2010 Partnering with Jeremy Palmer

31 December 2010 Update

2010-12-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

Hi Jeremy,

I added two more posts in the Acer netbook category and one more in the deals category. Also made some posts to my Facebook page.

The carousel widget is exactly what I had wanted from my wireframe. I'm very pleased with it.

I will plan on getting a list of ideas for graphic templates done this week. I had a hectic week at work and home.

Happy 2011,

me

Memories of cha-ching

2010-12-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

Back in 2002 -2004, I used to be able to log in to cj.com and practically refresh the page every few minutes to watch the total go up.

Just memories.

http://jeremypalmer.com/

2010-12-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Two posts, Nov 26, Nov 28, 2010.

Well, at least I got an idea that I should put an affiliate link to BOTW on my blogs. Hah, I just got a note from BOTW that I have affiliate funds less than minimum payout.

What is Tumblr? I mean, why would I use any product non-Google? I can quickly and easily set up both AdSense and Amazon for any Blogger blog I own, stats (use the beta dashboard and you'll see), I can add the sitemaps to my Google Webmaster Tools easily...

The WordPress blogs I have attached to sites are fine. I like having control of the hosting and content. I like not having a risk that Google will shut down my blog for some reason. But WordPress is constant upkeep. Update this plugin, update that plugin, update the database, blah, blah, blah.

And I won't be using one again as the main CMS for a website.

Wherein the author sighs and wonders where the heck 2010 went

2010-11-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Circular. Working on getting menus in WordPress to work wasn't what I signed on for. But when they still don't work, my motivation to write content sinks too low to get more done.

Of course, if there was traffic to the existing content, I'd probably have enough positive reinforcement to overcome the menu curse. But no, traffic is drips and drops.

No links coming in from qydj, and tomorrow is Dec.1.

It's difficult to feel at all optimistic. And with no optimism, it's hard to keep writing content and working on link building... which was supposed to be what I signed on for.

Update 5 November, 2010

2010-11-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Hi Jeremy,

Things accomplished:
1) I'm working on the questions for the showcase.

2) I finished my first ebook and posted it. For now since there is so little traffic, I haven't set up an email list, just a download and suggested people favorite the page and join the Facebook page for free updates. Here's the landing page: http://netbookguide.org/netbook-guide-2010-free-e-book/ .

3) I had some fun and played with making a text to video movie via Xtranormal.com and posted it to my YouTube channel. BTW, currently the links from YouTube channels are still do-follow. http://www.youtube.com/user/netbookguideORG

4) Submitted the free ebook to various ebook directories, such as http://www.jogena.com/ebookdir/computers.htm , http://e-library.net/search.php?q=netbook+guide&cx=partner-pub-3841787588316075%3A3xfxvk-veru&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=ISO-8859-1&I1.x=0&I1.y=0#242 .

5) Posted these and other amusing video clips on my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Netbook-Guide/162452683767371 .

Questions:

We forgot to discuss possible free options for an email newsletter to capture emails for brief follow ups after downloading the ebook. Do you have any thoughts on this?

all the best,

me

Update 22 October, 2010

2010-10-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hi Jeremy,
Do let me know what time on Monday is good to talk, please.

Tasks accomplished this week:

1. Published four more posts on the site. Two in the deals category, one in the Asus category, and one in the Acer category. The Asus and Acer posts are based on the keyword research with WT.
2. Posted an update to my Facebook page about the deals.
3. Set up the links page and wrote to each of the sites requesting reciprocal links. One already linked back: http://netbook-evangelist.com/ .
4. Looked at back links on the sites that I contacted and applied to several directories. Accepted in to at least two.

Questions:
1. The links page always puts something as a "menu" at the bottom of the page. I changed it to the main navigation, but I don't really like having any menu down there. Any idea how to fix this?
2. As we get more into Q4, traffic becomes imperative. Do you recommend starting a ppc campaign at some point?

Hope to catch you soon,
me

Of balances between link building tasks and content building and WTF with WordPress

2010-10-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

After reading in the partners forum that some folks are seeing spikes in traffic, I figure I'd better do something besides the web 2.0 profiles and posting in forums and no-follow ezine article links.

One of our tasks had been to make a list of top sites in our niche: forums, blogs, companies, etc.. So I started there and got the basics of my links page started. Then I wrote to each site the good old "Hi, I've posted a link to your site, I'd love a link back."

Then look at the backlinks to THOSE sites and see if I can get some of them, also. Two directory submissions, plus check on a submission from about a month ago. Oh, good, that one is in.

Then on to post some content and get all flustered about the Word Press side bars again. I hate them.

Since I got the site theme, I cannot get the sidebars to do what I want when I want. At some point I settled for one side bar for all pages, but then that got tweeked out again. The default side bar never shows in categories that have no defined sidebar. So I have to go in and define every single category side bar to have a side bar that isn't WP default.

So I found yet another subcategory that isn't pulling the default menu and I have to go put in menu widgets. Well, I also realized that product reviews are in one category, and the related products are in another. Can't have product specific menus in the review category, since all other reviews are in that category.... and this is what it's been like for months now.

On the good news side, I did have a first sale. Still hoping Q4 can recover the year's costs.

Update 15 October, 2010

2010-10-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Hi Jeremy,
Sorry I haven't been in touch much. I had the holidays to deal with among other things.

Tasks accomplished recently:
1. I did make single blogger sites for each of the models with keyword based domain names, linked them together and then linked to them from my Squidoo page. Within two weeks Google had shut down three of them for triggering the spam filter. So I removed the remaining ones immediately as well as the links from Squidoo. I see that domain squatting is not simple, and I don't think it's really my goal to learn how to do it.

2. Traffic on the site is still low. The webmaster tool in Google is showing more of the profile back links, as well as the ezine article links and such. I aggregated my profile URL's into an RSS feed, and went ahead and linked to that from my blog. Currently there are only 50 profiles, but the majority of the other sites that I checked on Knowem.com have little or nothing to offer. I subscribed to the newsletter mentioned in the forums, Paulie Ciara's Backlink newsletter, and try to choose one of those each week to add.

3. I am working on a downloadable ebook like I had in my wireframe. Mostly I am cutting and pasting information from my site so that it's not hugely time consuming. I signed up for the Netbook Buyers Guide ebook from NetbookReviews.com, and they do a nice set of follow up emails afterwards as well.

4. I made a Facebook Page.

Questions:

1. I started the clustered posts, but I need to solve the menu problem for me to even easily navigate the site. What day would work for you this week for a Skype session?
2. I'm not too keen on signing up for a paid newsletter service before there's traffic to the site. I set up a mailing list in the Cpanel, but I am not totally familiar with the settings in cPanel, as I use different hosting. What are your suggestions for being able to capture email address for two or three brief follow up emails to folks who download my ebook?

Hope all is well after that fire!

Best,
me

Q4 2010 is here

2010-10-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of personal holiday time last month, continuing frustration with menu trouble on the site with no time to schedule for a session with Jeremy to solve it, and using too much time on building profiles.

Hopefully I'll get the menu problem worked out this week. I am not happy having to deal with website issues, as it always saps my interest in content production. I have a lot of content to get written.

The link to my RSS feed for web2.0 profiles: http://rss.icerocket.com/xmlfeed?id=144499 . Not sure it's more than a huge waste of time. Good for branding if you are building a brandable site, I suppose.

Here's hoping everyone's Q4 goes well. "I'm dreaming of a black Xmas!".

Ezine Articles

2010-09-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

Ezine articles are a decent way to get targetted traffic to your site. Of course, you have to invest time in writing a decent article. The higher quality the article, the more views you'll get, and if you use some marketing know-how, you can get some very high click through rates.

EzineArticles.com now offers their authors a Title Tool. They claim that these titles are gleaned from searches that land readers on the site. This may be true, but I haven't been impressed with the results.

I took two titles in my niche and wrote two original pieces. I'm a Platinum Author, so within 48 hours my articles were live. I have several pen names and have seen some articles get tens of views on the first day, hundreds in the first few weeks. Some of my articles have an outrageous 30% click through rate, and others a dismal less than 1% click through rate.

The titles that EzineArticles.com gave me didn't take off for views. I can't blame them for a lousy click through rate, that's more my hooks or lack thereof.

I then used some of the "templates" that EzineArticles.com offers and that I've found very helpful for both getting past writer's block and getting views. First one was their "7 things" template. The article is a lot more successful in views and click throughs than the first two.

Then I hit some keyword research tools looking for some keyword phrases that are getting searches. I can't tell you yet the results of the test, but I did write a new ezine article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Netbook-Computers---Asus-Vs-Toshiba&id=4965878

Life with Google

2010-09-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

So I subscribed to an interesting newsletter about backlinks. Nice. Informative. Some great tips.

And some things that I could never stoop to on the internet.

I have some Google alerts set up, and at least one of them is largely full of reprinted articles. The same ones over, and over, and over, as if the articles had some interesting content. But they don't. All the links stripped, nobody notices that the products no longer exist. Today as I read through the newsletter I signed up for, I realized that largely these are Google bot bait. Yup, pre-scheduled PLR articles that nobody read because nobody cared.

Please, if you use the internet as well as market, publish unto others what you would have others publish unto you. I, for one, prefer real content, written by a real person. Thanks.

Forums are back up.

2010-08-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

Come on back, everyone, let's exchange tips and info.

Update 20.8.2010 and Skype

2010-08-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the note and update about your computer and timing.

The kids are in back to school mode, so my work on the site is slow.

Summary of Actions:
1. I updated all the buy links on all the pages, since I'd been waiting to hear about the server move before doing that. Since your note last week indicated we won't be moving server, I did get them taken care of. I noticed today that there are a number of programs that did not approve my application at cj.
2. In the process of adding another 10 WEb2.0 sites with the fellow I work with on fiverr.com. By building out only 10-20 a week, I think it's more natural. By paying him, I will save 50% over Knowem.com. Sorry that means in order to check out the profiles you'd need to search for **** on the sites.

3. I only made one more forum post, nothing spectacular.

4.I did read an interesting article from SiteProNews, something I've been a subscriber to for over 10 years: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/15/social-media-marketing-doesnt-replace-seo/ .

Questions:

1. Thoughts on contacting the CJ advertisers who rejected the application?
2. Forums????
3. I looked through my emails and either I'm going senile or I wasn't aware you'd be out of communicado again. Having the forum up might help with communication, as you could just make one post for everyone to see. Your thoughts?

Timing for Skype:

Looking at my schedule, thinking that Wednesday evening my time might work best. Say 17:00 GMT+2 = 8 am your time. Too early? Otherwise I could do 20:00, which would be 11 am your time.

best,
me

Weekly Update 13.8.2010 and Skype?

2010-08-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

HI Jeremy,

Sorry I wasn't able to get to Skype on Thursday. I've got some family issues going on with one of my teens. It was a slow week in terms of our site, sorry.

Summary of Actions:

1- I didn't use Knowem.com's service. I use their site to get info on the various Web 2.0 services, since they present right on the site the Alexa rank, Yahoo links, and Compete.com data. I decided to see if I could get some help cheaper at fiverr.com, which was recommended by one of the partners in the forums. I posted a suggestion for a gig and got two replies and one person has worked out just fine. I basically try to do 10-20 a week, but didn't get any more done this week. The list from last week is the majority, and I am always **** for the username.

2 - I made three more community postings, including changing my sig on that one site that didn't like the website in the URL. See what you thnk:
http://forum.***.com/6563372-post450.html
http://forum.***.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/507163-need-netbook-constant-travel-web-browsing-office-apps-form-included.html#post6563420
http://www.***.com/forum/general/3228-netbook-powerpower.html

3- I published another ezine article:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-7-Bestselling-Netbook-Computer-Brands&id=4819246

all the best,
me

Update 6 August, 2010

2010-08-06T04:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Jeremy,

As per your email last week, here is my update email for the week:

Summary of Actions:

1- Continued creating social media profiles for my site. :
http://www.tweako.com/
http://wakoopa.com/
http://www.bizsugar.com/
http://www.epinions.com/
http://www.thisnext.com/
http://www.ecademy.com/
http://www.kaboodle.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://amplify.com/
http://www.mister-wong.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/
http://www.diigo.com/
http://www.gravee.com/
http://www.mixx.com/
http://www.plime.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/
http://www.cocomment.com/
http://faves.com/
http://jeteye.com/
http://www.searchles.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.connotea.org/
http://www.folkd.com/
http://www.kirtsy.com/
http://www.mylinkvault.com/
http://www.backtype.com/
http://www.glogster.com/
http://issuu.com/

2 - I've begun participating in some forum discussions. Here are some posts I made in topics related to my site:
http://www.netbookchoice.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=251&p=781#p781
http://www.netbookreviews.com/forum/introductions/3177-netbook-fun.html#post10086
http://www.testfreaks.com/netbooks/qa/19528-difference-between-intel-atom-and-intel-core-duo/?new_answer=12296

Questions:
1- Are the sites going to move server or not? If so, target date?
2 - Did you send out an email or make an announcement in the Partner Portal about your plans to be offline in July? I totally missed it, if so.
3- Can you share general stats with us about where everyone is holding in the Partnership? It might be encouraging.

thanks,
me

10 days of silence again

2010-07-29T05:39:00.000-07:00

Well, the email from the 19th of July stated that Jeremy would be in contact mid-week, but here it is 10 days later.

Still no forums. No further contacts.

Is anyone out there interested in starting our own forums to at least give each other support in what we can?

A sign of life

2010-07-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

We received an email from Jeremy today letting us know that he'd been "off the grid the past few weeks", which sounds like since the last round of partner calls.

Hopefully the forums will be back up soon so we can get support from other partners.

If it was any quieter, I think I'd hear an echo...

2010-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Forum is still down.
No new partner emails updating all of us.
At least some new tasks appeared in the partner portal relating to link building.

JeremyPalmer.com has a new squeaky clean WordPress install, so hopefully that's a sign that there's been some progress with either moving servers or staying put on HostGator.

Are we moving all the partner sites or not? Nervous partners want to know.

New items in task list related to Organic Traffic

2010-07-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention that my whole reason for going to Knowem.com was Jeremy's suggestion in our phone call last week. I added the twist of fiverr.com.

A good sign today was seeing added tasks in the partner portal. Still no forum, and no word on whether the sites will indeed move server or not.

Knowem.com and Fiverr.com

2010-07-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Knowem.com has a huge list of Web2.0 sites and a service that costs a pretty penny. For essentially a dollar a site, you can have them initialize sign up, thus reserving your username.

This is helpful for branding, and most profiles give you a place to mention your website. This is helpful for building incoming links and possibly driving traffic if you are honestly active on the sites.

In the partnership forums (which are still down, by the way), someone linked to a site called fiverr.com. It's an amusing idea: Buy and Sell services for $5. In the forums someone pointed out that you can get article writing for $5 (which is a tad expensive if you are planning on paying for a lot of them, there are cheaper ways). But there are other services offered like commenting on your blogs, inviting 3,000 Facebook friends to your fan page, and such.

I didn't see one for doing Web2.0 signups, but there is a box in the far right hand column for "wishlist" gigs that you might like to see. So I put in a wishlist request for 10 Web2.0 signups for $5. Two sellers replied to my fiverr.com inbox (I had to sign up to post in the wishlist box)!

Hey, for $10 I could try this out and get 20 sign ups. 100 signups would then cos me $50, a savings of $49 over Knowem.com. I decided not to request them finishing the profiles for several reasons. One is that I wanted to check out the sites myself, since maybe something would be interesting (like kiva.org!). The other is that I wanted to change the password before entering more data. Hiring out someone to sign up was already enough information for them to have in their unknown to me hands!

One seller immediately sent me a gmail address to contact him/her. When I replied that I was new and didn't understand how to set it up so I could pay for the gig (that's what they call these at fiverr.com), s/he replied that it was no problem and I could pay directly to his/her PayPal account. My radar went up.

The other seller tried a sample sign up, messaged me at fiverr.com to check if it worked and if I was still interested s/he would set up a gig so I could purchase it and s/he would do the other 9 sites. Now that was good marketing, and all according to the rules. So I approved setting up the gig, purchased it (your payment is through Paypal to fiverr.com), and s/he quickly, efficiently, and with good communication when more info was needed, did the job. So I immediately hired him/her for another 10 sign ups. I gave him/her good reviews for both gigs.

I also hired someone to read my Squidoo lenses, comment, and rate them. She left relevant comments that showed she really had read them, and I gave her positive feedback. Fun!

And that first seller? I reported him/her to fiverr.com and the account was closed within hours. I didn't mean to get someone booted, but that kind of behavior is what could ruin the investment that fiverr.com put into the site.

Another thing about Knowem.com. So they have data on all the sites and for the 100 site fee, you get the 100 most trafficked sites. Some Web2.0 sites just never take off and dwindle, so what's the point of a sign up. Okay, so I figured we had the skills from the niche selection unit to get an idea of a site worth a sign up. I didn't end up having to do all that work, though Knowem lists on their site the Alexa ranking, Compete.com ranking, Yahoo incoming links, etc.., so you can see for yourself pretty quickly which are worth a sign up.

And don't forget to sign up for Knowem.com itself!

Moving hosts.. shudder...

2010-06-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

I got my reply to my ticket submission requesting a content review and Jeremy wants me to schedule a phone meeting. All the slots on his Jiffle calendar are post midnight my time zone, so I'll email to try to set something up for next week.

He also mentioned that there have been some issues with HostGator for the Partnership project, so they'll be moving the sites.

I backed up my site and am downloading the whole directory JIC. I can't imagine trying to move 59 database sites.

Since I started hosting at FutureQuest.net, I've only had nightmares with other hosts. So yes, I pay a bit more in hosting, but for my peace of mind it's worth it. Today I just put in my request for MySQL5 upgrades on my sites so I can be a good girl and keep my WP versions up to date. I'm out of date on all of them.

59 sites to move. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I have to say. It's not like they're static sites, they're all WordPress based. I think I'm going to try some of the new dark rum based drinks I downloaded from recipezaar.com soon...

Oh thank heaven for friends who are WordPress gurus!

2010-06-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

I used to be very active at ABestWeb.com back when I was supporting my family with affiliate marketing. I still have some good friends from there.

One is now quite a WordPress guru, so I asked her what she thought of my problem. After a couple of questions, she made a suggestion that worked.

Being more of a coder than a designer, I work in the HTML tab most of the time. Her suggestion was to actually add the link in the WYSISYG window, and it worked!

What was that mantra again? I know WordPress is supposed to be the best for a content management system, I know WordPress is supposed to be the best...

Forums down, sigh.

2010-06-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

The Partner forums are down. Been working on starting to add affiliate links and having some unknown problem in WordPress.

I put in a support ticket for a content review, since I am sure I need more, better, and some honing of what I posted. However since I am finding working in WordPress so challenging, I want to get focused with some constructive feedback.

Meanwhile I built a Squidoo page as a feeder to the site and unabashedly asked all my Facebook friends to at least click through, preferably add comments and rate the lens. That should start the lens rising slowly and hopefully by the time the site is actually ready for prime time the Squidoo page will be sending some nice traffic.

Also writing ezine articles, and taking advantage of the Title Tool at EzineArticles.com. So far I'm not impressed with the results of using the tool. Nice for brainstorming, but a quick look at Wordtracker or SEOBook has always been successful for me at finding titles that get my article viewed.

The advantage of the Squidoo page is that it's very Squidooly to compose in the first person. I wrote from very much my own head space and experience, which was fun and informative.

Okay, back to WP. Guess I should put in a support ticket.

First draft ready!

2010-06-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Three comparison categories, three top contenders in each category. I have enough material to post a couple more reviews of products that didn't make my top contenders lists, too. Then I will have to check what's new again in the niche... it's a fast moving niche and my Google Alert comes in every day with more material.

I spent some time on the side bar widgets in WordPress last night. My default template still doesn't seem to take hold and I end up having to make the same side bar for every category template that I've used.

Then I also wasn't satisfied with how to link to the comparison pages in a navigation tab so I created a new subcategory called comparison under the review category and moved the comparison pages to that category. Beware if you put a slug in the box for a category, WP uses that for the link archecture and doesn't always find the right category template. Sigh. I made the plug the same as the subcategory and WP found the right page template.

Today I will request a content review from Jeremy's team. I reapplied at Amazon.com for Associate status for the site. They had rejected the application when the site wasn't functional. I also reapplied at Shareasale.com, for the same reason. I'm a long time affiliate, so both of them can look at other work I've done, but I wanted separate accounts for the Partnership site. Still have to reapply to the Ebay Partner Network for the same reasons.

Time to start getting preliminary feedback from social networking and driving some traffic from article marketing. Though all my friends on Facebook are actually people I know from my real life, some of them are in the market for this product, just as I was. When I mentioned I was building a site to compare this product niche, many were interested. I plan on being shamelessly self promotional and asking everyone to click through, bookmark, tweet, Digg, and pass on to all their friends a link to my site. While this is not necessarily big time traffic, it should be a nice natural start to link building and traffic building. Not to mention free content review comments from people who know me. ;)

Okay, post product reviews before the comparison page...

2010-05-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Because that way you don't have to go back into the HTML of the comparison page to add the anchors.

I coded the comparison page and the three (well, two really, since one was also a winner in another comparison category already) review pages in DreamWeaver. Then posted the review pages one at a time. As I posted, I previewed the post, and copied and pasted the URL into the comparison table.

Then I posted the comparison table with all the links intact.

So it's mostly offline work on Good Olde DreamWeaver. Until I actually try to get these pages to look exactly right and the navigation just right... then I'll be spending a lot of time in my WordPress admin, I suspect.