• BlogProfitz Launches – Auto Monitizing your Blogs

    I was intrigued when I heard about the new BlogProfitz application, a tool that promises to combine affiliate marketing and blogging to create an automated site around specific topics and themes.

    In addition, BlogProfitz leverages the power of on-line video(YouTube), RSS feeds and over 15,000 articles (direct from our own private archive and covering hundreds of topics) to ensure your web properties are bigger, more helpful and more powerful to your readers than any other websites in your niche.

    I have found in the past that tools that promise to automate content, don't often live up to their hype, the best way to generate content for your site is to create it yourself, put your passion behind it, and that is what drives real long term value. 

    As with most things in life, the amount of effort you put into things typically determines the amount of returns you generate.

    That being said, I'm always interested in testing new applications to see what people are creating and if there might be ways to leverage tools to increase my business.  I have found interesting ways to utilize rss to blog tools for my blogs and those of others to auto-generate ideas and then create content around them.

    So I decided to take BlogProfitz for a test drive.  (I apologize for the affiliate links, but heck, I am an affiliate, and you are reading an affiliate blog, so if you decide to take the software out for a test drive on your own, we would appreciate if you used our link, if not you can head over to blogprofitz.com directly).

    First BlogProfitz only currently works with WordPress blogs, they are not too hard to setup, I learned how to do it and had a WP blog up and running in about 20 mins.  I grabbed an old domain we had through a domain expiration auction, shopping-today.com, and started playing with BlogProfitz.

    I had some problems with their blog templates, but easily found another one on-line that I liked and it was easy to connect it to my blog, and give it some categories to start posting too. With some quick keyword research to find out what people were typing in to search engines along with the term "shop for", I choose Ugg Boots, Stiletto's, Strollers, and Panties.  

    When setting up the product, video, and content feeds, I was a little disappointed that many of the CJ merchant's data feeds were missing.  I know Zappos and Shoes.com, for example, have good feeds, and they would have been a good fit for the shoe categories.  I was able to find some other merchants that had product, and in about 24 hours the content started rolling in.

    Like most systems that pull from data feeds, you have the crap in crap our problem.  Many of these data feeds need to be scrubbed before being utilized, who would buy this Graco Stroller?  The content choices can be a little strange too, I'm not sure what this Motorcycle Weekend Triphas to do with ugg boots, the term ugg isn't even in the article.  The program seems to have a similar problem when it tries to match up youtube videos, for a category I setup on Versace, it pulled this Diss Video.

    It is still too early to tell if the site will get any significant traffic, but even if it did get some traffic, I am not sure I would get too many repeat visitors.  Perhaps a broad shopping site wasn't the best route to go, but works for testing.

    I do think that if you have a niche blog around a specific product or product category, that BlogProfitz could be an excellent tool for finding and bringing in some good content and product information, but I would set it to post in draft mode, and then do some work cleaning things up, adding your own comments and personality, and then you might have some real good content that your readers would love. 

    BlogProfitz just launched today, and will be open for 1,000 members.  So if you want to give it a spin, don't wait around.  Their trial deal lets you monetize 3 bogs for $19 / month.

    Let me know how it turns out!

    BlogProfitz is brought to you from Scott Trimble, creator of the Affiliate Marketing PHD and following tools:

    • StoreStacker – build a complete, commission ready affiliate web site, featuring thousands of targeted products, relevant articles, and related videos.
    • The Content Club – 500 freshly written, researched and keyword targetted articles monthly.
    • BlogSolution - advanced blogging / pinging / SEO tool

    • RSS Evolution – produce a full website from any RSS feed.

    • ContentSolution – create thousands of unique articles for any niche or market,
    • RSSMagician – an RSS feed re-writer to avoid duplicate content.
    • VideoStacker – FREE software enables anyone to quickly and easily add powerful, niche videos to any website or blog. Any topic, any market.

  • Google Adwords Chat Support

    Getting support from Google can be a little tricky, here is a link to their online chat support for Adwords:


    Google Adwords Chat Support


    Good Luck!

  • Shoemoney Tools?

    Has anyone tried the Shoemoney Tools?

    I would be interested in hearing your opinions on the new tools.

    If you haven't tried them, I found this $3.95 trial:

    Shoemoney Tools 3.95 Trial

    What are your thoughts?

  • 10 Ways to Get the Most out of your Paid Search Affiliates

    Here is a great presentation from Duncan Jennings of eConversions at a4uExpo in the UK:

    10 Ways Paid Search – Duncan Jennings – eConversions

    View more presentations from A4uexpo .

  • What is Performance Marketing?

    Michael Mothner, the founder & CEO of Wpromote Inc. posted a well writen blog post, A Look Inside Performance Marketing – Part 1.  Michael does an excellent job of explaining the concept of performance marketing and defining some of the terms in our industry.  If you are new to performance marketing, this article should help!

    "with pay-for-performance marketing efforts, companies are able to remove risk from their advertising, and for the first time marketing budgets can directly relate to sales"

    We look forward to reading Part 2!

     

  • Swine Flu Billboards?

    Have you spotted one of these Swine Flu Billboards yet?


  • Scared of Swine Fly? Stay home!

    The news is all buzzing with swim flu fever. If you are scared of the swine flu, consider avoiding the super markets, malls, and stores by getting what you need from the comfort of your own home!

    You can find all sorts of deals and savings for everything you need at DealZam – http://www.dealzam.com

    Trust the dealzam piggy to keep you out of harms way!

  • Affiliate Marketing on Twitter – Part III

    I wanted to share a twitter conversation I had with a random stranger, to add to the question of 'Is affiliate marketing on Twitter wrong?" posed by Scott Jangro. (Part 1 and Part 2).

    hawkinsw I am looking to buy about 10 folding cots. Does anyone have a clue where to buy?

    adamviener: @hawkinsw Is this the kind of folding cot you are looking for? http://cli.gs/folding-cot

    adamviener: @hawkinsw Unless you are looking to buy the beds for a hotel, I have found the Aero Beds to be better – http://tinyurl.com/aero-bed

    hawkinsw @adamviener Thanks for the links. Those are exactly the kind of cots I am looking for. Too bad they are more expensive than I hoped. 🙂

    adamviener: @hawkinsw How much are you looking to spend per cot?

    hawkinsw: @adamviener I was hoping something under $50.

    adamviener: @hawkinsw Try this folding cot for under $50 – http://cli.gs/coleman-cot

    hawkinsw: @adamviener That is exactly what I wanted. Thanks!

    People have gone back and forth on the topic of using Twitter for affiliate marketing, honestly, I think those who are strongly against it are living in the past.  Sure there is a right way and a wrong way of using any communications medium for marketing, In my opinion, as long as you are providing a real solution to a real problem, that is good marketing.  If someone puts out a message on Twitter saying they are looking to buy something, I think that providing a link to the customer is a valued service, saves them time and has the opportunity to make you and your clients some money.  Win-Win-Win!

     

  • Reaching out to CA Politicians va Twitter

    Here is a great site where you can find the twitter addresses of some of the california state politicians, as well as other states:

    http://newthinking.bearingpoint.com/2008/11/20/govtwit-directory/

    I just sent out tweets to a bunch of them, feel free to grab their addresses or re-tweet my messages to help spread the word!

    http://www.twitter.com/adamviener

    Adam

  • California Puts Small Businesses at Risk

    In an attempt to raise tax revenues from larger online merchants and internet sales, California is threatening to put a lot of small businesses out of business.  This recently happened in New York.  The country needs to either decide to tax all internet sales, or none of them, but this piecemeal approach has caused large e-commerce companies to shut down local stores (read cut jobs) in order to avoid having a local presense in a given state, and now they are looking to cut marketing partners who happen to reside in New York or California to continue to avoid paying taxes on sales in that state.  The loop holes are harming workers and small businesses.

    Please read the following letter from Rebecca Madigan, the founder of the Performance Marketing Alliance:

    California Bill 178 threatens to change the performance marketing playing field. If you are a publisher or agency whose business is in California, your livelihood is at risk.

     

    This bill, copying a similar one in New York, unfairly categorizing publishers as sales presence for out-of-state advertisers. This means taxes will be levied on out-of-state advertisers, potentially causing them to shut down their publisher relationships in the state (it happened in New York). Learn more at www.performancemarketingalliance.com.

     

    With your help, we have a great chance to kill this bill: the PMA is working with the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association lobbying groups to fight this bill. These groups have successfully killed similar bills in the past, but the difference now is the precedent set by New York state. They believe the only way this bill can be killed is to have a coordinated grass-roots effort that demonstrates the devastating effect this bill will have on performance marketers in California.

     

    With the support of CalChamber and CalTax, PMA is launching a coordinated grass-roots campaign that targets congressional representatives. We are developing an attack plan that includes sample letters, fact sheets, congressional contacts by zip code, and a “Visit Sacramento” day, to put faces in front of decision makers.

     

    First step: The PMA is extremely fortunate to have the support and experience of Beth Kirsch, a well known industry leader who was formerly a federal lobbyist. She is leading our effort, but we need your help. We are looking for California performance marketers to get involved. The most seriously impacted are California publishers and OPMs.

     

    We don’t have much time – we have until March 31st to make an impact.

     

    As we learned from our colleagues in New York, the passage of this bill could have devastating effects on California performance marketers.  If this passes in California, it virtually assures a firestorm of adoption by other states, which could devastate our entire industry. If we beat this bill, it will severely limit the adoption in other states.

     

    Reply if you can help with the fight. At the very least, please forward this email to your Californian friends.

     

    Rebecca Madigan

    Founder

    Performance Marketing Alliance, Inc.

    805.469.1496

    rebecca@performancemarketingalliance.com