The affiliate marketing industry is known for its fundraising efforts on behalf of the Avon Walk for the Cure, which benefits breast cancer research and support. What better time of year than Valentine’s Day to show your love? This week affiliate marketers are using their book revenue to help raise money for Affiliate Marketers Give Back. Purchase any of the books listed below between February 12 and 18 and the authors will donate their profits to AMGB. Although many of the books focus on business, affiliate marketing, and blogging, you will also find children’s books, photography books, and more.

Join us in helping spread the word about Affiliate Marketers Give Back and this Book Hop for the Boobies. Support us by buying just one book. Don’t have a Kindle? You can still purchase Kindle books and read them on your PC, MAC, iPad, Android Tablets or other devices with free apps from Amazon. The link is on every Kindle book page.

Books About Business:

Internet Marketing From the Real Experts (Shawn Collins, Missy Ward, and The Gang of 88) Collection of affiliate, email, blogging, podcasting, video, search engine, and social network rock stars that break down the how and why of Internet marketing in a clear, easy to understand way.

The only print book in this book fundraiser is: It’s All About the Cookies (Mary Poiley, Missy Ward, and Jen Goode) A mouth-watering collection of recipes and thought-provoking insights affiliate marketers learned on their road to success – an interesting read and a wonderful addition to your own kitchen.

Internet Marketing for Business Answers (Jim Kukral) The absolute best way to learn how to grow a successful business is to pay attention to how the experts have done it before you. Internet Marketing for Business Answers, the Small Business Expert Interviews edition puts you into a private one-on-one session with over 16 of the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs on the Web.

No Publisher Needed – Crowdfunding Your Book – How I Raised Over $30k in 30-Days To Pre-Fund My New Book (Jim Kukral) You don’t need an agent or a publisher to make your new book a success. You can use the power of the crowd to pre-fund your book and create your own virtual signing bonus. That’s what I did. I raised over $30k in 30-days for my new book series. Want to know how to do it? That’s what this book is all about.

The Basics of Affiliate Success: Running a Business (Top Secrets of Successful Affiliate Marketing) (Billy Kay) Affiliates always joke that they make money in their bathrobes, and that affiliate marketing is “easy money”! But in reality, it IS… a business. If run it like a business, it can succeed. Billy offers these business tricks and tips to help establish, grow and sustain your affiliate marketing career.

Follow Me: Making Money with Blogging, Facebook Marketing & Twitter for Business (Dave Cupples) Former NSW Young Entrepreneur of the Year, SMX Idol Winner and International Speaker Dave Cupples shares leading Social Media case studies from around the world and the most effective tools and actionable cutting edge tips for businesses to skyrocket new leads and supercharge revenue using Facebook, Twitter and Blogging. Includes Tips & Tools to incentivize Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers & Blog Subscribers, How to spy on competitors and copy their most effective tactics, Tips & Tools to get your content shared by influencers and much more!

Affiliate Marketing: The Complete Guide for Beginners (Affiliate Marketing – Mastering Internet Marketing) (Todd Farmer) This guide is designed to teach you the basics of Affiliate Marketing. I want you to understand how it works, who the players are, and how you fit in.

MyContentPro’s Cheap-Ass Guide to Online Content (Online Content for Marketers) (Todd Farmer) Content for your website or online marketing project is a critical component for success. The goal of this eBook is to help you get the content you need, at the lowest price. Many of the sources and strategies uncovered in this eBook provide content for your websites, 100% Free.

Best Practices for Coupon Sites (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks)

Best Practices for Creating Your Affiliate Agreement (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Eric Nagel)

Choosing the Scope and Structure of Your Blog (Deborah Carney, Tricia Meyer, Liz Fogg)

Facebook + Email = Success (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Dave Cupples and David Iwanow)

SEO for Blogs (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Eric Nagel, Tricia Meyer)

Children’s & Young Adult Books

W is for Woofer (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) A rhyming picture book with words that all begin with the letter W.

Woofer Works Out (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) Get kids excited to move and exercise with this illustrated rhyming book that showcases activities and sports for every season.

Winnie McGoo’s Museum Adventure (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) A museum can be an exciting place. Just ask Winnie McGoo. Whose adventure in a museum one night isn’t something many people do. From eating pizza with Mona Lisa to swimming on the Isle of Grande Jatte, Winnie’s museum adventure creates an interesting plot.

Block Boy (Alec Ababon) Short story about a boy that is different from the others and is bullied in school.

Animal Kingdom: Jaguar is Reborn (Eric Carney, Deborah Carney) Workaholic Jason Peters is an average sales rep with a suburban house and wife, Jennifer. One day Jason spills coffee in his car and finds a gold coin that changes their lives forever.

Inspiratonal and Photographs:
Blue Honeycreepers (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare)

Flowers With Wings (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare)

Inspirational Quotes for Writers – Coffee Table Book (Deborah Carney)

Poetry and Peonies: Japanese Tree Peonies (Deborah Carney)

Buddha Beach: Sedona, Arizona (The Southwest Gallery Series) (Deborah Carney, Liz Fogg, Alec Ababon)

What is Inspiration? (Thoughts on Life) (Alan Loren) – a mini-anthology of poetry drawn from the pages of a writer’s workshop called MWW (My Word Wizard).

Valentine Quotes and Love Poems (Elise Beckett) Valentine’s Day Love quotes and sayings combined with images of romance, sweets and flowers for your sweetheart on valentine’s day. This book of love quotes and poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare and others is like whispering sweet nothings into your lovers ear.

An assortment of other books:
Sweet Indulgences (Heather Romiti) Sweet Indulgences offers Classic Dessert and Girl Scout Cookie flavored Smoothies, along with Holiday Favorites. These smoothies are especially helpful if you still want to enjoy your favorite desserts but are trying to cut back on fat and carbohydrates.

Bike – A Short Story (Eric Carney)

Slay the Demons (Daniel Fogg, Deborah Carney) When a random act of violence forces him to hide a corpse, Brent Fischer finds himself confronted with horrors long forgotten and horrors he longs to forget. In the end he must either face down his demons once and for all or let them chase him off a cliff. Sex, Drugs & Murder

Weirder Than Marshmallows (Daniel Fogg, Deborah Carney)

To donate directly to the Missy Ward Avon Walk Team, click on this link and donate to your favorite walker or to the team in general. Thank you in advance for your support!

I am still getting questions about my session “25 Ways to Improve Your Website” that I presented at Affiliate Summit West 2012 so I decided to share my slide deck from that. Below is the slides content in text form, it is a little tough to read so If you want to see the slide deck it is also below. You get bonus points if you spot the mistake.

1. 25 Ways To Improve Your Website Take Action Guide To Improve Your Website. Vinny O’Hare Vincent O’Hare Consulting

2. Who Am I  – Spent 23 years in outdoor advertising industry. Started on the Internet in 1999 – EBay Powerseller. 2001 Started making content filled websites focusing on affiliate programs. 2009 Started affiliate managing and teaching. Co-host on AffiliateABC’s podcast.

3. What We Will Discuss – This presentation is set up to show 25 topics and break it down by three items for each topic. I call it first glance – second glance – third glance. Be prepared to write on your worksheet. All links in this presentation can be found at Vinnyohare.com/help

4. Your Website Now – Current Rankings! – Where are you now? Why so bad? – Are you doing something wrong? Competition – What are they ranking for? Before you start you have to take a good look at where you are now so you can judge your results. Google webmaster tools can show your average rankings for free. Don’t get caught up in stats.

5. Keywords – Do you have a keyword list? Are you sure you are using the right keywords? Keyword ideas – check your competitions. Free Tools – Google Keyword tool, Compete.com, Google Alerts, Soovle, YouTube Keyword Tool, Wordtracker.com has free sample. Chrome extensions SEO site tools, SEOquake. Paid Tools – Raventools.

6. Colors – Is your site welcoming? Can color blind people read your website? Do you have good font and font size? Dark gray fonts on gray backgrounds should be illegal! Just because you think your site “Looks Pretty” doesn’t mean others will like it or buy something.

7. Title Tag – Is your keyword mentioned? Under 70 characters long? Is your keyword near the front? Do a Google search on your keyword and see other titles and see what others are using and take notice what they are missing and what you can do better.

8. Meta Description Tag – Do you have one? Less than 150 characters. Keyword in beginning and a Call To Action or Curiosity near the end. Same as the title tag do a Google search and see what can be done better than the results that are showing.

9. Meta Keyword Tag – Do you have one? Less than three? Page should only have one focus on one keyword Most search engines ignore this tag – I still use one – It is optional. Most SEO’s will tell you to ignore this tag. Bing claims they use it to catch spammers.

10. Search Box – Do you have one? Is it above the fold? Does it work? There is a reason why 90% of ecommerce sites have them above the fold. You can’t read customers minds or intentions. If you are using Google analytics you can see what people are searching for and develop new pages based on those terms or freshen up old pages.

11. Logo – Do you have one? Is it any good? Does it link back to the homepage? Make sure your logo is optimized for faster loading and includes “alt tags” for Google image search results. Don’t be afraid to get constructive advice on your logo. Lesruba.com is who I use to design mine.

12. About Us Page – Do you have one? Is it personal? – Explain your POD (point of difference) Easily found on your site? The about us page is your chance to build trust with your readers. The page shouldn’t be all about you, it should be about how you are going to solve the customers problem. Great example Derek Halpern SocialTriggers.com about page.

13. Blog – Does your website have one? Structure – is it WordPress – Paid Theme? Are the permalinks set correctly? Blogs are good for interaction with customers. It also provides a fresh place for the search engines to spider. Make sure your blog has all the social media sharing buttons. Have others spread the word about your site.

14. Contact Us Page – Do you have one? Is the information correct? Methods of contact – phone- email etc. Let user know how long a response usually takes. Readers that choose to contact you want answers a.s.a.p. be available in many different ways. Use a contact form to avoid spam. Readers questions can become content on a FAQ page.

15. Privacy Policy – Do you have one? Does it have the correct info? Easily found in footer – Make it a no follow page. Yes you need one. You can find templates online to get you started serprank.com has a good one to get you started.

16. Trust – Does your site have it? Would you buy something from your website? Be honest with yourself. Always a job to improve it. Building trust is an ongoing thing. Would you trust your website with your credit card? Have a neighbor or a relative sit at your computer and go over your site and see their reaction.

17. Email Newsletter – Do you have one? Have an offer to encourage sign ups. Have an auto-responder series. Gets users back to your website. I use Aweber which sends out my blog post as a newsletter automatically. No need to write content just for a newsletter. You can use current content on your site in an auto-responder series. Use Twitter and Facebook to get people on to your list.

18. Navigation – Is it easy to find items? Is it helpful to visitors? Driving visitors to a trusted landing page. Have to make sure your navigation is spider-able. It is worthless if your navigation is not able to be crawled by the search engines.

19. Backlinks – Do you have any? Always have a plan to get more. Find competitors backlinks – get some from them. Blekko.com – Type in link:competitorswebsite.com Contact the websites that show up and try to get backlinks from them. Firefox extension – Quirk Search Status quirk.biz/searchstatus

20. Images – Does your site have any? Customers like them. Are they optimized for fast loading. Alt Text – Do you have them optimized? Free tool picnik.com for easy optimizing. They also have a chrome extension and a Firefox add on.

21. Videos – Do you have any? Make “How To” videos explaining solutions. Self hosted or YouTube or both. Videos build trust, users love them! Never have them auto play. You can make short videos featuring a solution to a problem. Have your videos transcribed. Speechpad.com

22. Landing Pages – Call to action. No other distractions. Quick checkout or wherever you want customers to go. Getting the user to your shopping cart or to the merchants site in the least amount of steps possible leads to the best results. No sidebars – No navigation – no leaks to other pages.

23. Internal Linking Site Structure – Link at least one page to every new page. Natural Flowing – Only link where it is needed or contribute to the existing page. Link to Right Pages To Help Consumer. If you are on WordPress there are plugins for this. Internal linking helps many things happen on your website. Time on site, bounce rate, spiders.

24. On Page Content Keyword Density – Keep in mind as you are writing. Keyword bolded on the page once. Usually in my headline. Keywords in the anchor text to product or landing page. I keep my keyword density under 3%, not a rule just always done it this way. I use it as a guide. Content is always quality! If it isn’t then it shouldn’t be on your website. If you suck at writing outsource it or take classes to become a better writer. Iwriter.com or Elance.com

25. Site Speed – What is your site speed? How can we improve it? What is holding us down? Google webmaster tools has page speed tools. Cheap hosting is not worth it. Gtmetrix.com great resource to see what is slowing down your site.

26. Blogs in Niche – Find similar niches. Leave a good comment. Nothing spammy! Look for backlinks for your site in other users comments. There are a lot of quality sites that can be found on quality comments. Contact them for a backlink or possibly a guest post on their blog. Use Google alerts with your keyword phrases. Instant results delivered to your inbox.

27. Forums – Find a similar niche – Competition there? Participate – Be helpful. Good signature with your social media urls. When you find a good forum become the expert there. I usually dedicate some time once a week to check forums for new post. As long as you are not spammy the forum admin will be happy to have you answering questions.

28. YouTube – Do you have an account? Build subscribers and friends = recurring visitors. Make helpful videos – “How To” videos are huge. Place a link in description to your website product page. Including the link with an http:// makes the link clickable for users. Leave comments on high ranking videos in your niche to gain subscribers.

29. Twitter – Do you have an account? Is a keyword in the bio? Are you interacting? Build followers in your niche or problem solving. Find someone influential in the niche and follow who they follow. If you have a local website follow the local news or radio station accounts. Get their followers to follow you! Be funny and informative. Use tools when you can to help get out your message. Examples: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck.

30. Facebook – Have an account? – 70 million+ people do. Set up a fan page? Put your url in the about section. Have Facebook contest. Builds fans and returning customers. Use a Facebook approved app. Use Facebook to get readers on to your email list so you can market them forever.

31. Google+ – Do you have an account? Set up a business page? Find the most popular person in your niche and see who they are following and follow them. Share good information and you will build a loyal following. Follow Chris Brogan and Trey Ratcliff. Findpeopleonplus.com – Great way to find others to follow.

32. Resources  – Follow http://vinnyohare.com/help – All links in this presentation can be found here and more. Twitter.com/vinnyohare –

Things I really learned at Affiliate Summit.

Since my last post was kind of about what I learned personally about myself I decided to post about things I learned at Affiliate Summit.

In the creating a mastermind group session I learned that any number above 3 is too many people to have in the group. I have seen groups larger than this and it never works. If a group larger than 3 is working for you than fine but in general I think anything over 3 people is too much.

You Never Know Where Future Business Will Come From.

I was approached with so many different opportunities in the strangest of places. While I was in the mastermind session we were approached by a guy that has over 300 quality domain names that were never developed. The guy was in my session so he approached me asking what I would do with them.

After that session I went to the bloggers lounge where I was asked by two guys about his product and if he was ready for an affiliate program. Both the product and his idea of affiliate marketing was way off. Not only was his product a bad idea, his payout ratio was really really bad.

On Monday I had a time slot at the speakers lounge where I was expecting a whole lot of questions and answers. One guy came up to me that attended my session and told me about his website and that everything I said in my session he needed. I didn’t think too much about it until I was in the airport on the way home and took a look at his website. Out of my 28 things to look at in my session his website needed 27 of them. I will be contacting him during the week and help get his website improved.

As I walked around the show floor I was approached by many many people asking me questions. With my voice being so bad it was really really interesting to listen for a change instead of talking a lot. Many of the questions were basic, I learned that there was room in the affiliate marketing and website building for more training aimed at newbies. The more questions people asked me, the more I realized that a lot of stuff I take for granted really needs to be shared in the open.

Most of the networking, is done after the show. I made more connections just sitting around the show hall after the closing keynote than I did during the show. I exchanged business cards with about 10 to 15 people as I was walking out of the show hall. Out of the 10 or 15 I probably grabbed 5 to 7 cell phone numbers.

I learned that one of the benefits of speaking at affiliate Summit is the amount of sign-ups to happen afterwards to your affiliate programs. In the days after speaking, actually while I was still at the show we received many quality applications to all of our affiliate programs. This was a very unexpected benefit, and one that I didn’t count on.

Affiliate Summit really is about networking, and seeing old friends that you haven’t seen in a long time. I saw an affiliate I haven’t seen in about five years and didn’t realize his whole game plan had changed about three years ago. I also gave him a lot of advice, I’m sure that just by touching base with me we will be able to make him more money and affiliate programs.

I didn’t go to many of the sessions this year, as I was not feeling well and I watch them on video. I can’t say I learned anything in any of the sessions as I didn’t go to many. I did have some great conversations and the bloggers lounge with a few people who let some good ideas out in the open.

I am big on helping people, it makes me feel really good when I can make the connection between two people and they do business. I was sitting at my friend and she mentioned that she wanted an iPhone app and maybe a droid app for her websites. I sent out a tweet to my buddy Brad Waller who came to the bloggers lounge within minutes and will probably be making her two apps.

I didn’t make it to the white boarding sessions as they were too early in the morning for me. I did hear some rave reviews from some affiliates that said Eric Nagel really knocked it out of the park. I attended the closing keynote which was okay but nothing really groundbreaking came out of it for me. But since I got a whole bunch of contacts after the closing keynote was well worth it for me.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 was a very different conference for me this year as I chose to speak for a change. I have been on a few panels before but this time I had a whole session to myself where I could put more details into a bunch of topics. My session was titled “25 ways to improve your website” but I over delivered and made it 28 and if you take that I put 3 points in each section my session gave about 84 things to look at.

I have to thank Shawn and Missy for letting me speak at Affiliate Summit. The session came close to being cancelled as I could barely talk between a cough I picked up and just not feeling well had me worried. The day before my session I could not talk at all. The last thing I wanted to do was have to cancel a session after finally agreeing to do one.

We got to Vegas early for a much needed break before the show. When Friday came about friends started to wander into town and we went over to the Ceasers Palace hotel to say hello to them. We settled into the Galleria bar in the lobby and as soon as we got there the smoke from people smoking cigarettes hit me like a wall. The ceilings in the place were so low there was no place for the smoke to go. Add this in with trying to talk over all the noises from the slot machines caused me to wake up during the night not able to breathe. It felt like a tennis ball was caught in my throat. Not exactly the way to start off a show, especially one you have to speak at.

After waking up and what seemed like a million cough drops and water I was able to get out a squeak of a voice.  We headed over to registration and for a meeting. All day Saturday was just filled with people asking me to repeat myself. After a while I just shut it down and went back to the hotel where I could rest my voice. This seemed to be a wise choice as my voice came back in time for my Sunday session.

My session went well except I forgot to leave time for questions and answers but I did them after as people came up to me after with a bunch. I am the first to admit that public speaking is not my area of expertise and I felt like I was rushing at one point. After asking a few friends in the audience, they said I wasn’t so I feel good about that. I admit around the 3rd slide where I had to talk about myself and experience I did get a little nervous. It is hard to talk about yourself in front of a bunch of strangers, especially when you don’t do it all the time.

I did have some mistakes in the session saying that Facebook had 70 million users when in fact it is 700 million. I am going to have to look back and see how I made that mistake.  Surprised I didn’t notice it in the power point and odds are I probably said it since I was looking at my screen. If that was my only blunder so be it. I did have a few slides that I was going to take out to make it 25 but decided to leave them in. Meta keywords and keyword density were two candidates since no one talks much about them. Did they deserve their own slides? Maybe not but I felt it was important enough to talk about them and since there was newbies in the room it was a good decision.

After it was over I didn’t give much thought about reactions and was pleasantly surprised at how my session was viewed. Shannon from Marketing Elf and Dave from Fat Cow Business gave me nice reviews. The biggest surprise came from people just walking up to me and even going out of their way to let me know they enjoyed the session. Most were surprised when I told them it was a one time deal and I have no plans to ever talk again in public.

I handed out a worksheet that went along with the session but I didn’t print enough as people were taking 3 or 4 each so they could use it on each one of their sites. That was very well received, I wonder why more speakers don’t give worksheets out as audience members should have a takeaway from your session.

So I learned you have to take good care of your voice when you are speaking in public. I totally took that for granted and have more respect for people like Peter Shankman and Chris Brogan who speak all the time.

One of the questions I am asked on a persistent basis is about website or blog content. People want to know how they can come come up with topic ideas and where to get good content. While I am at the point where I just figure out the content phrases and hand them off to a writer that isn’t the way I started.

Whenever I make up a website the first thing I do is take my keyword list and set up about 10-20 Google alerts. Google alerts is a pretty cool way to get content ideas and also a good way to find websites that will exchange links and content with you. Take your keyword phrase’s with “quotes” around it and enter them into Google alerts and you will have content ideas delivered into your email box the next day.

Every morning I will get 10-20 emails with 2 or 3 links in each that mention the keyword phrase and if the topic is hot you will get more. It only takes a few minutes to give a quick glance over the emails and look to see if they are a good match. You can get some good ideas for content this way. I will look over the emails and end up with a topic that will allow me to create a whole page and maybe two. If you don’t want to be overwhelmed with looking through all the emails just choose one keyword to work that day and let the others sit in your inbox for another day. By the time you are ready for the next subject you will have more emails to work with.

If the story is hot at the moment I will create the page myself and then alert the other pages that I found in the alerts. This is done either through commenting on their site and include my link as a reference or I will send an email to the website owner and tell them that their piece was great and that I have a similar article. Maybe hint at a future guest post or to trade links back and forth. Something will usually come from it, if not during this exchange the ice has been broken for future stuff. They may even know another webmaster in the niche that would also like to work together.

Outsourcing Your Content Writing

If I am in no hurry to get the content up I will usually hire a writer. I will get together a bunch of keyword phrases and put up a job on Elance.com or more recently I have been using IWriter.com. While both are good services I am happy using ELance for larger jobs but that is only because I have used them more frequently. After you use either of these services you get to know some writers that are good and you make sure you invite them to do the next job. It is also not a good idea to settle for the cheapest writer as odds are you will get lousy content back. You want to plan your job with as many details as possible. I always choose writers from the USA and pay a little more than have articles written by someone that their first language is not English. It never works out and saving a few bucks on content that is going to be on your website for years just is not worth it.

Get Your Words Transcribed

If it is a topic that you are knowledgeable about and you don’t feel like typing out the information you can always use a voice transcription service. It may sound dumb but if you are lazy like me and you type slow you can do a voice recording. Hook up a headphone and mic to your computer and peak the content for your pages. I know I can talk 10 times faster than I can type. I load up a program called Audacity (Free) and make some audio files. After I am done I upload the files to speechpad.com and get them transcribed. It is cheaper than hiring a writer and I know the content isn’t some plagiarized copy that has been spun ten times to Sunday.

You will end up with some pretty good content this way. Odds are you will surprise yourself with the results, I know that every time I get the content back I am amazed at how accurate the content is and since you talk faster than you can type (and think at the same time) you end up with twice as much quality content than if you had hired a writer.

In October 2012 I will be walking for breast cancer as I signed up to walk with Missy Ward and her team as they take to the streets of my hometown New York City. It is a 2 day walk that will cover over 39 miles through the streets of NYC.

As soon as I heard Missy was doing the walk in NY this year I was signing up. I always wanted to do the walk to show my support for a great cause, but it seems like scheduling was always bad. This year will be different! I am looking forward to doing this and joining others raise awareness for breast cancer.

I am asking for your support any amount you can give to help me reach my goal will be greatly appreciated. You can donate here. I am trying to raise $3000 so anything you can donate towards this cause is appreciated.

The monies raised for the Avon Walk will ensure that uninsured or underinsured women and men facing a breast cancer diagnosis can get the care and treatment they desperately need. Please support me with a tax-deductible donation to this great cause.

Do you want to walk with me and join a great team? Click Here to Join our Team. Just enter affiliate marketers give back into the team search box.

You can also sponsor the team – Click Here to Sponsor our Team

Make a donation to our team – Click Here to Make a Donation to our Team

If you have questions or require additional information, please contact me or contact Missy Ward. She will help you.

Thanks in advance for helping me support this great cause.

I have been a fan of Google+ since it came out as I like the clean interface. I have not been a fan of Facebook or as I lovingly call it Spambook. Both serve a purpose for me and I consider them both as tools. While everyone and their grandmother in the tech industry likes pitting one against the other I just don’t care who will win the battle of the social networks. I already consider that game to be over but it is not what you think.

Facebook has a gazillion users I get that and Google+ has only just begun to get started but as I see it Google+ is the winner. Maybe this is the geek side of me talking but I am finding the level of interaction on Google+ to be way higher than that on Facebook. Most people use Facebook to play games and talk to the people they didn’t like in High School but for me it is just a marketing tool.

For each website I run I have a Facebook fan page. Most of the fan pages are failures as I didn’t exactly set them up to have interaction, I set them up mostly as placeholders and see what works and what doesn’t. Since Facebook has a huge audience it only seems right to get people from Facebook to the website of my choice. From there it is up to me to market to them. My goal with Facebook traffic is to get that person on to my newsletter list. That is also the same with Twitter since Google+ opened. Once the person is on my email newsletter list I can market to them over and over.

Google+ Booth at Ad Tech NY

I have met more people over at Google+ that are sharing what they are doing that even I am amazed. I have set up a few business pages and they are still too new to talk about but I am encouraged by them. Most of my post in the future will probably contain some sort of Google+ tips that I have picked up. Last week I was at Ad Tech and the Google+ team had a booth there and I showed them something they didn’t know about Google+. Needless to say it was a lot of fun.

The Battle of Social Networks Has No Winner!

Facebook can be the big winner in the social networking space because Google+ is not a social network. Yes I said Facebook is the winner because Google+ is a destination network. I can hear you saying “Vinny, what is a destination network?” Let me explain.

A few weeks ago I set up a second computer and didn’t realize how much I really used Google. Even though they forced me to sign up for a new Gmail account because I am an apps customer, that pissed me off but I still gave Google+ a chance. My second computer sits with Google+ open and since I did that I started using Google+ for my calender, and then I started using the YouTube button for watching educational videos. When I need to search for something I am using the Google+ search engine. I find searching using Goggle+ so much cleaner and I can’t exactly figure out why I like it better than Google search. Maybe it is because there is no adwords on it and it tells me stuff I want to actually know about. This week they added Trends to the side of the search engine which gives me breaking news as I search.

My Google+ Id Card

Google Photos is one of my favorite things. Not only does my droid phone upload to it automatically the pictures just look better. I have been following some of the best photographers in the world on Google+ and have learned so much my brain hurts at times. This past week I started following a group of people that use the same DSLR camera as me.

Since I am in the market for a new tripod I asked them what they use and learned that the expensive model I was looking at was a waste of money and 8 out of 10 use a certain model. Guess what I am going to be buying? If I asked this same question on Facebook people would be telling me they know Radio Shack sells tripods. Not exactly the best information.

Google Hangouts

Like I said above I am following some great photographers on Google+. Most photographers noticed the great job Google is doing and jumped on board early. A couple that I follow do Google+ hangouts and when they do you are lucky to get in. They share tips and how they got some of their award winning shots. Trey Ratcliff has one of the better hangouts and it is always full of other pro photographers. He also records them and puts them on YouTube so these tips are shared forever.

I have been using Google docs to help write the book I am working on. I can play a song or two on YouTube while I open Google docs and write a chapter of the book. I am also using Google docs to track the maps and data in my getting healthier effort. The My Tracks app on the droid allows me to send the data from my rides to a doc. More and more that I use Google+ I realize there is no battle for social media network, it all comes down to how you use them. If I feel like playing mafia wars I will use Facebook, if I want to actually get work done I will use Google+. Come follow me!

Last Saturday night we went to the new Resorts World casino at Aqueduct racetrack. The place was packed, there were six people waiting online at each slot machine waiting to play. We waited a half hour to get a players card and waited a half hour for reservations to the buffet. That was just for reservations, we then had to wait another half hour until it was time for our reservation.

The new casino is 3 floors but in a hurry to open they only have one floor open. It was an absolute horrible experience for us. Imagine waiting at a casino to lose your money? It was just insane, I am sure it will be much better when they open the other 2 floors but it got me thinking. When should you open your website to business.

When Is Your Website Ready?

This past week I watched a friend of mine throw together a website in a few hours. It was a complete website that had everything a website needs. Then I came across another website that was launched at the same time and it was not ready for prime time at all. While the first site had everything this site was missing some key ingredients like a privacy policy, contact us, about us, a search box and no social media. Their logo didn’t look so hot either. Nothing about this site made it look professional at all.

Will the second site ever be ready is the real question as odds are the webmaster will move on to another project and “forget” to do these things. I know I have done it myself. The first site out of the box is offering a great user experience and will end up with natural backlinks because it looks more trusting. They even have an email signup which in my opinion no site should launch without.

I can hear you already saying “But Vinny I will go back and fix these things when I have time.” Really! If that is what you believe then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Most webmasters don’t have a launch plan, most I know don’t have a go back and fix later plan either.

To have a successful website or blog you need to have a plan, and something that makes your site unique. You also need a syndication plan, just writing a page of content doesn’t cut it anymore.

I am sitting here thinking about Google+ for business pages. The more I do, the more I think this is going to be used as a signal that will help clean up Google’s search engine spam and make the internet a better place at the same time.

I just set up a few business pages and as I was inserting the code they give you for the head of your pages. I noticed it contains something similar to the rel=author code that they have been trying to push on everyone. Although it is not required to use the service I am sure that Google will use this as some sort of trust factor. They would be stupid if they didn’t use it. They are tying Google+ accounts to the websites that have pages. It is too early to tell but I am sure that this could be used as a social signal in the near future.

I was doing some reading in their terms of service and although there will be multi-admin users set up it says that the page can never be transferred. This means that once you build a page it will be in your profile forever. No idea what happens if you sell the website that is associated with the page but this has to be changed unless Google sticks to its guns with this.

First question that comes to my mind is who sets up the page in the first place really matters. Somewhere along the line Google is going to have to address the issue. What happens if the person working at the company lets say they are the head of social media leaves the company.

My first thought is what if Scotty Monty leaves Ford and goes to work for Chevy? How would he transfer the Ford business pages if they were set up under his account. Even though he is now working for Chevy he would maintain control over the Ford Business pages on Google+. Scary thought and even though this is way out there it could happen. I don’t even want to think of the headache brands are going to have when they figure out the pages are being made under the personal social media account of the person that owns the social media company they hired. You know it is going to happen.

Enough about that lets look at how it is going to clean up the search results. It’s very simple, every time a page is looked at they will check for the rel=author code and place that site above the one that doesn’t have it.

Spammers are not going to insert the code along crappy websites and tell Google that they own them. Sure they will put code for analytics reasons but this changes everything as it is linked to a Google account. Sure they can create multiple accounts but that is a time suck. This is going to be very interesting. I think it will change the serps forever, or at least it could.

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I submitted a speaking proposal for Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. If you know me you probably know I am usually not one to speak at conferences. Besides the two Geekcast live sessions that I did I really haven’t spoken at any of the conferences that I have attended. This is about to change for 2012.

What Changed My Mind

A couple of things changed my mind. Last summer I went to a conference and attended a session on making a profitable website. There was so much information that was either wrong or out of date that I couldn’t contain myself. I just sat there shaking my head in disbelief as the speaker went through the presentation. I almost walked out but I was curious to what he was going to say next. I actually had my blood pressure rise during the session and felt myself getting madder every minute. The question and answer session was filled with really newbie questions and not only were they getting bad information during the session, they were getting it in the Q &A part as well. I felt bad for the newbies in the session and for the next few days I couldn’t get the newbie questions out of my head.

Another thing that had me realize that it was time to speak was comments left by newbies. Whenever we record a podcast on affiliate marketing we get a bunch of questions that to me are second nature. I realize that people need this information and they either just don’t know where to look or they just don’t know where to go for it. I find myself time after time answering the same questions over and over again.  There must be a place for this information and by public speaking and having it on video eventually there will be a place I can send newbies for information and help a lot more people improve their website in the process.

I Review A lot of Websites Everyday

As an affiliate manager I look at a lot of websites that apply to our programs and the quality of some of the websites are really bad. There are some free templates that people use that actually hurt their rankings or in some cases they get their websites banned without even knowing it. I am amazed that people make websites and expect to get traffic to it. There are at least 10 things that they could be doing better at first glance. Even worse they don’t install any tracking at all so they have no idea what they are ranking for and where they can improve.  I can tell that these same sites don’t do any keyword research to see what people are actually searching for.

I put together a list of things I look at and presented it at the New York Affiliate Summit Meetup. We only got through 3/4 of the list because people were asking me questions. Some of the questions were really basic and I spent a lot of time on these questions instead of going through my list. When people asked me what site they could go to for more information I didn’t even have one to give them since this information I learned years ago. One of the people at the meetup hired a local SEO company that basically took a lot of their money and messed up their site. It killed me when I got home and looked deeper into their site. I am putting together a page now that will eventually have every place I go to for this basic information. It will probably never be 100 done as things change fast online.

I speak to a lot of people in the affiliate marketing industry and once or twice a week I get asked why I don’t speak in public about some of the stuff I know. I shared my list from the meetup with a few people and they asked me why I haven’t spoken on this topic before. I get the “You are a fountain of information” at least once a week.

I like helping people and if I can do that by speaking to a crowded room then so be it.