The second Affiliate Bootcamp was a little rough going because of technical problems with the new VOIP conference facility, but everyone huddled together and a work-around was soon presented.
Good thing because the second class has a lot of visual aids to help you to understand the concepts and tools presented.
The big lesson to be learned in the second class is something I learned years ago … the hard way. It's imperative to your business success that you work in an organized manner. Keeping records of your URLs, usernames and passwords is not a trivial task.
One of the tools James Martell endorses and uses is Affiliate Organizer. Affiliate Organizer's affiliate program is only open to customers who have purchased Affiliate Organizer.
According to James…
As a successful affiliate marketer and author of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook I learned very early on the importance of *properly recording* all the usernames, passwords, control panels, hosting companies, domain name registrars, software serial numbers, etc. provided to me by the various companies so that I could *find this important information when I needed it*.
Getting and staying organized can be a daunting task, however I could see that it was important if I wanted to succeed with affiliate programs, …so I had to figure out a way. I did, and then dedicated the first chapter of my training manual to the subject and titled it: "How To Get And Stay Organized".
What I love about Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, is the down to earth advice he gives to other bloggers looking to monetize their blogs to earn an income doing waht they love … blogging.
Darren's posted a nice advice series on How To Drive Traffice to Your Affiliate Programs that's well worth the read, if for no other reason than pure review to make sure you're doing the basics.
You also might want to go back and review the post I, Affiliate Bogger, posted for you about creating content to further help you prepare your affiliate websites and blogs for monetization Content for Affiliate Websites.
You can read Darren's next blog post contining this series by looking at his next post on Search Engine Optimization in the overall series of 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.
SimpleTuition Debuts Affiliate Program For Organizations Looking To Share Student Loan Comparison Research
Tuesday November 14, 10:27 am ET
Innovative Referral Program Allows Donations to Educational Charitable Organizations
BOSTON, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ — SimpleTuition, Inc. (http://www.simpletuition.com), a company dedicated to helping students and parents make sense of education financing choices, today announced the launch of its new Affiliate Partner Program. Available today at http://www.simpletuition.com/friend, the program is open to high school guidance officers, personal financial planners and advisors, as well as professional and student organizations and others that wish to offer objective third-party student loan comparison and research.
As a SimpleTuition Affiliate Partner, organizations that refer parents and students to the SimpleTuition web site for advice will earn a reward for each new visitor that uses the SimpleTuition solution to compare student loans and then clicks through to a lender's loan application site. For non-profit partners and public schools, SimpleTuition is planning to offer the option of donating the referral reward to an educational charity, thereby avoiding any conflicts of interest. A first for referral programs, SimpleTuition is working with leading educational charities, who all share a common vision of helping students and their families attend college, to make this a reality.
"Every year hundreds of thousands of students and parents receive advice and conflicting recommendations from friends, family, co-workers and other advisors about how to best research and manage student loan finances," said Kevin Walker, co-founder and CEO of SimpleTuition. "Since launching SimpleTuition, numerous parents have been telling us how desperate they are for a resource that offers a clear and easy way to understand their student loan options. When they hear of SimpleTuition, they want to tell all their friends. With that in mind, we created the partner program."
According to the recent College Board report, caps for federal student loans are not keeping up with inflation, yet tuition costs keep rising, up 35% from five years ago. With the cost of college at an all-time high — projected to reach $220 billion this year, $86 billion of which will be financed by students or their parents — families nationwide now require multiple loans each year to pay for college. Many are desperate for a clear, concise and easy-to-use resource to help find the best student loan options.
Currently, nearly twenty organizations have already joined the SimpleTuition Affiliate Program. Designed for all types of educational support organizations, partners can choose from three options:
Partners who want to be able to share student loan information can link directly to SimpleTuition
Affiliate partners who want to send SimpleTuition applicants (first-time visitors that open a student loan application with one of SimpleTuition's lending partners) receive a referral commission
Colleges, universities and other organizations can request a customized solution that integrates with their web site
The amount of information on student loans is overwhelming with many different types of loans from various lenders; each with different options, including fees, repayment plans, total loan amount, consolidation options, credit strength scores and FAFSA eligibility in some cases. SimpleTuition allows users to compare multiple financing options from a variety of lenders that can be sorted by monthly payment, total cost of the loan, number of payments, fees and APR. SimpleTuition is not a lender.
About SimpleTuition, Inc.
Founded in 2005, SimpleTuition is dedicated to helping students and parents make sense of education financing choices. Recently featured in FastCompany.com's top 12 innovative websites for Web 2.0, SimpleTuition is the only company to offer an independent and objective solution for researching and comparing parent, private, GradPLUS and federal loans. SimpleTuition is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts and is funded by Atlas Venture and IDG Ventures Boston. For more information visit http://www.SimpleTuition.com.
Joining solid affiliate programs is a good start. But the affiliate program is usually only going to give you banner ads and text ads … most don't provide the content part.
Here's my advice, do a search on "free rewrite articles." Pick an article repository, go there, search on your keywords … not sure what they are for you, but an example would be "music" … be as specific in the keywords as you can. Music might be too general.
Grab yourself some articles. You must publish articles with the author's signature at the bottom. Give credit for the content where credit is due.
Now, keep yourself out of trouble with Google. You have to write some content too. You need to have about 20-40% of the content on the page be unique. On every page!
So, if I were you I'd write a few paragraphs about the article's topic, maybe getting a little focused on the keywords you're going for on that page. Definately use your keywords as the anchor text for the affiliate program's links.
Meaning, if you're talking about electric guitars on a page and have an article on electric guitars, then in the part you write, link the words "electric guitars" to the affiliate program's link to their electric guitars. See?
You can't touch the content of the author's article. It's a matter of honor on that reguard. It's your way of valuing that author giving you free content.
Basically, you're writing an intro to the article and you need to make a clear distinction between what you're writing and what the other guy wrote. This should resolve your content issues for now.
It's a lot of work, but that's how it's done. Dig in!
Currently, I don't offer any one-on-one tutoring at Affiliate Guild … yet! If you guys think that's something I should do sooner rather than later, then let me know. I would have to charge a fee, but I also could keep it reasonable. Affiliate Guild has a complete school already in place, so it's not that hard to do.
You might have read my posts about the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp. Taking this course is really helping me to be more aware of what the newer affiliate's needs are. It's all information I already know, but it's always good to hear it again. I'll be blogging and posting about things I think could benefit others. Maybe some of that will help you as well?!
The first Affiliate Bootcamp class was pretty much what you'd expect of an online class with a bunch of folks who aren't too good at using online formats. We had to help everyone get that hang of using the on line communication interface. There were lots of newbie questions asked, but surprisingly not about affiliate marketing as much as about how to use their own computers … things like how to plug in microphones and speakers.
That's a great eye-opener for me because I try hard to help the newbies and I put all of that information over on the Affiliate Guild. I'm realizing I probably need to add some information on computer basics as well.
So, the first class wasn't all that earth-shattering, but I wasn't expecting it to be. It was a get-to-know-you and get a feel for the room type of thing.
One thing that I did come away with was the communication environment that James used. The company is called iVocalize and the environment is pretty nice … not too hard to figure out. It allows for chat, voice by all members, slideshows, and a whiteboard … there might be more features, but those are the ones I saw. If you've a need for a fairly sophisticated conference room, need something more than your IM can handle, then you might check this one out.
I'll be talking about my training with James Martell and sharing a few tid bits along the journey. In the meantime, here's a shameless plug for Affiliate Marketers BootCamp complete with affiliate links (thanks for your support).
Affiliate Marketing Mastery Can Be Yours By Attending James Martell's BootCamp
Its been said that the very best way to learn anything is to study with a master.
And the reason is simply this: We learn so much more through personal interaction than from books or tapes.
With that in mind, James Martell has series of BootCamps — intensive, live workshops using animated screenshots of everything James does to be successful on the Net — to "mentor" his students on the essentials of running a first class publishing business to profit from "affiliate programs".
Many know of James' Affiliate Marketers Handbook — 2006, which was first published in May of 2002, but not everyone knows that James originally started teaching his "secrets" to a small group of lucky locals in 2001-2002.
At that time he got out of live trainings because it took precious time and energy away from his growing affiliate business.
And although his "downloadable" training provided everything someone needed to know to make excellent income from a home-based operation on the Net — many over the years have asked if he planned to teach a live class again.
Although he entertained the idea from time to time, he never saw the need, especially since so many were reporting mind boggling incomes themselves when applying the principles taught in the Handbook, his Google Mastery audio report and his twice-a-month audio newsletter, know affectionately as "the buzz".
But the demand was still there from those who felt they either needed a "kick-start" — or some advanced training about how to take their operations to the next level by modeling James more closely and putting a small staff in place as he has done.
And because he now has people trained to do much of the "grunt" work he and his wife Arlene used to do — he has determined that putting together another live class might not only be profitable for himself — but could also be quite profitable in the long run for those attending.
And, of course, James loves to teach so it seemed like a good decision to launch another live training — and one that promises to be "light years" ahead of anything done by either himself or others in this fascinating, emerging industry that offers so much lifestyle and income rewards to those who master the techniques involved.
Jim Kukral at BlogKits has come out with a new viral idea to help the blogging community gain integrity while still earning an income from blogging. They're offering a BlogHonor banner for free with the following pledge by the blogger:
Thank you for reading my blog. You're here because you've clicked on the "Blog Honor" badge on my blog.
What does Blog Honor mean? It means I have chosen to pledge to you the following:
I will endeavor to continue to bring you the highest quality content that I am capable of
I promise to attempt to disclose or clearly mark any content or advertisements or other monetization attempts that help me keep my blog operating
I pledge to never write "fake" blog content solely for the purpose of trying to generate revenue without complete and clear disclosure. With exception, my blog may exist for business purposes, therefore I use it to talk about products & services that relate to my business, thus assisting me in generating leads & sales for me indirectly
In return, I hope that you will continue to read my blog with the knowledge that I produce my blog out of a passion for the topic I write about, and not because I'm hoping to fool you into making money for myself.
Please note, I have nothing against generating revenue from my blog, in fact, your ongoing support of my sponsors and advertisers (text links, partner ads, etc…) helps me keep my blog operating so that I may endure to create better content for you.
I do appreciate your support. Continued thanks for your readership.
According to BlogKits, the reason for the honor badges is that … right now we are at a critical juncture in the blogging community, where we (bloggers) can either find ways to band together to keep our integrity intact, or continue to let blogging get a bad name.
Blog Honor Badges were conceived by Jim Kukral, publisher of ReveNews.com and founder of the BlogKits Affiliate Marketing Blogging Network. Badge Artwork conception and creation by Whitecapstudios, specialists in blog design.
The big question is how to enforce abuse of the honor badge … If you believe you've found a blog that isn't practicing what they preach, then send it to us with your comments at info at blogkits dot com. We'll investigate it when we can and if we believe the blog is not representing our core values, we'll ask them to remove it. Beyond that, what can we do? We're not the blog police.
Bloggers, if you want to display this banner on your blog, then you need to stop cloaking those affiliate links and hiding them inside your content areas. Even in this post, I have keywords lighting up that link to my other resources. Does it matter that they're affiliate links or not? What I'm seeing other bloggers do is post a visable and static message on their blog "This Blog contains Advertisements" or they're adding this tag as the first line of their post if the post contains monetization links. It seems to be the path taken by top-notch bloggers.
But, what I really want to know is … Jim, when are you going to get BlogKits live?!!
Media Kits are popping up everywhere these days … they're baaack!
Used to be, back in the day, that everyone had a media kit on their business website. Then, for some odd reason they went away. I guess with the added presure by the search engines to provide unique content, we're seeing a reinvention of media kits.
I just came across another one today, and I'll share it with you:
AffiliatePrograms.com gets a new mediakit facelift created by WhiteCap Studios, who also gave their website a re-do earlier in the year. Under the guidance of Dave Cole at AffiliatePrograms.com, WhiteCap created a new media kit section for the AffiliatePrograms' flagship site. AffiliatePrograms.com is a paid resource for affiliate recruitment, communication, and retention.
Media Kits are certainly something to consider adding to your online business to attract additional attention, and it's always a great resource for any sales team.
I just got this compelling email from Anik Singal and thought I'd pass on the information to you:
Hi Bobbie,
I just got an email about Mike
Filsaime's Free Report called
"The Death of Internet Marketing"
I will admit, like you may be
feeling now, that I thought it was
some hyped up offer to get me to
join for free and get some offer…
…Turns out I was wrong. Way wrong.
The bottom line is, this report
really opened my eyes to what really
is the death of Internet marketing.
The good news is, the report also
shows you what you need to know to
succeed in the near future.
The times are changing and I it would
be a shame for anyone to not read this
report and fail like many will.
I read it, and I wanted to share it
with you ASAP.
I recommend you take a break from
what ever it is you are doing if you
can and get access to this report now.
LinkConnector appreciates your business and is pleased to offer two free tickets to the next Online BootCamp , hosted by the widely recognized affiliate marketing guru, James Martell. Classes are limited to 50 participants, so the Online BootCamp provides an excellent forum for getting all your affiliate marketing questions answered and for learning from a top expert in the field. Each ticket is valued at $997.00!
The Online BootCamp runs Wednesday evenings for eight weeks, in an online conference room. Each "night-school" style class is dedicated to one of the eight steps outlined in James Martell's top-selling downloadable Affiliate Marketer's Handbook. You will receive a free download of this Handbook prior to the course starting so that you can become familiar with the material. Kick off for this event is Wednesday, November 15th. Classes typically run for 90 minutes, commencing at 6:00pm PST (9:00pm EST).
You will be able to ask questions as you go, getting immediate clarification from James. Learn to build profitable websites and carve out your own online success!
Attendees of the Online BootCamp also receive 10 hours of new video, taped during a James Martell training seminar in Vancouver. This video provides unlimited access to a virtual library of training, allowing you to access James’ tutorials any time you want, even after the Online BootCamp has concluded.
To win one of the valuable seats to this Online BootCamp please write a mini essay, only 200-300 words, describing your success within the LinkConnector Network. Perhaps one of LinkConnector’s unique technologies or merchant offers made the difference for you. Writings will be judged based on candidness and thoroughness of the feedback. All entries must be received by Wednesday, November 8th. Winners will be announced on Friday, November 10th! Log into your affiliate account for more details.
