What is the value of becoming a repeat customer of Dragon NaturallySpeaking?

I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking often on throughout the years since version 3. Back in 2011 I decided to upgrade to version 11 from version 10. With version 9 and 10 I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred. Nuance change the names for preferred to premium with the advent of version 11. I wasn’t terribly interested in paying $200 again for the improved version so I decided to scale back and test out the home version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. For a new customer that cost $99 at the time, and it was offered to me for $49 as a repeat customer. $99 was the best price I could find the time even though it retailed for more than that and the prices were all over the place from one retailer to the next.

I’ve been using the home version now for close to seven months. I am dictating this blog article using the home version and I’m typing with in Windows live writer. So far I have not had to make a single correction, not counting the brief whim, when I attempted to sing a Police song karaoke style to see if Dragon Naturally Speaking could translate my singing into text. Unfortunately, I did not know the lyrics as well as I thought I did, and I completely botch the singing and Dragon doesn’t stand a chance.

Getting a little more serious, I have been underwhelmed by the utility of Dragon NaturallySpeaking home edition. It does seem to be as accurate as the preferred versions that I’ve used in the past. I have no issue with the accuracy nor the speed. That is all up to par and if you are looking to save money with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it could be a good option. However when it comes to training and correcting Dragon Naturally Speaking, I find the home version to be lacking. It does not provide you with the playback of your voice recorded as you were dictating. You cannot listen to what you said, and then correct the text on the screen and improve Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Instead the home version reads the text as it appears on the screen originally, sometimes full of errors, and you have to then simply attempt to remember what exactly it is that you said. Sometimes this is easy, and sometimes if you’ve been dictating for several minutes it is impossible.

In addition it is not possible to use an MP3 recorder, to transcribe WAV or MP3 files into text. That is not something that I do on a regular basis, but there are times when it is extremely useful. On a related note, is the technology that may have a short shelflife now that Nuance is released several very good iPhone apps that help you dictate and translate speech into text on the go on a mobile basis. These are excellent for very short memos, but not practical at all for longer styles are forms of writing, such as dictating a novel which I am attempting to do.

So today I decided to purchase the premium version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Nuance did not provide me with an upgrade option, and all of the upgrade options I saw online were extremely expensive than at full retail price. Essentially I’d have to pay about $150 to upgrade Dragon NaturallySpeaking which didn’t seem practical, since I could buy a full version on Amazon for less than that.

In addition I received an e-mail from Nuance, offering me a discounted version of Dragon Naturally Speaking is a repeat customer. This has nothing to do with the fact that I regularly write about Dragon  (imho Nuance does not seem to be that savvy ). This was simply a offer with a specific end date such that I could buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking for $99. I checked the best prices on Amazon, and a currently sell Dragon NaturallySpeaking through an alternate seller it’s not direct from Amazon for $124.99. Through Amazon I could get free shipping and Amazon does not charge sales tax, yet.

Dragon Dictate 2.0 is the Mac equivalent of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium and currently sells for $139.99 on Amazon about $15 more than Dragon NaturallySpeaking and does sell direct from Amazon at the moment.

I decided to buy the software from Nuance director $99. Nuance does charge sales tax and does charge for shipping, so my actual price total up to $117.36. That is $7.63 approximately less than what it would’ve cost purchased the same software from Amazon. If you consider that even when you purchase something from Amazon you’re still obligated to pay sales tax, this would increase the amount of savings to $15.05.

What is a great price for Dragon NaturallySpeaking?

It is never easy finding the best price for Dragon NaturallySpeaking online. It is even more difficult find a good price for Dragon NaturallySpeaking in a retail store such as Best Buy or Office Depot. The prices vary all over the place, they go up and down with various sales promotions that appear to be initiated by Nuance at times and by the seller at other times when they’re setting Dragon NaturallySpeaking up as a loss leader. This means that for your average consumer that is simply buying Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the first time, they will never really know to getting a good price on the software. More specifically, they will never know if they got a great price on the software. Instead the software always seems to sell and a range. When a new release comes out the premium version sells for around $200 and a good price range is typically $25-$50 less than that retail price. 3 to 6 months after the new version comes out, the average price for a good price on the product is about $125 which is a $75 discount off of the retail price. I’ve seen the software sell for as low as $75 as a loss leader and as much as $175 elsewhere. As you can see I purchased it for $99 so I didn’t get the absolute best deal that I’ve ever witnessed, but I probably beat the average by $25 before tax and shipping.

If you’re looking to buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking and you can find a product for $125 or less consider yourself lucky you’ve gotten a good deal. If you pay a little more, I wouldn’t sweat it all that much especially if you need the product soon. If you can wait a month or two and watch the prices on Amazon or other retailers, you may save a few bucks.

No related posts.

I generally use Gravity Forms (same plugin we installed to field feedback on your last site). It can definitely be used as a survey tool to create quick and simple surveys. It can also be used to create long and complex multipage surveys.

Imho Survey Monkey is a great service, but for one off polls, I like Gravity Forms better. There is no monthly subscription fee, no limits on how many questions or even responses you can receive without having to pay more. I think there is a place and time for Survey Monkey, especially when you want to provide a survey with a somewhat sterile looking response medium outside of your own site. A survey loaded on your own website might have subjective distractions such as ads, or things a survey taker can click on and quite before the survey is completed or saved.

As a disclaimer, Softduit Media charges $40 to install and configure the Gravity Forms plugin itself or alternatively you can purchase a Gravity Forms license directly at prices starting at $39 and going up to $199. Softduit Media can also create individual surveys or other forms with Gravity Forms.

If you simply need a survey, this is definitely something you could learn to do yourself with either Gravity Forms or Survey Monkey. Gravity Forms offers some options that include creating user generate feedback forms or blog article submission tools that definitely have a learning curve for the do-it-yourself types. We can help if you don’t have time to conquer the learning curve.

Where is Survey Monkey better? Graphs and Infographics!

One of the functional areas where Survey Monkey may trump Gravity Forms is in the display of the results. Gravity forms allows you to receive email notifications of each submission, or you can download results in a csv file, which can later be pumped into a spreadsheet to manually create a graph of results or something. However, there is no built in tool to display survey results in a cool looking graph. (note you have to pay for survey monkey to get excel export)

Update – Formidable Pro and Formidable Free or Lite Form and Poll Plugin – A Middle of the road option

A couple weeks after publishing this article Formidable Pro was brought to my attention by Richard Farr at Clickadvisors.  :)  I have not tested it yet so this is not a recommendation but more of an awareness update.  The Formidable plugins and add ons seem to strike something of a middle ground as compared to Gravity Forms and Survey Monkey.  It is priced at a level that just slightly under cuts Gravity Forms.  There is a freemium offering called the Formidable Free Edition or Lite version that offers Form options with a limited set of basic form elements. Then the premium level kicks in at $37 for a single site and $97 for unlimited sites with the full range of services.

Two things immediately distinguished the Formidable Pro plugin besides the $2 savings as compared to Gravity Forms:

1. Formidable Pro does provide infographic or graph presentation options of results.  The main thing missing from Gravity forms (when contrasted with Survey Monkey) is the presentation of polling results for those situations where you are conducting a survey with the form as opposed to some other form usage.
2. Lifetime updates – instead of having to renew the license on a yearly basis (as required from Gravity Forms) Formidable Pro only requires a one time purchase.  So in addition to that $2 savings, you don’t have to spend the money all over again next year!

Related posts:

1. Asteroid Mappers Sunday Picture
2. Google Spreads Wireless – Helps themselves
3. Wrapping Up Website Migration from Microsoft Web Page to WordPress as a CMS for CreatingInteriors.com

How to decrease bounce rate and increase page views at the same time

If you think about this question for a few seconds you will likely realize that both outcomes are tied together pretty closely.  If a visitor arrives at your website, and  then leaves immediately without viewing any other pages it is considered a bounce by Google Analytics.  So if you decrease bounce rate, those would have been bouncing visitors have not left, they  have moved onto another page on your site, thus you have increased your page views.  Sounds great, so how do we do it?

Background on Bounce Rate first.  Google Analytics defines Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

To view the bounce rates for your website, go to the Bounce Rate report under Visitors > Visitor Trending > Bounce Rate.

In lay persons terms this is bad, you brought someone to your website and they didn’t find anything useful enough to stick around.  The exception that makes the rule is possibly a scenario where they land on your site, find exactly what they are looking for there and leave immediately to go get it.  Presumably your site is just the leap off point to something good.  Keep in mind as well that Google tends to have an ‘advertising skew’ on the concept of bounce rate and the ways to decrease bounce rate because they look at it very closely in regards to Google Adwords campaigns and bounces off of landing pages.

If we consider how to manage our site better and get better results, lets consider that the people that fit within the exception are not true bouncers, but conversions.  We brought them to  us, and showed them the right thing and they went and got it per our advice.  We do not want to change their behavior by slowing them down or delaying them from getting the right thing.

But in several other scenarios, they may go away immediately and get lost once they are gone.  We haven’t really closed the deal with these folks in that scenario.  A stronger close might involve more education or training or sign posts to show them what to look for to be successful.

In other scenarios, we might attract people to our site.  They are looking for something and we just happened to be the closest thing to fit the bill.  But when they land on our site, we only give them enough information to tell them, these are not the droids your are looking for!  Go refine your search and try again.

That’s a lost opportunity.

Instead of showing them that we don’t have the right stuff in our content, we could show them related alternatives.  To this end, for years, I’ve been using the YARPP plugin on my WordPress websites.  YARPP is an acronym for Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.  It does some good things.  It shows a quick list of blog articles that are similar to the one that is currently displayed.  It is not a perfect plugin, but for an automated tool it is pretty damn good.  On the down side it tends to show these ‘related articles’ at the very bottom of the article you have.  Knowing that 80% of visitors never make it all the way to the bottom of any article, that means that 80% of your visitors never see the YARPP recommendations!  So one of my tips is to do a little custom coding and move those YARPP recommendations up, way up the article.  Put them in your sidebar possibly, or create a floating box in your post for them, possibly just below the first image in your  article.

By showing the related articles towards the top, a person scanning your blog article will see immediately if you have a better alternative than what showed up in search.  You can still put the YARPP list at the bottom as well for the hardcore 20% that will read the whole thing and look for more of your articles as well.

What happens when YARPP can’t find a really good related article?

Here’s the rub.  Related Post Plugins can’t find related articles on your site if you have not written related articles!  The automation only automates the organization not the writing.  So you need to go and do some work!

For years, I’ve been recommending Scribe SEO as one of the tools to help decrease bounce rate.  The simple reasoning is that this helps a writer optimize their copy and their SEO in sync with each other so that the article post optimization is more likely to show up in Search Engine Result Placements (SERP keyword listings) for the right keywords.  Ergo your article ranks for something it is actually about as opposed to some accidental tangent keyword that it is not about at all.  Scribe works very well in this  regard.

Proudly displayed Scribe SEO Affiliate link

However, sometimes when there is an information void (an information opportunity might be another  way to consider it) in Google search on a particular topic, your article that has been optimized by Scribe may not be the right fit, but it may still be the closest.  So when people click on it, hoping to  get lucky but preconditioned to bounce because they know they aren’t clicking on something that looks like a good fit, they will bounce away almost every time when you don’t have what you said you wouldn’t have.

To fix this and decrease your bounce rate and increase your page views, all you have to do is follow some simple steps

1. Look through Google Analytics> Content> Pages and sort for the articles with the highest traffic and highest bounce rate
2. If you like, export your results from Google Analytics into a csv or spreadsheet file for easier sorting if you are not familiar with Google Analytics filters
3. You are looking for your good articles that pull in lots of visitors according to Google Analytics.  These are your home run hitters but they are fowling out by attracting a visitor that bounces.
4. Find your top 5 (later you will repeat these next steps with the next 5 and so on)
5. Look at each of these and write 2 articles that relate to them.
6. The first article should cover a topic that is related but talks about what someone might do further up the pipeline from the original.  Ergo if you original article was about buying tires for a car, your new first article might be about How to determine when you need to buy  new tires.  Your goal is to educate them enough so that they will be prepared for your home run hitter next, but on the off chance that you attracted someone from a Google search that was not ready for that  original article, you are better positioned to answer their actual question if they are earlier in the process.
7. The second article should cover a topic that is also related but is further down the pipeline.  What do you  do after you buy the tires?  Ergo, it might be an article on getting an alignment, or tire rotation, or even sharing their thoughts with you and your readers based on their own experience!
8. Now your original home run hitter is more likely to either hit it out of the park for the people that do want the information it offers, or get on first base with a solid hit by helping what would have been a likely bounce rate increaser to find an answer closer to their needs.
9. This can then be repeated for all of your content over and over.  For an existing website, this is a great way for an editor to figure out what should be put into the content plan for the year.  Sometimes the topics might feel like they are getting stale because they have been covered and  covered, but this helps us find the wholes in our own content that we might be too familiar with ourselves.

Advanced Bounce Rate Decrease Tips

• In addition to just writing an article that is designed to fit one step earlier in the process or one step later in the process of our original content article, We can build out on this, like building a wedge or a pyramid, growing the base down further.  So go forth and write articles up and down the process chain relating to your best articles.  Increase your footprint on the topic, and flesh out your website to answer every related question, and cover every related step along the  way.
• I haven’t said it yet, but I definitely do recommend optimizing each of these new articles of course.  I use Scribe SEO still and these days, I’m also doing additional levels of optimization with other tools such as InboundWriter and even Zemanta.  InboundWriter is somewhat similar to Scribe with more of a focus on keyword search analysis.  Zemanta is just a useful way of adding related articles, links and images to help get the point across.  Plus, I do not just mean Search Engine Optimization, I definitely do mean Copy optimization or copywriting optimization or just improving general web readability.  These tools guide you through the process which is easier than internalizing and never forgetting a master’s level degree in web readability.  None of them are perfect, but together they round out the rough edges.
• Finally, if you have a really hot topic, the best way to hit a home run every time is to go back and create a YouTube video about the article.  If it is doing well in print, odds are amping it up with video and embedding that video back into your original article will also help drop that bounce rate and show those visitors that don’t like to read where the answer is when they hit the play button.

Related posts:

1. Searching for Bounce Rate Decrease with Scribe SEO?
2. WordPress Article Optimization Content Development for Oldies!
3. Digital Recorders and Dragon

Herein lies my report on the State of the BlogWorld Expo. Unlike other States of thing type of reports, this report has a sample size of 1. There have been years of anecdotal conversations and debates that have fueled this report, but in a Steve Jobs kind of way, it is really my own perspective on the State of the BlogWorld Expo. This is a show and a community that I have grown to care about quite a bit over the years even though, for most that attend it’s just business these days. If you are not familiar with my writing style (and Google analytics tells me your are not), I tend to use 50 words where 5 will suffice. So get a coffee and sit back and read.

This last week I returned from the 2011 BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Los Angeles. I’ve been to every BlogWorld from Vegas to New York and to LA. I’ve also been to almost every Podcast and New Media Expo with the exception of the first one in 2005. I’ve spoken at BlogWorld and Co-exhibited with Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. I have followed the State of the Expo with keen interest since 2006 and this year, I must must say the state of the BlogWorld Expo is strong with many areas for growth, improvement and new opportunity.

Background on the State of the BlogWorld Expo

In the early days, the Podcast and Portable Media Expo was a bit of a party fest put together by hobbyists. They had some great self taught educational tracks, similar to the best of WordCamps or PodCamps and they had a lot of big blow out rock star parties in small hotels. There were concerts and live performances and break away podcast stars and start up companies. The Expo itself couldn’t be sustained in the auspices of Ontario, California (West LA) and during the last couple years of the show, a start up emerged called BlogWorld.

In 2007 BlogWorld launched in Las Vegas. It was impressive in that it launched in Las Vegas alone, but the initial show located in the Las Vegas Convention Center felt like a pre-schooler running around a major college campus. Three years later by 2010, BlogWorld Expo had not only bought and merged with the New Media Expo but it had moved into cooler digs at Mandalay Bay and found some very large corporate sponsors. We partied like reality TV stars at the hottest clubs and venues in Vegas, and built social media empires by day. Along the way, podcasting took a back seat and video casting and even blogging were kicked over to shotgun while social media made names and fortunes. But the search for ROI had not really hit home yet.

The show seized an opportunity to co-locate and start a 2nd show in New York at the Book Expo of America. It was a small show by BlogWorld standards, similar in size to the first BlogWorld in Vegas way back in 2007 with about 1400 – 1700 attendees, as compared to the Vegas event the previous fall that brought in over 4,000 people. But the 1,700 of us at BlogWorld in New York City were just starting to swim with the 10,000 Book Expo attendees in a pool that was much bigger and deeper.

BlogWorld Expo City – Los Angeles

The show headed to LA that next fall, or in current terms last week, and this is where I begin with the 2011 State of the BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles.

While I have not received any official numbers, I’m led to believe that the numbers were again over 4k, probably in the range of 4,100 attendees registered for the show. This year the show was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center right next to the Staples Center, which was somewhat empty with the NBA on strike. This probably accounted for the easy seating at restaurants in the immediate vicinity, which was cool and a nice change from Vegas in the early years.  I flew into LAX despite my preference for either Ontario or Burbank.  The new full body scanners had the airports I travelled through lit up with naked pictures of bloggers, fortunately not where anyone could see them.  The only result of the scanners was an even slower security line, especially for flights later in the day.  The concept of getting to the airport early was definitely important if you actually wanted to leave LA after the expo.  From my experience the streets and sidewalks of downtown LA were safe to walk, although very wise to walk with at least one other person.

BlogWorld Convention Area

The show was a bit spread out in this new convention center. It is not as big as the Las Vegas Convention Center but definitely larger than the Mandalay Bay facility. As such, the flow of people was also spread out over 2 large areas, an upstairs and the coming and going of attendees of an unrelated Franchise Expo and a Tony Robbins convention, followed by a comic con of sorts replete with a visit by Stan Lee and Elvira. The result was that it was never difficult to find a quite place to talk, but traffic never felt super busy either. There’s a lot of room to grow and opportunity to better organize where every thing is located next year, but this year it felt a little loose.

BlogWorld Hotels

There were several partner hotels and like BlogWorld in New York, the show offered free shuttles to and from the show most of the day. You could also make the walk if you chose at about 1.7 miles from my hotel the Millennium Biltmore on 506 Grand. The distance was about the same as it might have been when I stayed at the Hilton in Los Vegas and had to trek to the South Hall or was it the North Hall…

Regardless the shuttles were awesome because it gave people a chance to network with each other, which is definitely one of the strengths of this show. One exhibitor, YouCast, even stepped up to the plate and hit a home run by offering attendees a free shuttle service to and from LAX! Any company that will solve travel to and from LAX is a winner in my book. That may or may not require FTC disclosure, if so here it is, but for the record, I purchased my own shuttle paid for out of my own pocket through Expedia to Super Shuttle. I didn’t use that one and took the ride with YouCast to network with people yet again and that was awesome. Plus they gave me a free donut, so there you go, fully transparent.

There are passes and then there are passes to BlogWorld Expo

I have been to every show and I have had just about every pass there is to be had from the super expensive to the super cheap to the press pass and the speaker pass too. The last couple of shows (NY and LA) I went on an inexpensive Exhibit Hall pass for $50 last minute or $25 if you buy it at early bird rates. The pass gets you into the expo hall and into the parties. It has been my experience having gone to all the BlogWorld’s that the Exhibit Hall is the best place to find cool and useful things and meet some of the folks that are really making things happen in this space.

Despite my preference for going the cheap route, it appeared to me through casual association and conversation that most visitors were there for the sessions and had paid to hear them.  I believe there were also just over 300 speakers covering the 10 tracks.  Speakers get in for free in exchange for speaking.  There were a handful of press passes issued, although since this is a blogging conference press passes are usually rather limited as it is a bit odd at best having the media cover the media and at worst its just an organization or two finding a cheap (free) way to get a full access pass.

BlogWorld Expo Sessions

Don’t get me wrong there are some gems in the conference sessions and keynotes. In past years, I have found inspiration from Leo Laporte, the guys from the YouTube show Ask a Ninja, and Rocket Boom’s CEO. The Copy Blogger team did a bang up job last fall in Vegas as well, and the tonight show like keynote at BlogWorld was one of the funniest I can think of. (disclosure my business partner Joe Klein performed the role as the announcer and imho came up with most of the idea and material to set that scene up). In LA, I never quite found inspiration at the keynotes. I was looking, I was listening, but nothing ever quite resonated nor came close to epiphany levels for me. There was a motivating and very well delivered keynote from @ambercadabra aka Amber Naslund. It resonated with me quite a bit as I’m a federal whistle blower and most of it sounded like a hoorah stand up and fight for what is right kind of speech.

I’ve never had much difficulty with that, and I felt like she was preaching to a choir of one. I think others may have been more inspired by it than I was, but I’ve been drunk on that Kool-Aid for years. The closing keynote by all accounts came together at the last minute in classic BlogWorld style. It was a very entertaining keynote, but it struck me that in terms of ‘new media’ the folks on the panel were largely talking about the past, what they had done in the past to get where they were and very little talk about what they saw in the future, with the exception of the quietest member on the panel, Tim Street. He did share some of his lessons learned from producing French Maid TV, something that anyone that has been around the show knew about already, but the rest of the panel, with the probably exception of iJustine, seemed to be clueless about. That seemed ironic to say the least as the celebrity/strangers to the community didn’t know him but many of us did. (even though he wasn’t wearing his dark glasses maybe that was why)

Other talks from folks like Deanna Brown, Michael Stelzner and Lisa Stone seemed to be way off the mark. (Michael a little less so, but definitely a disjointed combination on this panel). I did not attend but heard many complaints about the presentation by Technorati in regards to their State of the Blogosphere, a report that is very unlike this one and has no relation what so ever although they did quote me in their 2008 report. I heard from at least 10 people that this presentation was dull and mostly just a person reading slides. If you have read the 2011 State of the Blogosphere, you will probably get the idea, however, I would encourage you to focus on the final part of that report where I think there is some interesting information.

State of the Blogosphere

• Introduction and Methodology,
• Technorati State of the Blogosphere – Part 1
• Technorati State of the Blogosphere – Part 2
• Technorati State of the Blogosphere – Part 3

State of the Blogosphere 2011

View more presentations from Courtney Brook

A Fortune 100 Company Learns The Need to Produce Less – Not Quite yet

The presentation by Jim Farley from Ford almost had some interesting insights in it as Ford shared how they had learned to communicate with their customers by sharing the stories of their employees. They had learned how to break out of the communications bubble of a big corporation and show the real people on the inside and let them tell their story to the world. That was something of a case study in the obvious way to use social media. However, I was struck with the counter intuitive epiphany that for about 100 years, Ford Motor Company has been in the business of taking people and sticking them in bubbles where they are unable to communicate with others until the bubble (picture a Ford Pinto for the true bubble car) takes them from A to Z. These days their cars are cooler looking and loaded up with smart tech, but the tech is a slight counter to the physical separation and divider of people. Ford did not create the suburban wasteland that many of us commute from today, but it couldn’t have been possible without them. Plus no matter how safe you make a smart car, if you still have to drive, you are going to be distracted when you simultaneously communicate and your communications are going to be less zeroed in when you are distracted by traffic.

As I saw it, Ford needs to learn from their lessons in how the changes in social media have changed the world and wake up and learn how to survive in a world where they will need to produce FEWER cars! I don’t mean that so much in a green way, although it is a nice bonus. I do mean that people do not want to waste productive time that they could spend doing something else, getting something done, or even communicating with the people that are important to them. Every minute spent behind a steering wheel, is a minute of productivity lost. I tried to share this thought with the Ford Team at their booth the next day. They were very polite, and mentioned the vision of their CEO and their smart cars and work to plan for less congested roads, but like my old employer (the one that was the number 1 cell phone maker in the world 10 years ago) they didn’t get it when I explained that things were already changing. We’ll check back with them in 10 years and see if Google or Apple owns them…

So Where Was the Good Stuff for BlogWorld Expo 2011?

As I mentioned before there was some very good stuff at BlogWorld Expo 2011.

Disclosure on my finances of the show

Before I jump into this let me put out a disclaimer. I spent over $1k in travel and food and hotels and tickets to attend this event. A couple of the company names below gave me a freebie or two in the form of discounted prices (none of which I have used yet, but I do plan to use them if I can make the time). The sum total of these freebies by my estimates is probably almost $100, or 1/10th the amount that I spent to go to this show. I say this as I do not personally feel influenced by any of this. But I do want to disclose it and you can make up your own mind. In addition, I do intend to either use services of some of these companies and or resell the services or cross sell some of these services to my own customers. In some cases, I may earn a little from this, but it will likely be a while before that cross sales activity or reselling activity makes up for the expense I put up up front. Not to mention the expense I laid out year after year for this show since 2006, which spans approximately 9 shows which is probably over $10k. (Podcast & New Media Expos 2006, 2007, 2008; BlogWorlds 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010LV, 2011NYC, 2011LA).

You may ask why I go to the show at all if the return is so meager?  During my first visit, I was travelling on a corporate budget.  During that trip I saw a huge potential in this new group and industry and returned on my own dime ever since.  It has only been in the recent couple years that I have found a formula that allows me to find an ROI in attending BlogWorld.  This has more to do with my primary business working as a business developer and web developer.  I find solutions for my customers at the show, and sometimes when things go very well, I find new customers at the show too!

This is partly why I have always found that the good stuff was in the Expo Hall!

There were some very cool exhibitors at BlogWorld 2011, and in quantity more than any other BlogWorld to date. There were a few less giant booths this year as compared to last fall so the overall show floor size seemed about the same if not slightly smaller.

Here’s a run down of some of the exhibitors that really stood out, starting with technologies that are most likely to change the industry for the better. The first couple will probably move the dial significantly but in different ways.

1. WeVideo [Note as soon as I have an affiliate link for this I’m using it because this service rocked! I like money and if you signup for it,you’ll probably thank me, even if I get a commission.] – By far one of the coolest technologies I’ve seen at a BlogWorld yet (and I’ve seen technologies that by all rights should have killed Facebook, Utterz) WeVideo is an online, Collaborative, video editing, rendering and distribution service. A few years back, I think it was 2008, TubeMogul came out and everyone was impressed that they could allow you to distribute your video to more than one place at a time. Well We Video does that and at lower price points that TubeMogul, but that’s only a fraction of what WeVideo does. It also provides a very high end online video editing service. Instead of paying $500 to several thousand dollars for video editing software to go on one machine you can start off using this tool for free! Plus, it gives you access to a music and video catalog! But it just gets better. (Not trying to sell it, just think its cool) The service allows you to share your video project with others so they can help you edit it. That’s one of the main reason why I stuck with this industry, I wanted to see the day when I could collaborate with people! One of the other major cool features is that they do the rendering on a super fast computer in the cloud, which cuts the rendering time down significantly no matter how fast your personal machine is. Then they do the upload to YouTube or wherever through a connection far faster than you have at your home or office. Those last two features alone could probably shave two thirds off of production time for your average online video project. Decrease your computer equipment purchasing bill as well and this service looks like a bargain even at its highest package levels.
2. InboundWriter – I am not crazy about the name of this company, but I am crazy about their product! For anyone that has ever use ScribeSEO (and I love that one!), this is a little similar and very complimentary. Where Scribe helps a non SEO person or a non Copywriter to optimize their blog articles or their website content after a first draft has been written, Inbound Writer helps a writer from the very very beginning. They help you figure out what topic to cover and how to write a better headline and they give you feedback along the way. Their user interface is out of this world. They have an amazing writing tool on their own site once you sign up for an account and they have a pretty good plugin that gives you the best of that interface right in your own WordPress writing environment. They call their service a Freemium plan, where you can get it for free each month indefinitely when you write no more than 8 articles using their service. After 8, you have to pay for the premium service (or not use it anymore that month). The premium service costs $19.95 for unlimited usage, which compared to Scribe is a whole lot cheaper, although I’d probably recommend using both for reasons I won’t get into here. This service is going to help writers become BETTER writers and help their articles get found and get even more readers. Win, Win, Win, Win, Win!
   

   Update Scribe SEO v InboundWriter Video First Look

3. GTO Management – This one might not be so obvious, especially for the bloggers and podcasters, but these guys are tops when it comes to soup to nuts setup and/or management of an affiliate program. They run the affiliate program for BlogWorld itself, and setup the program for ScribeSEO that I mentioned previously. They are run by a family team and I love all three of them. They do a great job, get companies great results, and have been leaders in the affiliate industry for years and years. If you were a company at BlogWorld that didn’t have an affiliate program, then you should be talking to these guys right away (WeVideo and InboundWriter, I’m looking at you!)
4. Theme Design Competitors – > 1. Headway Themes and 2. PageLines – In years past I discovered Artisteer, which was a phenomenal desktop software program that makes it easy to design WordPress themes, Drupal templates, Joomla etc. This was not the first time I’ve seen PageLines or Headway, but I think it was the first time that their up and coming new software (versions 3 and 2 respectively) were achieving that level where I feel they could be truly useful. I’d advise waiting for the arrival of the new version before you try either (headway coming on Nov 25 2011 and PageLines on December 12th I believe). This is not desktop theme design software but online, web based drag and drop theme design software. Very cool stuff and definitely takes theme design to a whole new level.
5. SpreeCast – This was a cool cool online video broadcast tool launched by the founder of StubHub  that allows people to record up to 4 video casts as one show. It also has the added cool feature of letting audience members talk to live shows with video as well. Kind of like Ustream or Livestream but with 4 talking heads and with audience video chat. I have not seen anything like this anywhere else. On the down side, the final show can not be exported to YouTube, they want to keep everything in house and do a bit of an ad share program with the content owners. Since YouTube has most of the video audience, that means that this platform will probably be limited to whatever audience of users they can muster and how much users can push their own website fans and followers onto the new platform. Its got potential, but I’d love it more if there were an export/upload to YouTube option!   I’m in the midst of scheduling just had a more in depth walk through with Greg Wacks from SpreeCast later this week.  (For all of my old Utterz friends, do check this out!)
6. WebDoc – whom I first met at BlogWorld in New York was back and doing some very cool things again. These guys are taking the concept of Rich Media (think new media but with everything all at once with a double emphasis on easy) to a whole new level. They are to Facebook pages What WordPress was to blogging on your own website.
7. 23Press – I almost forgot about these guys and had to go back through my notes to recall what they did. Oops, there were a lot of cool things this year. 23Press.com helps you move your blog from one host to another and they offer the service cheap, cheap, cheap! I do development work and from time to time do this for clients, but it makes no financial sense to pay a developer to move files when you can get an efficient service like this to do it for a tenth of what I’d have to charge for the time spent. Their prices to do all of this is ridiculously cheap.  Typically less than the cost of buying 3 coke zeros in the LA conference Center at $3.50 a bottle!  A single blog move will cost $10 or if you are a developer and have more than one site moved (assuming at a time) the cost is $5 each.  That’s far less than anyone can do it themselves, and frankly in my experience its cheaper than wasting 30 minutes mostly on hold and later trying to smooth talk a hosting company into doing it for free.  I’m still waiting to hear how they handle the infamous WordPress widget settings.  Those annoying things can get lost very easy in a move, especially if there is a domain name change.  (Tip the Shiba Custom Widget plugin can sometimes help)  Update – They are soon coming out with a backup service that will backup a wordpress site for only $5!  (that’s about a tenth of the cost of another very popular wordpress backup system)

There were many other cool exhibitors that should get some honorable mentions. Some are iterating cool new improvements like Posterous Spaces (think Posterous but as an App and with group areas). CD Baby has been around for a long time, but I was very impressed with their sister program Book Baby that helps writers get eBooks out. I’m going to order up a book cover design next week for $149 $279 for my first fiction book.

ThingLink lets you add links or other types of interactivity on pictures that you might embed in your blog. Looked real cool and easy and I hope to try it out with a mindmap soon! Pond5 offers up a ton of stock media from video to pictures and photos to audio and more. They gave me $50 in coupons to try the service out and I can’t wait to try some of their after effects samples and audio. I also want to get my wife (photographer) set up as a contributor. Check out their cool search utility below:

Search Stock Video by - -

View - -‘s Artist Profile on Pond5

VoiceBase lets you take audio and video files and have the audio indexed such that it can be searched. Very cool application, but I’d like to see them add the ability to generate voice transcripts as well. I’d pay for that last bit! InCrwd helps commenters on a blog earn points towards free stuff. Seemed like an interesting idea, but its one of those things that will either work great or might be a bit weak. Popularity alone will probably allow it to sink or swim but I couldn’t predict it one way or the other. Stickam.com lets you broadcast from an iPhone or a iPad and have video conversations while you do it! Cooking with the Troops is a non profit organization working to help give soldiers and veterans more job skills as they transition out of the military and also help show them out to cook and eat healthier. As a former soldier who grew up eating all the wrong foods, I could relate to this effort on many levels and would like to help them too.

But that wasn’t it! There were even more exhibitors that also deserved some exploration and attention

1. Raw Voice/Blubrry (the people behind PowerPress) were soft launching a new service that will put video casts and podcasts on Roku devices, right on someone’s HD TV. Very cool stuff this
2. Zippy Kid- was there showing off premium WordPress hosting services, something that will probably be all the rage in 2012. I had just seen a demo of WPEngine the week before.
3. Viddy – offered up a 15 second iPhone broadcasting app. I like the app, but the whole 15 second limit is maybe not the best fit for me.
4. NewTek – was there showing off their amazing TriCaster. This is definitely one of the tools of the future for this community.
5. Raven Internet Marketing Tools was back in force again. I really like their user interface for managing SEO campaigns on a site. This is one of those tools that has been on my list to do more with for months now!
6. Website Magazine was present and I have to say that I stock pile their magazines and read them on the plane whenever I travel. I told them they needed to start putting bit.ly links on their physical magazine articles so I could share them easily while flying. They loved it and someone will probably get promoted when they get back to the Website Magazine offices. Great job!  You can get a feel for their writing value with articles like these
   1. New Microdata Plugin for WordPress
   2. Affiliate Marketing Glossary
   3. Impact of Google Search’s SSL Change
7. My friends from ShareaSale were there. I earn a happy revenue stream from various affiliate programs on ShareaSale. To my friends at the show and ShareaSale as well, I apologize for not talking you up more. But it’s a competitive world. Join shareasale.com, Earn Cash!
8. Last but not least were my good friends at CorpNet who help people get incorporated, perform Trademark research or setup a nonprofit corporation so that you can then get a tax exempt nonprofit PayPal account(if you area charity) among other things all for dirt cheap prices. (And they were giving away lots of cash prizes and two iPad 2. Last year I won an iPad from them in a blog naming contest!)
   1. Here’s one of their services that any blogger especially those with a domain buying habit should consider…Get $20 Off Any Trademark Service at CorpNet®. Use Code: SASTM – Start Now!

Well that’s the state of things at this point, I’ll likely revisit and upgrade this article sometime in the near future. Yet to be discussed was the colocation of PodCamp LA at BlogWorld and the future of Tracks, Sessions and most importantly Training! Plus whatever happened to those super cool interactive .epub formats with 3d interactive books and synced up iBook’s and audio books from BlogWorld and Book Expo in New York????

Cool stuff I’ve found in past years at BlogWorld Expo

• WindowsLiveWriter – edit almost any blog on almost any technology, easily with clean code from your computer – 2007
• Artisteer – WordPress theme design tool for any level of experience from beginner to advanced – 2008
• Utterz – Didn’t survive the name change  2007 I think
• WordPress – You may have heard of them
• Libsyn – 2006
• TechSmith – Snagit and Camtasia folks – Every year but this year
• Dawn and Drew – 2006
• Tee Morris
• Joe Klein – 2006 – 2010
• The Beatles Love Show – 2009
• UStream
• MycroBurst.com – 2011 NYC
• LiveStream
• TubeMogul
• Lewis Howes and his awesome LinkedIn Optimization tips – 2009
• Andre Natta – 2007
• Sean Jackson – ScribeSEO fame met him at PostieCon back in 2007

and much more!

Improvement Opportunities for BlogWorld Expo

This year the the expo hall sound system for announcements made every one cringe and try to scratch out their eardrums by going through their eye sockets.   It was comically bad at first and got worse.  That’s probably more of an issue for the convention center.

LA PodCamp was there, but I never found them!  I asked directions at the BlogWorld Expo booth and was directed to an empty booth in the middle of the floor.  I asked around several times and I never found anyone that could find it.  After the show, I heard that it had been set up in a side room somewhere, maybe upstairs???  Something similar happened when WordCamp Las Vegas collocated in 2007, but I found it back then, partly because I was a scheduled speaker.  Still I had an audience of at least 30 people.

Both shows were supposed to be on the expo hall floor. For a ‘Camp’ to work, it has to be right in the middle of everyone so that the people on the floor can vote for the tracks and things they want to hear about on the spot.  There needs to be a ringleader herding people around a bit.  If it is in a side room with too few people, it just won’t work.  I think this one should go through a redo, but maybe set up a full Podcasting area on the floor, maybe a video casting section also, and a social media section or blogging section too.  Something to help people get orientated and not have the floor quite so random.  It can also pool some of the people together that are in the same sub niche and spur more conversation.  Hell maybe there could be a different camp for each day of the conference.  Exhibitors of related tools could even pitch sessions to show off their wares.  Due to the nature of an unconference or camp, if no one votes for the sessions it gets crowd de-sourced anyway.

Show Growth Up – Can it Continue?

The show has consistently grown every single time.  New York City is something I treat as an expansion and I will look at the numbers of that show separately or added to the numbers for LA, so for 2011 that puts total attendees at something close 5800 up from about 4k in 2010 when the who was only in Las Vegas.

Rick and the team behind the show have done a great job.  I got a sense that the momentum might be stalling a bit, and here’s what I mean by that.  The number of people that are just bloggers or podcasters seems to be slipping.  They are being replaced by people that are corporate social media, corporate bloggers etc. at probably a 2 or 3:1 ratio.  The thing is those corporate types in addition to wanting to learn, want to meet independent bloggers and podcasters!

The independents are the least likely to be able to afford the entire show including hotel, flight, and tickets themselves.  I’m something of an independent myself and more often than not (I think its like 60% of the time now) I only get the expo pass as I mentioned before.  The show still runs at least $1000 and usually a bit more than that.  I’ve learned how to profit from the show.  I sourced about a third of my clients in 2011 from the show in 2010.  *I met some of those clients many years earlier and closed deals at the show or soon after.

While at the show and soon after I did some brainstorm and provided feedback to the team.  I think the show needs something like an ‘indie’ pass.  It’s a little too weird for corporations to run give aways for passes and the winners are often announced to late for people to actually book affordable travel.  The whole disclosure thing wonks things up too.  But potentially, the show could offer a pass focused maybe just on blogger improvement areas (as opposed to the full full show) and do that for maybe $100 – $150.  Larger corporations or sponsors could possibly provide a networking event or dinner as well and every one could benefit.  With the 2012 election coming up, there could be a political angle to this as well.  In 2012 political blogging was a very large component of the show.

The pass in my mind should be some type of pass a little discounted (maybe for first timers?) blogger/podcaster coming to the show that is not working for a big company.  I’m sure it would be difficult to vet out, and there could be a quantity limit as well but I think that might help.  Financially it might even work better than say the affiliate summit scholarship program. Maybe BlogWorld Expo could even host a page on the site where people could list whether or not they were seeking donations to make it to the show, possibly something held in escrow to insure things are on the up and up.  Something like a network of Kickstarter projects, but simply just bloggers and podcasters looking for help.

Bringing new folks in like that also needs one other key ingredient to make it viable.

Some of the Sessions/Tracks Needs a Steve Jobs Channeling Dictator

Issue

The speaking tracks are determined by committee.  This generally produces a long litany of critiques over the end results of the substance and quality of those tracks.  Plus, show attendance suffers because the tracks do not get finalized until just a few before the show.  A whole lot of tickets never get sold, because the decision to travel that far affordably expires a month or two before anyone knows who is going to speak and what information they will share.   The tracks need to be final and published at least 2 months before the show, preferably 3.

Solution

Keep putting some of the tracks together by committee.  This will continue to generate the same type of mix that the show has had historically. Some motivational talks, some industry debates and panels, some concept and tip sharing sessions as well.  Those are all needed and serve their role.  They rarely have a lot of meat on the bone, things that can be taken back to a company or home studio or what have you to be used to make money and bring people back again to the show!

This is one of the reasons why I focus on the expo floor where a participating exhibitor company has a strong enough value proposition to shell out money for a booth and put their money where their mouth is!

In addition set aside 3 tracks for nothing but comprehensive education. DO NOT run this one by committee!

The show needs to pull a Steve Jobs on this or find someone to be a mini dictator and create a training syllabus of topics to cover.

The tracks should be soup to nuts education on 1) Blogging 2) Podcasting & 3) Video Casting

When I say soup to nuts, I mean they should start out on day 1 hour 1 with beginner level education and build on that throughout the day until they end on the last day and last class with advanced training.

If need be, sub contract this out to someone like Lynda or Total Training.  (Digital Video Expo uses a similar business model for training working through the Weynand Training Center offering things that include Apple Certified Courses right at the show!)

At the end of the day, if the show can become a center place for training (meat on the bone) people at all levels will come from all over the country to get the tools and training they need to be successful, not just the good ideas and tips and networking. 

Then I think we could see the show grow in size a whole lot more.  Partly because people will come learn something useful and make money from it, hopefully enough money so that they will come back and repeat year after year.

This concludes my 2011 State of the BlogWorld Expo. I’m sure if you were crazy enough to read this far you have learned quite a bit about the show, its potential and its weaknesses.  I do find it valuable and fulfilling both personally and professionally.  I hope that it is able to continue this tradition, and I can’t wait to see what’s happens in the spring as BlogWorld Expo and Book Expo of America build more synergy, right in the middle of a major election!

Related posts:

1. Softduit Media Attending BlogWorld 2008
2. The Trifecta of BlogWorld, New Media Expo & Las Vegas WordCamp 2009
3. From One Great Conference to Another: Speaking at IzeaFest & BlogWorld

Monday, I had the opportunity to brainstorm with dozens of affiliates on the topic of maximizing data feeds or affiliate data feed files pulled from affiliate networks into WordPress websites.  The end results is that we were able to share and gather up a long list of useful tools that WordPress and other website users can deploy to pull content into their site from a data feed file with affiliate links.

What is a Data Feed File in the Affiliate World?

Essentially the Data Feed File can contain information that can be used to populate content on a website.  It typically in either csv or xml formats.  If this affiliate data feed file is formatted correctly and if the correct tools are used, this data can be imported in to a WordPress website to either populate brand new pages or posts or even a new content type.

So merchants such as Amazon.com or Walmart.com or many merchants on Affiliate Networks such as CJ.com, Linkshare.com, Buy.at and others will sometimes provide a file that can be downloaded containing many different products, their respective affiliate links, image links, product descriptions, possibly even customer reviews, video embed links and more, depending on the merchant or the network or the file.

How can a Data Feed File be used on a WordPress Website?

In theory, if site owner has a WordPress website (there are other ways to do this outside of WordPress, but this article is particularly concerned about WordPress methodologies), they can go to an Affiliate Network, establish an affiliate relationship with a merchant such as Walmart, download a data feed file from the network, and import that file into your website, creating dozens, if not hundreds of pages of content.  Typically one page of content for every line of data(products or items listed).

Basic Data Feed File Concepts

The key to making this work hinges on using the right tools for the job to manage the download of the data feed file, and then import that file into a WordPress website in a way that correctly creates content.

Intermediate Data Feed Concept

In some cases, a merchant may not provide a data feed file in a format that can easily be imported into WordPress.  In these cases there are some tools or online web services that work to reformat the file that is provided into a useable format for WordPress.

Advanced Data Feed Concept

From an SEO perspective a website owner does not want to simply copy a file with a product name and description provided by a merchant and load that as a page on their website.  Odds are very very high that such content would be considered duplicate content.

To avoid duplicate content, a website owner needs to either add to, edit, or manipulate the content of the data feed file and add something unique to it so that the provided content only counts for about 20% of the content on the future page that will be generated.

ShopperPress Plugin for WordPress demonstrated at Affiliate Summit UnConference

HAVE TO CLICK THESE LINKS FOR IT TO WORK!

Coupon Code: "JANSALE"
Description: $25 discount off the original price

In Orlando at Affiliate Summit UnConference, Brett Burky (follow @brettburky) demonstrated the power of ShopperPress to help manage the import of data feeds from multiple sources directly from within the WordPress admin environment.  ShopperPress offers direct connections to many different Affiliate Networks, Amazon.com directly, even some of the services that make it possible to reformat data feed files into a more usable format, or combine files from multiple sources into a single source.

ShopperPress is a full ecommerce (shopping website) plugin.  The data feed file is just one aspect of its very advanced functionality.  A website owner that purchases ShopperPress (current prices $79, which includes a current discount from the normal price of $199) can set up their own ecommerce / shopping website.  This can enable them to sell their own physical goods, digital goods such as downloads, or about anything else that can be sold on the internet.  Those are all additional things that can be done.

Networks that offer Data Feed Files

Buy.at (pronounced Buy At)	RegNow
Digital River	Commission Junction
Affiliate Window	Market Health
Pepperjam Network	Webgains
ShareASale.com	LinkShare
ClickBank	Affiliate Future
Amazon Associates	E-Junkie
Affillinet	OneNetworkDirect

Disclosure – I personally have had the most financial affiliate success with Digital River, LinkShare, RegNow & ShareASale in that order.  I’ve had minor success with Commission Junction and Amazon.com.

Big 3 Data Feed File Manipulation Services

1. DataFeedFile.com -  Price Comparison Shopping Script Integration Tool CPA CPC Linkshare Commission Junction ShareASale Data Feed File (see below in plugins also Affiliate DataFeed File )

1. DataFeedr.com – DataFeedr supports the following affiliate networks:
2. PopShops – Affiliate marketing with Data Feeds

16 WordPress Plugins that Can Help you with Data Feed Files or Data Feeds

1. ShopperPress – Really a Shopping Cart Theme, not a plugin, but ShopperPress has lots of plugins including the tools to manage data feeds built in!
2. WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin
3. Software Shop
4. WordPress Easy CSV Importer- Use any csv file to make 500 or 1 million posts or pages.
   • Supports use with ShopperPress or ClassiPress,
   • automated updating or manual,
   • import all at once or spread it out over days or weeks,
   • import to the blog your logged into or use the blog your on to put the data into a totally different blog (Blog 2 Blog),
   • use custom permalinks or the default,
   • use the default post data or
   • Apply your own from data or
   • Increment random dates between a date range you establish
   • Schedule future posts or publish everything straight away
5. Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer – “This plugin not only automatically changes any Amazon link on your site to use your affiliate ID, but it also changes the link to point to the user’s local Amazon store.  So if your visitor is visiting from the UK they’ll get a link to Amazon.co.uk, if they’re visiting from the US they’ll get a link to the same product on Amazon.com.”
6. AppStore Links – “Updates all Data directly from the Apple AppStore Server. Setup caching-times for images and content. Use TradeDoubler-ID and plugin automatically creates Affiliate Links to the AppStore.  You can easily add Links to the Apple AppStore with using [app ##idnumber##] in your posts, pages or comments. The ID number is the number from the official AppStore URL.”
7. CSVPiG – CSV Datafeed Import Plugin CSV Data feed Import Plugin (Free and Pro version available) – “a datafeed import pluginfor WordPress. It transforms affiliate data feeds into professional WordPress blogs with thousands of content rich self-publishing posts.”
   • Your CSV can include:
     • Descriptions,
     • Affiliate links,
     • Pproduct images,
     • Bullet lists or
     • Anything you want.
   • CSVPiG easily deals with anything via its Post Template engine or design multiple post templates and have CSVPiG rotate through them as it publishes so each of your posts will look unique.
8. DataFeedFile.com (DFF) Featured Product Plugin – “…select a product, compare prices from different merchants, place it in the middle of your blog, and earn commission on sales.”   To be used with the DataFeedFile.com service 100% free
9. DataFeedFile Product Show Case Plugin – “Price comparison shopping in your blog! With DataFeedFile’s Product Showcase plugin, you can create an entire showcase of several products for price comparison, place it in the middle of your blog, and earn commission on sales”
10. Wp E-junkie Shopping Cart
11. Shopp Improved
12. Affiliate DataFeed File -Price Comparison Shopping Script Integration Tool CPA CPC Linkshare Commission Junction ShareASale Data Feed File
13. eShop
14. WFReview – One of the nicest data importers for WordPress I’ve seen.  The Auto review functionality is dark gray to black hat imho, but love the import tool. Would like to see these tools split into 2 different plugins maybe.
15. ComparePress – “Use ComparePress to quickly add and manage a full SEO price comparison system on your existing blog or web site.” Check out http://ComparePress.com for the full overview
16. Owagu.com’s massive datafeed loader for ShareASale - “This very powerful plugin from owagu.com loads any ShareaSale affiliate data feed into your WordPress automatically and adds categories accordingly…”

Videos and Tutorials: How to set up Affiliate Data Feed Files in WordPress

Datafeedr Review

Title

Datafeedr Review

Runtime

3:24

Views

2,030

Description

http://Datafeedr.toreview.org Datafeedr Review. Learn how to build an ecommerce ...

Title

Data Feed Software for Affiliates

Runtime

1:59

Views

2,489

Description

Shawn Collins of http://blog.affiliatetip.com talks about software for affiliate...

Title

DataFeedR Training Video

Runtime

6:36

Views

822

Description

DataFeedR Training Video

Title

Datafeedr A Powerful Affiliate Datafeed WordPress Plug-in

Runtime

3:01

Views

2,838

Description

http://www.datafeedr.com/affiliates/jrox.php?id=1264 | Datafeedr is a WordPress...

Title

Free Commission Junction WordPress Plugin

Runtime

2:20

Views

10,827

Description

http://wpnicheground.blogspot.com .. Add Product listing from Commission Junctio...

Title

Data Feeds

Runtime

1:26

Views

1,045

Description

http://blog.affiliatetip.com Shawn Collins answers a question about data feeds a...

Title

WordPress CSV Import - CSVPiG

Runtime

2:15

Views

2,045

Description

Import, schedule and publish CSV affiliate data feed quickly and easily into you...

Title

Add Affiliate Product Feeds To Your Site In 5 Minutes: Part 1

Runtime

9:55

Views

2,425

Description

If you have a blog or a website that you want to display many affiliate products...

Title

Internet Tutor - Introduction To Datafeeds - Making Money

Runtime

4:40

Views

652

Description

Use Datafeeds to create thousands of websites and pages that make you money.

Title

Internet Tutor - Affilistore Making Money Datafeeds Part One

Runtime

7:40

Views

843

Description

As promissed part one of making money with affilistore script and datafeeds. Thi...

Title

Datafeed Integration to Database

Runtime

3:20

Views

2,953

Description

Visit www.Raakesh.com for any answers regarding this video. This video shows a p...

Title

Integrating DataFeedFile

Runtime

1:12

Views

342

Description

How to stream DataFeedFile

Title

Build Unlimited Affiliate Datafeed WordPress Stores

Runtime

5:00

Views

1,264

Description

We all know how it is promoting affiliate products with a messy data feed, a big...

Title

Affiliate store building system tutorial - STEP 1

Runtime

1:47

Views

152

Description

http://www.siteurigata.com/afiiliate-marketing-unlimited-ecommerce-stores/ STE...

Title

How to Build Affiliate Store on WordPress Simply

Runtime

5:00

Views

7,189

Description

More: http://scriptech.net/Wordpress-affiliate-store - Datafeedr is a revolution...

WordPress Plugins that are Currently Out of Date (tracking in case they are updated again in the future)

1. iTunes Affiliate Link Maker (iTALM) – (Currently only supports WordPress up to Version 2.8.6 see AppStore Links plugin for possible solution alternative) “The plugin adds an itunes button to the visual editor which when clicked bring forward a jquery dialog containing a search for the iTunes store link maker.”
2. WP-Affiliate(Only supports WordPress up to version 2.5)
3. ShopperPress DataFeed Importer – (Currently only supports WordPress up to 2.8.6 see recent updates in ShopperPress itself) “Inject any CSV file data into the WordPress database as new Posts with ShopperPress affiliate Data Feed Importer, try the demo now!”
4. CSV 2 POST Free Edition – (Currently only supports WordPress up to Version 2.8.6) “Inject any CSV file data into the WordPress database as new Posts with CSV 2 POST Pro, try the demo now!”

Non WordPress Data Feed Solutions that Could be Shoe Horned in

WebMerge (currently v2.6 as of the writing of this article) – This software program (not a plugin) has been around for years.  It essentially takes a database and converts it into individual static html files, which can then be loaded up via ftp.  If you wanted to shoehorn these into wordpress, it wouldn’t be a far step to convert the html into an xml import file, even though some of the solutions above might be easier.  The real use for this tool might be in working outside of WordPress itself.  It comes with a free trial, which I believe is limited, or the full single user license at $99.  (multi user packages also available.

Thanks to Shawn Collins and his awesome audience at Affiliate Tip who together tipped me off to WebMerge for converting data feed files to html resources.  It was mentioned in a comment chain. 

Related posts:

1. Softduit Media Covering Affiliate Summit West, Las Vegas, NV
2. Affiliate West Free Silver Pass Contest
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For the last week or so my broadband connection has been slow as a dog (I have a bassett hound) and when I heard that the Federal Government was going to start their broadband crack down with their own speed testing tool, I was happy!

Finally big brother was looking out for me.  I’ve had to put up with slow internet connections since the internet began, and before that, don’t even get me started.

So I zipped over to Broadband.gov and ran my system through the paces to test my broadband on an unbiased system.  I was a little suspect about the privacy policy from the government as they took my address but not my name.  They are apparently sampling information on speeds from around the country.  Probably grabbing IP addresses, browsers, computer systems and more too but what the hell, I used to work for the government.  …

Continue . . .

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It has been a little over 8 months since the Palm Pre was released to the public, and its just this week that Palm has finally released a Video Recorder as part of the operating system upgrade for webOS 1.4.

My initial tests with the video recorder generated video in .mpg4 that looks pretty good on the phone itself, a 60 second video takes up just under 40 megabytes of space on the phones memory.

It comes setup with a YouTube and Facebook video uploader, but neither one of them worked the first 3 days, I used the video recorder. 

But finally today, I was able to upload one of those videos successfully to YouTube so maybe the bugs are getting chased out of the new system.

So from my perspective, I am a mobile video blogger once again! I haven’t had this capability on a smart phone in almost 2 years since my Treo 700P on Verizon died and was replaced under warranty for the 5th time and I switched to a non-smart phone so I could actually make and receive phone calls.

You can also email videos with the Palm Pre but for some reason you are capped at sending videos of no more than 17 seconds (about 10 megabytes), which is very different from the Treo, which allowed you to send and attachment as large as the receiving email system would allow.

The webOS 1.4 update has a few other changes.  The buttons look ‘cooler’ and when you launch any given application, a slightly smaller than full screen image of the application shows up immediately on the screen as if your Pre is doing something, but unfortunately, the actual launch of almost all applications from the point of pushing the button to the point of actually being able to do something with the application seems to be a couple seconds slower.  (Score one for Form over Function!)

All in all, I’m still very happy with my Palm Pre.  Glad Palm finally decided to meet the minimum market standards for a smart phone by adding video.  I could never understand why Palm followed in Apple’s moronic foot steps and decided not to include video on the Pre (a year after Apple made the same mistake).  Regardless, I’m glad video recording is here now, and from my perspective the Palm Pre is now a fully functional smart phone.

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These are the top 5 most popular coupon sites on the internet as of the end of December 2009, according to Website Magazine.  We’ve Mindmapped them of course…. 

Download this MindMap

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Download MindMap

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