The ListBuilding Club Affiliate Blog

Question:

I would like to use the link redirect. I have watched the video and downloaded the software. I just don’t know what to replace the link with! Do I create my own, or what? Help. thanks!

Answer:

You replace the link with your affiliate link. If you do not have an affiliate link yet get yours here.

We also have a very helpful page in the Listbuilding Club affiliate area that explains how to use a redirect, upload it and insert your affiliate link. Check it out.

How the flow of a redirect works for a user:

They read an article you wrote and decide to click on the link in your resource box. This link reads www.yoursite.com.

The user clicks on www.yoursite.com, and for a split second they go to www.yoursite.com, go through your affiliate link redirect and end up on our page at www.listbuildingclub.com. This happens in a fraction of a second.

Since the user went through your affiliate link any purchases they made will be tagged to you.

Now that we have the flow established for the user, let’s take a look at how it works from the tech side.

To create a redirect you need to be able to edit the html code of your site. We show you how to do this in the Listbuilding Club. Creating a redirect is simple and can easily be done using notepad to edit the html.

Many people make the mistake of putting the redirect in the wrong place on their site. When you ftp into your site the first folders you see will look something like this:

/
.cpanel
.htpasswds
.mozilla
.ssh
.trash
access-logs
etc
mail
public_ftp
public_html
ssl
tmp
www

Yours will be similar to this example although it may not be exact, which is fine. The “public_html” folder is the one you want to open and put the redirect into. Depending on your hosting provider other names for this folder include “httpdocs” and “htdocs”

Make sure you open this “public_html” folder and put your index.php redirect in there. DO NOT put your redirect inside your main site folder. If it is not in “public_html” your redirect will not work.

You may see an existing “index.html” file inside that folder, which is fine. You want to create another file called index.php, this is where you put your redirect code. It’s not actually software, just code.

Here is the php redirect code for you to use:

<?PHP
header(”Location: http://www.youraffiliatelink.com”);
exit;
?>

Replace the http://www.youraffiliatelink.com link with your own affiliate link.

Finally save the new index.php file to your site inside the “public_html” or equivalent folder, making sure you upload it to the remote site.

Make sure you TEST every time you make a change. Go to www.yoursite.com and make sure you are redirected through your affiliate link to the Listbuilding Club sales page.

That’s it! Keep sending people through you affiliate link redirect and watch the profits start rolling in!

admin Affiliate Information, Ethical Bribes affiliate, affiliate link, listbuilding, redirect

What’s in an article?

Information. You want to create articles that solve problems for people in your niche. In promoting the ListBuilding Club, that would be the Information Marketing or Internet Marketing niche.

Think about problems you are experiencing as you learn to be a good marketer. Others are having those same problems, too. Or, if you’re a seasoned veteran, you know the hurdles you had to cross to get your business working for you.

Here are some issues you might cover, but give only partial information about the solution:

• Buying a proper domain (keyword rich)
• Getting a good hosting account (what to look for)
• Setting up a blog on your own server (or why not to use a hosted blog solution)
• Submitting articles to a directory (or anything article marketing related)

And on and on. If you’re a ListBuilding Club member, you can look inside the Club and see all the solutions we give in our 27 different lessons. We’re not suggesting that you use our material verbatim because that would be plagiarism, but you can notice what we cover and what topics you might be able to cover in an article yourself.  Focus on one aspect of any of those topics and you’ll be writing tons of articles!

Don’t Give It All Away

But, you’ll also notice above that I said to give “partial” information. Your job, as ListBuildng Club affiliates, is to get people to click through from your author’s resource boxes, and you want them to click YOUR affiliate links. (You will need to make a redirect link for article directories. See the video about how to make a redirect in the LBC affiliate center at: http://ListBuildingClub.com/affiliates.)

So, what does a good author’s resource box look like?

Here’s an example:

The ListBuilding Club is the premier source of list building information online. Join Tellman and the Overcome Everything team as they teach thousands of people how to have successful home based <a href=”http://redirectlink.com”>internet marketing business</a>. For more internet marketing tools, tips and strategies for your business, please visit http://redirectlink.com (actual URL of the redirect)

You’ll notice that there are two links in that resource box. The first one is a link from anchor text, which is a keyword phrase that is hyperlinked. This is easy to do, and what search engines look for. The link is described by the anchor text and search engine spiders understand what the website you’re linking to is about.

The second URL is a bare URL for the redirect you created. This will automatically show up as a hyperlink, so you need do nothing more than type it into the resource box.

This particular article attached to this box teaches people how to set up a hosting account at Host Gator. It doesn’t tell them what to do with it, so it’s partial information. Folks should join the ListBuilding Club if they want to learn more about using that new account. You can’t describe everything about hosting, and it’s a mistake to try.

Where You Might Go Wrong

Another mistake new marketers make when marketing with articles is that they use the same resource box over and over again. Not a good idea! You have to create a new resource box about every 10 articles that you submit. Using duplicate boxes too much will just dilute the effect with readers, and not help a hoot with search engine traffic.

So, remember these things when writing your articles:

1. Articles should solve a problem the people in your niche are having.
2. They should be incomplete information
3. Sell the click in your author’s resource box
4. Rotate the author’s resource boxes you use and only use each one about 10 times before rewriting.

As an LBC affiliate, article marketing is one way that you can sell the LBC and make regular monthly income, even if you’re in another niche. You don’t have to set up a blog, a website or anything! All you have to do is write articles about information marketing, list building, and all things Internet marketing, get people to click on the redirect you made for your affiliate link, and rake in the dough!

– Danny, Pat & Victor, Your LBC Affiliate Drill Instructors!

admin Article Marketing affiliate, affiliates, Article Marketing, blogging, hosting, LBC, listbuilding, marketing, traffic

The Affiliate Marketing Game

I am going to go ahead and assume that because you are reading this you already

know at least a little bit about affiliate marketing.    I was spinning my wheels about

some super tips I could share with you today to help you take it to the next level.  I

even searched around google and e-zine articles to see if I could  dig up  some

new  ideas that were not so obvious.  What struck me most about all the material I

turned up in my searching is that affiliate marketing at it’s essence is quite simple.

There are a hand full of pretty solid tactics that you can employ to drive affiliate

sales.   You can tap into social network sites , promote through a blog write articles,

advertise in e -zines, send e-mail blasts out to your lists, etc…  The one tip I could

think of that I wasn’t finding anywhere is this… Affiliate Marketing is a Game.

Lock that into your mind.  It is a game.   Like any game, there are winners and

there are losers.  Like any game, a good strategy from the get go is going to yield the

greatest results.  when you are in the thick of it, pushing to get  the momentum

going remember affiliate marketing is  a game.   William James hit the nail on the

head when he wrote  “Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.” When it feels

like work and you want to call it quits ,  go ahead and flip the script.  Find the the

thing that makes it fun and jump in from there.  Get into the action, develop a

strategy, play smart, play hard and enjoy it.  The alternative is a bummer.

When work becomes play,  play becomes pay!  That is where the magic happens.

admin Uncategorized affiliate, affiliate army, affiliate link, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, overcome everything

One of the most important things for you to remember as an affiliate is this: SPAMMING IS BAD!

Yes. It’s true. You should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,  ever, ever, ever,  ever, ever, ever spam.

But when you’re new at the game, you may not know the difference. So, here are a few spammy practices:

• You cannot BUY email lists. Unless people give you their express permission to email them by opting in, you will be a spammer if you send anyone on that list of email addresses. It’s illegal! Just don’t do it.

• You cannot use someone else’s address. One of the biggest no-nos is to spam using someone else’s address to send spam emails or as the reply to address for spam emails. If you’ve ever had this happen to you, you understand how annoying it can be. Your ISP might shut you down, and you’ll have lots of explaining to do before you can get back up and running. Not good.

• You should never use automatic blog commenting software. Ever! It’s totally SPAM. And it’s a huge waste of time. Any WordPress user has the ability to tag your comments as spam with Akismet that learns over time, and the next time your spammy message is detected, it will just end up in the dumpster automatically anyway.

• Don’t mail to someone else’s list in your name!  You can ask the list owner to mail for you, but you can never use that list of names for your own promotions.

• Don’t bookmark your blog post, website, article, etc. in a gazillion social bookmarking sites, using the same titles and descriptions. Change your entry every 5 - 10 times you use one and stick to a few trusted sites. You really don’t have to bookmark in every site online.

• Don’t write inane or useless posts in forums, just to get your signature file noticed. You’ll be ridden out on a rail. (And rightly so.)

• Don’t use as many keywords as you can think of for web pages, articles, blogs, press releases, etc. Choose 3 - 5 good, long-tail phrases and stick with those. Optimize each page, article, etc. for ONE of those phrases at a time.

• Never try to put a bunch of keywords in white on a white background so that only search engine spiders can see them. You’ll be dropped out of the listings like a hot rock. Owie!

And on and on… There are lots of ways to spam, and you definitely don’t want to be someone doing so. Email spamming is against the law in the United States and violations come along with severe consequences. At the least, you’ll lose your ISP. At the worst, you could land a stiff fine and even jail time. And if we find out you’re spamming your affililate link, your privileges will be gonzo.  In a flash! And that’s true of any affiliate situation.

So, just don’t do it.

Yet, the biggest thing when it comes to your affiliate links is with email. Never mail people that aren’t in your autoresponder, confirmed and double opted in. NinjaResponder and AWeber are both acceptable. Stick with the methods we teach you in The ListBuilding Club, and you’ll definitely be A-OK.

admin Affiliate Information, Ethical Bribes affiliate, autoresponders, blog, CAN-SPAM, listbuilding, spam

Question: Since you typically need a web-page to build a list, can I remain anonymous if I buy a domain?

Answer: Yes you can.

The term for this is “Private Domain Registration” or “Private Registration WHOIS Listing”

Many domain registrars offer this service for a small yearly fee. Most of them including Godaddy use the service http://www.domainsbyproxy.com

Read about how private domain registration works here.

Usually we don’t recommend privately registering a domain you are using for affiliate marketing or building your business. What do you have to hide? You want people to trust you, and if there isn’t a name behind the site it may not seem as legitimate. All of our domains here at Overcome Everything are registered under Tellman’s name or Overcome Everything Inc.

Of course you don’t need to list your primary email or exact street address, but it makes sense if people can see that you do in fact own and operate your site.

However there ARE some reasons worth mentioning to privately register a domain. Some include protecting yourself from domain-related spam, harassers, stalkers, and data miners.  “Moonlighting,” home- or side-business identity disclosure, and privacy intrusions are other concerns. Many people create sites for personal use with pictures of their family, home etc. Understandably they don’t want people to easily discover who they are and where they live.

Take a look at some additional reasons to privately register your domain.

Domains by Proxy has a page here illustrating the difference between a public WHOIS listing and a private WHOIS listing.

When someone searches for the WHOIS contact information for a domain that you have privately registered the name and contact information that shows is “Domains by Proxy” not yours. You still have full ownership and rights to the domain, and your true name and address is on file with the Registrar.

Domains by Proxy also says that privately registering domains is not acceptable for so called “Morally Objectionable Activites”

These include:

• Child pornographic
• Harmful to minors
• Defamatory
• Abusive
• Threatening
• Harassing
• Tortious
• Obscene
• Racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; or
• Involve hate crimes or terrorism
What they are saying is if you violate the law having a privately registered domain won’t protect you from legal action.

The choice to privately register a domain ultimately rests with you. In most cases it will help your business if your domain is registered in a recognizable name such as your name or your company name.

Don’t forget the Listbuilding Club has videos explaining step by step how to create a Godaddy account, buy a domain and hook it up to your site! If your not a member you are missing out! Get your free trial here.

admin Uncategorized affiliate, listbuilding, listbuilding club, marketing

We had an awesome training call today about Twitter. There were a ton of great questions as well.

Check out the replay here.

If your not on Twitter, head on over and get yourself set up!

Follow each of us at Twitter, we’ll follow you back.

http://twitter.com/techvic (Victor)
http://twitter.com/patmarcello (Pat)
http://twitter.com/cosmocto (Danny)
http://twitter.com/tellman (Tellman)

Here is a list of reccomended twitter resources:

Management

http://tweetdeck.com

http://mycleenr.com

http://twittermass.com

http://splitweet.com

Search

http://www.twellow.com

http://twilert.com

Traffic

http://retweet.it

http://repeets.com

Polling and Surveys

http://twitter.polldaddy.com

http://twtpoll.com

Other stuff:

http://www.widgetropolis.com

http://twitdom.com

admin Affiliate Information, Blogging for Bucks, Ethical Bribes, Press Release Power follow, training, Twitter

Affiliates have to look professional to be professional… If you’re using the blue & white default theme from WordPress (or even if you just changed the header colors), you need to stop your blog from screaming, “NEWBIE!” Here’s how to change your look in WordPress 2.8.

admin Uncategorized

I’ve got some shocking information to share with you today… SHOCKING!

The web is NOT a marketing tool.

Okay, so maybe that statement isn’t exactly shocking, but it got your attention didn’t it?

The web is a social tool… I’ll repeat, the web is a social tool.

Facebook  has over 200Million users world wide, Myspace has well over 100 Million member pages and 1.3 million Twitter users are posting an average of six Tweets daily. There are countless social networking sites and web forums and the numbers grow by the hour.  These people are not selling their products to one another, they are connecting, sharing information, building relationships, building trust and communicating with each other.  As an affiliate marketer you need to do this too.

If you are posting to blogs, writing articles, sending out tweets, making videos, pod casting etc… beware of the hype and hard sell approach. Think about the value that you are bringing to the game.  Share the knowledge you have,  work to build the trust of your audience. Deliver quality information for free and you will build a following of people who want to consume what you put out there.  It is much easier to convert consumers to customers that to convert strangers.  Use this tactic over time and you should see great results.

If you want to get in the game you need to connect with people. Share your knowledge,  establish yourself as someone of high integrity who knows the game, build trust and strong relationships will follow.

Most Importantly…  enjoy!

admin Uncategorized, Using Video affiliate marketing, Facebook, internet marketing, Myspace, personality marketing, Social networking, Twitter

Question: I have a website but I don’t host it. Can I use an auto-responder when I don’t know the specific host?

Answer: Yes!

The short and simple answer is: if you can edit the html code you can use an auto responder such as Ninjaresponder on your website. To insert the opt in form code you need to be able to edit the site html.

This question brings up several other important related points.

There are many options available for free websites that have template based pages and manage the hosting for you. Most of these are intended for personal use. Many of the free providers will terminate your account if they determine you are using it for business. Read their terms of service to determine specific policies.

We strongly recommend you host your own site. Our favorite is Hostgator.

There are many reasons to have your own hosting. It’s a much more customizable platform. This means you can tailor the look and feel of your site the way you want. It also makes it easier to expand your site and business later on. you want the flexibity to grow. You also won’t run into any problems using your site for business and selling if you have your own hosting.

Inside the Listbuilding Club we provide you step by step video tutorials detailing how to get your own hosting set up. Even if you’ve never done it before it won’t take more than a couple hours and you’ll be up and running with your own hosting!

If your not a member of the Listbuilding Club you can signup for a trial here, and if you are a member you already know how rockin’ the LBC is!

admin Uncategorized hosting, LBC, listbuilding

Question: If I am promoting the LBC to several different email lists using the affiliate link you gave me: (http://listbuildingclub.com?AFFID=XXXXX), how will I know which list the traffic is coming from and which traffic is converting the best? Thanks.

Answer: You need to use a tracking program to decide where your traffic is coming from. Since you can’t use Google Analytics for this (because you don’t control the page that the link points to), you’ll need to purchase or try an online solution.

One of them is called AdTrackz, and it’s a program that you have installed on your own server. You can track clicks and sales, even though you’re using an affiliate link. Unless you’re comfortable with installing databases, you may want to hire someone to install the program for you. It’s not terribly expensive, and you can probably have both program and installation done for under $100.

Another stand-alone program is GoTryThis, which will tell you how many clicks you’re getting and if you set up the tracking link (which is easy to do) for each site you put your affiliate link on, you’ll see where they’re coming from, too.  However, the newest version is a bit pricey. It costs $97 for the license, and $29.97 a month to maintain.

An online solution is Robert Puddy’s  HitsConnect and if you don’t have a hosting account, or don’t want the hassle of installing or hiring an installer, this is a great solution.  With a free account, you can track 10 different links and 10 different banners. You also get a rotator for links and banners. If you want more power (and as your affiliate efforts grow, you will), you can pay just $19.97 a month and track up to 100 links and 100 banners. It’s a great solution. Try the free account, and then if you’re happy with that, you may want to upgrade.

Those are three solutions for ad trackers, but if you Google “ad trackers,” you can probably find many more. Until you’re comfortable with ad tracking, I’d suggest trying out HitsConnect and tracking just your OE affiliate link there. When you decide how well that’s working for you, you can decide if you want a more robust solution.

Happy tracking!

admin Affiliate Information ad tracking, affiliate, internet marketing, LBC, overcome everything, tellman knudson, testing, tracking, traffic