Sells products

To do Internet marketing well, it requires its own marketing plan. Every activity in your Internet marketing plan should have a budget, an objective, a market and a way to track success.

Each activity should include costs for creative, time (human resources) and items such as hosting, advertising, maintenance or design charges.

Target Market
Consider who will use your website and it will be easier for you to determine your objectives. Will it be…
*Staff
*Present Customers
*Suppliers
*New Customers
*Distributors

Important for pricing and language considerations, is to determine where your website will be accessed from…
*Locally
*Nationally
*Internationally

Determine which age group will use your website as it will help you consider the information, type style, graphics and technology that you include in the site…
*Kids
*Teens
*Adults
*Seniors

You get the idea! As with other types of media, you have to know your market before you can design an effective website for it.

Revenue
Consider the ways that your website can bring in new revenue streams….
*Support existing products and services
*Offer New products and services
*Advertising or link exchanges
*New customers

Expenses
Consider some of the expenses of website development and marketing…
*Photograph acquisition
*Copywriting
*Design
*Hosting
*Maintenance
*Promotion

Price
Pricing of the website design, hosting and maintenance is important to consider as part of your marketing plan. I always advise my customers to start small and build. Get on the Net with a small investment. Begin promoting the site and generating traffic to it. Then expand.

You also need to consider how to price your products on your website. For example, will you offer discounts for on-line ordering? Will you use your website to blow out slow moving products? Will you offer your purchases in Canadian or US currency, or both?

If you feel that the website will be worth your time, energy and money, then let’s get started!

Blogs are also great alternatives to a website. Read more about blogs.

Thanks for reading.

Courtenay Pitcher, Webmaster, Website content writer

This article was adapted from my book: Secrets of Internet Marketing

Linkwithin: A free secret weapon for getting readers to stay in your blog longer.

Many bloggers ask the question, "How can I get people to stay in my blog longer?" Linkwithin (not to be confused with LinkedIn) is my new secret weapon for getting readers to stay on my blog longer. If you have a blog, it's something you may want to add.

It's free.

It's very simple to add.

It doesn't come with advertising (other than an unobtrusive linkwithin link).

I have been very pleased with how it looks, how it pulls related articles and how it makes my site more "sticky" (people stay longer).

Photos are so important to a blog, and this little widget drives that point home. Linkwithin automatically pulls suggested articles to the bottom of your most recent blog post, and all of your other posts, along with a thumbnail photo from each article. You can tell it to pull three, four or five suggestions depending on how you would like it to look on your site.

Platforms it works on include:

Typepad
Blogger
Wordpress
(Other) ie: your own site

It is so attractive that it entices readers to stay longer on your blog. Readers poke around in other articles you've written.

This is what the sign up form looks like.




Don't get confused when you're setting it up because the process is so easy and simple. It literally takes about 1 minute.

How to set it up:

1. Open your blogging platform.
2. Then open linkwithin in a new window.
3. Fill out the form.
4. Hit the "get widget" picture.
5. Finish the prompts in your blogging platform to complete the process.

Presto, it's in there.

Articles are pulled based on categories or tags. Voila, you've got yourself an automatic-article-suggester-of-sorts. Now, watch your pageviews per unique visitor go waaaaaaay up. (If you're not sure what pageviews or unique visitors are, read this article about google analytics.)

If you add Linkwithin to your blog, please let me know how you like it by leaving a comment on this blog post. I love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Blogger

p.s. If you would like to get a blog and have it customized to your other branding, please contact me for a quote.

How To Track Your Advertising and Social Media Efforts On-line

This article has been adapted and updated from chapter three of my book Secrets of Internet Marketing: Streamline, promote, communicate and sell more effectively on-line.

Tracking programs


 

As you know, it is imperative to track your advertising – whether it is website banner advertising, television or print. With the advent of social media, it is also good to know how much traffic is coming into your blog or website through Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube or other sites. You must know where your business is coming from. If you have a banner ad on a website that is costing you big money and your referring URLs from that site are low, you have choices. (More about URLs below.) You can pull the ad, change the ad, change the location of the ad on the site, or negotiate a better rate or location for your banner ad on their site.

Tracking programs or website statistics are excellent for monitoring visitor and customer behavior. With them, you can track where your customers come from, where bottlenecks occur in your site, which content, products or services visitors prefer, how you can improve your customer support, the best way to convert a visitor into a buyer and which advertising campaigns are working.

I use Google Analytics to track my blog traffic. The best part about it…it is free.

Hits

Hits, also called a page hit, are the retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a web server. For example, when a visitor calls up a web page with eight graphics, that's nine hits, one for the page and eight for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of Web traffic. Anyone trying to sell you on-line advertising based on hits should be asked to get out of the ballpark.

Page Views
A page view is a web page that has been viewed by one visitor. Rather than hits, page views are a much more reliable measuring tool for evaluating where to place your online advertising and/or your website traffic. You'll see by this image below, how my page views skyrocketed when I added K. D. Lang to my site immediately following the 2010 Winter Olympics.



Search Engine Reports

Software (like Google Analytics) that provides search engine reports can tell you which search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) visitors are using to find your site. By knowing which search engines people are using to find you, you’ll be able to tell which search engines aren’t working for you. Then, you can attempt to fix your ranking in those search engines where you need improvement.

Keyword Reports
See which keyword combinations people are entering in search engines to find your site by looking at keyword reports. Keyword reports tell you that you have content in your blog or your site around those keywords. However, if you want to bring visitors to your site or blog with other key words, and you are not getting traffic from them, you’ll know what kind of content you should add.

Here is an example of my keyword report. Recently, I posted a YouTube video to my site and ever since then, my traffic has gone through the roof for K.D. Lang Olympic video searches.

Referring URLs (or Referring Sites)
A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator. It is a very complicated way of saying ‘website address’. Referring URLs are the websites that refer, send, divert or direct business into your site.

By tracking your referring URLs, you can determine which websites (in addition to search engines) are sending you business. This is extremely valuable information because it allows you to determine where your advertising is, or isn’t, working.

As you can see by this image below, top referring sites to my blog are Twitter, Kelly Diels, Facebook and Hootsuite. (That goes to show the power of blogs and social media to generating traffic.)

Return on Investment Calculation
Compare referring URLs to determine the percentage of traffic each URL brings. Track return on investment for each URL by assigning a dollar figure to the percentage and dividing it by the cost of your advertising. This method is used for comparison purposes. It doesn’t actually assign a real dollar value.

For example: let’s say you are a photographer and you have banner advertising on two sites:

Kodak.com
Gettyimages.com

Kodak is bringing you 50% of your visitors, but the ad cost you $500. Getty images is bringing you the other 50%, but the ad cost you $1000.

Return on investment (ROI) is calculated strictly for comparison purposes – the dollar figure means nothing in this case.

Your return on investment for Kodak 50/500 = 0.1

ROI for Getty is 50/1000 = .05 (half).

While they bring you the same amount of traffic, the traffic costs you twice as much with gettyimages.com.

Therefore, you may want to consider reducing your investment with gettyimages.com to see if you get the same amount of traffic for the same price, or negotiate with Getty to keep the same ad, but at half the cost based on your knowledge of Kodak’s results. As long as all other things remain equal, you may be in a very good negotiating position with Getty. Do you getty what I’m saying?

Most requested pages
Tracking programs also allow you to track the most requested pages on your website. The most requested page on your website is often your home page. But which page do your customers visit next? Is it your contact information, jobs, or what? This is useful information to know.

This is important if you are trying to convince a supplier or associate to buy advertising space on your website. You can indicate where the best place to advertise will be.

When I had a contract with a community Internet portal to sell banner advertising, we sold all of the advertising at the same rate – regardless of whether it was a busy page or a slow page. However, we quickly sold out the busy pages because we were able to prove to our customers that they could capture a portion of the traffic we were getting just by placing banner advertising on those busy pages. Interestingly, some of the busiest pages were bus route schedules on BC Transit, movie listings, and the ‘image of the day’ (a nice picture of the local scenery that the webmaster took each day). Accommodation was hugely popular in the tourism section and the news continually drew visitors to the site.

Tip: Movie listings are a great place to advertise on line if you are targeting teens. Facebook, is another. Ironically, Facebook is also great for advertising to grandmas!

The most requested pages are one of the first things you should ask if you are considering advertising on anybody else’s website. If it is a high traffic site, place your banner advertising on their most requested page, and you’ll see results!

Use your most requested pages as a place to put announcements and news, or move product. If you know it is a well-visited place on your site, use it to your advantage.

Average time spent on the site

    “The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.”
      -William Gibson

A good tracking program can provide you with the average amount of time that your visitors spend on your site. If your visitors are not spending much time on your site, maybe it is not very interesting, maybe your pages download too slowly or maybe your shopping cart package is not user-friendly. Tracking this information allows you to re-think your site layout and/or content. Increase the amount of time a user spends in your site and you will likely increase the amount of money that they spend with you.



Unique Visitors
Unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses. IP addresses identify each computer or computer network that is connected to the Internet. IP addresses have a unique four digit number that identifies a particular network and a host on that network. Except in special cases, one IP address equals one unique visitor no matter how many times they visit the site within a given period. The only flaw in tracking unique visitors is that one IP address can be assigned to a network having 500 employees on it – so the unique visitor will be counted once while up to 500 employees may have actually visited your site.

Unique visitor statistics can be useful if tracked on a daily basis to tell if more people visit your site on a Monday or a Sunday, or in August than March. They will indicate when your traffic increases or drops.

It is also important to know what this term means when you are sourcing information from advertisers about their unique visitor traffic so that you can compare ‘apples to apples’. It is better to ask ‘how many unique visitors do you have’ than it is to ask ‘how many hits do you get’ as an indicator for their amount of traffic. 

Path Reports
Statistics or tracking programs can monitor path reports. These indicate where visitors entered your site, which paths they took and where they exited. This is useful information for determining ‘jumping off’ points that may need to be re-designed. They will also tell you how people travel through your site which can arm you with information on how to improve your navigation.

Return frequency
See how many visitors have returned to view your site a second time, and how long they waited between the first and second visit. If visitors return to your site daily, you know you’ve got an interesting site. If they return monthly, you may need to reach out to your customers electronically more often with an e-newsletter, blog or special promotional deals by email.

Other Items Which Can Be Tracked

Software can track everything from the most common monitor resolution settings used by your visitors to their language setting, country and operating system.

Email Reports

Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can also set weekly or daily email reports to send to you in .pdf format.




Summary

*Tracking programs or website statistics can help you monitor customer behavior and traffic to your site

*Hits are a common, yet unreliable measuring tool

*Use page views to guide you in placing your advertising or to determine the most popular pages within your own site

*Keyword reports help you optimize your content

*Referring URL’s help you determine which websites (in addition to search engines) are directing traffic into your site

*Use referring URL’s as a measuring tool to determine your advertising return on investment

*Put your most important information or product offerings on your most requested pages

*Invest in advertising on other websites on their most requested pages

*Knowing the average amount of time that visitors spend on your site can help you provide better site layout or content

*Unique visitors are a better tool than hits for measuring traffic to a site

*Path reports tell you how people travel through your site and where they leave, giving you hints on how to improve your navigation

*If customers return to your site frequently, you have great Internet marketing. If they don’t, you need to reach out to your customers more often.

*Tracking programs can track just about everything. Focus on the tracking information that helps guide your Internet marketing the best.

More Information

If you would like coaching on how to set up and interpret Google Analytics to track your on-line marketing, please get in touch.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Google Analytics Cheerleader

Video tutorial: How to add a Facebook Fanpage to Hootsuite.com

Here is a video tutorial on how to add your Facebook Fanpage to your Hootsuite.com account so that whenever you send a tweet from Hootsuite, you can update your Facebook Fanpage automatically.

Or, here are the written directions:

Open Hootsuite.com

Go to settings > social networks > add a social network




Click the “pages” icon. (as per the image above) Note: Do not click the "Facebook" icon.

Connect with Facebook (It will open Facebook and you'll have to type in your Facebook email and password).

It will bring up a list of Fan pages you have set up on that account and so you can tick the Fanpage that you want to come up.

Cllick "Allow Publishing".

If you're getting this post by email, you can watch the video at this link here.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher
Social media trainer and Hootsuite Fan

Jay Rosen's Video Tea With The Economist: Media After iPad

How to create a picture-in-picture video for your blog for under $400 USD

Dear Varada:

Thank you for your question:

    “How did you create the video overlapping the background demo on
    Socialoomph presented in your blog.”

Adding video has been an excellent strategy for adding personality and credibility to my blog and getting people to stay for longer. It has also resulted in exposure through Youtube and now my blog has been bookmarked on the site Delicious which pushes traffic into my blog.

Here is how I do it:

First of all, I believe that the video example you are referring to is this video on how to upload tweets and schedule them using Socialoomph.com.

I use two tools to create my demo videos:

1)    A Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 / QuickCam Pro 9000 that cost under $99 USD.

and

2)    Camtasia Studios 5.0 Screen Recorder Software that cost under $300 USD.

I launch the Camtasia Studios Screen Recorder Software and set the recorder to make sure it is using the Logitech® Webcam Pro 9000 to record my face and my voice at the same time that I am clicking on the screen. In the settings of the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000, I ensure that it is tracking my face. This image demonstrates what the face tracking settings look like:

Logitech® Webcam Pro 9000 has exceptionally great audio quality, so I recommend it. And it sits right on your computer screen which means that you don't need a cameraman (or woman) to operate it. You just have to make sure to check that you are centred in the viewer.

For lighting, I have two small table top lights that I set on either side of my computer screen. They seem to do the trick.

In the Camtasia Studios Screen Recording Software, I also make sure that I set the “cursor effects” to highlight the clicks of my mouse with a yellow circle so it’s easier for people watching my video demonstration to know where I’m clicking.

The Camtasia Studio Screen Recorder software records what I am doing on my computer screen at the same time it is recording my face. It essentially makes two video files: one of the video of me and one video of what I’m clicking on my computer screen. It calls this picture in picture (pip) and when you are editing the video, you can decide if the videos will lay side-by-side each other, or one overtop of the other. In this case, I've laid one over the other.

To prepare to take the video, I practice what I am going to do and say a few times before I go through the “real” demo. This is like a sound check to ensure that my audio is being recorded and to see how the video is looking. After practicing, I do the demo in one take so that editing is kept to a minimum. The only editing I do after that is to fade in and fade out the video of me so that the screen recording demo can be seen. Sometimes I also enlarge my video.

When I began producing video, I noticed that my computer was quite slow and this was effecting the quality of my video and causing it to be somewhat stilted. It also took a very long time to render the video, which is also what Camtasia Studios terms as the "produce" phase. So I upgraded to a faster computer. The processor speed is most important. I use an Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9300 - 8 Gig System memory - 1 Terabyte hard drive. (I haven't included the cost of my computer upgrade in the $400 USD.)

Occasionally, I will get "chipmunk" voice when I record a video. This is when my audio comes out really fast and I sound like Alvin and The Chipmunks. When this happens, I close all of my programs and restart my computer. This takes care of the problem and then I start the process all over again.

Here is a video from Camtasia Studios that shows you how to place videos through pip (picture in picture).

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher

Mitch Joel Video about social media, privacy, equilibrium, group expression

An interview with Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image and Author of "Six Pixels of Separation" as part of the TVO series in an online Podcast called Digital U. 

In this video, you can hear Mitch Joel’s discourse about:

• Group expression: it’s different from a one way or two way conversation.

• How social media sites allow people to congregate and activate their passions.

• How social media sites like blogs or Twitter are creating an equilibrium between “regular people” and large budget advertisers.

• How social media brings transparency. Credibility is hard.

• How “being in the loop” is attitudinal, not generational.

• How it’s a challenge to manage technology and not let technology manage you.

• Privacy and evaluating your public versus private relationships. Your life is being recorded. Anybody can take a picture and upload it to anything without any ramifications.

• How a laptop is no longer needed for travel now with the Blackberry and Iphone.

• Snaptel. Take a picture of a product code, find out where you can buy it, get prices, get a review, and find people to help you buy it.

• Augmented reality: point your phone at a house and see its real estate agent, price and a virtual tour. 

• Meet ups, “Thriller” and facilitating better relationships.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Digital Facilitator

Super Affiliate Handbook Review - Monetize and supercharge your website or blog

Have you been writing articles and posting them on your blog and not getting enough traffic to it?

Are you a traditional brick and mortar business who has a website, but wants to add revenue streams to it?

Are you an entrepreneur thinking about starting a blog?

Do you have a website with good traffic, but are you having a difficult time selling advertising on it?

Do you want to start a business with minimal risk and financial investment?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to purchase and read the Super Affiliate Handbook, by the “Affiliate Queen”, Rosalind Gardner.

What percentage of visitors to your site will become your customers?

How much is each visitor to your blog or website worth?

How much does it cost to bring a new visitor to your site?

This book teaches you how to answer those questions.

I’ve been marketing on the internet since the late nineties, but this is the first book I’ve read that really explains in detail how to profit from a website or blog and how to promote a website or blog with software I had not considered.

The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner was published in 2003, but it has been recently updated. Since internet marketing is evolving with the addition of social media and new technology, I was happy to know that the book wasn’t a dinosaur. It’s current and relevant. In fact, the book even lists changes and improvements since 2003.

First, you’ll learn seventeen benefits of being an affiliate. What stands out for me in this section, is how inexpensive, simple and virtually risk free it is to begin an affiliate progam.

Gardner explains:

 “An affiliate program is a program that facilitates the relationship between online merchants and their affiliates – allowing the affiliate to promote that company’s products or services for a commission. Affiliate programs may also be referred to as:
    *Associate programs
    *Referral programs
    *Bounty Programs
    *Partner Programs
    *Revenue Sharing Programs."

In the book, Gardner, who is a successful webmaster, online entrepreneur and affiliate marketer, shows and links to her own website examples so you can see live working affiliate websites. The well-written book reads like a full-fledged business and marketing plan. She tells you the software and tools needed, the process and steps to take, ways to stay organized, ways to identify a profitable niche, short-cuts, how to evaluate market demand and competition, how to choose a domain name, how to choose a web or blog host, design rules-of-thumb and how to build a website or blog with, or without, a webmaster.

Software she reviews in enough detail to really understand them are: Google Adsense and Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, Google Toolbar, Microsoft Excel, Eudora Email Client, File Transfer Software, Paypal, Wordpress, and Aweber Enewsletter Software to name only a few.

She explains how to create or find content, which content is essential for an affiliate blog or website, how to write product endorsements, secret ingredients every article needs, and how to make your site “Google” friendly. 

The meat of the book is in the middle where she goes into ways to monetize your site simply by adding small snippets of code to them. And, she shows you step by step how to do it and which ones to add. She explains how to evaluate affiliate programs and which ones are profitable and easy to work with. Recurring sales, commissions, lifetime commissions, multiple-tier programs, sales tools and sales statistics are covered. Page 132 of her book has a gem so good, I was too excited to sleep the night I read about it.

After she explains how to fill your site with content, she details thirty-one ways to market your site on-line. I’ve known about many of the tools and strategies she lists here, but she goes into them in detailed ways that shifted my perspective. Also, she reveals software on page 138 so powerful and effective (I watched the video) that I’m scheming of ways to afford it. After all, my internet marketing plan is ever-evolving too. That’s why I read great books like this one.

Like adding icing to a delicious cake, she puts a section at the back of the book called “Evaluate Your Site’s Performance” which explains how to determine:
1.    What percentage of visitors to your site will become your customers.
2.    The conversion rate for each Affiliate program.
3.    How much each visitor is worth.
4.    How much it costs to bring a new visitor to your site.

This section also teaches you how to assess individual product performance (clickthroughs, number of sales, commission amounts), compare products side-by-side for performance, evaluate monthly trends, grow commissions and profit from error pages and exchange rates. The number crunching techniques on these pages will keep your Banker and Accountant happy for sure!

The book is topped off with problem-solving and prevention tips plus a glossary of terms. “Twenty-five mistakes to avoid” is the maraschino cherry of this affiliate marketing masterpiece.

Rosalind Gardner lives in Penticton, B.C. Canada, just down the road (two hours) from me. Her book is 210 pages long and it took me six hours to read. I jumped over some sections I already felt I knew, but took longer on some of the links. This book comes as an e-book. After reading it, I printed it and put it into a binder that I will keep on my shelf and refer to often.

At just $47 USD, this book is excellent value. I give it 10 out of 10.

Buy a copy of The Super Affiliate Handbook here


Thanks for reading.

Courtenay Pitcher, Aspiring Affiliate Marketer

Automated reply system for Twitter: antique collector and web designer unite to brand Twitter

On Twitter, what if you could brand your tweets, follow key phrases and auto-reply to them in real time from your desktop?

TweetBrand is a free mini application launched just over one week ago that allows you to brand your tweets with a company name, your name, tagline, or message of your choosing and link that branding right to a specific web site or landing page.

This majour breakthrough allows you to take back the valuable impression space on each tweet from Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Ping.fm, Twitterfeed, and other companies promoting themselves on your tweet.

Listing your website on the tweet saves your followers, or potential followers a step or two in getting to your website, thereby increasing traffic.

TweetBrand is the tip of the larger iceberg, a product (to be named soon), which will launch the third week of January 2010. Both applications are part of the company MarketMeTweet.

According to Tammy Kahn Fennell, Co-Director of MarketMeTweet, “our product, will be the ultimate Twitter marketing application.” she says.

The product, will combine some of the very powerful features of Socialoomph (like scheduling multiple tweets, automatic link shortening, and basic management to organize friends and followers) with TweetBrand’s ability to brand tweets from multiple users and multiple brands.

The titanic revelation here though, is the product's ability to follow key words or key phrases in real time with the application on your desktop, and auto-reply once with a specific phrase. It will also track how those keywords are performing measured by which tweets are turning into followers, potential customers, or buyers.

Yes, it’s an automatic conversation starter for Twitter. A robot engages people with an @reply and then you take over the conversation as a live person.

It’s powerful call centre-like technology for Twitter users like those automated telephone systems that phone you. When you pick up and say “hello” there is a pause and then someone comes on the line with you, surveys you or tries to sell you something.

Say you sell sneakers. You may do a phrase search for "Nike 701". Bob in Nebraska tweets, "Deciding if I should buy the Nike 701.” You will use the product to reach out to him and say something like, "Saw u tweeted about Nike shoes, do u use them for running?" or "I own Nike 701 and love them."

Tammy says, “our product will cut through the clutter and allow conversations to happen. You will be able to add “negative” keywords to filter out subjects you’re not interested in.”

Let’s say you are in the antiques and collectables business. You would set up “German figurine” as your key phrase to follow. Then, you would write and automate a specific reply to that keyword tweet. “I saw you tweeted about German figurines, which type do you collect?” If there is a response, you now have a conversation to get personally involved in.

Tammy Kahn Fennell knows it works. From Long Island, New York, she is also the owner of Vintage Rare Stuff, a business she operates with her father. The technology has allowed her niche business to get out in front on Twitter. No stranger to E-Bay, Tammy says, “I’ve been doing the collectables business for five years. One year ago, I started to understand the power of social networking, Twitter and blogging. Collectibles Corner T.V., a web T.V. show, was my first step away from dealing with physical antiques and collectables and doing more internet stuff.”

While helping some people manage their sites, she met Alan Hamlyn, her business partner who is based out of England. His company is a website design and development agency Wuup Media.

Tammy says, “I said to Alan that I love Twitter and I’m getting lots of interviews to my shows. He said that if I could think it, he could create it.” So they developed the product and tried it for his business. “All of a sudden he went from 10 followers to 1000 followers. So we said, let’s form a company. Now, I handle all the marketing and he does all the development.”

Alan is twenty-one years old. Tammy says of Alan, “He is so incredible, a boy genius. He is wise beyond his years.” Alan and Tammy have created the application face to face on webcam using Skype. She’ll be seeing Alan for the first time in the flesh in April 2010. “I feel like I know him and his whole staff. We’ve toured each other’s offices on Skype.” Tammy says.

Along with her father, Tammy also works with her husband in the antiques and collectables business. Her husband is from England and the two of them recently had a baby boy. Tammy says, “My husband and I are firm believers that people should make it in this world. It’s a cool world if you use ethical Twitter marketing. You can use this tool to make connections. Oh, and we’ve banned words like "it" or "the" to keep spammers out. I hate people who spam on Twitter, it drives me nuts.”

Pricing for the product will start at $14.99 and up per month for a personal account. Professional unlimited accounts will be available too. Tammy says, “Updates will be included free. We will have a feedback section directly from the application. We want the community of users to tell us what they want and we’ll build it. We don’t think those other brands like Tweetdeck, will allow you to brand your tweets anytime soon, so get on board and support us. Within the first two months, we may add statistical link tracking.”

MarketmeTweet.com has an Affiliate program with a 40% payout. In one week, they have seen more than one thousand downloads of their TweetBrand free product and Tammy is scheduled for various internet blog site interviews. 

The Market Me Tweet blog  will keep you updated on new feature launches and Beta tests. Follow them @marketmetweets on Twitter.

Do you think branding and automatic reply technology on Twitter is a good thing? Or do you oppose it? I would love to hear your point of view. Please post your comment. There is a link in the footer of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Twitter Conversation Starter

Video: auto follow and auto direct message in Twitter using Socialoomph

Here is a quick Twitter video (less than four minutes long), showing you two time-saving automated features you can tap into through Socialoomph online software:

1. Auto Follow: automatically follow any new followers.

2. Auto Direct Message: send a quick welcome message to new followers.

My personal philosophy is to follow everyone who follows me. I think it is a nice courtesy. So the auto follow feature in Socialoomph's online software is a great tool for me.

As for Direct Messages, some people don't read them, but some people do (maybe 10%). So if you want to send one, automating them is convenient.

Do you think either of these tools are useful? I look forward to your comments.

Here is the video:

If for some reason, you can't see the video, click into my Youtube site.

Thanks for watching and reading!

Courtenay Pitcher
Twitter efficiency expert

Find me on Twitter @vernongirl

http://www.vernongirl.com

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