It has been a long year of hard work for both of my kids in pursuing their passions, but they are each about to pursue the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

PONY Thunder

The passion that drives my oldest son is baseball and his pot of gold is the PONY baseball playoffs, which will begin this weekend. His team, modeled after the Trenton Thunder Minor League Baseball team, will be ranked as either the #2 or #3 seed depending on the outcome of the final game on Saturday.

Throughout the season, he has been a fixture behind the plate as one of the few kids that enjoy playing catcher. With a fair share of foul balls off of the mask and chest pad, and even an errant bat off of the elbow (ouch!), all of the hard work and pain is about to be forgotten as these kids enter the post-season.

As a dad, I have had the pleasure of numerous proud moments on the baseball field this season - including when he hit his first triple and throwing out two baserunners, one at third base and one at first that had taken a large lead.

But what I am most proud about is how he has worked hard on and off the field to improve his skills, supported his teammates throughout the season, and had fun.

Good luck in the playoffs Thunder!

Storm Dance Alliance

After trying baseball and coming away unimpressed, my youngest son found his passion in the dance studio as a member of the Storm Dance Alliance Hip-Hop Company. This coming week he will be in hot pursuit of his pot of gold in the form of the National Finals Dance Competition being held in the Wisconsin Dells.

The schedule has been grueling with more than a few 10-12 hour days at the dance studio and having to miss out on fun with his friends for extra practice sessions. All of the previous practices and competitions have provided the opportunity to fine-tune each dance in preparation for this moment, as he is now about to step out on the largest stage.

The dance studio has provided me just as many proud moments as a dad, whether it be his insanely long handstands or his latest trick of doing a headstand and pushing himself up into a handstand (go ahead and try it, it will humble you).

What makes me the most proud though is how he has overcome the fear of stepping out on a stage in front of hundreds of people to perform, ignoring the criticism from friends, and having fun doing something he loves.

Good luck at Nationals Storm!

The one bad thing…

As the kids embark on this journey to the pinnacle of their respective passion, the one bad thing is that the PONY playoffs and National Finals are scheduled for the exact same week.

That means a divided family between the baseball fields and the dance stage, so I am sure the text messages will be flying back and forth as we keep each other updated. Fortunately we both have nice new phones, otherwise we would have had to take a stab at winning Steve’s free iPhone 3GS contest (now how is that for a contest plug Steve?).

JB and G*Slick, I am extremely proud of you both!

(And no, we could not have planned it any better if we tried to have one son at Storm dance and the other on Thunder baseball. LoL!)

The Good

Before we get to the “not so good” things - I have always been one that prefers the good news before the bad - here are a few of the things that have been keeping me busy.

But I thought you weren’t blogging…

Even though I have been away from the daily posting, I have still been somewhat active behind the scenes with the Interweb. Some of you might recall that I had partnered up with a fellow blogger to work on a few sites; the arrangement that we have been working under is that I am responsible for the creation and maintenance of the blogs while she handles the day to day posting.

We redesigned her primary blog, GrowMap (with more design changes still to come), and have continued to work on our site dedicated to helping improve your golf game. In addition to all of that, I am working with a new client right now on a Typepad to WordPress migration - for anyone that has not done this before, Typepad is an absolute nightmare to migrate away from as they severely restrict the way that you can access your own data.

With my break from blogging, I had expected to see my blogs drop completely off the radar but there is still a healthy amount of traffic coming into each site and the earnings have not dropped off as much as I thought they would - more on that a little later.

Punching the time clock…

The day job has flourished as well in the absence of my blogging. Shortly before stepping away from the blogs, I had been transitioned out of my position as a software engineer into project management. As much as I miss writing code every day, I have learned to embrace this new challenge and my first few projects have all been successful.

It has not all been a bed of roses though, as the demands at the day job have resulted in some stretches of longer hours that have taken away from my time with the family; which is the reason that I was stepping away from the blogs in the first place. Things have been settling down lately and I continue to make strides as a project manager, something that has been noticed by management as well.

The wind in my face…

With the summer weather upon us - although some days I really question that - I have been out riding the Harley a good deal, and have a new enthusiast to share this with as my son is now old enough to ride with me.

Not only have I been riding more, I even have some new gear courtesy of Harley-Davidson. Through the power of the blog, I had been in touch with a representative from Harley-Davidson for a few months and just recently she sent me a note asking if I would like to try out a pair of their new sunglasses. So while I have been enjoying the wind in my face, I have been keeping it out of my eyes with a slick pair of shades. Expect to hear more about my thoughts on the gear in the near future.

Long live Derek…

It might not seem like such a big deal, but I have been getting much more sleep. In my previous life, I’d work all day at the day job and come home to spend a little time with my wife and kids before hunkering down with the blogs. On average, I was only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep each night.

Over these last few months, I have been getting approximately 7-8 hours of sleep each night and I feel so much better. Sure, I still have a few late nights but they are now the exception more than the norm.

In addition to getting more sleep, I had an opportunity - or maybe it was an order (see below) - to focus on my health. Not being a fan of the treadmill, I opted for an elliptical machine from Precor and have been logging mile after mile…and kind of enjoying it. I’ve still got a long road ahead of me but I like where this road is going.

The Bad

As I mentioned earlier, not everything has been good since taking a hiatus from the blog.

My head is about to explode…

In mid-February I had a bit of a health scare - there were two instances, just a few days apart, where I had excruciating pain in my head. Being the type of guy that never goes to the doctor, I tried to ignore it the first time it happened. When it happened again a few days later, I got myself into the doctor and they ordered a CT scan as there was concern that there may have been bleeding in my brain.

Talk about stress, nerves, and fear!

Fortunately, the CT scan did not show any cause for concern but the outcome of everything did reveal that my blood pressure and cholesterol were slightly elevated. Neither is high enough to require medication, but the doctor did suggest that I improve my eating habits and exercise more regularly; hence the new elliptical machine.

Poof, where did my blogs go…

How well are you backing up your blogs? I *thought* that I was doing a decent job of it until I had a reason to need those backups. When the server where my blogs are hosted had a few issues, I was told that everything would be restored from the backups taken by my host. There was only one problem - their backups were corrupt and the last good backup they had was from March of 2008.

It was like the last year of blogging never happened.

Fortunately, I had daily backups of the database for this blog archived in email so restoring this blog was a piece of cake. All of the new blogs that I had created since that time, well, I wasn’t quite as efficient with my backup strategy. It took me a few long days but I eventually had everything restored. Needless to say, I am now being much more structured with my backups.

Conspiracy theory or just bad luck…

Earlier I mentioned the fact that my blog earnings have not taken too much of a hit; however, there is one thing that did hurt my blog earnings - my AdSense account has been terminated!

While I was not earning record sums of money through AdSense, it did add nicely to the bottom line each month. As such, I would certainly not do anything that would jeapordize my account - or did I? For the conspiracy theorists in the crowd, I found it extremely ironic that my AdSense account was terminated just a few days after I canceled the AdWords campaigns that I was running for a few other initiatives.

Appealing the decision with Google did not prove to be useful, as they denied my appeal. Rather than worry about it, I simply changed gears and implemented ads from Chitika where I had previously been using AdSense. While the Chitika ads aren’t pulling in the same amount of money each month, I am slowly building that up as a replacement for AdSense.

Does this mean I am back?

So, am I officially back to blogging?

As much as I would like to tell you that I will be here posting every day, I know that I cannot commit to that. But rather than remain silent until I would be able to post daily, I wanted to dip my toe back into the water and tell you all that I have missed the interaction with everyone.

Now it is your turn…what is new with you?

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As I skimmed over the posts he has made here over the time, I am amazed on how much Derek has kept up his blog to what it is now, how far he has come. It gives me inspiration that maybe one day, maybe my blog will be the same way. It should give other new bloggers hope too, I hope it does.

Here is to the past two years and the future years to come!

Happy Birthday, Derek Semmler dot com!

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Let me clarify that…..is good, helpful customer service still alive?

Some say yes, while others may say no.

I am going to share with you a couple of stories on how Customer Service is dying and how it is still alive and kicking.�

�

Customer Service is Dead

In December 2007, I bought my husband a 2008 Chevy Corvette for Christmas. Dont ask me what type it is. I have no idea, I just let him pick it out. Well late January this year, one of his headlights went out. To make a long story short, we discovered that the light didnt go out. �The entire casing for the light was malfunctioning. The whole thing needed to be replaced. Since the vette is still under warranty, he put in a service ticket for the headlight casing to be replaced at the place where we bought it. We were told that the part would be here in about 2 weeks.�

Two weeks go by and no phone call. He call up customer service and was immediately put on hold for a long time. He got switched to different people. Come to find out the part was never ordered. Ok, thats fine. Mistakes happen. No big deal.

I make my husband call them after a week full well knowing that the part isnt going to be there but just to make sure the part was ordered. Guess what? It was not. I about flipped out. I asked to speak to upper management to complain. I was put on hold and switched around to different people. When I did speak to someone, not only were they unfriendly they were almost belittling me. Complaining did no good. You would think after buying such a car from them, they would care how their customers were treated.�

Btw, the vette was fixed today.

If you have a story about bad customer service, you might find this forum useful or funny…depending how you feel. You can submit your story to Customer Disservice.�

�

Customer Service is ALIIIIIIIIVE!!

I have an iPhone and I love it. I am addicted to it. When I am bored, I whip it out of my pocket and entertain myself. I have an app (application) on my phone called State Plate Hunt by Jeremie Weldin. You can find out info about it here (iTunes link) or here. Basically, you can keep track of what�license plate you see while out on the road. Living in New Orleans, we get alot of out of towners. I have seen plates anywhere from Alaska to New York. I also went on a family vacation to Orlando and found tons more plates there too. I found all but 10 plates! It took me awhile to find all of them. I even found a few Canadian Provinces. I went to install the latest update for the app. Once the app installed, I went to launch it. When I did, I totally panicked. All of my plates were gone. The new update did not keep my old info.�

I immediately emailed the developer. I explained to him what had happened. I expected to get some sort of response in a few days or so. Wrong. I immediately got a response. He apologized and said he will look into it and let me know when he comes up with a fix.�

Yeah right. He is going to fix my problem? Pffftt. Whatever.�

Just a few days ago, I received an email from Jeremie saying that he fixed the problem and submitted the update to Apple and that it should be available within a week. Wow. Just wow. I emailed him on Sunday about my problem and received a fix on Tuesday. Now, talk about wonderful customer service.�

I wish more companies/people were more like this, more caring and doing more on follow-ups. Apparently, Victoria’s Secret is like this. Now that I got your attention, you can read about how they did a nationwide search for a pair of panties.�

I ask you, what has been your experience with customer service? Have you received bad service lately? What is your take on this topic? Or if you are a company, what are you doing to make sure you have decent customer service?

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Last month on Derek Semmler dot com was pretty uneventful but that doesn’t mean that people didn’t stop taking an interest in what was going on over here!�

So here it is folks, The February 2009 edition of Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go?

Top 10 Referring Sites

1. Geekologie
2. Courtney Tuttle
3. InlineSEO
4. Sparkplugging
5. Drew’s Marketing Minute
6. Molson in the Community
7. romandock dot com
8. Big Foot Web Marketing
9. Bloglines
10. Blog Blazers

Once again, Geekologie has taken the top spot for the month of February. Congrats! InlineSEO and Sparkplugging were neck and neck for 3 and 4th place. I would like to send a special shout-out to Nick from romandock dot com�for beating me this past month, WTG! LOL One major thing I noticed about this past month is the new faces to the top 10 list. Drew’s Marketing Minute, Molson in the Community, and Big Foot Web Marketing to name a few. I checked out Drew’s Marketing Minute and i enjoyed his site. I especially enjoyed his encounter with a dog/marketing whisperer.

Top Ten Visited Posts

1. How To Record A Cellphone Conversation
2. Being A Better Husband
3. Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor
4. Pictures :: Aftermath of Exploding CD
5. Thesis Unveiled :: Threaded Web Redesign
6. Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go :: January 2009
7. Can You Record A Cellphone Conversation?
   
8. 100 Push Up Challenge :: Join Me And Win
   
9. Pursue Your Passion, But At What Cost?
   
10. How To Add Affiliate Products From LinkShare

No surprise in seeing the cellphone conversation being top dog. It is pretty much the same list as last month but a bit jumbled up.�

Digging in Google Analytics, I discovered the pageviews and visits were slightly down from the previous months but not by much! So, yay for that!�

So in closing, I hope to bring more interesting post here. Now that I am back from vacation, you shall see more of me! But I will say that if you have any suggestions for posts and if you want to run it by me, please email me. Thanks!

Up high reading about Derek share his Magic Formula to More Comments�,�Adding 440+ Readers to Your Blog in 4 Easy Steps�and who could forget about being at The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time.�Down to reading about Derek’s realization about Pursuing His Passion.�

By the way, my name is Andrea. I run the show over at According to Andrea. You may have seen me hanging out here�commenting and also my attempt to lighten the mood with nonsense in my guest post.

No, I am not taking over derek semmler dot com.

I know I am filling in some big shoes but I am simply helping Derek out until he makes it back. Rest assure that you are in good hands. I will try my best to keep the community interaction going.

I know it is a bit late but I am here to present to you the Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go?

Top 10 Referring Sites

1. Geekologie
2. InlineSEO
3. Courtney Tuttle
4. GrowMap
5. According To Andrea
6. romandock dot com
7. Sparkplugging
8. Trade Show Guru
9. Dietriffic
10. Digital Product Reporter

Geekologie has taken the lead away from Blog Blazers last month. You know, if I didn’t know any better this list pretty much looks like last month’s top ten with the addition of Trade Show Guru and Dietriffic. Blog Blazers seems to have slipped off the list from last month but I am sure it will be back, it had a strong debut last month. Congratulations to all the Top 10 Referring Sites this month, great job!�

Keeping with last month’s visits and pageviews, this blog passed the 6000+ visits and 10,000+ pageviews! I am completely amazed how this blog keeps up with these figures. Derek couldn’t have done it without help from y’all, the community!
�
Moving on to the Top 10 Visited Posts, here they are from the past month (according to Google Analytics).

Top 10 Visited Posts�

1. How To Record A Cellphone Conversation
2. Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor
3. Being A Better Husband
4. Pictures :: Aftermath of Exploding CD
5. Can You Record A Cellphone Conversation?
6. How To Add Readers To Your Blog In 4 Easy Steps
7. Magic Formula To More Comments :: Only 3 Ingredients
8. Pursue Your Passion, But At What Cost?
9. Google Script Error Wreaking Havoc
10. 100 Push Up Challenge :: Join Me And Win

3 of the Top 10 Visited Posts were from within the last month, several have been recently and few that have been well established such as the how to record a cellphone conversation and Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor.

I will be honest with you, I haven’t read the top 2 posts. I came across Derek’s blog in the middle of last year and never read them firsthand. Maybe I will add to the visited post count and go take a look at them.

Reflecting on this past month, I saw alot of posts being focus on information on being successful and alot about affiliate marketing. Do these possibly go hand in hand? Hmm, maybe. What do you think?

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The ideal that many of us strive for is to find work that we love while still being able to provide for ourselves and loved ones. Shortly after I began blogging, I have had the desire to see this passion become that work that I love to do and be able to provide for my family.

But at what cost does one pursue their passion?

With a full-time day job being balanced with three blogs and countless other side projects, there have been sacrifices made. Sacrifices by my family. Sacrifices by me. There has been some degree of success, building up to the point where my blogs earned nearly $10,000 in 2008, but it has certainly been a difficult road.

As much as I have tried to keep everything balanced, I have failed.

The late nights spent working on the blogs and various projects have been having a negative impact on my family.

So what does this mean?

Right now this means that I need to take a step back and focus on my family and life away from the Interweb. There is no timetable on how long I will be away but right now the cost of pursuing my passion is too high for me to continue on this path.

This doesn’t mean that I will stop pursuing work that I love, or that I will completely unplug. While I understand that stepping away will make it more difficult to build on what has been started here, this is something that I have to do.

Knowing all of you, I am confident that you will understand.

Before I go, I’d just like to say thank you to each and every one of you. The interactions that we have shared is what has made it so much fun to pursue this passion and that is something I truly cherish.

Thank you!

Merchandiser Data Feed Program

LinkShare offers a service that they refer to as the Merchandiser Data Feed Program that allows publishers to maintain a database of product links that is updated daily. Unfortunately, there is a one-time setup fee of $250 unless specific criteria has been satisfied.

Since we are hoping to get started with as little upfront cost as possible, this is probably not our best option and is one that I have not personally explored. However, there is another option for those of us that do not meet the criteria to avoid the setup fee.

Merchandiser Query Tool API

Before you get scared by the mention of API, let me tell you that this is extremely easy to implement and does not require extensive technical knowledge when you use the process that I am about to share with you.

The Merchandiser Query Tool API is a Web service that allows you to run a query against any one, or all, of the merchants that you have a partnership with at LinkShare and will return a listing of affiliate products. The query can return a maximum of 4,020 search results, which should be more than sufficient for our needs.

So how do we leverage this service?

In order to efficiently use this service, we are going to create a custom script (fancy word for PHP page) that we can use throughout our site to display relevant affiliate products.

There are a few prerequisites that must be met in order to use this script: 1) we have an account at LinkShare.com and have been approved for at least one merchant; 2) we have requested and received our web services token from LinkShare.

Creating Custom LinkShare Script

Now that we have satisfied the prerequisites, we are ready to create our script. Don’t worry, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds. To get our script working on our site, we need to perform the following steps.

• Save the code from Code Example #1 to a file named linkshare.php
• Open the file in a text editor and insert our LinkShare token on Line 4
• Upload the file to our web host

Now, wasn’t that easy?

At this point, we have a functioning custom script on our site that will return affiliate products from our merchants at LinkShare. To test that our script is working, simply open a new browser or tab and navigate to the following URL:

1

http://yourdomainname.com/linkshare.php?keyword=yourkeyword

Be sure to actually update the link to include the appropriate domain name and a relevant keyword for at least one merchant. If everything is setup properly, we should see a display of products from at least one of our merchants.

There is the possibility that we will see a message that there aren’t any available products. That doesn’t mean that the script is not working, as we may simply need to change the keyword to match the products of our approved merchants.

Also, this script assumes that our web host supports PHP5 as the call to simplexml_load_file will not work if your host is running PHP4. If you encounter this problem, let me know and I can share the code to work around that issue.

One last note about the code example, you will note that there is a URL on Line 2 that has been commented out. For whatever reason, I found the standard LinkShare link to be extremely unreliable and often resulted in a script failure. By changing to the URL on Line 3, I have not had any problems but feel free to experiment with either URL.

Code Example #1

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<?
  //$url = "http://feed.linksynergy.com/productsearch";
  $url = "http://65.245.193.50/productsearch";
  $token = "ADDTOKENHERE";  // Add your LinkShare token here
 
  $results = '';
  $resturl = $url."?"."token=".$token;
 
  if (isset($_GET["keyword"]))
  {
  	$keyword = $_GET["keyword"];
  	$resturl .= "&keyword=".$keyword;
  }
 
  if (isset($_GET["cat"]))
  {
  	$category = $_GET["cat"];
  	$resturl .= "&cat=".$category;
  }
 
  if (isset($_GET["max"]))
  {
  	$maxresults = $_GET["max"];
  	$resturl .= "&max=".$maxresults;
  }
 
  if (isset($_GET["mid"]))
  {
  	$mid = $_GET["mid"];
  	$resturl .= "&mid=".$mid;
  }
 
  $SafeQuery = urlencode($resturl);
  $xml = simplexml_load_file($SafeQuery);
 
  if ($xml)
  {
    foreach ($xml as $item) {
        $link  = $item->linkurl;
        $title = $item->productname;
        $imgURL = $item->imageurl;
        $price = $item->price;
        $merchantname = $item->merchantname;
        $description = $item->description->short;
 
        if($link != "")
	        $results .="<div id=\"product\">
	        		<div id=\"product_img\"><a href=\"$link\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"$imgURL\"/></a></div>
	        		<div id=\"product_link\"><a href=\"$link\">$title</a></div>
	        		<div id=\"product_desc\">".$description."</div>
	        		<div id=\"product_price\">Add to Cart: <a href=\"$link\">$price</a></div>
	        		</div>";
	}
  }
 
  if ($results == '') { $results = "<div id=\"product\">There are no available products at this time.</div>"; }
 
  print $results;
?>

Now that we have our custom script installed on the server and everything is working great, we need to investigate how we can actually implement this script on our site.

Implementing Custom LinkShare Script

Ideally, we will want to incorporate one or more affiliate products within the content of a blog post. As an example of what we want to accomplish, look at how the affiliate products are integrated in this post about buying the right football gloves.

In order to implement the script in the manner described here, our site will need to satisfy the following prerequisites: 1) Exec-PHP plugin must be installed, as we will be executing PHP code within a blog post 2) our web host must support cURL (if not, there is a workaround).

Next, we simply need to copy the code from Code Example #2 into our blog post and update the URL parameters as necessary. There are four parameters that we can specify:

• keyword :: Replace KEYWORD with the keyword that you would like to use for your product search
• cat :: Replace CATEGORY with a product category to restrict the search results
• max :: Replace MAX with the maximum number of products to return in the search results
• mid :: Replace MERCHANT with the merchant id of an advertiser to limit the search results to their products only

Of the four parameters above, only the keyword is required. The remaining parameters are optional, although they will assist in refining our search results so the products match the content of our post as closely as possible.

Note: If you choose not to use one of the optional parameters, remove the entire parameter (i.e. remove “&mid=MERCHANT” not just “MERCHANT” if you choose not to specify a merchant).

To receive the best quality search results, it may be necessary to experiment with a variety of parameter settings.

Code Example #2

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<?php
$cURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL, "http://" . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . "/linkshare.php?keyword=KEYWORD&cat=CATEGORY&max=MAX&mid=MERCHANT");
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$strPage = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);
echo($strPage);
?>

At this point we should have our custom script installed on the server and have a new blog post that is returning relevant affiliate products within the content of the post.

Wrapping It Up

The process above is exactly what I have done to integrate affiliate products on both Pro Football Workouts and Chicago Football Gifts. Keep in mind that the code provided above does not include any true error handling, but it has been working well on my sites.

Also, as mentioned earlier, you may encounter problems depending on certain configurations made by your web host. The two most likely issues will be support of PHP5 and/or cURL. If you encounter problems with either of these, let me know and I can offer assistance.

Is this a perfect process?

Not by any means, as there is still a good deal of manual work involved and the code could certainly be improved upon (adding robust paging controls, error handling, etc.). This should get you started though and allow you to start adding affiliate products from LinkShare.

Now go earn some money!

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There are three basic methods:

• Manually add product links (which can be extremely time consuming)
• Create your own script (which requires some technical knowledge)
• Use an established tool (which is rarely free)

Many people that are just getting their feet wet with affiliate marketing are trying to keep their costs down, so naturally they lean towards manually adding products or creating their own custom script to add products.

So which method is right for you?

The answer to that question will depend on a number of factors, including your goals, how much time you have to spend, and your budget. The first step though is to gain a better understanding of each method and look at the pros and cons of each method.

Manually Add Affiliate Product Links

This is the most basic approach to adding affiliate product links to our website, and is the one that most blog publishers have at least some level of experience using.

One of the more common means of adding manual links is with the use of the Amazon affiliate program (be sure to understand the real power of the Amazon affiliate program if you use this method). This method can also include the process of logging into the various affiliate networks and manually selecting product links from the merchants.

Pros Of Manually Adding Links

• Cost :: Free! It doesn’t get much better than that for someone beginning to dabble with affiliate marketing. The only cost of the manual method is our time, as there are no fees associated with accessing the variety of affiliate networks and browsing for relevant affiliate product links.
• Targeted Product Links :: One of the key advantages of using the manual method is that we can target the exact product links that are relevant to the content of the post. For instance, when writing a book review, you can easily add a product link directly to that book.

Cons Of Manually Adding Links

• Time :: While there may not be a true monetary cost with the manual method, we will spend a considerable amount of time. When using this method for one-off posts, the time will most likely not be a problem. When attempting to build an entire affiliate driven storefront, the manual method will require far too much time.
• Product Knowledge :: Using the manual method requires an expansive knowledge of products, as we cannot manually add an affiliate product link to our site unless there is the knowledge that the product exists.

Creating A Custom Script

As you begin to dig deeper into the affiliate networks, you will begin to see the term “data feed” mentioned. The data feed is essentially a master list of affiliate product information that a merchant provides to their affiliates. This data feed is typically provided as either a flat file for the affiliate to download or the affiliate is given access to an FTP site to download the information.

But how do we work with this data feed?

While it is possible to manually extract data from the file provided by the merchant, what we really want to do with the data feed is automate the processing of this data. There are a variety of options on how this can be done and each will require some form of a custom script.

Pros Of Using Custom Scripts

• Time :: Rather than searching for and adding affiliate products manually, we can add an entire category of links to a post or site in seconds. We can even use the script to create an entire storefront in the time it takes to manually find a handful of links.
• Volume :: Having a custom script will allow us to add many more affiliate product links to our site, some of which we may not have otherwise ever known about.
• Maintenance :: When a merchant updates their product information in their data feed, our site will automatically display the updated information without having to edit each of the links.

Cons Of Using Custom Scripts

• Technical Knowledge :: Creating a custom script will typically require some degree of technical knowledge, which a lot of people don’t have and don’t want to learn. As part of this case study I will share the scripts that I have created at no cost to you - aren’t I just the best?
• Quality of Data Feed :: Unfortunately, not all data feeds are created equally. Some merchants provide clean data feeds without any data errors, while others provide a jumbled mess of data that is nearly impossible to manage.
• Configuration :: Depending on how much time and energy we spend on creating the custom script, there will be some things that just cannot be done very easily (if at all).
• Support :: With a home-grown custom script, there isn’t anyone to turn to when there is a problem. Depending on the level of technical knowledge we possess, this could be a significant problem.

Using An Established 3rd Party Tool

There are a variety of 3rd party tools available that will help automate the process of adding and managing affiliate links on our site. Some of these tools, such as datafeedr, provide seamless integration with WordPress as well, making the process even easier.

With the use of a 3rd party tool, we will be able to focus more of our time on creating unique content and promoting the site as opposed to developing a custom script or manually searching for product links.

As of right now, I have only had experience with datafeedr and have based the following pros and cons on that experience.

Pros Of Using 3rd Party Tools

• Robustness :: Every single product that is offered by the merchant is literally a click of the mouse away. Simply search for a keyword and instantly have pages of affiliate products to use on the site.
• Support :: With a commercial product, there will be some degree of support offered (or at least there better be). When there is an error, simply contact support and get help resolving the issue.
• Speed :: It is possible to build an entire affiliate store in less time than it takes to draft a post. When I built the first pass of No Bogies, I had over 1,500 products integrated into the site within an hour.
• Configurable :: Using datafeedr, there is the option to create a traditional storefront type design or have each product periodically “dripped” to the blog as new content. With a commercial tool, there should be much more configuration available.

Cons Of Using 3rd Party Tools

• Cost :: The 3rd party tools are typically commercial products, meaning there is an upfront cost.
• Learning Curve :: There will certainly be some amount of time that it will take to learn how to use the tool properly. Depending on the tool, this may be hours, days, or months.

Making The Right Choice

Now that we have taken a quick look at the pros and cons of each method, how do we know which one is right for our site?

In my opinion, it will really depend on our goals.

If we’re creating a simple blog that we want to periodically include relevant affiliate product links, we’ll probably be fine sticking with the manual method. If we want to create a more robust variety of affiliate product links, we might be best served by looking at the available 3rd party tools.

Regardless of which method is selected, one important thing to remember is that none of them are going to provide a situation where we can simply “set it and forget it” and expect to make any amount of money. There is still a need to promote the site, as without traffic it really won’t matter how the affiliate links were added - there won’t be anyone to click on them!

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Throughout all of these discussions, I have made mention that I have been experimenting with a handful of affiliate based websites. With these new sites, I have also been working to implement the concept of keyword sniping in an attempt to quickly rank well in Google for my targeted keyword.

Given that one of my goals with this blog is to share the steps that I am taking to make money online with all of you, I thought that it would be fitting to dig a little deeper into these new sites and the approach that I have been using.

The Sites

As we pull back the covers on what I have been doing, one of the first things that we need to examine are the sites that we will be reviewing. For the purpose of this exploration into affiliate marketing, we will be looking at three sites that I have created.

• Pro Football Workouts
• Chicago Football Gifts
• No Bogies

Now, many of you might recognize those first two links as I have mentioned those sites previously. However, that third site is a brand new initiative that has just been put up in the last week.

The Process

As I mentioned earlier, each of these sites has been designed with the ultimate goal of becoming an additional source of revenue - although in slightly different manners. The process of each is highlighted below.

Pro Football Workouts

This site began as an experiment with keyword sniping - which as of my last check, I rank in the top 5 on the first page of Google for my targeted keyword. In terms of monetization, this site features both AdSense ads as well as a variety of affiliate products and links.

Generally speaking, you typically don’t want to run AdSense ads on an affiliate driven site (but I did here). Think about it for a moment. Do you want your reader leaving via an AdSense ad that pays you a few dollars at most, or an affiliate link that can pay quite a bit more?

The affiliate links on this site feature a combination of banner images that have been manually selected and affiliate products that have been automated with a custom script that I wrote to manipulate datafeeds from my affiliate merchants. You can see an example of this automated script on this post about buying the right football gloves.

Chicago Football Gifts

With this site, I again used my custom script for importing datafeeds from my affiliate merchants but I expanded the implementation to create more of a storefront. In addition to the storefront, I designed this site to have a separate blog that would be independent of the product listings.

Rather than implement the theme used in my keyword sniping experiment, I opted to implement the Thesis theme that I recently purchased. After seeing the results of how quickly the Pro Football Workouts site has ranked for my keyword, it will be interesting to see how using this theme compares.

No Bogies

Here again I have opted for a customized version of the Thesis theme. However, rather than relying on my custom datafeed script to select and import the affiliate products, I have opted for a 3rd party tool.

The tool that I have opted to use on this site is called datafeedr. With datafeedr, you’re given a web-based interface to construct your “store” and two WordPress plugins to integrate that “store” into your site. With datafeedr, you have the option of creating a more traditional storefront or you can have your selection of products automatically “dripped” into your site as individual blog posts.

Now, datafeedr is not free unfortunately, but it does make the process much easier to manage than what I was doing with my custom script above. At a cost of $27 per month for a one site license, time will tell whether or not this can prove to be profitable.

The Results

With Chicago Football Gifts and No Bogies it is too early to tell, as these sites have just been created in the last week or two. Pro Football Workouts has been live for a few months and has minimal earnings thus far, with approximately $40.00 from AdSense and $20.00 in affiliate sales.

Clearly the one hurdle with all of these sites is the ability to generate traffic to each site. At this point I have relied solely on organic traffic and have not investigated any PPC advertising or other forms of advertising.

Over the last month, my site on football workouts has brought in only 500+ visitors through organic search results. Oddly enough, Yahoo is giving Google a run for the money with only a few percentage points separating them from being the top referring site.

In order to make any significant amount of money, each of these sites will need to see a significant increase in the volume of traffic.

As this process has evolved, there has been more attention given to creating a brand - which you can see with the twitter account and Friend Feed account for No Bogies. By developing these additional channels of communication, there will be more opportunity to try and build relationships with like-minded people and thus increase the traffic to the site.

The Future

Will these sites prove to be successful?

Absolutely!

As even if they fail to earn me the money that I expect that they can, I will have learned valuable lessons along the way that will better serve me for the next site that I create. However, I believe that we will be discussing how these sites were built from the ground up into successful affiliate stores.

If you’re interested in continuing to explore each of these sites as a case study in building an affiliate store, please let me know and we will march onward. Ideally, I’d like you to let me know what aspects of these sites that you want to know more about and we can focus the discussion in that area.

So what do you want to discuss in the next installment?

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