Big Foot Web Marketing

My biggest months by far for Amazon and other affiliate revenue are November and December. I probably do about half of the my years Amazon revenue in just those two months. This year I expect to break the 5,000 mark in December. ( At least i did, I am not sire what will happen to retail this Christmas) I am also bit behind on everything because of car accident and my vision loss. I am learning to use voice to text software and that should help.

The secret to making money off of Amazon is not to stick an Amazon affiliate ad in your sidebar or do up a couple of pages on your blog of your favourite books or movies but to embed links to product through your whole blog.

I am conscious of this throughout the whole year and use season as a guide. I generally write about 2-3 months ahead so I can build up backlinks to the post, be ahead of the curve and cross link heavily.

If you do not have any Christmas post or ideas for Christmas, start thinking NOW. Don’t be heavy handed, Go though you blog and find references to Christmas post and see if you can work in an affiliate product link somehow. Star writing some post about about products and weave in Christmas keywords. write about how the current economy will change your buying habits this year. What would you have bought What will you buy now?

Places that sell text links like Text Links Ads will have advertisers who want to advertise on pages that relate to Christmas so keep this in mind when you right up update your blogs content. More advertising dollars are spent now than at anytime of year and advertiser want to find places to spend their money- make your one of them.
scan affiliates at Cj.com for Christmas related product and services items that you can use and pop into posts. A decent commission for affiliate ads is 10% or more when dealing with Commission Junction. Keep this in mind when choosing an affiliate link Also balance with credibility. Look at the site. I would rather link to a site offering 7% commission that is reputable , easy to use and has good copy than one that has 10% commission and a crappy site that scares visitors away.

Tags: Blog For Money by Lisa Stewart
2 Comments »

One of my favourite plugins, is is not working properly. The blog is SLLLLLOW and a mess. I have been going nuts trying to weak it and figure out what is wrong.

I can;t get cahcing to wrk properly in WP-Super cache and I think this is one of the problems I am having. I found a site that had some great tips on troubleshooting WP-Super Cache, Quick Online Tips.
I have tried enabling and enabling compression.. nothing. Checking that htaccess file is written correctly- it is.
Problem must be with the cache folder on server itself.
Was a HUGE deal trying to delete the wp-content/advanced-cache.php file.

Tags: WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
3 Comments »

I have written countless emails and made considerable posts about plugins on developer blogs with usually disappointing results. I don’t; expect much in the way of support I am pretty grateful when some one creates somethings and lets me use it for free and don;t like to make waves or do anything to curb the future efforts.

I was very pleasantly surprised this evening when the developer of WP-Spam Free, Scott Allen commented on a recent post I made about tracking down scripts and plugins that were slowing down my blog.
Here was Scott’s comment:

Hi Lisa, Sorry to hear you had a problem with WP-SpamFree. I really do wish you had contacted me first before posting this if you were having problems because I don’t think that’s an accurate diagnosis. If it’s slowing down your site then there is something else going on, possibly some kind of conflict. It’s actually engineered to be extremely lightweight and fast. Most other anti-spam plugins use much more server resource bandwidth. We’ve tested it on many different configurations and servers and it shouldn’t be slowing anything down. Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to try it out again and would like help diagnosing anything.

Scott is so smart on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. He has done everything right from a marketing an service perspective. He followed up on a quasi- negative post about his product/service QUICKLY and saw an opportunity to make it better.
In a world of “what can you do for me” mentality was refreshing to have someone contact me and say- “hey, what can I do to help you ?”
Scott did not whine.. he did not say hey – its your fault the plugin in didn’t work, he didn’t flame me for criticizing his plugin, he saw a way to address the issue and ameliorate the situation and create some synergy.

When I owned my own brick and mortar retail store, a floral design studio, I saw every customer service problem or customer complaint as an opportunity. If some one called to complain about dead flowers- not only would I resend the flowers AND refund the money with a smile and a no questions asked policy I would send a little bouquet with note of apology.
Every time someone walked in the store with a problem I would address it and exceed their expectations. Customers were almost universally caught off guard that it wasn’t a huge hassle and and they were SO grateful .. and walked out of my store with a smile on their face. They did not tell 10 friends about the dead flowers and awful my store was.. they did not walk by my store and remember that there last experience was negative.
When you EXCEED expectation you have given good customer service.
I am stunned by the crappy customer service we are shoveled daily by the stores around us- we are so used to we do not even question it any more.
Try and return something.. EVEN if you have a receipt some stores now hang on to your money by making you accept a gift card as a form of refund.

I have lots more to rant about but my vision is fading and I am giving my spell check a real workout tonight.

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Tags: Marketing Your Web Site by Lisa Stewart
2 Comments »