Market Samurai Review – SEO competition module

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1dDq71L90

Market Samurai SEO Competition Module

I was doing backlink research in Market Samurai and noticed that it was no longer using Google pagerank in the backlink data tool.

Instead, I found Majestic SEO’s ACRank tool and had no idea what the data meant.

Market Samurai Blog

I first went to the Market Samurai blog ro read over the post on the new recovery changes the Eugene Ware and his team had implemented.

And in there I found the reference to the ACRank tool mention, but still had no idea what it really meant.

Majestic SEO Glossary

So I went to Majectic SEO and found the glossary of terms and went over a few hundred times to figure out what it was measuring.

That’s when I decided to do what I always do when I want to learn something.

I made a video.

Take a look and make sure I got it right. I’m pretty sure I did but you never know. There is always a nugget that passes through the sieve and I am fallible!

If I got it , the ACRank tool parses external links going to a web page into 15 different number sets.

A scale from 1 to 15, 15 being the most authoritative since in order to rank there you need over 1,417,176 incoming links.

Anyway you get the picture, the more you have links going to a page from an external root domain, the higher you move up the scale.

So Market Samurai, takes those ACRank data and uses that to measure a page’s link source to show a level of difficulty or lack thereof in your analysis.

It is not as accurate as Google pagerank but it is good enough for now until Market Samurai comes up with something better some time soon.

So there you have it.

Take a look at the video, you’ll see what I mean and I hope this will make it easier for you to evaluate what the numbers mean.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS. As always, if you find this info helpful don’t forget to “tweet”,’like”,or Google + and tell all your friends.Many thanks.

New YouTube Channel Design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1UjeEyZkrw

The sidebar of the new YouTube Channel design has a lot of functionality that might interest you.

The video highlights what you can do.

You should fill in the text “About” box with a description of your channel.  Optimize it with keywords that let the visitor know what your channel is about and that uses terms being searched for on YouTube.

You can also insert links to sites that you own or are of interest to your visitors.

There is the option of linking to FaceBook, Twitter and Google +. You should take advantage of that to establish some linking and increase your chances of getting noticed and ranking.

And there is another option of highlighting other Channels that you think are relevant to what you are doing and that might be of interest to your audience.

So take a look at the video and take action.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

Don’t forget to ‘Like”.”Tweet” or Google + the content. Many Thanks!

NE Emmies I Won

I came across this video from Khan Academy in the comments of the issue on Matt Carter’s blog and am embedding it so you can get informed about this very important issue.

It has serious implications for how information is shared on the web.

Now I understand the concern Hollywood and the big media companies have. They don’t want folks stealing their content.

I produced content for television for over 25 years so I get their point.

I just think this approach is not the right way to go about it.

While the intent of these laws is benign and understandable, the devil is in the details and this video illustrates the dangers by citing some of the language of the proposed law.

Now, for the moment, the law has been shelved. But rest assured, this issue will come up again. So you should be aware of what is going on and contact your Congressional reps if you are a US citizen and stay informed.

Stay with it stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzqMoOk9NWc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAJCoXHfoh8

The YouTube New Channel Design has some customizable features that you will want to be aware of.

Edit Channel

In the video above you can see how to set up and using the “edit channel” function select the different features available.

Edit Channel Nav Bar

Once you are in the edit area, you can start with the appearance screen under the Appearance tab and select the color schemes and graphic background for the site.

I go over this in another video.

In the Info Settings tab you can set up your meta title, meta description and you Feature,Feed or Video tab selection.

I also show you how to do this in greater detail in another video.

And finally you can go to the Featured tab and select which template you want to use for your Channel.

Don’t forget to check the “enabled featured tab” box if you want the “Featured” tab to appear in the main nav bar.

The other thing you want to do when you are done with the edit channel function, is go back to the main back office screen, go to the right sidebar and edit in a description of the Channel in the “about ” section.

This is important so you have your Channel properly optimized for your main and secondary keywords that define the site.

Don’t forget, YouTube is a search engine and needs all your meta titles,descriptions and keyword in order to serve up your channel for relevant queries and searches.

So take a look at the video and see how it can get you started.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

Don’t forget to “like”,”tweet” or Google + this post if you can. Many thanks.

Video Management To Optimize Your Content

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DspiBIJwkaA

In this video we take a look at the new video manager interface and what it can do for our video management.

Select Video Manager

To go to the Video Manager, your go to your main drop down box in the upper right corner of your main nav bar with the box of your channel name and select Video Manager from the drop down.

Left SideBar

The main Video Manger page will have a left hand side bar and a main column showing all your videos in chronological order.

At the top of the left sidebar is an “upload” button that is self explanatory.  There are other functions also there such as setting up to record with your webcam, creator tools and promoting your ads.

Under this button is a array of functions:

YouTube Video Manager Sidebar

You can select any of these functions. So you can check out your uploads, playlists, history, your watch laters, your favorites or your likes.

This gives you a lot of options to manage your video needs in one easy place.

Main Column

The other thing is that the video manager gives you a lot of information in the main channel column in the page.

The column header has two buttons in the nav bar, “Add To” and “Actions” that activate when you select a video from your upload list.

The Add To lets you add your video to a playlist or whatever list you want.

The Actions button lets you delete your video, set your privacy setting or select your copyright preference.

There is a search box on the right that comes in handy when you want to find a video from a long list of uploads.

And there are some icons in the video box that tell you if the video is public, if it is monetized, and all the way to the right, how many times it has been viewed and how many comments there are.

Edit Button

The main button of interest is the edit button in a video box.

Click that and you go to an edit screen that lets you review and change all sorts of information form the description and tags to privacy, geo targeting, and how the public can interact with your content.

In the main nav bar on this page you will be able to go to Info Settings, Monetize your video, technically enhance, annotate, set captions, view your video on the youtube search result page and return to the video manager homepage.

All in all the video manager function offers a lot of options for optimizing the video experience. So you should check it out.

Check out the video and you’ll get a much better idea of how it all works.

In the meantime, stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

Don’t forget to “like”, “tweet” or Google +1 this article if you can. Many thanks

New YouTube Channel Navigation Bar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Dfr2sdf8A

The new YouTube Channel Navigation bar is a compact three tab nav bar that offers a streamlined way of managing your channel.

The three tabs are the Featured tab, the Feed tab and the Video tab

Featured Tab

If you select the Featured tab as your default, what you will see when your Channel page displays is your latest uploaded video in the featured video display at the top of the channel and your uploaded videos listed in chronological order below.

This is what I have chosen for my channel.

The right sidebar displays my about information and a run down of my featured playlists and featured channels of other YouTubers who I think offer a good insight into how a successful channel is organized and designed.

Feed Tab 

Feed tab is probably the most popular as a selection because it shows all the latest activity of what you have been doing on YouTuvbe.  It shows the videos you have liked, commented on, favorited,uploaded subscribed to or added to a playlist.

Anything of note that you have done on YouTube will show up in the feed.

It’s a great way to let your subscribers know when you have new material and offers a great way to follow you on YouTube.

The right sidebar under the Feed tab displays the About information and Featured channels but does not show any Featured playlists that you see with the Featured tab.

Videos Tab

The Videos tab is self explanatory.  It displays all the videos you have uploaded to your Channel.

There is no right sidebar displayed when the Videos channel is loaded.

How To Configure The Navigation Bar

To configure the Nav Bar you go to the Edit Channel button on the upper right of the Main Nav bar and click it

You then go to the Info and Settings tab and select it.

And then you go to the drop down menu on the right under the Defautl Tab heading and select the default tab you want.

That is how you select the default tab you want for your channel.

You’ll note that the default tab that is selected will have a black background while the other two tabs will have gray backgrounds.

There is a check box under the Default tab drop down that you can check to send your subscribers to your Feed tab. This overrides whatever selection you have made in the drop down and ensures your followers will see your latest activity. That is an option you can take if you so choose.

And there you have it. The Channel Nave bar and how to use it.

Hope this has helped. Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

If this post and the video have help don’t forget to give it a “like”, a tweet or a Google +. Many Thanks

YouTube Channel Redesign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVwVU7Gidfw

The Edit Channel Function

One of the things about the new YouTube channel redesign is the ability to customize the look and feel of the channel, the ability to optimize the title, description and the nav bar and the ability to pick a site template that suits your needs.

Appearance Tab

The first tab you see once you click the edit channel button is the Appearance Tab.

The first option you have is a button that lets you go back to the old YouTube channel look and feel.

Old Channel Button

If for any reason you find the new look not to your liking, then this is the option for you.

Avatar Button

The next option offered is the avatar loading button.

This lets you load an avatar from your computer to use as a marketing icon for your channel.

If you are like most channel creators, that is something you will do.

This feature is easy to use and will give you unique branding of your channel.

Custom Background

The last offering is the background color selection tab.

Here you can pick a color for your channel background.

Or if you have a custom background you would like to upload, you can select a menu choice from the drop down button and insert a custom background.

Default Tab

The last option you have available is the default tab button.

Here you can select which tab, the feature, the feed or the video  that you want as your default display when your channel loads.

The feature tab will load your latest video at the top of the content and display your playlist videos as a list under the main video.

The feed tab displays all you activities that you have had in your channel. All the videos you have liked, favorited, comment on; channels you have subscribed to and uploaded, basically all of your recent activity on your channel. This is the default of choice of a lot of channel owners.

And finally, the video tab displays all of the videos you have uploaded to your channel.

These are the basic choices you have under the default drop down menu.

There is one added function.  There is a check box you can check that will load the feature tab when any of your subscribers come to your channel.  That is because whenever you make a change to your channel, your subscribers are automatically notified and the thought is when they come to your channel, they will want to see your featured content and this selection will make sure they do.

So there you have it.  Take a look at the video above and you will get a visual rundown of  how all this works.

In the meantime, stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS. If you find this post helpful give it a “like”,a tweet or a google +. Many thanks.

For more information you can check out YouTube help about the Youtube Channel Redesign.

 New YouTube Design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulw1g53ReLg

New Channel Design

If you have a YouTube channel then you may have noticed that there is a new YouTube Channel redesign that has happened in the past couple of weeks.

The new look and feel makes it easier to find and watch the content you have to offer, or at least that is its intended goal.

It offers you the channel creator a better way to organize and showcase your work and give your viewers the information they are looking for.

In YouTube’s own words the benefits are the following:

• A more streamlined and consistent design
• An easier way to find and view videos
• New, more flexible layouts for featured content, and
• A way to keep your audience engaged even when you don’t have new uploads

There are some things that don’t change. Again, according to Youtube, here is the list of things that stay the same:

“The following will remain intact and will not be altered as part of the Channels migration:

• Videos
• Playlists
• Comments
• Subscribers
• Likes
• Account Settings
• About this user
• Title
• Tags
• Visibility
• Redirect URLs
• Vanity URLs
• Tracking Pixels
• Google Analytics Account ID number
• Avatars, and
• Backgrounds images

All of these elements can be updated in the new design.”

So what does this all mean to the channel creator.

I think it means a better way to showcase your videos and organize them so that your best material gets highlighted.

The Header

The header is clean and gives a quick view of the channel’s view count.

Four Template Formats

And the format is offered in one of four templates each w ith its own way to present your channel content and the content of other channels you think your viewers would enjoy looking up.

The Video

The video above is an overview of the new channel design and what it has to offer you. So take a look and see for yourself.

And if for any reason you are not satisfied, there is the option of going back to the older design if you so choose.

So take a look, give it a try, check out what some of the leaders on YouTube are doing and go for it.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

If you want to read up on it you can read the YouTube Help document on the New Channel Design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6CM6ni1TE

Posterous – Content Curation and Content Sharing

In my first video Posterous Bookmarklet Set Up, I showed how to get a bookmarklet up to your bookmark menu bar in the new Posterous user face.

This allows you to access Posterous from the web page you are viewing if you find you want to share that web page with any number of sites you have configured on Posterous.

In the second video, Posterous – How To Set Up Posterous, I showed you how to set up an account and configure that account using the “autopost set up” button and the “add service” button.

That is how you choose which services you want to auto post to, be it twitter, facebook, your blog or which ever service available in the long list of services that appear in the selection box.

In the third video above, I show you how you can access Posterous from any page on the Web and from your Google reader.

This ability to post dynamically from wherever you are gives you tremendous leverage in sharing with your core audience and followers. So take advantage of it as you establish yourself online.

Have a look and see for yourself. The video lays out much more succinctly and clearly how to do all this.

So have a look. Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

If you find the video and this post helpful, please give it a “like”, a “tweet” or a Google +1. Many thanks.

In the first video I made about Posterous,I showed how to set up a bookmarklet.

The Set  Up

This is because a tutorial I watched showed how to do it in an older version and the new user interface is different.

But how do you set up Posterous?

Posterous – How To Set Up Posterous is a video that does just that.

It shows you how to create an account.

It makes sure that you know that what you use as a username will become your first Posterous “Space”.

A “Space” is  a site. That is what Posterous calls a its proprietary web sites just like Squidoo calls its sites Lens.

Profile Set Up

Once you have your account set up, you want to fill in your profile information.

Make sure you create a back link in your profile to one of your authority sites.  Posterous is a great source for back links.

With your profile set up, you’re now ready to set up your “Space” for autoposting.

AutoPost Set Up

To do that go to your “Space” on the Manage Space page and click the floral button to see the drop down menu.

Go down to AutoPost Set Up and select it.

Then select the “Add Service” Button.

Adding Services

Here you’ll have a ton of services to select from. For each one you select it will ask you for your log in information for that service.

Once you go through the process you will have a bunch of services you can autopost to through Posterous.

In the video above, I show you how to set up a WordPress blog to autopost to.

Once you have done that your are ready to go and use Posterous to  autopost information you find anywhere on the web.

There is a third video that shows you how to do that so if you are done here just check that one out.

That’s it. I hope this was helpful.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS- Don’t forget to give this post a “like”, a “tweet” or a Google +1. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtaJZJBWu_s

cPanel Problem

No print description under the icons

I had a problem on both my iMac and my PC laptop.  When I would go into my cPanel using the chrome browser, my cPanel would render with out print descriptions under the icons in the panel windows.

My cPanel felt very naked. Just icons to information about what they stood for.

So if fooled around clearing the cache and looking at the preferences in Chrome and just trying to figure out what could be causing the problem.

Things were OK in Firefox and Safari so I knew it wasn’t the cPanel.

I called Hostgator and asked what they thought and my customer service rep told me to check my extensions. That in all likely hood one of them was in conflict with Chorme or cPanel or both.

So I went into my extensions and disabled all.

And guess what?  Problem solved. Print descriptions reappear in cPanel.

Now the task begins. Turning the extensions on one by one to find the culprit.

Low and behold, about  a dozen in, the culprit causes the descriptions to disappear.

It was “Show Title Tag” version 1.6.1.  Disabled it and bingo, things are back to normal.

So here’s hoping this information can help you avoid wasting any time when if this happens to you, you have this post and video to see how to fix it.

That’s it.

Stay well, stay with it and talk soon.

PS. If this information helps, hit the “like”,”tweet” or Google +1 buttons. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69oJJ1OLHfc

Twitter Sign In

I read an interesting article about your twitter username and how you can change it without affecting your followers and your twitter account in general.

While I was reading it I thought how much easier it would have been to show the information in a video. It would have been much more complete and easy to understand.

So I decided to do a video about changing your username.

While doing the video I realized that the distinction between your username and your twitter site name were two different items controlled from two different places in your twitter account.

That is what this video is about.

How to Set Up and Sign In To Your Twitter Account

The first step is to sign up for a twitter account and there is where your will find it is important to think it through.

In the sign up screen the first field to fill in is the name field. Here you fill in the name of your twitter site. Some folks may use the same name for the site and username but generally they are often different because the username is limited to 15  characters and the name site can be longer up to 20 characters.

The second field is the email address field and that has to be an email address specific to that twitter account so you have to have a unique account set up for the purpose. I have a web site specific email address for each web site I build so I use that email address when setting up a twitter account to connect to that site.

The third field is the password field and there you create whatever password you want.

The fourth field is the username field. Here you are limited to 15 characters and this is the keyword that will appear in the URL of your twitter account in the address bar. So you want to take some care to make sure your username is keyword rich so that it appears in the url. It may not be the most important factor for ranking or SEO but it’s just good to get into the habit of thinking keyword and relevance whenever you can.

Twitter Confirmation Email

Once you have filled in all the fields and the information has been approved you submit and will go to a screen that will tell you to check your email box and to confirm your sign up.

Once confirmed you will go to a twitter sign in screen where you will log into your new twitter account.

Twitter Account Name

To control you twitter account name you want to first click the settings tab in the upper right hand screen drop down menu.

Once in the settings screen you want to click the profile tab in and fill in all the information on the page.

Your Twitter Account name  is the first field and it will reflect the name you chose when you sign up for the account.  You can choose to leave it or change it. Remember you have 20 characters to play with and that includes spaces.

The other fields to fill in are Geo location, web address for an associated website (this is important so do it, great for back links) and a bio box that you should fill with keyword rich descriptions of your business.

Twitter Username

Your twitter user name is very different from the twitter account name because it is shorter and because it appears in the URL for your account.

Here you should pick a keyword associated with your account, your business, your brand and make sure it is relevant,

The place you control your username in in the settings tab but under the account tab.

Here you can change your username to fit your business objectives and you can do it without affecting your existing Tweets, @replies, direct messages, or other data.

After changing it, make sure to let your followers know so you’ll continue receiving all of your Tweets with your new username.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to setting up and using your account than what you find in this article and in the video above, but the point here was to draw the distinction between your Twitter Site name and your Twitter Username.

I hope this information does that and take a look at the video above to see all this in action.

So there you have it.

Stay well, stay with it  and talk soon.

PS – Don’t forget to “like”,”tweet” and Google +1 if this helped you out. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgcIhWajw9Q

Posterous Bookmarklet

I was trying to figure out how to set up the Posterous Bookmarklet after watching a Challenge 2011 video and finally figured it out.

So I decided make this video about it.

Basically what you do is go to Posterous help and type in Bookmarklet.  

The url is http://www.posterous/help/bookmarklet/ .  Once three you click on the button on the upper right and drap the icon into your bookmark menu bar of which ever browser you are using.

I use Chrome.

And that’s it.

Once there if you find anything you want to forward to any number of platforms, be it  twitter, facebook, your website and so on, you can do it by clicking the bookmark and filling in the post box that appears. ( I’ll do another video about that).

And so there you have it.

I hope this is helpful. Check out the video above. Don’t  forget to “like”, tweet or +1 if you can. Many Thanks.

Stay well, stay with it, talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRUzevLibzQ

Amazon S3 Video Series

In the first video of this series, we saw how to set up an Amazon S3 account.

this video we learn how to create buckets, upload data and set permissions to make our selected files public.

Create Bucket

Once you have logged into your S3 account, you’ll find a sidebar on your left and at the very top is a “create bucket” button.

When you click the button, it will open a dialog box in the middle of your screen and offer you options.

One option is to pick a name.

Now when you pick a name, you’ll have to pick something unique to Amazon S3.  All names are checked against the entire S3 database for duplication. That means if someone else has used the file name you will have to come up with something else.

S3 will suggest you use a company name as a prefix or something unique to you or your company as you search for a bucket name.

Once you have a bucket name, the ne In xt thing is to select a “region” that corresponds to your own geographic location or that closely matches the area from which you will be doing most of your business.

This has to do with where the data will be stored and where it will be served to maximize speed and minimize load times.

When you have a name and region picked out, click the “create” button on the lower right corner of the dialog box and your bucket is created.

Upload Data

To upload data to your bucket, select your bucket and then click the “upload” button on the upper left corner of the bucket menu bar.

You’ll notice the menu bar offers a list of functions:

• Upload
• Create Folder
• Actions
• Refresh
• Properites
• Transfers
• Help

The one we are interested in now is ‘upload”

When you click upload, you will be taken to new “Upload Select Files” dialog box.

Here you want to click the “add files” button.  When you do click it, it will open you computer file system and you navigate to the data you want to upload.

When you select the file you want to upload (you can shift command several files) go down to the lower right and click the “open” button.

You will see the files appear in the ”Upload Select Files” dialog box.

Go down to the lower right of the  ”Upload Select Files” dialog box and click ‘Start Upload”

When you do, you will see new “Transfer” area appear below your ”Upload Select Files” dialog box. It will display the file that is uploading and in the upper right a progress button showing how far you are into completing the task.

Once the transfer is done, your new file appears in the file area of your bucket.

Set Permissions 

When you upload data to your Amazon S3 account, all of the permission settings default to private.

That means that only the account owner has access to the data.

If you want to distribute the files for public consumption, like embedding videos or making reports available, you have to reset the permission of the file you want to make public.

To do that you have two ways to do it.

Right Click File

You select the file you want to make public, right click it and in the drop down menu select “make public”

That is the easy way.

If you want a more detailed approach, you can select the “properties” command in the drop down instead.

That will open up the “Properties” screen below the bucket where you will see  an information sidebar giving all the information about your file.

On the right is a box with a menu bar with three tabs: Details, Permissions, and Meta Data.

The Details tab gives you the link you will need to serve up the file you have made public. I would not change the default settings for storage or encryption.

The Permissions tab is where you will set the file to go public.  If you have already selected the “make public” command you will see a setting for “everyone” under the “grantee” box already in your data screen.

If you haven’t used the “make public” command, you can click the “add more permissions” command and open a new “grantee” command line, open the drop down, select “everyone” and check the “open/download” box only, move to the lower right and click “save” and you are done.

You now have a file that can go public.

You want to go back to the “Details” tab, copy the link and paste in your browser address bar and make sure it opens or plays if it is a video.

Conclusion

So there you have the basics on how to create buckets, upload data and set permissions for your Amazon S3 account.

All you have to do is take action and get going.

If you want to see how it’s done , just watch the video above and take it from there.

I hope this has been helpful.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS. Don’t forget to “+ one “,” like” or tweet. Thanks.

How to Set Up An Amazon S3 Account

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDbSsUabGkA

AWS S3

Amazon S 3 is one of the services offered by Amazon Web Services that you should know about.

It is a great solution for storing all your data usingin a secure and safe environment and all for a very low price.

It is easy to set up but takes a little time to figure out just to get used to the user interface.

The video I just produced shows you how to find the main page and how to find the link for the Amazon S 3 product page.

You should take the time to read through it to see what the service has to offer and to check out the pricing.

Amazon S3 Sign Up

Once you have got a good idea of what the service has to offer, you can click on the sign up button and begin the sign up button.

You will be asked to sign up using an email address and a password.

Once you have selected your email address and password, you will be directed to enter credit card information and then you will need to confirm with  an opt in email.

Once that is all done, you will be able to log in to your new account and check things out.

Amazon S3 Account

Amazon S 3 uses a hierarchical structure to organize you data.

It calls its folders “buckets”.  These “buckets” are the main folders in which you will load in subfolders with will hold your data in folders of their own.

It is all pretty self explanatory as you set up your account.

Safe and Accessible Data

Amazon S 3 is a great way to keep all your data in a safe and accessible environment either as back up or as a distribution center for your key data,

It is free to upload data and free to set up. You only pay when you download files and data. The product page shows the pricing so there should be no surprises there.

So there you have it.

In the next video we will see how to upload data and create buckets. We will see how the file structure works and learn how to set your permissions to allow the data to be distributed to the Web.

In the meantime, stay well, stay with it and talk soon.

Utube – How to set up a playlist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDhUzzBg5oE

YouTube Playlist Set Up

If you have a YouTube Channel, chances are you have picked and saved some of the videos you have viewed to a playlist.

I have too except I never categorized my videos, I just dumped them into a general playlist without any discrimination between music and marketing or anything for that matter.

In the video I made I show how you can create a list of playlists that are organized by keyword.

Keyword Playlist

In my case I had about 200 videos and they were all lined up in chronological order.

The thing is I have created video series around WordPress, cPanel, ScreenFlow, SEOmoz, Google SEO guide and on and on.

So  what I did was go to the search box in my video back office and type in a keyword.

The search returned all videos relating to that keyword and then I would create a playlist for that keyword.  Then I would select the videos for that keyword  and save those videos to the playlist.

In the video above I show you how to do that and you’ll see how that can come in real handy when you are searching for a video from a long list.

It’s just easier to find what you are looking for when it is organized to be found.

I actually refer to my videos all the time when I need to remember how to do something.

YouTube Playlist – Traditional

The traditional way to use the YouTube playlist is to watch a video and select the playlist button under the video window and save that video to playlist or create one to save it to.

Under this scenario you can create you playlist by whatever category or keyword you choose and organize your material to suit your way of thinking.

Conclusion

However you set up your YouTube playlist, you should make a point of starting and using a playlist system to get more out of the videos you have in your YouTube account.

That way you can optimize the use of the information you have at your disposal and see if it can help you better enjoy or even make you some money along the way.

So there you have it.  How to create a YouTube Playlist and make it work for you.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

Screen Capture Software Review

Screenflow 3.0 update

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55bPfoQobU

I finally figured out how to video the update of the Screenflow 3.0 Callout Properties.

Video Inside a Video

I had to video a video in order to demonstrate how the new Callout features worked because Callouts only activate on a pre-taped screen capture.

That means I did a video in Screenflow ( I didn’t import a video from my video camera) and than pulled a Pirandello… I made a video from inside a video!

Classic Callout (Circle effect) Mouse Cursor

Anyway…I show how the classic Callout works as a circle effect you can magnify and resize.

Freehand Callouts

And then I show how the new freehand feature works to let you draw a square/rectangle instead of a circle.

There is also a spotlight circle cursor that lets you draw a path you want to highlight. And I show how it works.

ForeGround Window

The only thing I didn’t demo is the Foreground Window Callout since I couldn’t figure out what to use it for.

Once I figure that out, I’ll make a video to demo that feature.

So take in the video and have a go at Screenflow 3.0 Callout Properties.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS. This is a great piece of software so click here to buy it and enjoy making really cool videos.

Screenflow 3.0 Screen Capture Software

A Look At Google

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BILHob14LzU

I just read In The Plex by Steven Levy.  It’s the story of Google and much more.

Whatever you think of Google, this book gives you a great insight into how the company came about, how it thinks and how it operates.

If you are in Internet Marketing or Affiliate Marketing this is important because it makes you aware of the depth of talent and competence behind the machine.

It saved me some time, effort and money when I was watching a video for a product I am certain the engineers at Google will most certainly nail when they find it.

Take a look at the video if you haven’t already and get yourself a copy of the book.

It will put things into perspective and I think will help you make better decisions in growing your online business.

Stay with it, Stay well and talk soon.

Learn YouTube For Marketing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1rIlEXcXaw

If you want to use YouTube for marketing,  then the YouTube Browse tab in the main menu bar is something you should look at.

I have a series of marketing videos with plenty of YouTube tips on my YouTube Channel, ClaudePelanne.

Don’t forget to use the search box in the upper right of the channel, type in YouTube Marketing and you’ll see the videos appear.

The video above this post will take you through the Browse function in YouTube.

Tip 1

It’s great because it allows you to drill down in the category of your selection.

You can choose between videos, music, movies, trailers, and live streaming shows.

Just take you pick and then on the landing page hit the category button and start searching.

Tip 2

When you get to the first page after your subcategory selection, look for a more info link and click it.

This will take you down to more subcategories in your area. In my video we chose Sports and found videos on sports I would never have guessed would have anything on YouTube.

Tip 3

When you get to the subcategory you want click it and see how many videos appear.

Go through any or all and make sure you click the “more info” on the description box to see what keywords and tags are being used. They can give you ideas for what you can use when you broaden you reach in your niche research.

YouTube Browse Marketing Conclusion

The Browse function can be used as a marketing research and niche research tool to give ideas about material to cover and keywords to select as you develop your own website or your own product to sell.

So take a look at my video and make sure you give it a “like” or a “+One”, that would be greatly appreciated.

That’s it. Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

How to use the Annonations Function in ScreenFlow 3.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMdU4tdkPao

In the video I show how to use the annotations feature in ScreenFlow 3.0

Media Tab

I start the video with a recap of importing media using the media tab functions.

Text Tab

I also do a quick recap of how to insert text in a lower third position on the screen using the text tab function

Annotations Tab

I then go into the annotation tab and show what the arrow, line, filled square, open square and circle look like and how you can modify them.

I show how you can set the time for the effect in the timeline and how to put in dissolves if you want to.

If you haven’t yet seen the video, just take a look and see how you can use this really useful feature.

If you find this video helpful don’t forget to click the “like” button and the “+ One” button. I thank you for that.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

PS- check out my YouTube Channel for all sorts of useful videos and you can check out my other videos on ScrrenFlow 3.0 right on this site.

ScreenFlow 3.0 Review Part 1

and

ScreenFlow 3.0 Part 2 Media Properites

How To Use The Media Properties Function

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baqTwWTYaww

I made video 2 to show the two functions of the Media Properties tab.

The first is a button at the bottom of the Media Properties box that lets you import media ( videos, photos, audio files).

The other lets you select your record functions.

I show how to import videos from your computer, or anywhere else for that matter.

The nice thing is you can select a video you have imported, wait a couple of seconds and you’ll see a play button appear on the video, and then hit it to see the video run.

This allows you to check out the video before you start editing.

There are two ways load a video into your timeline channel.  You can drag it over or you can double click it and it will install on a dedicated timeline channel.

When you are in the timeline channel you can right click the video and select to separate the audio and it will then install audio on a dedicated timeline channel.

Nice functionality that makes it easy to edit sound.

Anyway I have a video so check it out and don’t forget to like and plus one if you find the information helpful. That would be greatly appreciated.

I also have a video Part One called Screen Capture -ScreenFlow 3.0 Review if you want to see the first video of the series.

I have a 6 part series on ScreenFlow on my YouTube Channel. Just type in ScreenFlow in the search box and it will pull up all the videos for you.

Thanks and Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

Enjoy.

ScreenFlow 3.0 Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHOQLyLht6I

I just upgraded my screen capture tool ScreenFlow to the latest version 3.0.

It has some very interesting and new features. For example under the files drop down you now have a New Empty Document function that opens a new screenflow document Main Window.

Remember how you use to have to record something to open a new document? Well the New Empty Document selection means you don’t have to do that any more.

When you load in a video into the channel below the timeline you can right click the channel and select to separate the audio and it automatically sends the audio to new channel below.

New Features

Call Out Properties

In the Call Out Properties tab of your palette you can now select different regions on your screen with a paint brush tool, blur the content, add shadows, and create a default style.

Annotations

In the new annotations tab, you can draw circles, squares, lines and arrows on your video and adjust the size, color, postion and thickness. You can also define annotation styles.

Improved Timeline

You can add a timeline from the Preferences window,set a default height, set default duration of still images and use SMPTE timecode.

You can also reorder tracks,resize them,delete them, insert space and set your duration of your transitions from the inspector window.

Media Library

You can now preview video or audio in you media library.

You can also resize the library items.

Audio

You can view audio waveforms and clipped audio peaks in the timeline and edit accordingly.

You can smooth audio levels, remove background noise and convert text to synthesized speech…Not bad!

Export Improvements

You can customize you export presets and see the time remaining in exports.

You can export to iPad with an iPad preset. 3.0 will export to vimeo and YouTube.

It has 720 and 1080 support for YouTube Publishing.

Video Canvas and Lion OS

3.0 also has some canvas improvements that let you move video clips around, set the position for an object by entering the coordinates into the inspector and change the background color of your canvas.

3.0 also is compatible with Lion OS with features like Autosave,Resume,Versions and full screen mode.

I am going to be doing a video series and with that in mind, follow this post is the first video intro of Screenflow 3.o.

So have a look and remember if you find it helpful, please give it a Like and a Google +1.

Stay with it, Stay well and Thanks and Enjoy

If you want to see the full series of videos I have on ScreenFlow go to my YouTube Channel and type in ScreenFlow the search box on the upper right of the Channel screen and you will get all the videos.
[wdgpo_plusone]

There is a great way to get started that costs you absolutely nothing and it is called The Challenge.

The Challenge with Ed Dale

It is a program offered by Ed Dale, Dan Raine, Robert Somerville (better known as Guru Bob) and it is designed for the beginner who is looking to build a business online.

Now there are many programs that are great and I am going to do a series of reviews of the ones I have taken and continue to use.

But The Challenge is the very first one I took back in August of 2008 ( it was called The 30 Day Challenge back then) that I found the most helpful in getting to understand this thing called Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.

It was free and continues to be free so there is no risk to you at all.

What does cost is some of the steps in the process that involve domain name registration, hosting and buying tools like Market Samurai if you choose to do so.

The thing is that this program has grown for about 900 people who took the first Challenge in 2005, to 35,000 who took it in 2008 when I first found it, to an expected 100,000 who will sign up this year.

The course material is really well designed by a team of Internet Marketers who are actually practicing what they are teaching, so you will get a full array of options of tactics and strategies to develop an online business.

And remember, the operating term here is ONLINE BUSINESS.  This is a business not amateur hour. So you have to be prepared to invest time and money over the long haul if you expect to see results.

But this program will get you started on the right footing while you get to meet interesting folks along the way.

I am no longer new to the business, but I am still a ways from being a super affiliate. So I plan on taking this and I hope to get my family in with me like we did last year when we put together my daugher’s site OrigamiGift.co.

You will learn something no matter what your level of expertise so take a look at this program and take it at your own pace and on your own schedule.
The Challenge

Take the Challenge and learn how to make your first $1 online.

PS. The links here are affiliate links so if you take the course and sign up I will get a commission if you purchase anything through the program.

Early Bird Whiteboard

In the first video reviewing Affiliate Summit East, I mentioned the early bird whiteboard that I thought was a real gem for attendees to take in.

It started at 8 am on Monday and Tuesday and was a really great session critiquing web sites and offering really helpful information.

It was run by Eric Nagel, but there were other knowledgeable people in the room who were experts in their own right so that made for some very good feedback.

But there were a couple of other really good resources.

The Bloggers’ Lounge ( also the Press Room)

The bloggers’ lounge was a room set aside for the press and bloggers covering the conference and was a place where you could find people who are nice to know.

In my case I ran into Vinny O’Hare by chance walking down a main lounge and introduced myself. I listen to his podcasts that he produces with Deborah Carney and wanted meet them to tell them how much I appreciated their work.

Well he invited me to stop in and see him and meet Deborah in the Bloggers Lounge when I got a chance. And that’s what I did.

The place was where presenters and big industry names hung out and blogged about what was happening.

So that was another great opportunity to get to meet really interesting folks.

Ask The Experts

The third resource was called Ask The Experts and was an end of the second day event where you could join a group run by an expert and ask any questions you wanted.

In my case I wanted to get information about setting up a Facebook page properly and I went to the Facebook table and learned a hell of a lot in the hour I spent there. It was run by Justin Rondeau who was a great presenter. Lots of questions from the group made for a really great session.

So there you have it.  I made this video to fill out the information about what was available to you at Affiliate Summit and hope this will help in planning your own agenda if you decide to go to Affiliate Summit West or if you return to New York for Affiliate Summit East next year.

Take a look at the video and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr1mC1oQyQ0

Affiliate Summit East 2011

I just spent last Saturday through Tuesday in New York City attending the Affiliate Summit East conference at the Hilton in Manhattan.

It was a great time in which I sat in on a bunch of conference presentations, all well run and well attended.

Some were more interactive than others but the presenters were all industry names with a lot to offer.  So all you had to do is show up and soak it in.

There were three full days of conferences, working the merchant and affiliate network expo areas.

I met some really interesting people and was there from 8 am until 8 pm on one day.

If you are in the business or just starting out, this is a great event to attend just to meet the best and brightest and learn a whole bunch while you are doing it.

I made a video so take a look and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVXVYkZr3CY

Voice Activation for Google Search

I was doing some searching for things on Google and I noticed this microphone icon in the search box.

I hadn’t noticed it before even though the feature has been out for about a month.  I figure it might have been in beta and I wasn’t one of the lucky few.

Anyway I made a video demo so take it in and enjoy.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCCLq7MGt1s

Organic Link Building

An Answer To Article Marketing Sucks

How This Started

I found a video shortly after watching the GoogleWebmaster Help video on article marketing.

I think it is a great follow up to the article marketing video even though it pre-dates it by a year.

The information is an answer as to how to build organic links.

This is all assuming that you are creating original great content in the first place.

There are eleven points made by Matt Cutts and lets take a look at them.

Controversy

Nothing attracts attention like a good rant. And some people make it their stock in trade to rail against the world. But too much of anything can eventually lead to a loss of interest so if you want to rant, make sure it is an honest beef that will help your audience with a solution or beneficial outcome. It is also nice if humor is part of the process. I guess a little sarcasm can go a long way.

Community Participation

Participating in a community by giving help to others is a great way to build authority and get quality back links. There are public forums and private forums that are authority centers for information that can go a long way to serving community needs. So find a group of like minded people around your niche area of interest and see how you can offer whatever knowledge you have to help others out.

Original Research

Doing some research and experimentation and publishing your data for all to see is a great way to generate interest and establish your authority in a subject or niche. It is a way to get recognition and build a following and Google will recognize that in the process.

Newsletters

Newsletters are another way to build relationships and followers who will organically link to your website. This kind of link building is what adds value and authority to your site.

Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are all great ways to distribute content alerts and link back to your site. The recognition generated is genuine and carries weight with Google so it is in your interest to have a social media strategy in place.

Articles

Articles still work. As long as they are unique,well written and add value to the conversation. So make the effort to create valuable content and get it to your site and you will be rewarded with return visits while you build a following.

Blogging

Blogging is definitely a must and WordPress is a great platform to use. This is one suggestion that you will not want to ignore because it is very clear that the folks at Google love blogs. New content and fresh content are the order of the day, so this is one activity that is a must.

Whichever platform you choose is your decision but you will want to set up a blog to be in the competition.

Tutorials and How To’s

Tutorials and how to’s are a great way of building a following that will send you solid and natural organic links. Anything you can demonstrate to your community or target audience will enhance your ranking as an authority.

Create a Product or Service

Creating product or service builds a list and an income stream. One common characteristic of successful marketers is that they are creating plug ins or themes or tools that help build businesses online or solve problems.
In the process they get a trusting group of followers to buy the products, spread the word as affiliates and funnel back links to the marketer’s website in the process.

Site Architecture

Design and maintain good site architecture to make it easy for users to navigate your site. A rewarding and pleasant experience on your site helps build links.

Video

A very effective way to build links is to make and distribute videos. Some people learn visually and so videos should be part of any information distribution system.
Check out YouTube, Vimeo, Ustream and all available video services to see which one can help you build community and back links.

Conclusion

So there are the eleven points raised by Matt about ways that Google likes to see people build back links.

No link exchanges, link farms, link buying need be used. Just good solid organic link building will do.

Hope this review has been helpful.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

If you want to check out the video, here it is:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkLFlaWxgJA

Article Marketing Sucks?

According to whom does article marketing suck?

According to Google, That’s Who!
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-v53nH3zXw

I was checking out things with Google on YouTube and came across this video by Matt Cutts from April of this year.

This was about the time of the Panda update and pertained to something I like to do. Write and push out articles to create some back links.

Indeed, I was writing articles for the hell of it before I even had a web site and would push them to a bunch of article directories.

So imagine my deep disappointment when I came across the video below.

Google Does Not Like Article Marketing

What you will hear in the video is that Matt Cutts and Google are no longer great fans of article marketing.

That’s because these articles are written for the sole purpose of creating back links through content farms or article directories.

For the most part, they are often poorly written with lousy content. They define duplicate content at its worst and duplicate anchor text that goes with it.

None of the links you get from article marketing have great value and you are much better off creating your own original, unique content that generates a natural volume of links from people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Since there is no value add to the process of article marketing as it was practiced in the past, you are going to a lot of wasted effort in pursuing it

How Disappointing

I guess things are changing and the Farmer/Panda marches on.

I see the point though I’m not sure I understand completely.

Not all the content in article directories is garbage. I find good stuff there when researching topics though there is a lot of garbage also.  Not everything in the NYT is fit to print either!

That said, when the big guerilla speaks, you have to pay attention.

So what is the solution? On another tape I’ll post where Matt tells you what he considers value.  Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Here is the video about article marketing below. Check it out and tell me what your take is.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xP-pTmlpY

How To Use YouTube Browse for Market Research

I just had a comment from a YouTuber about a video I did on the Browse function in YouTube.

When I reviewed the video I saw that some of the Browse feature had changed so I made the video below to go over the changes.

Channel Listings Gone

Basically the main change is that Channel listings of the most viewed and popular Channels no longer appear in the results.

What you now get are the following headings:

• Videos
• Music
• Shows
• Trailers
• Live

Each one of these heading has an option to dig deeper by categorie in a drop down or as part of the selection in the landing page that is broken down into different headings.

You’ll see what I mean when you screen the video.

Market Research Using YouTube Browse

The point is that the Browse feature can be used to see trends and what is moving and hot on YouTube and it comes in real handy as an out of the box way of researching niches and products that might be great to market.

So take a look and see if you can use this in your online marketing efforts.

That’s it.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqVFF2U-MGk

Google Sets Tool

I was reading  my rss feed of Viperchill where Google Sets was mentioned as a nice tool for market or niche research.

I took a look at it and found it can come in handy to get ideas of related keywords and niche ideas.

What it does is drill horizontally as opposed to vertically so you get an idea of what may appeal across the niche or keyword you are researching.

I made this video below so check it out and see for yourself.

The down side of the tool is that is does come up with single word returns that make no sense.  You will see a “of” , “and” , “the” as well as other prepositiona,articles and conjunctions appear in the results.

But you will also find suggestions for keywords or related niches that you would not think of at first.

So all in all it is worth a quick look since it is a simple tool and very easy to use.

There you have it.  Take a look and see what it can do for you.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCCFyqfHWQw

Speed Matters

Google announced the roll out of a new feature on the Chrome platform called Google Instant Pages.

What is Google Instant Pages? Well it’s a way for getting you to results you are looking for a lot faster than it otherwise takes right now.

And if you get to those results faster, you will be a happy user and do more searches than your counterparts who have to wait longer for their search results.

More searches for Google means more eye balls, and more eye balls looking for longer periods of time at more results means more ad revenue for all.

Load Time

A key factor here is the load time you experience when you are searching for information. Or even more importantly, the time it takes for your customer to get information from your website.  That is because Instant Pages will apply to all searches and sites when it is fully rolled out and that can mean more conversions if your site is set up right.

In the video below, there is the Google video that shows you the difference in load time between a site with Instant Pages and one without it.

So take the time to take in my review and then go to Webmaster Central to see for yourself if you want to process all the information for yourself.

There you have it.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV4c_xDPXqk

Google Webmaster Central

Speed Matters

 
Free shipping for orders over $29! Save up to 70% on Inkjet and Laser Toner!

Google Webmaster Central Blog

What Are The Farmer/Panda Guidelines?

There has been a lot of ink spilled about the Google Farmer/Panda algorithm update and what it all means to Internet Marketers and more specifically to Affiliate Marketers.

Well there is a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog about what specifically the Google team wanted to achieve with these changes.

I just recorded a video that takes you through the information about what Google wants you to do when you create content for your websites.

They list 23 specific points you should be aware of and implement if what you are doing is relevant to each one of these points.

They also give some more pointers of what affects your site ranking in the closing paragraphs of the post.

Suffice it to say, that you should be writing or researching your content to make sure what you present is unique and adds to the body of knowledge of your niche or whatever it is your site is about.

They are looking for good writing, grammatically and stylistically.  And they are looking for material that is well developed and given the length and time to offer value to the reader.

This is all about the user experience and the importance Google places on giving people the information they are asking for.

So take in the video and see for yourself straight from the source what Framer/Panda is all about. I think that is more valuable than letting someone else do it for you and you may see things that others don’t.

So have a look and I hope this helps you succeed online.

CloudBlueprint is a 100% free video course on how to make a living online. 

CloudBlueprint Video Course

I make a point of learning as much as I can from people I trust.  Here is a course that is just out and I know there is going to be some really great information about making money online.  Not BS but useful actionable information.

I follow Glen on all matters about affiliate marketing and blogging and always come away with something new.

Now if you want to find out more about this guy just go to Viperchill and check him out.

For now here is what he is offering and all it will cost you is your time and effort.

Go for it.

CloudBlueprint: Intro from ViperChill HQ on Vimeo.

.

Affiliate Marketing Is More Than 9 Simple Steps

In my previous post I put up a great graphic offered by Rae Hoffman Dolan that shows 9 basic steps in the affiliate marketing process.

The graphic is a easy way to understand the basics in getting your head into affiliate marketing. And in that sense it is helpful in getting the newcomer to the business thinking more clearly about what is involved.

I thought I’d take a stab at filling in some of the blanks, given I have been at this for three years now and can shed some light on how to set up your expectations of what it takes to learn affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing: Early Learning Phase

I think before you do anything you should do a lot of reading and observing.  That’s because affiliate marketing is a sophisticated and tricky business that calls for technical knowledge of how the internet works along with business common sense on how to set up and run a real business.

The temptation is to dive right in and start launching sites and stuff online.  While that is a noble instinct, I think you are better off just watching how the game is played before you get on the field and try out a few shots.

How long should you wait?  That’s up to you.  You will find plenty of people ready and willing to teach you for a price and I found it real hard to figure out who was right for me and who was just interested in taking money off my hands.

With some time just watching and seeing what people are saying about products and services, you will find out soon enough who is the real deal and who you should avoid.

Whatever you do, pick a program that fits your level of understanding.  Move to more sophisticated programs once you get a grasp of the basics.  For example I stayed away from Pay Per  Click at first because it was way over my head and it can cost a lot of money if you don’t know what you are doing.  You might want to do the same.

I have a list of people listed in my sidebar that you can take a look at.  I wish I had known about these folks in my first few months and that would have saved me time and money.

So there is my rant about the early learning phase.

[Image provided courtesy of the Sugarrae affiliate marketing blog.]

Let’s look at the steps of the How Affiliate Marketing Works graphic.

Affiliate Program Sign up

This first sounds simple enough, but it really is the last step in a multi-step process.

Before you can sign up with an affiliate program you have to decide what you want to sell.

Before you decide what you want to sell you have to do some market research.  More specifically you want to do some keyword research to determine the level of demand and the level of traffic your keywords can gererate.

All of this requires some experience and knowledge of what keywords are; how they work; where they are in the buy cycle and how you can use them to your advantage given the competition there is for them.

You are going to want to learn how to register a domain name. You are also going to want to learn how to set up a web site to go along with that domain name and you are going to want to create articles and content to put on that website in a way that optimizes what the search engines are looking for.

You get the picture?

This is a real business that takes time and effort to master.

Now we are still at step one.

The thing is this is a crucial step to get right because it makes a lot of difference in whether you stand a chance to succeed at making some money.

Affiliate Link

When you get through all the steps in phase 1 and succeed in getting approved, then you get your product or service affiliate link from an affiliate program.

This is a piece of code that has an identifier on it that is specific to your account with the merchant.  It tells the merchant that the traffic it is receiving with that code on it is traffic you have sent to the merchant.  If that traffic buys you get a commission.

You put that affiliate link on your website.  Your link can take different forms.  Sometimes it is a visual banner display that a visitor can click on. Other times it can be a product image that is clickable. Or it can be a text link in the copy of your site content in an article or in the product description.

Whatever the form, it is a link that sends your visitor to a merchant’s site and with some luck or good pre selling you get that visitor to buy the product or service.

There is a whole body of information about masking or cloaking your affiliate link to prevent bad guys from stealing your link but that is something for another time.

Customer Visits Your Website

The next step is pretty straight forward.  You set up you website, get traffic and visitors are coming to your site.

Customer Clicks Your Link

You have a visitor arrive at your site. He/she reads what you have to offer and clicks on the banner, text link, product image and is sent to the merchant site.  Bravo! You got a click.

The Cookie

When the visitor clicks on one of your links, a piece of code is put on his/her computer with your identifier on it.  It is called a cookie. It tells the merchant who belongs to the link and who should get a commission. It also tells the merchant that the cookie is good for 30-45-60 days so that if that visitor doesn’t buy right away you still have a shot at getting a commission.

Vistor Buys on Merchant’s Site

You luck out and the visitor buys a product or service and your cookie is still on his/her computer.

Merchant Checks Cookie

When someone buys something from the merchant and the transaction goes through and is confirmed, that merchant looks for an affiliate link and a cookie to find out who referred the sale.

Merchant Confirms Cookie

When the merchant finds the cookie and ties it to the confirmed sale, that sale generates a commission for you the affiliate.  The amount is determined in the affiliate agreement which you have read and are familiar with.

Commission Report

A record of all your sales and commissions is filed in a report kept by the merchant in your affiliate account.

Payment Period

At the end of the payment period specified in the affiliate agreement, you will receive a payment by check or direct deposit or by whatever means agreed to in the affiliate agreement.  This payment reflects all the commissions generated for that period of time, usually on a monthly basis.

Conclusion: The Affiliate Marketing Process

This whole process takes time to learn and digest.

As was mentioned earlier, the research and set up of an affiliate relationship takes time and effort. You have to learn a whole bunch of things about keywords, domain names, web site set up and design and content creation.

There is the issue of getting traffic and getting links to your site that haven’t been covered here but that you will also learn how to do.

Take Your Time

The whole point here is to take your time and learn to take in information in small digestible pieces.

It took me just about a year before I began to put things together and the next two years of trial and error to feel confident I could work in this business.

Now my experience was starting from total ignorance and going in the wrong direction more than once.

So just give yourself plenty of time and plenty of slack in learning how to do affiliate marketing online.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Here is a graphic that shows how affiliate marketing works.

The diagram below is a visual rendition of the process that unfolds when you sign up with a merchant to sell his or her product/service. It takes you through the various steps that occur and lead to your receiving a commission.

It was commissioned by Sugarrae, aka Rae Hoffman Dolan, a professional online marketer – ( I’m really tired of the term super affiliate since I’ve been taken by a few) – who is happy to see it propagate far and wide.

It’s a great short explanation of the essence of affiliate marketing.

Sugarrae is the real deal and you should read what she has to say. You’ll learn more in one paragraph from her than in some 80 or 100 page ebooks. Her site can be found at  http://www.sugarrae.com/

This graphic is one sample of that.

Enjoy

Click here to view a larger version.

[Image provided courtesy of the Sugarrae affiliate marketing blog.]

Index problem

Google Webmaster Homepage

I was checking out my website to see what Google was indexing and had a research tool return that I had only one indexed page in Google.  I was really surprised so I went to the browser and typed in  site:www,affiliatestartingline.com.  Sure enough, the only return was one indexed page.

I really got worried and tried to figure out what was going on. Then I remembered I sometimes use my domain without the prefix www.  So I tried the same command without the prefix site:affiliatestartingline.com.  And boom, there were all the indexed results.

Lesson learned is this.  Google sees your prefixed domain and your un-prefixed domain as two separate domains. So you might find yourself with indexing one or the other or a mix of both.  You don’t want that.

Index Solution

The solution is found in Google’s Webmaster tool.

You need to have a Google account and then you need to sign up in the Google Webmaster area.  Register both your prefixed and unprefixed domains.

In my case I had already signed up the prefixed domain in the Webmaster tool for my account so I added the unprefixed domain.

Once you have registered your accounts, click on one of your domain names to go to the Webmaster tool dashboard for that account.

On the sidebar on the left select the Site Configuration tab.  Scroll down and select Settings.

This will take you to a screen with the preferred domain function ready for your use.  Select a domain as your preferred domain.

When you do that, Google will index all pages to that preferred domain regardless of whether the prefixed or unprefixed domain is used.

Redirect Your Domain

There is one last step Google wants you to take.  Go to your Web host, go to the domains panel in your cPanel and select the Redirect icon.  This takes you to the input screen where you will select the domain that is not preferred and redirect it to the preferred domain.

Complete that step and you are done.

Now all your indexing will be directed to one domain and your data will truly reflect the latest status of your site.

If you want to see this in a video, check out my video on Preferred Domain set up, that should make it easy for you to take the steps to solve this problem.

I hope this has been helpful.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous.

Read a nice article about brevity.  It comes compliments of Copyblogger and you should check it out.

Looking to build some back links.  Try this tool it’s called BackLink and it’s an incredible way to build back links.  It costs $20 and it’s worth much much more.

That’s the Tip of the Day.  Enjoy.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous

Related articles by Zemanta

• 140 Characters of Simple Value
• Simplicity is the Theme for December

Google Instant Preview

Google Instant Preview – What is it and what does it mean to the Internet Marketer?

Google has a feature called Instant Preview and I made a video review what it is and what it means to you as a marketer.

You find the Instant Preview icon in the search results at the right hand end of title line in the form of a magnifying glass.

When you click it, it renders a page of the website for that result.

What this means is that you want your website to be optimized for the Instant Preview.

You want your titles and headlines clearly visible and easy to read.  There has to be instant recognition of what your site is about and what it can do for the reader.

It also means that results in the lower listings may have a better chance of getting looked at because I found myself checking out the sites on the first results page.  It was so easy to do I went right down the page in no time.

So there you have it. Check out the video below and see how Google Instant Preview can work for you.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

• LOVE

• MAKING MONEY

• BEAUTY

• ENTERTAINMENT

• HEALTH

May Your Travels Be Prosperous

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tips for Good Website Design
• WordPress Plugins

 
 
Free shipping for orders over $29! Save up to 70% on Inkjet and Laser Toner!

Claude Pelanne YouTube Channel

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners- A Great Source of Free Tutorials  – YouTube

Over the past week I have received two emails from a membership site that I have paid to join. They both offered video tutorials.  One on setting up a confirmation page to capture names and email addresses before sending prospects to a merchant’s landing page and another explaining why your should use a robot.txt file to streamline search engine indexing of your blog or site.

The content of the videos was useful and certainly something I wanted to learn.  The only thing is I had already found these tutorials on my own some time ago.  The place where I found them was YouTube.

The lesson here is a short one.  Why pay for content that you can get for free?  So before you go out and pay good money, try going and doing a search on YouTube to see if a video tutorial exists there.  There is a reason why YouTube is now the second most active search engine on the Web.

If you want to see how to create a robot.txt file and upload it to your root directory of your site or blog, I’ve posted the videos on my YouTube Channel.  Check it out it’s free.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous

How to Configure Your Home Page to Hide Live Chat and Open a New Window

I had an irritating problem with my iGoogle homepage.

When I would log in I would get this ping and my freindfeed chat box would pop in.

I would close it but it might reappear at any moment or if I left and would log in again.

So I did some clicking and finally figured out where to find the link for iGoogle settings which I clicked.

Once in my iGoogle back office I found a button defaulting to open the chat feed.

I then selected the button to hide the chat feed and while I was at it I checked the box for opening a new window when clicking links in my iGoogle homepage.

I then looked for and found a save button and voila, the problem was solved.

Take a look at the video and you’ll see how to take care of this irritation if you have this problem.

And that’s it.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sB4NPJ6XS4

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners  -  Tip of the Day

Hope the New Year has started out on  a good note.  Thought I’d let you know of a great WordPress plug in I found called reposter.  It takes posts from your blog or web site and re-posts them on a schedule of your choosing.

For example I had 30 or 40 postings from my first blog that I imported to my new blog.  They were articles and tips that had run once but had been archived and never used again.

This plug in allows you to pull them from your archive or category and schedule them in for reposting unassisted.

It’s a great way to keep content flowing without the need to actively be there to do it. This comes in real handy if you are going flat out and are short on time to post fresh content everyday.

It’s called Reposter and it’s free compliments of Kathy Burns-Millyard at Reposter Plug In

Enjoy.

Claude Pelanne

Related articles by Zemanta

• 8 WordPress Social Bookmarking Plugins
• 6 WordPress CSS Plugins
• Maximum WordPress Security

Web Site Analytic Tools

The following video explores web analytics and all the software and website analytic tools you have available to get data about your site.

Once you have the data you want to go through it and analyse what it means to your site and how it is working to give you the results you are looking for.

Have a look at the video and then use some of the tools to see how your site is doing.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Q5JOIB_f8

Image by TaopaiC via Flickr

Organizer Tip

Having trouble keeping track of your affiliate links along with all the other important information? Set up a spreadsheet or try out Affiliate Organizer to keep track of all your affiliate business information. It will make things easier and prevent any slowdowns in your business growth.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Eleven Interesting Ways to Use Google Docs in the Classroom
• How to Analyze Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts

Need a logo?

What Are Keyword Metrics?

Keywords and Traffic

This video looks at a metric that tells you what keyword or term or phrase has sent traffic to your site.  You also want to know which search engine has generated that keyword, term or phrase visitor.

You want to see a count and see what secondary keyword or phrase has sent you traffic.

A great tool for this kind of traffic analysis is Google analytics. This tool will show you which specific keyword or term is sending you traffic.

It’s interesting because you will find keywords and phrases that you may never have thought of and which you can them optimize for to increase visitors to your site.

Keywords and Conversions

A second metric is to see the conversions you get, whether it be a sale or a sign up through an opt in box, and find out which keyword or phrase is driving conversions.

In Google Analytics you can do that by setting up goals and measuring your keyword against the achievement of that goal.

Number of pages receiving at least one visit

Google Analytics will show you pages receiving at least one visit and what the keyword or phrase is that generated that visit.  It also will tell you which pages have received no visits.

This is a great way to see which part of the site is receiving interest and which part your visitors are not interested in at all.

There is also a tool in beta that will give you a visual of your site and show you a measure of visitor interest for that particular page.  It is a great way to get a visual confirmation of what part of your site is of working and which part is not.

The video below goes into more detail so have a look and then give the guide a read.

That’s it. Hope this is helpful as a preview to the actual read.

Stay with it, stay well and talk soon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJDUkN7DMtA

Ctrl-A Select all

Ctrl-B BOLD

Ctrl-C COPY

Ctrl-D BOOKMARK

Ctrl-E CENTER

Ctrl-F FIND

Ctrl-G GO TO

Ctrl-H REPLACE

Ctrl-I ITALICIZE

Ctrl-J FULL JUSTIFY

Ctrl-K HYPERLINK

Ctrl-M INCREASE INDENT

Ctrl-N NEW DOCUMENT

Ctrl-O OPEN DOCUMENT

Ctrl-P PRINT

Ctrl-R RIGHT JUSTIFY

Ctrl-S SAVE

Ctrl-T TAB

Ctrl-U UNDERLINE

Ctrl-V PASTE

Ctrl-W CLOSE DOCUMENT

Ctrl-X CUT

Ctrl-Y REDO/REPEAT LAST ACTION

Ctrl-Z UNDO

Website Analytics

The Guide presents five key tools to track website statistics and measuring how traffic finds your site.

In this post and video you will see what the first two tools are.

Metric Tool 1 – Search Engines

How Traffic Comes To Your Site

1. Direct Traffic – User types in your url
2. Referral Traffic – Traffic coming from links – email campaign,PPC or other branding method.
3. Search Engine Results Page – Organic search results from user typing in keyword.

You need to know what percentage comes from these three sources. This will help you plan how to get traffic to your site.

Metric Tool 2 – Search Engine Percentage Benchmark

How does the search engine referral split look between Google,Yahoo and Bing.

Measure the specific share of each search engine against the benchmark percentage that comes from each search engine on a normal basis.

Those numbers will show you how you are doing against the traffic referral you should be getting from each engine.

The video below covers this material in greater detail so have a look and then use the tools to see  how your site is doing.

That’s it. Stay with it, stay well and talk soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gDt0NeJieU

Tags: affiliatemarketing, affiliate marketing for beginners, online affiliate,

The video below explains how to figure out if you have been sandboxed or banned. It also lays out steps you can follow to get back in with Google and reappear in the index and the SERPs.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgnOOnAIAks

 
[ad#ASL01Linkad]

SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO – Spamming

How Do Search Engines Find Spam?

They use two tools that measure relevance and trust.

TrustRank – An algorithm that measures how close or removed a site is from trusted benchmark sites usually .edu or .gov sites.

HITS – an algorithm that measures link quality.

Page Level Spamming

Search engines look for the following practices that lower site quality and the user experience:

Keyword Stuffing

Manipulative Linking

Link Farms

Paid Links

Low Quality Directories

Cloaking

Low Value Pages

Domain Level Spamming

At the Domain level, the search engines look for the following indicators:

Linking Practices

Trustworthiness

Duplicate content

Check out the video below and get more details on what these spamming practices are and why you want to avoid them.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdksRfu4-eQ

[ad#ASL01Linkad]

To find independent merchants for a product you want to sell add the + sign in front of your Google search term. That will bring up sites in the search list pertaining to that specific term. For example to search for independent merchants for remote control airplane you would type +remote+control+airplane into the Google search box.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Find posts/pages recently indexed by google
• Now get optimized Google search results for iPhone

This video goes over chapter 9 of the SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO.  The videos cover the chapter in two parts. Part starts with 6 basic myths.

Six Basic SEO Myths

These are some of the most basic myths according to SEOmoz that their research has confirmed.

Search Engine Submission

This is the practice of submitting your site to search engine directories and is something that used to be normal practice. Today search crawlers do all the heavy lifting to index your content as long as you set yourself up properly (ie:xml sitemap etc…). So there is no need to submit to a search engine directory any more.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are important but are not the only consideration anymore.

Your Meta Title tag and Description Tag still carry weight in SEO.  The Keyword meta tag no longer has much authority. That said I still put in Meta keywords for the discipline of doing it and because if things change and they come back into vogue, I won’t have to go back and add them.

Keyword Stuffing and Density

The practice of loading your content with lots of the same keywords is no longer effective.  In the old days people would game the system by loading keywords in the meta tag and cloak them. None of that works any more, so don’t bother.

Also, the practice of using a keyword with a frequency as a percentage of your word count, the practice of keyword density, no longer brings any advantage either.  This according to the testing done at SEOmoz.

Paid Search Helps Organic Results

If you run a paid campaign (PPC) and rank on  page one for that ad and keyword, your organic ranking will also be helped for that keyword.  Wrong!  It doesn’t work that way.

Personalization

With the introduction of personalization, you results in organic returns are skewed and you don’t see clean results. That is only true for the specific and repeated searches you perform during the course of your activity online. But since your activity covers only a fraction of the total searching going on, your results will not be greatly affected overall in the organic returns.

My personal experience does not bear this out.  As a marketer I search far and wide looking for niche possibilities, so to avoid skewed results I always log out of my personal account and look at results with out personalization turned on.

Reciprocal Links

The practice of exchanging links with another webmaster is no longer effective. So don’t waste your time with it.

The Video

The video below goes over these points in greater detail so have a look.  It should help you determine where to put your efforts and make better use of your time.

That’s it. Hope this is helpful.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUcSEoFfcjg

In Chapter 8 of the SEOmoz Beginners Guide To SEO, you get to learn what tools and services are available to you so that search engines can find you and index your content.

The Guide basically lays out four tools and lists the three Webmaster tools for the three major search engines.

Tool 1 – Sitemaps

SiteMaps are very important in getting indexed because they are the tools search engines need to read what is on your site.

There are different types of sitemaps so you need to load each one on to your site to maximize ways to be found by the major search engines.

For those of you using WordPress, there are plugins for all of these types on site maps and on my YouTube Channel, I have videos explaining how to set up and configure your xml,text,image and video sitemaps.

xml sitemap – This is the first sitemap you should install since it is essential to the search engines for finding you.

rss sitemap - rss feeds – This is a great tool to use when you want to index an interior page or post that has no ranking yet with the search engines.

txt format sitemap – This is a great way of creating a visual sitemap for visitors to your site to use. Google and company like these because they enhance the user experience.

Tool 2 Robot.txt

Robots.txt files – This is a way of telling the search engines that you do not want a certain page or post on your website crawled and indexed.

disallow indexing – You can choose which part of your website, which specific page or post that you do not want indexed.  This comes in handy if you have duplicate content on several pages.

location of sitemaps – The robot.txt also tells the search engines where to find sitemaps that will help them index a site.

speed of crawling – Robot.txt can be configured to tell the search engine what speed to use when crawling a site.

Tool 3 Meta Robots

Meta Robots

Page specific robots.txt info- Meta robots are used to tell search engines which specific page, post or information that you don’t want crawled.

Tool 4 NoFollow

nofollow attribute – Another you can do is tell the search engines if you do not want to pass on any of your link authority to people who link to you.  You do this by putting a piece of code, relnofollow, onto your page. Again in WordPress there are plugins that make this very easy to implement.

Webmaster Tools

There are sites at all the major search engines available to you for the purpose of getting data about what is indexed on your site and what people are typing in to find you. You will have to follow the set up process specific to each search engine Webmaster site, but once you have done that, these tools can be very helpful at making sure your site is properly optimized. These site are listed below:

Google Webmaster Tools

Bing Toolbox

Yahoo Site Explorer

SEOmoz Webmaster Tool

Take in the video below and you should have a good idea of the tools and services available to you for optimizing your websites.

That’s it for now. Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR-6Ip7DtxI

Image via CrunchBase

One of the hardest parts of getting started in affiliate marketing is deciding what to pick as a niche or product. Don’t let this slow you down. You don’t need to feel a passion or dire need to excel. What you need is the desire to find something you can build interest in. Everyone has that ability to find a point of interest and build on it. So go to Amazon, pick through the magazine or book section and choose whatever strikes your fancy. That’s all you need to start.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Find Your Niche With Long Tail Keywords and Make Money Online
• Want to Know About Affiliate Marketing?
• Affiliate Marketing – An Easy Way to Success

This video and this part of the SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO lays out five key strategies for building links.

allintitle: attribute

For example, you can use the allintitle: attribute to find sites online that have your main keyword in their title.  These would be natural sites for getting backlinks because they are relevant and have authority.

Customer Linking to You

Get your customers and followers to link to you. One way is to create a badge and have your customers or follower post it on their sites.

Build a Blog

Build a blog that is informative, helpful and adds value to your customer and follower experience.

Viral Sharing

Create content that can be shared virally.  An ebook, a video, a podcast are all products that can be easily shared.  Protect your content by registering with Creative Common

Creative Common

Create a product that can be shared through some form of licensing. There is an organization called Creative Common that offers several licensing options for you.  Protect your content by registering with them. It’s free and a very good way of making sure your products are safe from copyright infringement.

Don’t buy Links

The last part of the chapter strongly suggests not buying links.  The search engines are all getting very sophisticated and if they suspect that links are artificially appearing they will delist or enact penalties that will hurt your efforts to succeed.

That is a quick summary of this very important chapter.

Take a look at the video and see how this information can help you move forward.

Stay withit, stay well, and may your travels be prosperous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdFlfQC1E9A

Here is a list of 8 Great Resources that I use to find out what people are searching for online today. In the spirit of sharing and giving back I offer you the following:

1. Google Trends

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

2. Yahoo! Buzz Index
http://buzz.yahoo.com/

3. Lycos 50
http://50.lycos.com/

4. AOL Search <<Hot Searches>>
http://hotsearches.aol.com/

5. Ask.com Top Searches

http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml

6. Amazon.com Hot New Releases
http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases

7. eBay What’s Hot page

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html

*** Make sure you click on eBay Pulse and eBay Pop

8. Google News – Most Popular

http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&topic=po

BONUS:

Also take a look at the most popular sections of digg.com, netscape.com, reddit.com, and del.icio.us.

Enjoy!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Blogsearch Relaunches as Techmeme Killer, Across 11 Categories
• Report: Google talks acquisition with Digg

How to figure out the value of a link?  The SEOmoz beginners guide gives you eight different ways to do it.

Here is the list of link metric tools:

Page rank for relevant search terms

Google pagerank

SEOmoz rank

SEOmoz domain authority

Google Blog search

Yahoo Site Explorer

Number of links on a page

Potential referral traffic

The video below givens an explanation  for each of these definitions of how to measure link authority and link juice.

So take a look and use these tools in your research.

Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYgI9B-TjR4