Author: Joe Whyte

My second interview in my elite retreat interview series is with the well known social netowrking expert Lee Dodd who has achieved much success with sprint forums and is a current speaker at elite retreat San Fransisco in march. Lee’s expertise is essential for anyone considering creating and marketing a forum. Be sure to check out lee’s business bushido site to learn more about lee.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Lee: I plan on speaking about the growth potential of online communities in the first segment. I will basically outline the benefits of online communities, how to monetize them, dive a bit into SEO, and give a solid picture of the growth and earnings potential. The second segment will be dedicated to my tactics of both buying and selling web real estate.

I have bought and sold more than 60 web properties (websites) over the past 2-3 years. I have spent $xxx,xxx in acquisitions yearly. I have learned much through all of these transactions and will show our attendees how to buy and sell effectively without getting burned. There is plenty of money to be made doing this very thing. You can read more about me and the other speaks here:

Joe: What kind of real world value can attendees take from YOUR seminar?

Lee: I think the attendees will walk away with a solid understanding and plan of attack that will help them achieve the very goals they came with. The leadership will guide them through the EXACT steps it will take them to get from their POINT A to their POINT B. They certainly won’t get fluff or sales pitches, just the hard facts they need to succeed in their business.

Joe: How did you make the sprint forum so popular?

Lee: The site really grew in popularity as I continually added free tools and resources for the users. We have a free upload tool, one of only 3 or so on the web for Sprint phones, we have a huge wallpaper gallery with free wallpapers to download, we provide custom graphic and ringtone creation for free, we have user blogs, and so much more. As I built the new fun content, growth continued at a steady pace. Things like SEO and branding really took care of itself at that point.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a forum popular?

Lee: I will continue to share that my main secret (and there are others which will be discussed at the Elite Retreat ) is creating useful and unique content. This doesn’t have to be written content necessarily, but rather tools, games, video, audio, or some other type of valuable content to your userbase. Having this in place will bring the traffic required to see your community grow.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Lee: I have worked with a variety of clients and their forums. The first one that comes to mind is a woman that runs a large community that is health related. I was able in one session to give her a plan of attack that took her earnings from approximately $1,700 a month to more than $4,500 a month. It didn’t require much work either as it was something she had implemented in a matter of hours.

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Lee: Depending on the niche you are in, you will want to focus your monetization efforts in a specific area. For instance, if you are in the technology sector you would want to begin with monetizing your traffic through CPA offers and CPC (Adsense or YPN) networks. As traffic grows, you would want to build up your private advertisers as well. To maximize ROI, the key is to maximize eyeballs. Ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to bring in the most traffic to your site, and then once they arrive are you doing the best you can to convert them in to revenue.

Joe: Who is the best web hosting company in the world?

Lee: Lunar Pages of course! ;-)

Thanks for entertianing that question Lee. I have been very impressed with what you have done with sprint forums and spending 20 minutes speaking with you about social networking and marketing could truly increase someones online efforts and maximize their ROI. Have a great trip to San Fransisco.

Author: Todd Austin

What is Kuler? Will it keep my beer cold? No, it won’t.

Kuler is Adobe Labs’ latest web application geared toward the design crowd. It is a online color scheme creator, for lack of a better term.

Here’s the main page of the application:

With kuler, you can creat your own scheme, search other users schemes, and share your schemes online. You can even download them as Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files, but those are only usable if you have Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 programs. If you don’t, you can always use the screen color picker in your copy of Color Schemer Studio, or of course you could use the Colorzilla add on in Firefox.

Reminds me a lot of the ColorSchemer.com scheme gallery. Except here you can actually create the color scheme online. Then share it with the world, so that other users may download your creation.

Download others themes, or create your own to let others use. You do have to have an Adobe ID to create or download, but sign up is easy and painless.

The Adobe Labs page says Kuler is being released as a technology preview, free of charge. Now whether that means it will someday be charging for it, I do not know. So for now, check it out for free, download some of the great color schemes available online, and give a try at creating your own.

I personally have been using Color Schemer Studio(shown below) for years, mainly for color picking and some themes, but this may be a great online alternative.

Check out Kuler, or Color Schemer Studio. They are both great applications.

EDIT: Just got this link from Lunarforums:

http://www.colourlovers.com/ - looks like a good resource also!

Author: Joe Whyte

Elite Retreat is geared more towards the industry professional looking to learn the secret skill set from the professional super affiliate, SEO, SMO and venture capitalist. The speakers at elite retreat are highly qualified industry professionals who will be able to answer in depth questions which are posed by the attendee’s on a more in depth level then normal conventions. Elite retreat is going to have a one on one feel giving specialized attention to the individual’s who attend making this the first ever one on one convention in its field. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and small to large business owners attempting to gain momentum in the search field.

I will be doing a series of interviews with the leading speakers at Elite Retreat attempting to get some information on what they will be speaking about and how it can be beneficial for the attendees in a real world situation.

First up is a leading powerhouse in the search field and his name is Kris Jones of Pepperjamsearch.com.

Joe:What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Kris: I will share my insights on how to make money online using a combination of search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, and various alternative online media channels. Since my experiences cross both the affiliate (publisher) and advertiser (merchant) perspective, I’m likely to be responsive to the needs of the attendees and address their specific concerns. This is not a conference where we speak to the attendees - instead, we speak with them to address and optimize their businesses.

Joe: What can attendees expect from this conference?

Kris: Attendees can expect to come to the Elite Retreat with problems or ideas and have those problems or ideas addressed by very experienced, proven internet marketers. In addition, each attendee will have valuable one-on-one interaction with each speaker, including myself.

Joe: Why do you hire such attractive women? Is that your form of chickbait?

Kris: It just so happens that our approach has always been to hire the best and brightest employees we can find. In general, women are smarter than men. Being one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States attracts smart people. Oh, ya, and there is a strong correlation between smart people, being female, and being attractive.

Joe: What is more important to you as a marketer, SEO or SMO?

Kris: I’m a strong believer in both SEO and SMO, but I have to admit that I’m fascinated by SMO. I’m a student (and in some cases a teacher) of different forms of buzz and viral marketing - not necessarily from the standpoint of just putting out (social media) content, but doing so in a way that entertains, while capturing imagination and gets people talking. Both SEO and SMO can help businesses capture market share, but only SMO can truly get people talking about your product or service in a way that makes them want to tell their best friend who tells their co-worker to take action. By the way, my company offers businesses management and consultation in both SEO and SMO.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Kris: We have been the outsourced online marketing division of igourmet.com since 2000 - we perform all online marketing duties for igourmet, including SEM & SEO, affiliate marketing management (Linkshare), online media planning & management, partnership acquisition (i.e., Target.com, Overstock.com, Epicurious.com), etc. With our help igourmet has received numerous national awards, including designation by Consumer Reports (2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online, Internet Retailer as a Top 500 online retailer (2005 - 2006), and Forbes Magazine (2003 - 2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online. We’ve increased igourmet’s sales in each of the areas mentioned above by an average of 150% per year, every year.

Joe: Can you give some advice to our visitors and customers on how to effectively market their site.

Kris: (1) Start with paid (PPC) search-engine marketing. Hire a PPC expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands PPC and is committed to staying on top of the daily changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. Your PPC manager should not be responsible for multiple channels of online marketing - they should be dedicated to PPC. If done correctly, PPC should account for 20% or more of your online sales.

(2) Second, hire an SEO expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands SEO (especially on Google) and is committed to staying on top of the periodic changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. The goal here is to create some short, medium, and long-term goals for how you can represent your website as an authority to Google and the other engines - therefore, have patience, it will take time, but the committment will pay dividends many times over once your reputation is established and your website takes into consideration the basic and advanced tenants of SEO ( i.e., links and what those links say, tags, content, navigation, etc.).

(3) Third, evaluate the power of affiliate marketing. Does affiliate marketing provide an additional market share acquisition channel for your business? Regardless of your business model, chances are affiliate marketing can add an additional 15% or more to your bottom line. Hire an affiliate marketing expert (internal or outsource) with leverage into the affiliate marketing community. Since approximately 95% of your sales are likely to come from less than 5% of the affiliate community (the Super Affiliates) you’re going to need an affiliate manager with access to those 5% (leverage) - I call it leverage because affiliate marketing is really about building partnerships - your affiliate manager must be able to spend most of their time building relationships with the 5% of affiliates who drive the industry.

(4) Finally, evaluate alternative forms of online marketing, including social media, display advertising, contextual advertising, behavioral targeting / re-targeting, strategic partnership acquisition, buzz marketing, etc. Hire an online media expert (internal or outsource) with experience and insight into the aforementioned channels.

By the way, your online marketing efforts should not be structured for autopilot. Moreover, your executive team should not be responsible for online marketing efforts - if this is the case, you need to hire an expert and allow the executive to get back to what they should be doing. If you are not involved in all of the above channels you are missing out on market share that your competitors are likely enjoying.

Joe: How did you propel PepperJam to the forefront of the internet marketing field?

Thanks Kris and I wish you all the best at elite retreat and I know anyone attending your session is going to take away a life long value that cannot have a price put on it.

Happy valentines day to one and all. Its a day of love and living. Its a celebration of loving your loved ones. It is important for us to show the ones we love just how much we care for them. Some say its only a commercial holiday and women some say its one of the best holiday’s in the world. I have been lucky enough to have some of the major players in search give us a little bit of insight into their valentines day holiday. It was very kind of them to give us a little bit of access to their personal life.

Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land): For Valentine’s Day, I’ll not so surprise my wife with flowers and a card and try to give a real gift, which would be ending work early and having a nice meal at home with her.

Darren Rowse (Problogger.net): It’s a fairly normal day really. We exchanged cards and took a mid morning stroll down to our local cafe where we had a coffee. The rest of the day will be normal work and tonight we’re off to church for our normal Wednesday night gathering.

Aaron Walls (seobook): I am going to help my girlfriend fix up her kitchen cabinetry website and then go to the city for a sweet yummie dinner.

Kris Jones (PepperJamSearch): I will be spending Valentine’s Day with my beautiful fiance Robyn. We are bracing for a large snow storm on the East Coast so after a romantic dinner we will probably spend some time with a bottle of Chianti and our 2-year old English Bulldog - Roxy - by the fireplace.

Bill Slawski (SEO by the SEA): Sad to say that nothing romantic is going on at SEO by the Sea tommorrow. Instead, we’re planning on battening down the hatches, and riding out a wintery storm that may or may not hit us with a lot of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and possible flooding. We do welcome valentines, to help get us through the rough weather

Adam Maywald (voasi.com): I am going to an anti-valentines day party with all girls.

Todd Austin (Worlds Best Designer):I am doing nothing. I am leading an organization against valentines day. Its a corporate holiday created by corporate commercial capitalists and although I respect their drive I hate the idea and that women all over the world have fallen for it and are making men’s life living hell.

Andrew Gerhart (Automotive.com): Tonight I’ll be taking my fiancé to one of our favorite local restaurants, starting a new tradition. Either that or cook her the meal I made her on our first date. We’ll see.

Lee dodd (LeeDodd.com): Our day is going to be a pretty normal Wednesday. We weren’t able to secure someone to watch our children after church tonight, so we had our Valentine’s Day on Monday. It was nice as we went out to dinner (delicious) and then a movie. I did get a card from my wife this morning at breakfast however, and plan to give her my gift tonight.

Amy and Jay Armitage (lunarpages.com): (amy) so yeah i’ll get home, we will prolly have a chat bout our day and a drink.. put the kids to bed.. I’ll make him watch my lame TV shows and guilt him out bout not sending me flowers (that I never wanted anyway). He will try get his leg over and we will spoon until I turn like a rotisserie chicken because I’m too hot.. We never have celebrated Valentine’s Day.. we just love on each other every day. (Jay) Gotta go she told me I aint getting any for a while if she doesn’t get flowers.

Andrea Schoemaker (planetandrea.com): I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen this Valentine’s Day. This morning I woke up to a delivery of a dozen roses and a bag of my favorite chocolate (Peanut M&M’s) and I also have a dinner date later this evening! Should be fun. I also baked 2 dozen cupcakes and decorated them with hearts for all of my neighbor kids!
What are you doing for valentines day?

P.S. Here is what I am doing:

Joe Whyte (joe-whyte.com): I am not really into valentines day but considering this is the first valentines day I have spent with Marielle as my wife I wanted to make it special. I bought about 4 gifts and hid them around the house. I have notes or “clues” placed next to each item and then one near the door when she walks in. When she opens the first clue it will have a riddle she needs to decode to find her next gift. Each clue has a little love note in it.

Author: Joe Whyte

After you have built your affiliate site and done your OPO (on page optimization) how do you start generating traffic to this site? Utilizing SEO can take a long time and yes SEO should be in mind when doing an affiliate site but if thats all you rely on then you are not going to see an ROI for a very long time. So how do you get around this and what are the best ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site.

Over the last couple weeks some really great post’s have come out outlining many of the topics I will be covering so you will be getting a cornucopia of info wealth with this single post.

The first question is how to draw traffic to your affiliate site without doing SEO. Again make sure you do SEO your site but to reap benefits rather quickly then utilize some of the ideas listed by scoreboard-media.com , toprankblog and SEOmoz. here is a brief breakdown of traffic sources you can call upon.

1. Blogging
2. Podcasting
3. Link buying
4. TV Buys
5. Web Directories
6. Ad Networks
7. Online Forums
8. Social Media
9. Email List Rentals
10. Webinars/Video
11. Online Press Releases
12. PR Firm
13. Event Media Sponsorships
14. Sponsored Reviews
15. Syndicate Your Content

This is a pretty good list and some ideas are going to be much more worth your time then others. For instance submitting to web directories are not going to get you the type of traffic you want. Out of this list I will suggest which ones I personally would target when setting up an affiliate site for traffic.
Ad Networks (Pay Per Click)
Social Media
Online Forums

These are going to be the best way to get high volumns of traffic without spending an arm and a leg. One of the most effective ways of generating a ton of traffic is going to be through your social media. Now SMO is a completly different ball game then SEO and an emerging highly qualified authority on Social Media is Pronet Advertising. They discuss social media and how to optimize it.

Something that was not really mentioned was a tactic called Link Baiting. Link baiting is basically setting up quality content or a quality tool where people will naturally link to it like a fish to bait. A great list of link baiting tactics has been created by andy hagans and in essence this article is quality link bait!

Now that you have some tools and information on building traffic using other methods rather than SEO its time to talk about PPC. Literally the fastest way to draw targeted traffic to your site right away. I use Google Adwords and Stumbleupon Ads and the new Yahoo Search Marketing for this. The reason I choose these three is because with google and yahoo I am covering about 78% of the search market and I am using stumbleupon as a filler to drive a set amount of predefined targeted traffic.

The experts say you can see if a campaign will yeild profitable results within a 24 hour period. So what is the trick of testing your PPC? The very first thing I would suggest is reading Aaron walls PPC Secrets book. It goes through everything from writing creative ad copies to how to improve CTR and conversions. Its a must read for anyone attempting to do PPC.

At affiliate Summit West Shoemoney said that when he sets up a PPC campaign for his affiliate sites he pays NO MORE then .05 cents for each keyword. The trick to the campaigns is choosing long tail keyword phrases and target specific product names or brands. For example if you are selling sirius statelite radios then for your ppc campaign you might target “sirius channel guide” or “howard stern sirius satelite” or “starmate boombox” or “discount sirius satelite radios” or “sirius satelite radio coupons” or more product specific like “stiletto sl100″ or “starmate” or “sporters” or “sportster 1200″. These are just some test phrases and words I would target if I was doing an affiliate campaign for sirius satelite radio.

Since the Overture bid tool is no more I have been using the google keyword selector tool a lot more now but I also rely on keyword discovery and word tracker to help me. Remember to make creative ads and interesting landing pages for all of your keywords as they will convert a lot better. For landing page optimization check out these resources: Bruce Clays Landing page optimization, Marketing Sherpa’s Landing Page Optimization book and Marketing Experiments/Landing pages. Another great tool to use is a PPC spy program called Keyword Compete which is a powerful tool for affiliate marketers. If you want to see what your competition is doing you can see what words/ phrases they are targeting by using keyword compete. Check it out and I am sure you will be an avid user.
A basic formula to determine if a campaign is succesfful is to remember this calculation.

Daily Sales Income - Daily Advertising Expenses / number of sales = Average customers value

If this number is in the negative you may need to rework you advertising expenses or your entire campaign.

When considering if a PPC campaign has been succesful I usually look the bottom line. Some people think that a high CTR above 5% is success but for me if I have 5% CTR and no sales then it is a huge failure and I am loosing money. I recommend keeping an eye on the bottom line that being cost of ads vs conversions. If you are seeing high impressions and low CTR you might consider beefing up your ad copy and if you are seeing high CTR and no conversions you might consider re-evaluating your landing pages. The worst thing you can do is get yourself into a bidding war so keep it simple and expand from there.

Author: Amy Armitage

So it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and love is all around us.. lol

I was at my fave E-Card store today Hallmark.com and I decided to post the best cards I was able to find, depending on the message you wish to send:

The Anti Valentine:

For the “Grinch” of Valentine’s Day - When you hate love and romance

You can say it

Kind reminds me of The Fonz when he would try to say sssssssorry..

An interview with Cupid

The real facts behind the man..

The next step in a relationship

When it’s time to hit a home run..

The Cheesy Love Card

Love Love Lovey youuuuuuuuuu.. oooh ooh

The Rules of Love

Learn how it really works

The Obligatory Long Term Relationship “OMG the passion is gone!” Card

When you’re in a hum drum marriage/relationship and you’ve really got nothing more to say..

Marriage Proposal

Gawd.. I could think of nothing worse than being proposed to via an e-card

Demented Love

Uh huh..

The Acid Trip

Say it stoned!

A Friend in LOVE

When you have feelings for your buddy 

Sarcastic Valentine

lol @ the Pizza comment

Missing You

When you MISS someone all the time :(

Stalker Love

We’ve all had a stalker in our time? Right?

Cyber Kisses

When your lips can’t say it in person

Long Distance Love

Appropriate for long distance and unrequited love

I Messed Up

Let him pass out ;)

Sorry valentine

Suck up because he/she won’t accept your calls

If you have more Valentine’s suggestions, please share them with us!

Author:  Mitch Keeler

Back before I had several jobs, started writing articles all over the place and pretty much had a lot more time on my hands, it was easier to find time to look at my Web site and do a little “spring cleaning” every once in a while. These days though finding that free time in my day seems like it is almost impossible.

That is why the past few weeks I have decided to give up one free weekend day to cleaning up one of my Web sites and seeing what I can do to make the browsing experience a little better.

Now some of the things you should look at would be:

1. Does all of my navigation work? Is it easy to browse from one section to the next?

2. Am I giving people a reason to stay on the Web site after they have found it? Having “related links” for any topic is a good way to keep people on your Web site instead of looking for their information somewhere else.

3. Does it look visually appealing to you and to the public? To test this one, you might send the link out to a few friends and see if they like your use of graphics, colors and design. If they give you some tips, try them out and see if your visitor numbers go up or down.

Now you don’t want to go overboard with adding new features to a Web site. You want the content to be the attention getter. Think of it as the main course of your meal. The extra features around your content should be the side courses or appetizers.

How do you manage keeping your Web site’s content fresh and manageable? I’d love to hear what one and all do to tackle this sometimes frustrating situation.

Author: Todd Austin

I am always looking for cool little apps, especially ones that mimic Mac OS X apps. I love my Mac, but I tend to do most of my design and development work on my PC. Yeah, I know, I know. I should be using my Mac for design. That’s a whole other saga.

Normal:

Hover:

I reported a while ago on my own blog about Y’z Dock, an OS X style application dock, unfortunately they were told to stop by Steve Jobs’ team of lawyers. Well we shall see how Punk Software, the makers of RocketDock, fare. They have come up with a similar type of application as Y’z Dock, but in my opinion have done a better job executing it.

I recently installed this little app, and like the ease of use in adding additional icons. They also have a usable screen to adjust specific icon settings.

You can even have it hold minimized windows like the OS X version:

Definitely check this out if you are a PC user looking for some Mac style.

Author: Joe Whyte

I was eating dinner last night and I turned the boob tube on to watch my most favorite show in the history of man kind, WHEEL OF FORTUNE!! I mean every time the crowd screams … WHHEEEEELL …. OOOOFFFFFFF.. FOOORRRRTUNE It gives me goose bumps. Pat Sajack is my hero! I remembered all the good times I have had with this show and I decided to make a post on it.

I was recently a guest on wheel of fortune and I was lucky enough to get a picture taken with my life long hero Pat Sajak. We where partying pretty hard and this was back in my rock star days.

Later that glorious night I was playing the wheel. Thats what us fanatics call the show. The wheel not wheel of fortune. I had to solve a word and I was suprised at the actual word. Here is a photo of the actual puzzle as it was shown to me.

This post is a complete spoof and nothing on this post is true at all!!! Thanks to Atom.Smasher.org for the image and to philipp for the initial idea.

Author: Mitch Keeler

Well, I have been a writer for almost half a decade professionally now, and I think I do pretty good work. Over that time, I have picked up on a few tips and tricks I have learned from my elders on how you can write better content for the Web. The basics are simple, but some of the time we even forget those. Hopefully this will be a nice rough guide to help those who want to create better content.

So What are the Writing Basics?

As far as the basics go, you just have a few things you need to remember. One thing would be to tell a story when you can. Telling a story while you write an article or even fill out your “about us” page would be a great way to keep the flow of things.

You can also follow the format of topic, definition, what does it do for you. This way you introduce something before you tell people what it is about. If I just said, “Lunarpages awesome.” you might agree but folks outside of the world we live in might be confused. A much better way to go about it would be saying “Lunarpages, the Web hosting company and all around cool place to hang your hat, is awesome”. You see then, we get to know what it is and why it rocks.

Tips, Tricks and Other Helpful Knowledge

Now that you have the basics down (well, the basics of the basics) it is time to cover a few more quick tips for writing success.

1. Writing headlines for content is good. Also try to break your paragraphs up by topic and try to keep them from getting too large.

People on the Web don’t like big blocks of text to read.

2. Using lists, bold text, italic text, and other format changers are good. This helps better define certain sections of what you are talking about and gives the reader’s eye a break from the usual format.

Just don’t over do it or you might be having the negative effect. There is too much for the reader to try to soak in.

3. Don’t be boring. Sure, you don’t have to talk about midgets in clown suits, but try to bring a little excitement when you can. If you are getting sleeping while writing it - chances are people are going to get sleepy while they are reading it.

That is about the time you should hit that backspace key till you can’t hit it no more!

Do you have any other helpful tools or tricks that help you create content on the Web? I’d love to hear about them. Just leave a comment and let us all know how you deal with this tricky and sometimes sticky topic.