We all know how popular the social marketing site Twitter has become in the past 12-18 months. Have you joined the throngs to build your followers? Did you know that there are several marketers that are using it to it’s fullest advantage and becoming very successful with it?
Yes, there are ebooks sprouting up all over the place with instructionals on HOW to use it to it’s fullest advantage, but how many of the authors of those books have actually done it?
How about if I told you there is a brand new ebook out today that profiles 17 marketers who have used it and are extremely successful with it? Wouldn’t you consider picking it up to find out their Twitter ’secrets’ and how they have used it to become successful?
My friend and accountability partner, Peggy Baron, has done something unusual. She has queried 17 different marketers about their Twittering and has gotten some juicy tips and tricks from the likes of Willie Crawford, Craig Ballentyne, Bev Clement, and Connie Ragen Green to name a few.
Peggy was kind enough to provide me with a preview copy of the book and I must say that as I read through it, I was shocked at the simple, yet effective, methods that these marketers use to increase the number of followers they have and how they use Twitter to add to their numerous income streams.
Here are a couple of the ways Twitter has been used:
One marketer has used Twitter to get past the ‘gatekeepers’ of some of a few ‘gooroos’ only to be asked to help out on a couple of projects. Find out who that was here.
Another one has used Twitter to put out the word that they were in a bind when a phone interview subject no-showed. The followers who responded ended up turning the conference call into a brainstorming session. Which Twitterer was that?
Find out who has used Twitter as a source for one of their successful products.
These marketers will tell you about their personal Twitter successes and what they’ve learned in using Twitter to grow their businesses. They will also give you TIPS to get you on the right track.
So if you’re interested in growing your business and using Twitter as another marketing tool, pick up a copy of Twitter Success Stories. I’m guessing you will come away with some great ideas you can apply to your business.
Until next time,
Here’s to YOUR Successes,
Ron
P.S. I pulled out a quote from the book for you that I liked:
“If you own a business of any size and you’re still not Twittering, you’re missing out on what amounts to a global virtual chamber of commerce networking event you can access anytime, day or night.” from Heidi Richards Mooney
Cloaking your affiliate links is a good way to keep people from stealing your commissions. All a “cloak” has to be is some sort of a redirect.
One of the ways that I was ‘taught’ how to create a redirect a while back was to use a .php file and upload to your server. That way when your customers clicked on the URL, their browser would redirect to the sales page that you are promoting.
Don’t get me wrong, I still use this method for a number of the affiliate products that I promote and they still do work. The problem that I found was that for each new affiliate product that I was promoting, whether it be here, or in the emails I send to my subscribers, I had to upload a brand new ‘file’ to my webhost.
That is until I discovered a much easier way to do this. It’s a very easy way to manage as many redirects as you want, and it’s FREE and easy to manage with just a single file.
Let me give you an example. My good freind, and one of my mentors, Doug Champigny, has just released a new PLR package in a smoking hot niche. You can pick up his Aromatherapy PLR Package and have the rights to do just about anything with it. You will need to read the license agreement to find out what you can’t do, but that’s pretty standard with a package like this. The Aromatherapy PLR Package includes a 50 page eBook in .doc & .pdf formats, 10 Aromatherapy Articles, mp3 audio versions of all 10 articles, TWO sets of website graphics, PLUS the .jpg AND .psd graphics for everything! After all of that, you won’t believe the price. I told Doug that he needed to go see his therapist with the price that he is offering this package at.
You will notice that when you ‘hover’ over the link, it looks like you are going to go to a page on my site (http://www.ron-barrett.com/AromaTherapyPLR.html), but you aren’t.
You will be ‘redirected’ to Doug’s site. This is something that ALL affiliate marketers should be doing, but a majority don’t. Why? I am not sure. Maybe it’s because they think it’s a bit too complex to create the file and upload it to their site.
Well, I am here today to show you how easy this really is. The person I learned this from claims that it is so easy, even a five year old could do it. It is now my preferred method of creating redirects.
There are a couple of problems with linking directly to an affiliate page with your ID. The obvious reason is that someone could steal your commissions if they are also a member of the same affiliate program (which is common if it is a large program like Clickbank).
The other main reason is that a lot of people are wary of clicking on long affiliate links, things with lots of letters and numbers. This seems to be more and more the case as I sometimes see these mile-long links, with un-needed crap in them like “id=xxxx”, “www.yourwebsite.com/cgi-bin/affil-id=xxxx” etc. A good affiliate link should have two items MAXIMUM. If the program is specifically towards one URL it should only have one piece of information, your affiliate name (preferably a name instead of a number). But that’s not always within your control.
The most common thing I see a lot of affiliates doing is just creating the folder or the file and doing a simple redirect. So if that person needed the URL: http://www.yourwebsite.com/theaffiliateprogram
… To send the user to:
http://www.affiliateprogram.com/?affiliate-id
They’d physically make the folder on their site and add in an index.php redirect. Sometimes they’ll also use .html redirect, which uses meta tags… which means the .html file has to actually load before the redirect takes place. That makes the trip take even LONGER and in the meantime the visitor is staring at a blank page.
This would be ok, but what if you were promoting 20 or 30 or 40 affiliate programs? That’s a lot of folders to get the coding exactly right and to upload each and every time you add another program.
Anyway, now that I have given you reason to change the method you use to redirect with, my NEW preferred method is with an .htaccess file. All I have to do when I want to add or remove a redirect is just edit a text file, and upload it to the webserver.
(In this example, you would change the “xxxxx” above to your own Clickbank name.)
You put each redirect on a different line. What you first need is the word “Redirect”, and then the relative path the .htaccss file is going to intercept. In the first line since my second part of it is “/clickbank”, that means if my domain is:
http://www.mydomain.com
… And someone goes to:
http://www.mydomain.com/clickbank
… It will send the user to that third item on that line, the long Clickbank hoplink.
The redirect doesn’t just have to be a folder name. You could even make people think you’re linking straight to an HTML file, like in the second example. Or, it could even end with “.php” if you want (3rd line) or even something you make up, like “dot-crap” (last example).
So go ahead and add tons of affiliate redirects in seconds. Just modify that above code to your needs, save it as “htaccess.txt”, upload, change file permissions to 755, and rename to “.htaccess” with that dot in front.
The file will disappear to you, because it becomes hidden, but if you need to come back to that list later you can still see it with many FTP programs. I use FileZilla and I go to Server -> Force Showing Hidden Files. I don’t know how it’ll be in your FTP client… in a lot of them this sort of choice doesn’t even exist. But that will allow you to see the .htaccess file for future editing if you lose the copy on your hard drive. (Hey, stuff happens.)
One last thing you should notice is that even though .htaccess has sort of a “bare bones” feel to it, it doesn’t have to be hard to read. Look at what I’ve done, I’ve spaced everything up so when I look at the file in Notepad with my fixed-width font everything lines up nicely.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I will get back with you as soon as I can. YES, I do monitor comments.
Well, finally….I have gotten the new theme somewhat where I want it. Please leave me any comments on what you think of the new theme or content of the post. Thanks.
Before I get to the meat of today’s post, I wanted to let you know that today is the last day you can get in on ‘The Free PLR Giveaway’. Doug and Xavier are closing the doors on this bad boy later today. The products in this particular giveaway, are not only ‘never before seen’, but they are also from some of the big hitters in the biz:
Doug himself
Willie Crawford
Joel Osborne
Mike Paetzold
you can read the rest in my previous post….get over there really quickly to grab the products…and don’t forget to grab the 50 MRR products right after your register…if you are using MRR in any way shape or form, you can’t pass these up…
Speaking of Giveaway Events, you can check out the latest ones that are going on and the upcoming ones (they are still accepting contributors, sign up through the links provided)…they are a great way to build your list. There’s a great segue into todays topic:
Optimizing your Optin
Have you done that? Do you know what it means to do that?
Let me explain: probably 85-90% of marketers out there who are building their list(s), whether through giveaway events, or through forms on squeeze pages, blogs, sales pages, whatever, are not optimizing their optin. In other words, they have an optin form on a page, people sign up for whatever they are offering, it redirects to a standard ‘thanks for subscribing’ page…they get an email saying they have requested information from so and so and to click on a link to confirm. They click on the link and are taken to a page that says thank you for subscribing.
That’s it. Period.
If you are supposed to get a gift, you either have to wait for an additional email from them or if they are really scummy, they have your email address and there is no gift. I don’t know of anyone that does that, but I am sure that it has happened in the past.
They don’t have their opt in process optimized.
If you are doing it right…or optimizing (another name is monetizing) your opt in process, once your customer (and they are all customers, whether it’s a freebie or they are buying something, NEVER forget that!) has filled out the form and clicked submit, they are brought to a page that should thank them for signing up and what is going to happen next.
You should have a page constructed that explains the entire process. That they have entered their email address and if they are using a free service, they may have to check their spam filters for the email that they will be getting asking to confirm their email address.
On this page, you should have at least one unannounced bonus for them. Possibly and ebook or two that is related to whatever you are giving away. You can also put an inexpensive paid product, again, if it’s related to what you are giving away.
Having something that requires them to buy something gives you an indication of what type of reader this person may become– A Responsive Reader — that’s what you are looking for.
You may also have something to the effect that if they entered a bogus email address looking for the freebie right away, they can go back and enter a valid email address again, or you could have another optin form on the page so they don’t have to go back. Explain that there are unscrupulous people out there who do just that and you are attempting to get a valid email address.
At this point, they should realize that they will be getting another email from you which is going to confirm their email address. This is called the verified opt in. Once that second email has arrived and they have clicked the link to confirm it was indeed them that requested the information, you have a second chance to provide them with more added bonuses, or a page with another paid offer. This is commonly called an OTO (One Time Offer) page.
You can do whatever you want to do on this page. My preference is to have a product that you can sell and keep all the profits for yourself, but some sort of affiliate link will work just as well. The preferred way is one of your own products…if you don’t have a product of your own that you can sell, check out Doug’s PLR sale and pick something up.
At this point, you have the subscriber on your list, and hopefully that person has purchased at least one of the paid products you have offered and from here you begin to send out quality content on a regular basis with the occasional relevant offer.
You have now optimized your opt in process.
You can get more detailed if you want further down the line and that is something that I will cover in my K.A.R. newsletter, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do.
