Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

I’m a Star: Internet Marketing from the Real Experts

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Okay, so I’m not really a star. But I kind of felt like it when I got home from Affiliate Summit and started reading the book that was in our conference bag: Internet Marketing from the Real Experts. Why did I feel like a star? I found that I have two different articles in the book and I am among such amazing company! There are articles from so many people who are truly amazing in affiliate marketing: Geno Prussakov, Jamie Birch, Scott Jangro, Brian Littleton, Lisa Picarille, the list goes on and on (and apologies to the other 80+ people I didn’t mention!). The book is edited by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward.

If you are looking to learn about affiliate marketing, this book gives you a couple of things that the others do not. First, it is written from the perspective of many different players. By that I mean that you can read articles by affiliates, affiliate managers, networks, and consultants. You’ll get a 360 degree view of the industry. Second, it touches on many different areas of affiliate marketing from SEO to video to blogging. Lastly, it is broken down into 3 minute segments so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you have time. You can also jump around to the area that impacts you.

If you are the least bit interested in affiliate marketing, this book will be money well spent for you. Whether you are just starting out or have been in affiliate marketing for years, you will absolutely learn something new from this book. It’s not a “get rich quick” book; it’s legitimate information on how to help you grow your business and maximize your returns. And if you care to check out my articles, they are on pages 94 (Merchants, Bring on the Videos) and 102 (Rewards Sites: Asset or Liability?).

Using Aweber Lightbox for Newsletter Signups

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I’ve been using Aweber for the newsletters on a few of my websites for quite a while and like it for a number of reasons. I don’t pay for any traffic to those sites, and my lists are building slowly. I happened across a post on Facebook recently (and can’t even remember how!) where they were talking about using Lightboxes. I started investigating and discovered that the Lightbox option is where you get a pop up of sorts that isn’t really a pop up asking if you want to sign up for a newsletter. I had mixed feelings about implementing it but have been pleasantly surprised so far.

Here’s a chart that shows daily signups over the course of a month. It’s easy to see when I implemented the Lightbox:

The blue show people who unsubscribed (luckily not many!). Green are people who subscribed and verified their subscriptions. Yellow are those who subscribed but did not verify. I can understand why the yellow increased so much. Some people just entered an email address in the box to get it to close rather than hitting the “close” button. However, you can see that my verified subscriptions have tripled. Interestingly, this is from a site that actually has much less traffic now than it did in December, and the December subscription numbers were consistent with those first eight days shown in the chart.

Clearly I am getting more newsletter signups. However, there are two potential downsides. First, are people hitting the back button on the site after the Lightbox pops up? I have it set to a delay so that they will find the content and start reading before the Lightbox pops up. Conversions on merchandise are definitely down a little bit, but it is also not a month in which I would expect to see high conversions. The second issue is the number of people “complaining” about the newsletters. My “complaints” (which can be defined as many different things in Aweber) have gone up from about .08% to .24% this month. Could it be that people are signing up just to close the box but then also verifying and not really wanting the newsletter? That seems odd, but possible.

I’ll be continuing to watch the trends over the next month or so regarding newsletter signups, site visits, and merchandise conversion rates. The one thing that I want to stress is how easy it was to create the Lightbox in Aweber, including modifying the template as well as the appearance itself. Next up I will be doing some A/B testing on Lightbox differences (graphic v. text).

Affiliate Marketing Session at Blog Indiana

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Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking with my fellow presenters for the upcoming Blog Indiana, Kristen Kinsey and Carolyn Tang. We are working on a presentation about affiliate marketing and blogging.

As I begin work on my part of the presentation, I’m having to take a fresh look at my blog sites and how I am monetizing them. Is there enough content? Do the affiliate links flow naturally from the content or am I forcing the links in the hope of making an extra buck or two? It’s a good chance to look at my own blogs and evaluate them in the same way that I would look at someone else’s blog–with fresh eyes.

Speaking about affiliate marketing is a pleasure but is also going to be a little bit tricky because we are not sure just how much Indiana bloggers already know about affiliate marketing. Judging by the attendance of Hoosiers at Affiliate Summit and the lack of discussion on Smaller Indiana about affiliate marketing, I’m guessing that there isn’t too much of it going on here. Hopefully our session at Blog Indiana will change that!

If you are planning on attending Blog Indiana (taking place August 13th and 14th in Indianapolis), please leave me a comment and let me know if you are already using affiliate marketing, plan on using affiliate marketing in your blogs, or do not even know what affiliate marketing is. Hopefully we can tailor our presentation so that everyone walks away with something useful.

How Many Blogs Should You Have?

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I was reading a mom’s site the other day and she was talking about how people should only have one blog because you can’t focus on too many. I got to thinking about how many different blog sites that I have–lots! Am I sabotaging myself by having too many blogs? I don’t think so. Here’s why…

First, some of my blogs are really websites just running on WordPress as a means of content management. So while it is true they are “blogs,” they are really niche websites where I just add content weekly using WordPress. I would say that most people in affiliate marketing have multiple websites.

Second, one of my blogs is tied directly to my biggest business (Sunshine Rewards). And it is a completely different type of blog than the rest because it is videos only. Plus, I have other employees that help me generate the content for it.

Lastly, and most importantly, I don’t think readers of one of my blogs would be interested in the content from my other blogs. Are you here because you want to read about chocolate? About being a work at home mom? If you were, you would go read those other blogs. Granted, this blog is supposed to be more random….so you never know what you are going to get from me. But that in itself is a niche…it’s a blog about the niche of Tricia Meyer. (Thrilling, I know…but you are still reading, right?)

In the end, I’ve decided that it’s perfectly fine to have multiple blogs as long as you are not just repeating the same content and you are keeping them fresh. It doesn’t hurt to cross-promote your blogs a little bit either. How many blogs do you have?

Thesis WordPress Theme

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So why did I decide to use a Thesis WordPress Theme for this blog? I’ve tried lots of different themes, some free and some not. I’ve done some customizing of various themes. The site of mine that I love the most (although it gets the least traffic and attention) is my chocolate site, www.chocolatepicnic.com. Why do I love it? Because it’s pretty! Compared to all of my other sites, I think it came together the best. I used Revolution on some other sites, as well as Cutlines. But Thesis was the easiest to customized and sharpest looking.

Because I already had one Thesis license, I could upgrade to the “developer” license for only $77 and be able to use Thesis on as many of my sites as I want going forward. What a bargain!

I still have a lot to customize on here, but it looks 100 times better than it did 10 minutes ago. And by the end of the week, it will be beautiful (although maybe not as beautiful as Chocolate Picnic).

You can check out the Thesis Theme for yourself.