Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

My Actual Pajama Jeans Review

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Pajama Jeans Review
Pajama Jeans

Groupon Alert! Here’s the link to the Pajama Jeans deal on Groupon!!

Since I first mentioned Pajama Jeans back on January 3, I have been getting a lot of questions (and teasing!). From Shawn and Lisa talking about them on the Affiliate Thing podcast to the Sunshine Rewards members asking for a review to my Bunco friends all wanting me to wear them last night, everyone has been asking me what I think about them. The sad part is that it is February 17 and they just arrived!

I was starting to get really angry with the Pajama Jeans and I hadn’t even tried them on yet. I know they said that it would take 4-6 weeks for them to arrive, but I had friends who had already gotten theirs. Apparently my size was on backorder. When they finally shipped on February 5, I was so excited. The bad news was that they shipped them via pony or something because shipping took almost 2 weeks.

When I saw the mail lady putting a big yellow package into the mailbox today, I immediately ran out and grabbed it. When I saw that it was, indeed, my Pajama Jeans, I ripped them open to try them on. My first impression was that they definitely looked like denim but felt thinner and stretchier. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they feel like my fluffy flannel pajamas though.

Without getting too personal, I had to try on a few different pair of underwear with them before I found a pair that worked. I didn’t want you to be able to see lines, and the Pajama Jeans sit low enough that I had to go with low ride undies so you wouldn’t see them when I bend over.

The picture above is the best I could do with my webcam and the timer on Daily Booth. Not the best quality but you can see that they really do look like jeans. I already had on a long-sleeved gray shirt today, so that is what I am wearing with them. I’m going to wear them to lunch with my friends and see if any of them notice. I’ll let you know what they say.

All in all, do I like the Pajama Jeans? Yeah, I do. They are comfy enough that I could do a light workout in them but also look better than any of my stretchy black workout pants. The sizing is perfect, and I went by what they said on the site. Were they pricey? At almost $50 including shipping and handling, they are definitely more than what I would usually spend for pants to wear around the house or run errands in. We’ll see how they wash up.

Want to learn more? Check out my article about Pajama Jeans on Good Morning America.

Let the crazy comments begin. 🙂

Affiliate Manager, Be My Valentine?

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Eric, Greg (Back) Kim, Tricia (Front)

Are you an Affiliate Manager, Merchant, or OPM that wants to know what it would take to get your affiliates to love…or even LIKE you more? Last month I was fortunate enough to speak on the Inside the Minds of Affiliates panel at Affiliate Summit West with Eric Nagel and Kim Rowley (moderated by Greg Hoffman). If you missed that presentation (or didn’t take notes), here are some of the basics that we covered.

Program Management

  • Weight the pros and cons of using outsourced program management (OPM), including how much you already know (or do not know) about affiliate marketing, whether the OPM will have the authority to do their job, and if you need them to connect you immediately with new affiliates
  • Understand the difference between hiring an in-house person to run your affiliate program as opposed to outsourcing. In  addition, will your in-house person be a dedicated affiliate manager or just a part of your marketing team?

Communicating with Affiliates

  • Your initial recruitment email should specifically state which of our sites you think your program would be a good fit for. Make sure that you know our site and that your product actually fits out niche.
  • Sign that email with actual contact information and not just “the affiliate team.”
  • When you mention numbers to us, make sure that correspond with numbers we will find within the network (such as EPC, reversal rates, etc). Understand that those numbers do not mean much to most affiliates.
  • Tell us how you are different from your competitor. There are likely a number of competitors in your niche and we need to know why we should promote you over them.
  • Once you approve us to your program, provide us with full contact information such as phone number, Twitter, direct email, and IM.
  • In that approval email, provide us with any non-standard terms (like coupon and PPC restrictions), your top-selling products, and any seasonal trends.
  • Do we want an email when we have our first sale with you? Our panel was split.
  • Be available via email, phone, Twitter, Facebook, and Instant Messenger. Respond timely if you want us to make sales for you. If you have to go search for an answer, at least let us know that you are looking for it. Be available to your affiliates. Be available for questions. Be available…are you getting this one?

Newsletters

  • Newsletter frequency preferences vary but we all agreed that we do not want to see the same thing every week. We like newsletters at least monthly but only weekly if you have different coupons or specials each week.
  • When should you send your newsletters? The panel was pretty split on this but overwhelmingly agreed that we need at least a couple of days’ notice for special offers and coupons. Anything sent for “today only” is probably going to be overlooked or ignored.
  • Be sure to include the program name in your subject line. It’s also helpful to include the network somewhere in the email because sometimes you have programs on multiple networks.
  • Include either our links in the newsletters or direct links to access the links. If you just say “find the links in the interface,” we are not as likely to take the time to go get them.
  • Tell us what is working for other affiliates but be generic and don’t give out the actual domains of other affiliates.
  • Tell us about seasonal trends because we do not know your business like you do.
  • Let us know about any kind of media exposure that you will be getting.
  • Send us any specialty categories that might be applicable to you like top sellers, best sellers, holiday specials, hot deals, and new arrivals.

Banners and Creatives

  • Give us at least one text link to your homepage.
  • Provide banners in popular sizes (see the iab.net “Ad Unit Guidelines“). Consider that different types of sites use them in different ways (coupon sites, content sites, cash back sites).
  • Provide at least a couple of banners that are logo only.
  • Let us know about any video that we can embed, including Youtube videos.
  • Consider creating widgets.

Datafeeds

  • Make sure that they are updated and check the links before you upload the datafeed.
  • Provide both thumbnail and full-size images.
  • Understand how your affiliates are using your datafeeds (e.g. niche sites or product search/price comparison).
  • Let affiliates know in advance or ASAP about any major datafeed changes because these could impact their entire site.

Coupons

  • When possible, provide exclusive coupons that track back to the affiliate. Don’t know how to do that? Ask your network and they will help you.
  • Give out the coupons at least a day in advance, not the day that they go active.
  • Understand the coupon feed system of the network you are on so that your coupons are included and have the proper start and end dates.
  • Make sure that exclusives are really exclusive.

Search Restrictions

  • Know what you are telling your affiliates. Saying that “affiliates cannot use brand name in source code” is stupid because we can’t promote you if we can’t say your name.
  • Really think about PPC restrictions. Would you rather have your affiliates bidding on your brand name or your competition? Even if you restrict your affiliates, your competitors may still be bidding and sending your potential customers to their sites instead of yours.
  • Understand TM and TM+. One restricts the Trademark only and the other includes Trademark plus additional terms.
  • If you have restrictions, enforce them fairly across all affiliates. Consider using Brand Verity.

Rewards and Incentives

  • Incentive programs that reward only the affiliates with the “most sales” do not motive niche-site affiliates.
  • Allow us to compete against our own stats–year-over-year or month-over-month.
  • Personalize the rewards to your affiliates and make sure that they are achievable.
  • Ask your affiliates what they want–cash, prizes, increased commissions?
  • Don’t make us ask you for our prizes. Send them immediately or make them easy to claim.

Leaks

  • Know what “leaks” on your site are. Essentially, anything that takes the traffic that we are sending you away from your site in some way that will benefit you and not us.
  • Fix 800 number leaks with a PayPerCall program.
  • Ensure that Live Chat does not overwrite our commissions.
  • Do not link to other sites, including your “sister sites” if we will not be compensated for purchases made there.
  • Take off AdSense because we receive nothing if people click on those links.

Network Account

  • Have your own affiliate account within the network. Join your program and set yourself at 0% commission. This way, you will be able to see what we are seeing.

Thanks to the AffStat Report for providing us with some data that we were able to use during the presentation. I left out the quotes and pretty charts but you can read the whole report yourself. The rest of the presentation was based on the experience that the 4 of us have had in our 20+ combined years of affiliate marketing.

Questions for us? Anything we missed? Here are our Twitter accounts if you want to track us down:

Tricia Meyer @sunshinetricia

Eric Nagel @esnagel

Kim Rowley @kimarketing

Greg Hoffman @akagorilla

Amazing Women in Affiliate Marketing

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Women in Affiliate MarketingI might get teased for being a PollyAnna or seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, but I’m totally okay with that if it allows me to open myself up to positive influences and strong people who do good.

At some point at every Affiliate Summit I hear talk of how the men outnumber the women. While that is definitely changing over the years, the fact remains that although the number of women may be fewer, the quality and strength in those women is amazingly high. Here are just a few of those amazing women in affiliate marketing that everyone should get to know because they inspire me every day.

Missy Ward is pretty much the queen bee of affiliate marketing. She has the knowledge, the connections, and the enthusiasm to make everything that she does successful. As one of the co-owners of Affiliate Summit, she is the face (and voice!) that everyone recognizes. I owe so much to Missy and the doors that she has opened for me.

Connie Berg is like the big sister of affiliate marketing. She was doing it long before most of us and was willing to share with us what she knew. If you haven’t read her story, you need to check it out. She’s a true example of someone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and succeeding where others were not.

Deborah Carney is the self-professed “mama” in affiliate marketing. If you haven’t heard her name before, you will definitely hear it a lot more as the moderator of the new Affiliate Summit forum. She’s had experience as both an affiliate and an affiliate manager, which gives her some really unique perspectives.

Kim Rowley. I was always a little intimidated to introduce myself to Kim because she is so well-known and respected in the business and always has a group of friends around her. Now that I have gotten to know her better, I understand why!

Lisa Riolo. Lisa is one of the smartest, most articulate women whom I have ever met. She has seen so many facets of affiliate marketing that her knowledge of our industry is unbelievable. She continues to innovate and bring new ideas to our business.

Lisa Picarille. I used to be REALLY scared of Lisa. Why? Because she is one of those women who is confident and smart and self-assured. I was afraid that if she met me, she would think I was just a giggling little girl. As I’ve come to find out, Lisa is actually one of the warmest, most trust-worthy people you will ever meet. She has such interesting perspectives that I could sit and talk to her all day and never grow tired of learning from her.

Cindy Ballard. She may not work for me anymore, but she is still an active part of the affiliate industry. She can negotiate with affiliate managers like no one I have ever seen or probably will ever see.

Rebecca Madigan. When I first heard about Rebecca, I thought that she was just some woman who the PMA hired to do administrative work. How unbelievably wrong was I? Rebecca’s roots at CJ make her an absolute wealth of industry information and she will be the first person to jump in and help you make connections when you need them.

Affiliate managers. There are many female affiliate managers and network employees who always go the extra mile and are such a pleasure to work with that they have become friends. Off the top of my head: Teresa Tao (Shoebuy), Kristen Grace (BuyCostumes.com and Celebrate Express), Kim Salvino (buy.at), Amy Ely (buy.at), Jessica Sander (Shareasale), Melissa Salas (Buy.com), Carolyn Tang Kmet (Groupon), Karen Garcia (GTO Management), Wendy Palmer (Rextopia), Anne Fognano (all-around Wonder Woman), Jill Swartwout (GirlyChecks), Liz Gazer-Proudfoot (Growthspurt Media), Sarah Beeskow (Sharesale), Sarah Bundy (AllInclusiveMarketing).

Fellow affiliates. I love reading what these women write and seeing how they always find fresh was to earn money in affiliate marketing! TrishaLyn Fawver, Jen Goode, Heather Sokol, Amanda Orson, Judi Moore, Lori Herron, Heather in Beautiful BC, Char Polanosky, Rexanne Mancini, Shannon Weidemann, Laura Parvey-Connors (I think an affiliate now? Awesome either way!), Julie Vazquez, Sabrina Malone.

Industry influencers. I can’t profess to actually know how each of them earns a living, but I know that they are smack dab in the middle of our industry as movers and shakers:  Stephanie Lichtenstein, Melanie Seery, Sharon Mostyn, Kellie Stevens.

Then there are women whom I do not know but wish that I did. I hear such great things about them but haven’t had the good fortune of meeting them yet. Rae Hoffman-Dolan (Sugarrae) and Eva Klein are high on that list. (I know I kind of met Eva at the SAS party but it doesn’t count because she didn’t know who I was!)

I’m sure that I have left out a lot of great women in our business. Feel free to add them in the comments! I would love to know more about them. Affiliate marketing is an industry FULL of strong, intelligent, hard-working women. And our numbers are growing!!

Planning a Pittsburgh Steelers Party

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Pittsburgh Steelers Deluxe Party Pack
Getting ready for the season and want to add a little bit of authentic Pittsburgh to it? Living in Indiana, this is a challenge for me–but one that I readily accept! Here are my ‘burgh tips for a Pittsburgh Steelers party:

1) Terrible Towels: You can’t celebrate the Steelers without Terrible Towels. Preferably everyone at the party will have their own. You can get them online for less than $10 each.

2) Black and Gold Decorations: You can get Super Bowl decorations at almost any party store, but if you want actual Steelers plates, cups, and napkins, you will probably have to get them online. My favorite place for that is CelebrateExpress.com. Get the Steelers logo items online and then buy your black and gold balloons, tablecovers, etc. locally.

3) Iron City Beer: Although I am not a beer drinker, Iron City is pretty much the official beer of Pittsburgh. If you don’t like Iron City, you can  go with Rolling Rock or Yuengling.

4) Chipped Ham Barbecue: You won’t be able to order “chipped ham” from the deli if you aren’t in Pittsburgh, but just ask them to shave it really thin for you and then kind of break it up into smaller pieces with your fingers. AllRecipes.com has a Pittsburgh Chipped Ham Barbecue recipe, but I make mine even easier than that because I cheat and start with a little pre-made BBQ sauce. Set it out in the crockpot with buns on the side for serving.

5) Heinz Ketchup: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

6) Clark Bars: Born in Pittsburgh, they are the perfect way to satisfy your sweet tooth during the game.

7) Primanti Brother Sandwiches: Obviously you won’t be able to buy them if you aren’t near Pittsburgh, but you can make a pretty good imitation. The basics that you will need are sandwich meat, italian bread, french fries, coleslaw, and cheese. All of that goes on the sandwich–all of it! Need more information? Get the cole slaw recipe and meat ideas.
 Watch the Man v. Food of Primanti’s below.

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8) Kielbasa, sauerkraut, and pierogies: I like my pierogies with cheese and potato on the inside and sour cream on top. You should be able to find them in your freezer section (Schwan sells good ones as well).

9) Pittsburgh Steelers Polka: It’s been redone many times over the years and they update it every time the Steelers go to the playoffs. The video below just gives me chills. Love the Myron Cope “Yoi” and “Double Yoi”!

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10) Smiley Cookies: Love those cookies from Eat ‘n Park? Get them online and in Steelers Black and Gold!! (Get $10 off your purchase of $50 or more with code 10OFF5) Just saw that they are also offering free shipping on all Steelers packs right now and you can schedule them to ship just in time for the game!

11) Pittsburghese: Make sure that yinz throw in a few “Stillers” and “‘burghs” when you are cheering and yinz will all have a terrific time at any Steelers Super Bowl Party!

Moms, Beware Guest Posts

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Let me say before I make everyone angry, I am generally an advocate of guest posts. I see value in them for the following things:

  • Sending link juice to my friends’ sites
  • Exchanging posts with colleagues
  • Posting valuable information from experts
  • Directing my traffic to sites they would genuinely find valuable

What I do NOT like are people who pretend to be fellow mom bloggers who are actually just SEO specialists generating fake profiles to get keywords dropped into my site. Think it doesn’t happen? Guess again.

Twice in the last month I was approached by people I didn’t know with the following pitch: “Hi, Tricia, love your site, I’m a fellow mom blogger, coupon cutter, blah blah blah, just like you. I see that you take guest posts and would love to do one about X topic. Here are a list of some others that I have done. All that I request is a link back to my bio.”

So I check out their Guest Posts on other mom blogs and every one of them has a keyword stuffed link back to another site that has nothing to do with the mom or blogging. It’s either cosmetic dentistry or some kind of lead generation site. I decide to check out the “blogger” and Google their name. No LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, Facebook account, or personal information comes up. Nothing but this “profile” of theirs on a commercial website.

Profile Picture This is a cute profile picture, right? If the “profile” has a picture of a woman who  looks like a blogger, it’s probably legit? Wrong, I got the picture on the left from www.freedigitalphotos.net. I could easily make up a whole profile about that woman and convince other bloggers that it is me and get them to link to my “profile” page or site in general stuffed with great keywords.

Another clue that I shouldn’t have missed is that I have been getting search results for “dentist guest post.” Obviously people looking to drop guest posts on every blog that they can to get links back. I have absolutely not problem with that if the person is actually a dentist and genuinely wants to provide content in exchange for links. When that person is actually an SEO specialist pretending to be a mom blogger, I consider that sneaky. In addition, I question whether the information in the blog post is even accurate.

So beware the guest blog post requests that you receive. If you don’t mind giving away links to liars, by all means accept all of them that come your way. But if you value your traffic and want to encourage REAL blog post exchanges, do some research on your “blogger” before you blindly give them link love and exposure.