From Podcaster to Pro Speaker at PodcampToronto 2011

Tomorrow, Saturday Feb. 26, I’ll share tips with Toronto’s leading multi-media, audio podcasters, vloggers, web show hosts and online content creators at podcamptoronto 2011. If you are in town, it’s a great event and I highly recommend it. Chris Brogan was one of the original founders of the event, and it is a true un-conference and a great learning fest for all concerned. Plus, I hear pub night is awesome. Registration is free, and you will find the networking is world class.

Today, I’m putting the finishing touches on the notes that I’ll share at Podcamp. To be honest, the notes are as much for me as they are for the audience. Since this is a special event, I will use the slides as ‘triggers’ or ‘prompts’ so I can figure out what I need to say or ‘riff’ on a topice until the next point or slide.

It also helps me to have the slides so I know what I’ve already covered and won’t miss key points or information that I’d really like to share. What I want to use the slides for is to avoid repeating myself, droning on about something that people don’t or won’t want to hear about, or have a public peri-menopausal ‘duh’ moment.

The slides will also help me remember stories that I think will help folks know what it’s like to get front of an audience, the kind of things they can expect, how to create good relationships with meeting or event planners, or ideas about topics or things they can do to start or kick-start their own speaking careers.

None of my ‘stories’ are ‘rehearsed.’ So if you heard me talk, I’d welcome your comments to tell me if they ‘flowed’ well into and out of the rest of the content.

If you want any more information or insights, or have suggestions for topics, please let me know.

Hopefully my talk will go as I hope it will, and everyone there will learn more about the world of professional speaking. If more people can become actively involved in charity, cause, event, educational, public and professional speaking with new, fresh, solid, thoughtful ideas, then all of us benefit in the long run.

And if folks can leave with more useful info than before they first walked into auditorium, and they enjoyed the time I’m ‘on,’ then that just makes my day.

Create an Enticing Event to Attract Sales & Affiliates

I recently got a question from one of my customers about how to attract more affiliates.

She works for a successful online marketer who is doing all the right things with her affiliate program. She has great products, affiliates who are already successful and lots of great promotional tools.

In order to boost the program’s success and get more sales this affiliate manager was looking at adding more affiliates to her program (a common goal for most affiliate managers). So she did what many people do to find new affiliates and started emailing potential partners who would be a great fit. The response just wasn’t good.

I’m not surprised. Read more

Affiliate Site Content Management for Easy Affiliate Marketing

One of the biggest stalling points for many a new affiliate marketer is getting the actual affiliate website up and running.

As an affiliate marketer, you want a content management system (aka website) that makes it easy for you to add new information and promote new products. You also don’t want to spend forever trying to figure out what that is.

My solution for you – WordPress.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

That’s the definition straight from WordPress.org.

Want to see what you can do with it?

Here’s a new blog I’m playing around with as a potential affiliate site, it’s one of a few niche sites I own and run on WordPress:

This website right here is built on WordPress as well. My professional speaker’s website, SpeakerSuccessOnline.com is another one. Here are a couple more:
AngelaWills.com
AffiliatesMojo.com

And of course I’ve also built dozens of sites for clients through my service available at BlogSiteMojo.com.

So, yea, I like WordPress. I use it on almost every single website I create and will continue to do so because it’s easy, fast, intuitive and always getting better. That means I can focus on creating quality content, products and resources that serve my market rather than trying to get the darned stuff out there.

How Do You Start Your Own WordPress Affiliate Site?

Here’s a brief description of what you need to do:

1. Get website hosting with Fantastico or Simple Scripts for click and go easy WordPress installation – I promise it’s easy to install if you get hosting with one of these! I recommend Bluehost for hosting which has easy installation and a handy control panel.

2. Install & Customize WordPress. WordPress straight out of the box does need a little tweaking. If you’re not comfortable with this you can hire a Virtual Assistant to help you or hire a blogsite service to set it all up for you.

3. Start Promoting Your Affiliate Programs. The beauty of wordpress is that it is set up in such a way that it helps you get found easier by the search engines and it is very easy to use once you get the hang of it. You won’t have to wait for a website designer to do updates and you won’t have to buy a crazy expensive program like Dreamweaver to do it yourself.

You can grab a copy of my completely free ecourse on How to Create a WordPress Website in 7 Days or Less and you can also learn and awful lot from WordPress.org.

How did I learn?

I have to admit that even though I had built websites for many years before using WordPress, the thought of this CMS (content management system) on a blogging platform was intimidating to me. That’s why I choose to learn by having someone walk me through the whole process. Having someone walk you through or even do it for you takes all the pressure off, saves time hunting around (and potentially grabbing the wrong information) and gets it accomplished fast so you can move on to making money through affiliate programs.

So if you’re ready to get moving forward on your own affiliate marketing my recommendation to you is choose your system (I recommend WordPress ) and then just dive into it. Once you’ve got a website you can quickly and easily update you’ll have no more barriers to making a great income as an affiliate marketer.

p.s. If you learn best through video then I recommend you check out the Blogging Starter Pack by Lynette Chandler. Lynette has been a friend, mentor and colleague for years now and when it comes to WordPress she also knows her stuff.

Getting Your Business Emails Delivered to Your List

Worried that your carefully crafted email newletters might not actually make it to your subscribers?

It’s a valid concern and it’s constantly getting harder to get your completely legitimate emails delivered to your subscribers inbox. We can thank the lovely spammers for the difficulties in email deliverability!

There are some things you can do to protect yourself and get your emails delivered to your opt-in list and read.

Getting Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed, double or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.
Read more

Free Market Research Using Keyword Tools

by Angela Wills

Audio Version of Article

If you have a website, or even read any information on creating a website, you’ve most likely heard that you should use keywords on your site. Keywords are so much more than just words. Let me give you my definition:

- Keywords or keyword terms are specific terms or phrases that people use in the search engines to find what they are looking for online.

Most of the time people are looking for information. So they type in the keywords relating to what it is they want to find.

What does this mean to you?

It means keywords are a goldmine of information telling you exactly what people want when they are coming to the search engines. It means it’s just silly for you to pick out two or three keywords, slap them on your website and call it a day.

You need to integrate keywords and keyword research into your business and respond to what people are calling out for. Sure you can write about whatever you want, whenever you want online but if no one is looking for that information you’re wasting your effort.

Where do I find MY keywords?

There are plenty of great places to do keyword research. Start educating yourself on what the numbers mean and what the google competition is.

Do a google search for any of the following and you’ll find some great keyword tools:
- SEO Book keyword tool
- Adwords Keyword tool
- Wordtracker free keyword tool
- Wordtracker
- Market Samuri

So, here’s your homework:
- Go find a list of about 100 keywords relating to your market and use them. Use them in your website copy, to create newsletters, to create new products, to write blog posts and anything else that you do for the market those keywords serve.