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from Stephan Miller

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talk about fantasy football, monetizing pee wee soccer and job charts, and ShoeMoney keynoting Affiliate Summit West 2012.

Also discussed were the ROI of dressing well, affiliate marketing meetups, a new tracking system for some affiliates from buy.at, and Netflix launches a new brand without securing the Twitter handle.

Some annoying clicking sound creeps into the show at the 40 minute mark. Feel free to drop off then… if you don’t want great information for free.

Show Links

• Friday Night Lights
• MyJobChart.com
• Jeremy Schoemaker to Keynote Affiliate Summit West 2012
• Why You Should Dress to Impress – The ROI of Fashion
• Early Bird Ending for Booths and Tables at Affiliate Summit West 2012
• Affiliate Summit West 2012 Travel
• Affiliate Marketing Meetups in September 2011
• Affiliate Summit East 2011 Video Recap
• buy.at Launches a Technology to Address Cookie Overwriting
• ShareASale Honors September 11 Victims and Heroes
• Twitter: @Qwikster

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

A killer article is nothing more than a long and structured piece that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors, thus attracting backlinks and increase the traffic of your blog/website.

If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”, or one with the “Top 50 Design Blogs for 2011.” Some people call these linkbaits, other pillar articles, but the concept is the same (if you want to read more on this topic check out my article 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic).

Researching, writing and publishing the article is only half the battle, though. The other half is to actually get it in front of people. The standard practice is to email other bloggers and website owners inside your niche, hoping they will like your article and either link to it or share it on social networks.

The problem with this approach is that it’s pretty passive. If you want to increase your chances of success you should combine it with more active methods, and below I’ll explain three that I use, with real examples included.

1. Find Who Linked to Similar Articles in The Past

Let’s say that you have a design blog, and you just published a killer article titled “Top 200 Free Icons on the Web.” As mentioned above you could start promoting it by emailing bloggers and owners of design related websites, recommending your article to them.

But what if you could find the bloggers and site owners who linked to articles talking about free icons in the past? They certainly would have a much higher chance of linking and liking to your article, right?

You can do this by using Google and Yahoo! Site Explorer.

First of all go to Google, and search for keywords related to the title of your article. In our example we would search for “free icons on the web” or “top free icons”. The result of this search would be a bunch of articles featuring free icons.

After that you just need to go to Yahoo! Site Explorer, copy the URL of each article there, and click on “Explore URL”. Click on “Inlinks”, and then “Show Links Except from This Domain”. You’ll end up with a list of all the blogs and websites that link to that article, and then it will be just a matter of contacting them suggesting your own link.

Real Example: When a published the article 100 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic I knew that mine was not the only article talking about this topic, so I went to Google and found others. After using Yahoo! Site Explorer I came up with a list of almost 100 sites that had linked to similar articles in the past, and I contacted most of them suggesting my article. Around 15 of those ended up linking to it.

2. Comment on Blogs Using the KeywordLuv Plugin

KeywordLuv is a WordPress plugin that will add a link to the latest post of the blog of the person leaving a comment. That is, if you leave a comment on a blog using that plugin right below your comment there will be a link to the latest post on your own blog.

The cool thing about this plugin is that it will link using the title of your article, so it will be a relevant link with a good anchor text.

If you want to promote your latest article, therefore, you can find a bunch of blogs inside your niche using this plugin and leave a comment there.

In order to find those blogs, as usual, we’ll resort to Google. Simple go there and search for: “This site uses KeywordLuv” + keyword. The first part will find blogs using the plugin, and then you add a related keyword to filter blogs inside your niche or related to the topic of your article.

Real Example: On one of my tech sites we recently published an article titled 7 Places to Find Cheap iPads for Sale. In order to promote it I went to Google and searched for: “This site uses KeywordLuv” + ipad. The result was a list of blogs using the plugin and with posts talking about the iPad. After that it was just a matter of leaving some comments. You can also use different keywords and repeat the process.

3. Leverage Social Marketing Gigs on Fiverr

If you haven’t been using Fiverr to promote your sites and articles, well, you are missing some good stuff. It’s basically a site where people offer services for $5. There’s a category called “Social Marketing” where you’ll find all sorts of stuff related to Internet marketing, from social bookmarking submissions to Twitter followers and video testimonials.

To find the best services click on “Social Marketing” on the right menu, then filter the gigs by “Popularity.” After that you’ll just need to pick the ones you think will benefit your article the most.

Real Example: As some of you guys know I also own an iPhone site, and last week I published a monster article there titled Top 100 Free iPhone Games. Given the topic, I knew that promoting the article on social networks, especially on Facebook, could be a good idea. I went to Fiverr and purchased a gig where the guy offered to get 100 of his friends to “Like” any page on Facebook. The results were pretty good, and in the end the article received almost 250 “Likes”, meaning that many people discovered the article via the promotion and shared it spontaneously.

Over to the Readers

What about you, what methods do you use to promote your killer articles? What worked for you in the past, and what didn’t?

from Daily Blog Tips

After you make all your money blogging online how do you plan to spend it? Let me tell you a little bit about how wedding rings have been around for centuries and many people think it is hard to do anything original with a man’s wedding band. Recently though there have been many strides taken in the wedding bands industry. There are many more choices of the metal you want for you ring than there was even 25 years ago. 25 years ago there really were only two types of metals to choose from, gold and platinum. Some people used silver but not many. There were different karats of gold but you were going to be wearing a gold ring. At the turn of the century palladium rings were introduced to the market. This was great because palladium cost much less than platinum.

Also around the turn of the century alternative metals were making a splash on the scene. Titanium rings were introduced and were thought to be very exotic at the time. They are light weight and are made of the same material that airplanes are made out of. Another positive from titanium rings were that they also held up much better than gold or platinum. They were much more scratch resistant. After titanium made a big splash tungsten wedding bands were introduced to the market. These rings are great. In fact when they were first introduced the wholesale price was more than $300. This has come down significantly since then but the properties that made them so great are still there. They are virtually scratch resistant, which is the biggest factor people site for purchasing a tungsten wedding band.

Recently more and more alternative metals have been added to the market. Where there is a need there are always people ready to feel the needs. Tungsten rings are great but they really don’t match her ring. So there was a need for a white alternative metal. That is where cobalt chrome rings were born. They are much stronger than platinum or palladium but at a fraction of the cost. In fact the color is so close to platinum that the naked eye has a very hard time telling the two apart. Another plus side to them is that they are highly scratch resistant. Not as much as tungsten but much more than titanium. So unless you work a lot with your hands you will have a ring that has that perfect finish all the time. There is no need to go and get it recoated or do anything like that. The last alternative metal rings are ceramic rings. They are a great alternative to black tungsten rings. Black tungsten rings are just coated and the coating comes off.

With all that said making money online is becoming a regular trend in today’s society. So its no wonder that buying those wedding bands with that money makes sense!

from InfectedByBugs

The monthly Affiliate Summit meetups are expanding to a sizable list of cities from month to month around the U.S. and Canada.

These meetups are free, and they provide a chance to network with affiliate marketers in your local area, as well as to learn from a speaker.

The format varies a little from place to place, but it’s typically a two hour get together with a mixture of open networking and a speaker for 15-30 minutes.

For instance, at the next one in Austin, TX, which I organize locally, I will be speaking on how to create an “Ask the Expert” affiliate site.

There are meetups scheduled this month in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, East Bay (CA), Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Montreal, Niagara Falls, New York City, Orlando, San Francisco, and Wilmington (NC).

Check http://www.affiliatesummit.com/meetups for upcoming meetups.

If you are interested in getting a group together in your area, please contact Mary Poiley by email or by phone at 813-438-6279. She will set up your group, spread the word and help you along the way.

from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

The cost of tuition can be so high at times that by the time you leave a particular educational institution, you’re in debt for tens of thousands of dollars. Even though getting an Online MBA or PhD can be far more cost-effective, it still costs. This comes at a time when people don’t have much to spread around. It may be cheaper, but you always want to know what it’s going to translate into in the long-run. This cost-prohibitive reality is often a deciding factor for people that would like to go back to school, but simply can’t afford it. Bettering one’s self is always a component in the decision, but especially in this job market, many people ask, “how much more am I going to make by going back to school?”

Of course, the answer is always more complicated than a simple figure, but in recent years, the employers have shown that they’re far more likely to hire someone with a masters or doctorate over their associate degree holding counterparts. For the most part, an MBA holder can generally expect to see a salary increase, but there are other factors that come into play when figuring out the final earnings and what you can expect. The devil is always in the details, and once you figure this out, you’ll have a much better idea of how much money you can expect to make with a higher-education degree.

Depending on what field or area that you’re wanting to get into, sometimes the prestige of a school’s name can play a factor. Even if it’s an online school, generally it’s a starting point and you want to make sure that any school you attend is accredited and has a good reputation. This is going to get your foot in the door and get people to take notice. Past that, where you go to school also depends on the quality of connections and networks you build. Better schools will translate into better pay. If you’re interested in an online school, do a lot of research to see how well the school has done and any feedback it’s gotten. You don’t want to waste precious time and money on a junk degree that translates to zero earnings.

The field you ultimately decide on, according to a GMAC Survey, plays a huge part in your earnings. It’s not that surprising, but important to take note of. According to the same survey, those graduates that decide to go into investment banking or find employment with consulting firms will usually earn a lot more than other people that hold an MBA. It usually translates into several thousands of dollars more per year. The same goes for the IT sector. This is a growing field since companies are relying more heavily on their technological capabilities. As always, government work seems to be an excellent place to go. People with good degrees that end up working for the government usually do quite well for themselves.

Have a specialized approach to your degree is always the best approach, perhaps the most important one. Automatically, when you get a higher degree you’re opening doors for a brighter future filled with more opportunities. This is even more so when you have a greater idea of what area of the market you want to get into. Very often people graduate school with even less of an idea of what they want to do as when the started their program. Deciding on a specialized education will cut down on the time it takes you to get the training and experience you need. Just think all of these things through before you make any decision so you’re not wasting your time and money.

from InfectedByBugs