If you communicate to webmasters, you'll want to signup for the SubmitEaze affiliate program and encourage your list to try SubmitEaze.
SubmitEaze is a semi-automated directory submission software package that combines both website directory submission and article directory submission in one, easy-to-use package. Using SubmitEaze will result in more traffic, more sales, and more importantly: more money in your pocket.
Speaking of affiliate programs, just about anyone can put a link or banner on their site and sell software or electronic gadgets so here are two must join programs:
- One Network
- Buy.com (their buy.tv is revolutionizing the way consumer electronics are being sold; after you register with Commission Junction, join Buy.com's affiliate program and search the links for 'buytv')
If you want to get into specifics on how affiliate programs work and how easy it is to profit from them, join me on
Cool Talk where you can ask me and my
panel of experts questions via phone.
Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008
A couple of weeks ago I attended the
Affiliate Summit Social Media conference in New York City. I came away with a lot of good information so here's a quick brain dump of the choicest bits compiled just for you:
To begin, if you think social media sites like myspace and facebook are for kids and teens only, you're wrong; 41% of facebook users are 35 years old+
As for DIGG, many folks agree that the true 'DIGG effect' is all about getting links. Don't expect the traffic to be high quality but do expect that once dugg, others will 'share' your link on their social bookmarking sites which will give you valuable inbound links.
You write great stuff. Now what?If you write good content, share it via
scribd,
hubpages, and
squidoo. This can be time consuming, so consider outsourcing (look on craigslist if you want somebody local) or hire a student intern.
Along those lines, consider putting up a Wiki. Don't know what I'm talking about? Start with
wetpaint.
Also, anytime you post something of interest, post it to your
Twitter account. Then, use either
Socialmarker or the Firefox Add-On,
Shareaholic, to spread your enviable message to the top 20 social/web 2.0 sites.
CAUTION: do not post to more than 3 or 4 sites a day and try to mix and match Titles and Descriptions (metadata that the search engines crave)--again, consider outsourcing for this task.
Video MarketingClearly the drumbeat continues for using video as a marketing tool. If you can, come up with 'top 10' lists and record your reviews on video; then, use
Traffic Geyser or
TubeMogul to get listed in 20 or so video directory sites.
Another great tool for creating screen based tutorials is
Jing or (for Mac freaks)
Screenflow from Telestream. I know that once I start using these tools there'll be no turning back. And, BTW, I'll make my 'keyword research' video tutorial the first one you'll see--for a sneak preview, just play around with
keywordtopia).
Also critical to your video marketing efforts: entering metadata (metadata includes the Title and Description that you include with the video--the search engines rely on this information to find your video and rank it appropriately).
Finally, don't feel pressured to create a regular stream of informative videos; consider that there are three sources from which to draw upon: 1) your own produced videos; 2) contributed videos from your visitors; and 3) collect videos from other sources. In essence, you want to assume the role of a 'curator'--there's a lot of great stuff out there related to your passion. Go get it!
More TipsFind out which sites are linking to you and bookmark them using the social media sites. The idea here is that as the number of inbound links increase so does a site's Page Rank which means higher search engine rankings for them which then means more traffic and, ultimately, a great number of folks who will see the link to YOU.
Apparently, the best blogging platform to use when it comes to achieving better search engine rankings is
Moveable Type. I wish I could offer more here but I'm just taking the word of the web 2.0 guru, Don Crowther, of
StomperNet.
For reasons I don't quite understand, when posting URLs in
Twitter, keep them under 20 characters (I suspect it's to assure that you don't get 'tinyURL'd' thereby eliminating backlinks back to the page/URL you're promoting).
Out of a desire not to overwhelm you, I'm going to stop here--I just looked at the rest of my notes and realized I've got a lot more to share. Stay tuned.
Mike
P.S. Here's a cool site I just discovered:
Viewzi brings your favorite stuff together in one place in a new and highly visual way.
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