Eric Thomas The Secret To Success

ET took the stage while Fame or Juliet‘s Dreams of Reality played. Here’s the video of the keynote, and my notes

• Excited for 2012
  • Malcolm Gladwell
    • Importance of Environment
• We all have an opportunity for success
  • Backstory
    • ET was born when his mother was 17; she was kicked out of the house
    • It’s not how you start, but how you finish
    • High school dropout, homeless on the streets of Detroit, but write a book
    • First one to go to college in his family
      • Took 12 years to get a 4-year degree
    • Dissertation away from completing PhD
  • Hold on it may not happen in the time you think its going to happen, but it will happen.
    • But if you quit, it will never happen
• What does success mean for you?
  • Showing images of “success” (cars, nice houses, etc).
  • Success starts with a vision
• Information changes situations
• Story about his daughter making the basketball team
  • She made the B Team
    • Good, Michael Jordan didn’t make the A Team
    • On the B Team, you’re going to stay hungry and stay thirsty until you make the A Team
• As a homeless teenager, he was given vision
  • Sight vs. vision
  • Start every day with vision with where you want to be and what you want to do
  • His circumstance was being homeless, but his vision wasn’t
• Plant the seed
  • You’re not planting a seed, you’re planting a tree
• What do you need to know (to be, to have what you want), that you don’t know right now?
• Dr. Ben Carson Gifted Hands
  • From Detroit, became doctor
  • Do not have a victims mentality
  • Why he wears a Detroit Tigers hat on the cover of his book
• Thought our friends are also in this business (Affiliate Marketing) not really, but I do have some friends who I work with regularly
• Use what you got, to get what you want
  • Story about ET fitting in during class
    • Had to change his clothing, sit at the front of the class, maintain eye contact with the teacher, smile & agree / nod with the teacher. Finally, read the teachers books and ask the teacher about what he wrote.
• Failure is not an option
  • Odd that he used a demotivational poster from despair.com
• The show up rule: You can pretend that you care, but you can’t pretend that you’re there.
• Dream Session
  • Take 5, 10, 15 minutes, close your eyes, and see yourself living your goal, then get back to work and make it happen.
• Sight is for people who work in the present have vision!
• For every minute you think about failure, spend that long in a dream session
• Work vs. Wishing
  • Finishing his book took only 3 months.
  • Again referenced Affiliate Summit as a company, where we all worked. Small trip-ups like this distracted me from the message
• Positioning vs. Pouting
  • Star Trek: Beam me up, Scotty
    • You have to be in the right place
  • When you position yourself properly, stuff happens! Opportunities present themselves!
  • “You want the finest things, but you’re not willing to work for them”
  • You don’t get out of life what you want, you get out of life what you earned!
• Change vs. Chatter
• Don’t just talk make the changes
• Earn vs. Want
• Guru story
  • You need to want success as bad as you want to breathe
• You need to know what you want

Positioning vs. Pouting spoke right to me. If you’re sitting around your house, working by yourself, and not interacting with others, you won’t be as successful as if you were networking (online and offline) and working with others. There’s a lot of times (A LOT) that I just don’t want to go places. I don’t like crowds, I don’t like loud places, and I don’t like dealing with idiots. But when I put up with the crowds and loud parties, and filter through the idiots, there are smart people out there that I can help, and who can in turn help me.

Many people have said this was one of the best keynotes from Affiliate Summit, up there with the likes of Gary V. He also brought a few audience members to tear up a bit, which is a testimonial for how powerful of a speaker Eric is.

It was great to hang out with Eric during lunch that day, and I hope to get to hear him speak live again someday.

If you enjoyed ET’s keynote, go back and watch those by Gary V, Cory Booker, Jim Kukral and Peter Shankman (Karma at 26:00).

Pinterest is the hottest little digital curation tool to come along in a while, and Internet Marketers are taking notice. Here are some ways you can use Pinterest to boost your online marketing efforts, and a bonus tip for keeping your content off of there.

Brand Awareness
To start, Pinterest can be used to share products your brand creates. Fans can then like a photo of a product, or re-pin it to their board.

Very Bradley Pins on Pinterest

While your immediate audience (followers) may be small, having the right person repin your content can be powerful (much like getting a RT from a Twitter user with thousands of followers). Tricia Meyer adds:

The key is getting others to repin. You don’t have to have as much of an audience yourself if you get OTHERS with an audience to repin for you.

SEO Benefits
Pinning a product gives you a backlink to the deep-linked product page (anchor text is the main domain name). This is a followed-link.

There’s also a no-follow link wrapped around the image. Unfortunately, the alt text of every image is “Pinned image” so that’s not giving you much value.

Leg Lamp on Pinterest

Affiliate Direct Linking
As Kim Rowley mentioned, if the final destination URL has your affiliate tracking information in it, you can pin your affiliate link and use Pinterest as your publisher’s site. (Make sure the program that you’re promoting allows this).

Amazon is a popular one that has your tracking link right in the destination URL. GrahicRiver is another one that you can deeplink to individual products, and maintain your affiliate tracking code (and lots of people are already doing this one).

Books I've Pinned

If your tracking information doesn’t carry through, you can still pin the image from your site. Just remember it’s 1 more click before the cookie is set.

Gifts
Pinterest has a Gifts section, which will highlight products categorized by price ($1-20, $20-50, $50-100, etc). How do you get your product shown here? Simple: include the price in the description! I wish there was more to this trick, but that’s it.

Pinterest Gifts

Pin It Button
Don’t forget the Pin It button for your site! You specify the URL, the image URL, and can even pre-populate the description. Remember what I said about appearing in the Gifts section? Make sure your pre-populated description includes the product price!

How to Block Pinterest
Some people don’t like Pinterest because they make a copy of the original piece. I’m not sure which is worse: hotlinking the image, or copying it. If you’re one of those people who don’t want your content pinned, there’s a solution: block the user agent via .htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Pinterest
RewriteRule .* - [F]
</IfModule>

If you’re running WordPress, some of this is already in your .htaccess file. Put the two lines (RewriteCond and RewriteRule) right under the “RewriteEngine On” line.

Pinterest is growing quickly (I’m seeing Server Error 500 daily now). If you run a website with Pinterest-friendly content, don’t wait any longer to learn how your audience is using Pinterest!

Curation was a hot keyword in 2011, and it’s going strong into 2012. Scott Jangro, creator of Shareist, held a session at Affiliate Summit West on Digital Curation, which answered some of my questions about what curation is, and why I (as an affiliate) should care.

Digital Curation with Scott Jangro

The beginning of Scott’s presentation reaffirmed that affiliates should build sites with their future audience in mind. He then went on to discuss the (brief) history of curation, from a museum curator to Curation Nation to Scobleizer’s The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators to today’s digital curation tools.

Here are my notes:

• Why are you here?
  • Affiliates build sites, but without an audience, lose encouragement
  • Why are you starting this website?
• What is Digital Curation?
  • Curators collect information for a museum, library, etc. for a collection (bundles)
    • An online curator
  • Curation Nation (book – history of curation)
    • Covers copyright, ethical questions
  • Magnify.net
    • Video curation platform
  • Scobleizer
    • The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators
      • Bundle
      • Reorder
      • Editorialize
        • Adding value / prospective
        • Get comments
      • Distribute / push to social networks
  • MasterNewMedia.com
    • Curation tools
  • Filter through lots of information and pull out bits that are useful to your audience
• Quora released a curation model in December
• Why is curation important / necessary / critical?
  • Internet is growing quickly / exponentially
• Information discovery
  • Random
    • StumbleUpon
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
  • Specific question / search
    • Google
  • Curation is in the middle
• Aggregation is not Curation
  • It’s tempting to automate
    • Danger – it should be filtered
• How to get started with curation
  • Choose a topic
  • Create a profile of your ideal fan / customer / user
  • Discover great content and organize it
    • Use the tools mentioned (see photo)
    • Twitter / Google / Youtube / etc keyword searches
    • RSS feeds
  • Publish and Distribute
    • Biggest mistake affiliates make when publishing is affiliates try to get users to leave quickly & get the cookie set. Make that visitor yours.
      • You’re borrowing Google’s customers
      • Great & easy when the traffic is coming. What happens when the traffic dries up?
      • Pay yourself first.
        • Fan
        • Newsletter
    • Publish to a platform that you own
      • Not ezinearticles, wordpress.com, pintrest
        • Great for marketing, but make these drive traffic to you
  • Engage with your audience
• Curation is a tool and a mindset
• What audience can you build?
  • What problems are you solving?
  • For whom?
  • NOT: What website can you build?
• Using curation as an SEO strategy
  • It adds value to your site

Robert Adler of Microsite Masters (@Bofu2U) presented a session on Link Building at Affiliate Summit West 2012 in Las Vegas.

Link Building with Robert Adler

Adler started his session with a definition of link building that was different than what is normally thought of in the SEO community. SEOers look for links that are keyword rich, and ideally do-follow. Robert, however, will take just about any link.

He then went on to show how a site can move around the SERPs until it settles into its new position, and discussed what metrics may influence ranking.

The different shades of SEOers were defined (white, gray, black) followed by examples of the different types of links you could get back to your site.

This wasn’t your typical link building session, which may have turned off a few attendees (including the one who blamed Robert spamming his forum and wasting 20 minutes out of his day, every day). However, as an affiliate, it’s important to understand the many different types of link builders out there, what tactics they use, and how to compete against them.

Here are my raw notes:

• Definition of Linkbuilding
  • Game of building connections
    • Getting tweets / Rts to homepage / deep page
    • Activity on Facebook Page / Group
    • Other social links (see KnowEm.com/websites/all)
    • If Google can find it, it counts
• Rank history up & down until it levels off / plateaus
• Metrics
  • Domain backlinks
  • URL backlinks
  • Domain Age
  • Words on page
  • Keyword density
  • Number / Source of ads if any) on page
  • Facebook likes root domain
  • Facebook likes deep link
  • Twitter root domain
  • Twitter deep link
  • digg / Stumble / Delicious / google +1 / etc etc etc
  • pages indexed
• Hats in SEO
  • Whitehat
    • Never breaking the rules
    • Likes
      • Press Releases
      • Guest posts
      • Doing things manually
      • Blogger Outreach
      • Matt Cutts
    • Dislikes
      • Everyone that doesn’t do things manually
      • Anything that may be a too fast form of link building
      • Automation of any sort, unless it’s used for reporting
      • Any type of link that they wouldn’t get themselves
      • Robert Adler
    • Examples
      • Slow & steady win the race
      • Press Releases
      • Directories
      • Guest Posts
      • Linkbait
      • Site wide exchanges
      • E-mailing webmasters
  • Greyhat
    • Sometimes break the rules
    • Likes
      • Obtaining / Producing as many types of cleaner links as possible
      • More complex linking schematics
      • Filtering tiers
      • 100,000 links -> 50,000 links -> 10,000 -> … -> 1 page.
      • Usually has ‘test bed sites to throw new links at for testing
      • Rides the line between obviously blackhat and whitehats wouldn’t do that
      • Whitehat on-page with dark(er) colored link building
    • Dislikes
      • People who report his sites
      • Algorithm updates (sometimes)
      • The idea that he’s doing blackhat
    • Examples
      • Blog comments
      • Blog posts
      • Social Bookmarks
      • Forum Profiles
      • Web 2.0′s
      • Wiki’s
  • Blackhat
    • Always breaking the rules
    • Likes
      • Loves automation
      • Promoting lots of sites simultaneously
      • Linking schematics that’ll make your head spin
      • Building more links that an entire country in 1 day
      • If it’s scalable and has a start button, he made it / has it
    • Dislikes
      • Snitches
      • The time it takes to stay ahead of the curve
      • Deindexing based on a footprint that could take 50% of his assets down
      • Matt Cutts
    • Examples
      • Blog comments
      • Blog networks / posts
      • social bookmarks
      • forum posts / profiles
      • web 2.0′s
      • CMS’s like wordpress
      • (my own example, not Rob’s) Hacking a site & injecting links into site header / footer
  

  Black Hat Link Building

• Test link building methods before doing it on your main properties
  • Do your own tests don’t listen to other case studies, etc.
• Types (based on footprints)
  • Forum links
    • Xrumer
      • Register accounts
      • Crack CAPTCHAs
      • Check email accounts
      • Click the verification link
      • Set-up a full profile
      • Post a message
    • site-wide
    • In-content
    • Signature links
    • Profile links
    • Category-Wide links
      • sponsor a category
      • Category redirects
  • Blog links
    • Contextual
      • Paid Posts
      • Guest Posts
      • Blog network posts
      • Buying a link in an existing post
    • Blog comments
    • Blogroll
    • Sitewide footer
  • Social Links
    • Social Bookmarking Sites
      • Actual bookmarks
      • Comments
      • Digg, Delicious
    • Stories
      • Can be rated, +1, liked, etc.
      • Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Google +1, Twitter (RTs)
  • Article Links
    • Links in the body of the article
    • Links in the resource section / resource box
    • Links on the Author About Me Page
      • 500 articles -> author page -> your site
    • PR links
    • In-context
    • Sidebar / Resource box
    • Author page (only some have this)
    • PR Newswire, PRWeb, PRLog (free ?)
  • Directory links
    • On a page with a list of other links
    • On a standalone page with just your listing
    • Hot vs Not, Best of the Web, Business.com, DMOZ, Yahoo directory.
      • DMOZ: volunteer to be the moderator for the cateogry
  • Web 2.0s
    • Profile links
    • In-content links
      • video descriptions
      • article descriptions
      • updates, posts, etc.
    • Flickr, Vimeo, youtube, daily motion
• 1 Link != 1 link
  • Internal linking
  • Write a Blog post. You link from
    • Homepage
    • Tags
    • Archive
    • Category / categories
    • Recent posts widget
  • The blog post creates a tweet
    • Direct from the tweet
    • Hashtag search pages
    • Every list your listed on
    • syndication on Tweetmeme.com for example
    • then some Rts it. Repeat above
  • digg
    • submit a story
    • thumbs up 20 other stories
    • they all link back to your profile, which links to your story, which links to your page
• How it works overall
  
  

  Link Building: How it Works Overall

  • Focus on top 5
    • These determine if your page should rank in the top 10
• Syndication
  • Submit your RSS feed
    • Feedfury.com
    • Feedage.com
    • Feedfairy.com
    • RSSMountain.com
    • BlogCatalog.com
    • Take your Ezine article RSS feed & submit to these syndication services, too.

Timothy Kerber (CEO of MemberGate Solutions), moderated a panel at Affiliate Summit West 2012 consisting of Mike Allen, (Shopping-Bargains.com), Tim Ash (SiteTuners and author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions) and Jennifer Myers Ward (ebove & beyond) on How to Quadruple Revenue Using Existing Traffic.

Tim, Jennifer & Mike talk about increasing revenue

While the target audience was listed as affiliates / publishers, I personally think merchants who attended got more out of the content, as affiliates can pre-sell then direct the user where to buy, but it’s the merchant who can really increase revenue via cross-sells, upsells and a simple checkout process.

Here are my notes from the session, slightly cleaned up and important parts highlighted

• Split-testing
  • Multiple versions of the same page, randomly show to visitors
  • Tools
    • Google Website Optimizer (free)
      • Integrated w/ Google Analytics
    • Unbounce
    • Optimizely
• Common problems
  • Affiliates give good traffic to back merchant (advertiser)
  • Lengthy content / hard to read content
  • Don’t require a login for guests to buy
  • Don’t keep secrets (show return policy and shipping charges clearly)
  • Keep it simple
  • Navigation is a roadmap, not a puzzle
  • Quick read show content as an outline, not an essay
  • Continue to sell to your customers
  • Leverage cross sells & upsells
    • If selling a suit, recommend a tie. If buying a tie, don’t recommend a suit!
    • See: GoDaddy
    • Be intelligent
    • Put 1 upsell on the thank-you page
  • Have a strong offer give them something they can’t get anywhere else
• Split testing effects on SEO
  • Google is OK with testing, but permanently put winning version live
  • Don’t cloak, bait & switch
• Affiliates: 7 Ways to make more money
  • Be the expert
    • Become an authority
    • Embrace tough questions
    • Find solutions
    • Establish trust
  • Leverage your Advantage
    • Build partner relationships
    • Offer something exclusive
      • data / wisdom / analysis
      • coupons
      • access
      • you!
  • Provide Better Content
    • Be unique
    • Give something away
    • provide real answers
    • demonstrate trust
  • Help People Decide
    • Honest comparisons
      • Reviews & ratings
    • If you have side by side options, show the most expensive one first.
      • Quality Imagery
    • Photos, screenshots
    • Provide details
    • Gently lead
      • Don’t force the sale
  • Increase Touch Points
    • Not everyone buys the first time
    • Social media
    • Newsletters
  • Build Lasting Relationships
    • Customer service
    • Say Thank You
    • Help your users succeed
  • Monitor Behavior (analytics)
    • Survey your users
  • Continual Innovation is key
    • Focus on goals
    • Seek advice from others
    • Make adjustments as necessary
    • Wash, rinse, repeat
• 5 tips to skyrocket conversion
  • Make your call to action clear
    • Declutter
  • Ask for less info
    • Absolutely necessary
    • Current transaction
  • Cut Down on your text
    • People don’t read on the web
      • They scan, look for places to click, look at photos
  • Keep your promises
    • Best Digital Cameras consumers reports example
• Make your trust visible
  • As seen on media logos
  • Over 200 satisfied clients
  • Download statistics (social proof)
  • AttentionWizard.com
    • Upload screenshot, get predictions

I’ve previously blogged about how to add Rel Author Markup on your Thesis-themed blog, which is great for blogs run by one (or more) people. But what if you have a site that isn’t run by a person, but rather a brand? You can get your brand’s page to be listed as the “author” of the page, and include your logo in the SERPs. Here’s how:

First, you’ll need to create your Google+ page for your website. When you’re logged in to Google+, go to the Manage Your Pages page then click on the Create button to create a new page. Once you’ve created your page (including a nice avatar), make sure you add a link from your page profile back to your site. This is very important!

Next, all of your blog posts must link back to your Google+ page. I do this by adding my Google+ page URL into my WordPress user profile. There’s a certain format to follow, however, so copy this URL and change the ID to your Google+ page ID

https://plus.google.com/116136250255806002474?rel=author

Once you have that saved, you can link your posts back to your Google+ page by editing your theme’s “single.php” file, and linking the author’s name back to

get_the_author_meta('user_url')

Lazy solution: Just add a plain href into your site’s footer, linking back to your Google+ page

Now you have each blog post linking to your Google+ page (with the added query string, rel=author), and your Google+ page linking back to your blog. This circular-linking is important as it proves to Google that you manage both accounts.

If you think you’ve done everything right, check it out using the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool. You should see your Google+ page listed along with the result.

Click to see verified Google+ Page as Rel Author

Like real-person rel author markup, now you sit back & wait for Google to pick up on the changes.

I was excited when I read Google had released an API for their Affiliate Network, as I wanted to automate pulling sales data from GAN. But I quickly became disheartened when I realized how difficult it is to use.

Since this was for myself, and not a web-based service that would be used by others, the Simple API method of authorization was good enough. After getting it to work with Picasa, but not GAN, I asked for some help and was introduced to the OAuth 2.0 Playground. This showed me the headers I’d need to send, and how OAuth 2.0 works.

For the record: the Google Affiliate Network API does NOT support Simple API Access. You cannot access the service with an API Key and IP locking.

I now have a working script, and have written up step-by-step instructions on how you can pull orders from GAN automatically each day.

This script is not complete, as it’s up to you to do something with the data once you have it. You can also modify the final call to pull advertisers, instead of orders.

Copy this to a new file (double-click to select-all. I named mine gan.php)

<?php
$cPublisherID	=	'';
$cScope			=	'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gan.readonly';
$cClientID		=	'';
$cClientSecret	=	'';
$cRedirectURI	=	'urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob';

$cAuthCode		=	'';
$cRefreshToken	=	'';

$bRefresh = true;

if (empty($cAuthCode)) {
	$rsParams = array(
						'response_type'	=>	'code',
						'client_id'		=>	$cClientID,
						'redirect_uri'	=>	$cRedirectURI,
						'scope'			=>	$cScope
						);
	$cOauthURL = 'https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?' . http_build_query($rsParams);
	echo("Go to\n$cOauthURL\nand enter the given value into \$cAuthCode\n");
	exit();
} // ends if (empty($cAuthCode))
elseif (empty($cRefreshToken)) {
	$cTokenURL = 'https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token';
	$rsPostData = array(
						'code'			=>	$cAuthCode,
						'client_id'		=>	$cClientID,
						'client_secret'	=>	$cClientSecret,
						'redirect_uri'	=>	$cRedirectURI,
						'grant_type'	=>	'authorization_code',
						);
	$ch = curl_init();

	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $cTokenURL);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $rsPostData);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

	$cTokenReturn = curl_exec($ch);
	$oToken = json_decode($cTokenReturn);
	echo("Enter the following values:\n\n");
	echo("\$cRefreshToken = '" . $oToken->refresh_token . "';\n");
} // ends
else {
	// Get a new Access Token
	$cTokenURL = 'https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token';
	$rsPostData = array(
						'client_secret'	=>	$cClientSecret,
						'grant_type'	=>	'refresh_token',
						'refresh_token'	=>	$cRefreshToken,
						'client_id'		=>	$cClientID
						);
	$ch = curl_init();

	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $cTokenURL);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $rsPostData);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

	$cTokenReturn = curl_exec($ch);
	$oToken = json_decode($cTokenReturn);
	$cAccessToken = $oToken->access_token;

	// Get the results
	$cGANURL = 'https://www.googleapis.com/gan/v1beta1/publishers/' . $cPublisherID . '/events';
	$cAuthHeader = "Authorization: OAuth " . $cAccessToken;

	$ch = curl_init();

	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array($cAuthHeader));
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $cGANURL);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

	$cJsonReturn = curl_exec($ch);

	print_r(json_decode($cJsonReturn));
} // ends else from <all authenticated>

?>

Login to your GAN account and get your Publisher ID. It’s the 6-character ID under your name (or your site’s name) in the upper-right once you login. Enter that value here

$cPublisherID	=	'';

Next, go to https://code.google.com/apis/console/, login, click the drop-down in the left navigation, then choose Create… and name your project. I named my project GAN Reporting

In the list of services, turn on Google Affiliate Network API

Turn on the Google Affiliate Network API Service

Now click on API Access (left navigation), then click on the button Create an OAuth 2.0 client ID…

Enter “GAN Reporting” for the “Product name” then click Next

GAN API Create Client ID

Choose “Installed application” for the Application type, then click “Create client ID”

GAN API Application Type

You now have a Client ID, Client secret, and 2 Redirect URIs

Enter your Client ID in the variable $cClientID and the Client secret value in $cClientSecret

$cClientID		=	'xxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com';
$cClientSecret	=	'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxx';

Make sure $cRedirectURI is correct. Then save and upload gan.php (yes, there will be some empty variables… that’s OK!), and run it via command-line or a browser. You’ll see:

[esnagel@ec2 temp]$ php gan.php
Go to

https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?response_type=code&client_id=xxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com&redirect_uri=urn%3Aietf%3Awg%3Aoauth%3A2.0%3Aoob&scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fgan.readonly

and enter the given value into $cAuthCode

Go to this URL while logged into the Google account associated with your Google Affiliate Network (usually you@gmail.com, but if you’re like me and use Google Apps, you’ll have to open an Incognito window in Chrome to login)

You’ll see a page telling you GAN Reporting (your application) wants access to your GAN data. Click Allow access.

GAN API Allow Access

Next, you’ll see an Auth Code.

GAN API Auth Code

Copy that value and paste it back into gan.php:

$cAuthCode		=	'x/x-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';

Save, upload and run the script again. Now, you’re given the value for the Refresh Token. Copy that and put it in gan.php:

$cRefreshToken = 'x/xxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';

Save, upload, and run the script again. Now when you run the script via command-line, you’ll see:

[esnagel@ec2 temp]$ php gan.php
stdClass Object
(
    [kind] => gan#events
    [items] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [kind] => gan#event
                    [modifyDate] => 2011-12-21T01:17:47.608Z
                    [eventDate] => 2011-12-21T00:46:38.185Z
                    [orderId] => xxxxxx
                    [commissionableSales] => stdClass Object
                        (
                            [amount] => xx.xx
                            [currencyCode] => USD
                        )

                    [status] => ACTIVE
                    [type] => TRANSACTION
                    [products] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => stdClass Object
                                (
                                    [sku] => @adjustment
                                    [quantity] => 1
                                    [unitPrice] => stdClass Object
                                        (
                                            [amount] => xx.xx
                                            [currencyCode] => USD
                                        )

                                )

                        )

                    [advertiserId] => xxxxxx
                    [advertiserName] => xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                    [memberId] => xxxxxxxxxx
                    [earnings] => stdClass Object
                        (
                            [amount] => xx.xxxx
                            [currencyCode] => USD
                        )

                )
...

This is the result of

print_r(json_decode($cJsonReturn));

At this point, it’s up to you to loop through the items array and do what you want with the data.

I’ll answer some technical questions in the comments, but for the complicated questions, I’ll direct you to my PHP Programmer page where you can email or call me to describe your project and receive an estimate.

I received an email the other day asking how I added my breadcrumbs to my Thesis site.

On the site, they look like this:

Microformat Breadcrumbs

But in the search results, they appear like this:

Breadcrumbs in Search Results

In the search results, the title is linked to the blog post, while the category is linked to the category page.

Here’s how I do it in Thesis…

In custom_functions.php, I add the following function:

function breadcrumbs() {
	global $post;

	if (is_single()) {
		$aCategories = get_the_category($post->ID);
		?>
		<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb" id="breadcrumbs">
			You are here: <a href="http://www.ericnagel.com/" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Eric Nagel</span></a> &gt;
			<span itemprop="child" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
				<a href="/category/<?= $aCategories[0]->slug ?>" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title"><?= $aCategories[0]->name ?></span></a> &gt;
				<span itemprop="child" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
					<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title"><?php the_title() ?></span></a>
				</span>
			</span>
		</div>

		<?php
	} // ends if (is_single())
} // ends function breadcrumbs()

And then I add the hook to call the function:

add_action('thesis_hook_before_post', 'breadcrumbs');

Of course, you’ll want to take out the references to “Eric Nagel” and ericnagel.com. Also, my category slug is “category” but you may have changed yours. If so, make that change (line 10)

Read more about breadcrumbs, or test your code using Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool

I saw a new merchant come across ShareASale today: Online Amish Furniture. I probably only looked at them because I found it funny that the Amish are selling online…

And yes, I know this site has leaks all over it. As an affiliate, part of your job is to educate the merchant (or point them to an OPM or some Merchant Affiliate Program Training)

But what was interesting were the links at the bottom of their site

Online Amish Furniture categories

These just screamed at me: Exact-Match Domains!

So I copied those categories and made 2 lists out of them: singular and plural.

Then I removed all spaces, and ended each term with a .com (creative find / replaces make this easy)

Then dump that list of potential domains into GoDaddy’s Bulk Search. This will tell you which are available, and which are already taken.

Next, copy the available domains back to your text file, remove the .com, and break into multiple keywords again (so amishcomputerdesks.com becomes Amish computer desks).

Copy that list, and paste it into the Google AdWords’ Keywords Tool. Make sure you check Only show ideas closely related to my search terms and then hit Search.

Finally, download all keywords as a CSV for Excel, and you can identify keywords that may have enough volume to create a site around. Some good ones from this list:

• amish glider
• amish bookcases (sorry, taken now)
• amish coffee table
• amish end table
• amish dining room tables
• amish dresser
• amish kitchen table

Check out the merchant’s site, figure out commissions etc. (5% on an Amish glider is about $40) and decide on the site you want to build.

Remember: don’t just copy / paste the merchant’s data, or use their datafeed word-for-word. Create unique content. And you can build a product-driven affiliate website without even using a datafeed (see An Affiliate Website Anyone Can Build)

If you build a site using this information, let me know!

On September 27, I presented about On-Site SEO at the Affiliate Summit Toronto Meetup Group at Syndicate in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Eric Nagel speaking at the Affiliate Summit Toronto Meetup Group

Liz Gazer of Growthspurt Media organized the event; Eric Schwarzer also spoke with this presentation, 16 random things you can do to improve your productivity, mindset and achieve bigger goals. Eric is full of energy, but if you can get him to focus for a minute, you’ll see he’s a true genius (and a great speaker).

Download a PDF of my On-Site SEO presentation from the Affiliate Summit Toronto Meetup Group.

Search Engine Optimization

• On-Site SEO
  • You control
• Off-Site SEO
  • Other’s control (mostly)

Off-Site SEO

Backlinks

• Page Rank (PR)
• Top-Level Domain (TLD)
  • .com
  • .edu
  • .gov
• Anchor text
• Author

Trust Rank

• http://seogadget.co.uk/life-after-link-trust/

On-Site SEO

Title Tag

• Shown in the Window or Tab of the Browser
• Used in SERP as Page Title
• Make it unique
• 70 characters maximum

Meta Tags

• Description
• Robots
  • Index / Noindex
  • Follow / Nofollow

Header Tags

• <h1>… <h6>
• One <h1> per page
• Your most important / stressed keyword
• WordPress: Post title, not blog title

Site Structure

• Header, content, sidebar, footer
• HTML5 new tags
  • Article
  • Aside
  • Header
  • Footer
  • Nav
  • Section
  • Summary

Site Speed

• April 9, 2010
  • Google is incorporating site speed as one of the over 200 signals (used) in determining search rankings
  • fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal
• Enable compression
  • gzip compression
• Leverage browser caching
  • Specify expiration times
• Optimize images
• WordPress Plug-ins
  • WP Super Cache, WP Total Cache
• Fix manually
  • .htaccess

    <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    	<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|png)$">
    		SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
    	</FilesMatch>
    </IfModule>
    
    <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    	# YEAR
    	<FilesMatch "\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|flv|pdf)$">
    		Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400"
    	</FilesMatch>
    	# WEEK
    	<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|swf)$">
    		Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"
    	</FilesMatch>
    </IfModule>

• PHP’s gzip compression
  • php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler
• Google’s mod_pagespeed module

  ModPagespeedEnableFilters make_google_analytics_async
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters collapse_whitespace
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters rewrite_javascript
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters rewrite_images
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters remove_comments
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters remove_quotes
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters trim_urls
  			ModPagespeedEnableFilters inline_css
  			ModPagespeedCssInlineMaxBytes 2048

Microformats / Rich Snippets

• Labeled HTML elements
• Uniform structure to data
• Helps search engines read your data
• Schema.org
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Yahoo
• Types
  • Creative works (book, movie, etc)
  • Audio, Image, Video objects
  • Event
  • Person
  • Place (Local business, restaurant, etc)
  • Product
  • Review
  • Recipe
  • Breadcrumb