While I was checking out all of the SEO functions of some new Firefox extensions I installed, I happened upon Archive.org and the Wayback Machine. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the first week of the first site that I ever launched. It was 2004 and my site Helping Moms Connect was brand new. After my initial laugh at the site, I started looking more closely at what has changed and what has stayed the same over the last 6 years. Although I completely scrapped the site a little over a year ago and started fresh, it was interesting to see what stayed the same and what changed.

See Helping Moms Connect in 2004

See Helping Moms Connect now

Major differences:

Then: Frontpage (which most other people at my skill level at the time were using)
Now: Wordpress (which most other people at my skill level are now using)

Then: Pink! I thought if it was for women, it should be pink. Thankfully, I realized I was wrong.
Now: Green and yellow. A little more neutral.

Then: No advertisements. I hadn’t discovered affiliate marketing yet.
Now: A few banner ads on the main site and some tasteful text links.

Then: An email address and phone number to communicate with me.
Now: Twitter, RSS feeds, and newsletter.

Similaries:

When I look past those huge differences, I actually end up with a whole lot of similarities. A straightforward header with our name. Basic navigation to categories. Articles for moms that are updated at least a couple of times each week with female-friendly topics.

Despite a complete overhaul of the site, including moving it from hand coded HTML to a blog platform, I stayed true to my original purpose when I started the site. I always wanted Helping Moms to be a source of good content first and revenue second (and that is definitely still the case!).

How have your sites evolved over the years? Are you still true to your initial purpose? Has what you learned online changed your perspective and as a result your website?

I’ve only been home from Affiliate Summit for 8 hours and it’s already time to start thinking about next steps. I’ve brought in the luggage, spent time with my kids, ate a regular meal at the kitchen table, and read through all of my emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts since Saturday. At the same time, a thousand new ideas are running through my mind and I am trying to channel what is left of my energy into capitalizing on the education and networking I took away from the conference. With so many things to do, it can be daunting to figure out how to make up the work you missed while also making the most of the new opportunities that you have because of the conference. Here’s my take on an action plan. Not everything will apply to you, and you may need to change up the order, but hopefully it will help you get on the right track.

• Business Priorities. Make your way through anything that is an absolute priority for your business that you missed in the last few days. This may be running reports, responding to customer service emails, or something else. Essentially, it’s anything that absolutely cannot wait another 24 hours. Do that first so that you can feel comfortable continuing to focus on the Affiliate Summit follow-ups for another day.
• Sort the Physical “Stuff.” Pull out everything that you brought home and separate out business cards, notes, and swag to deal with later.
• Make Immediate Connections. One of the fastest things you can do is run through your whole stack of business cards (even the people who you do not intend to work with any time soon), and add everyone as a contact on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter. This is just to get through everyone while you still remember who they are and where you met them. Don’t expect conversations or deals this week because everyone is busy.
• Create Prioritized Task List. Sit down for an hour and go through all of the business cards and notes that you took and make a list of everything that you would like to do as a result. Which merchants do you want to schedule follow-up meetings with? Which programs do you need to join? What SEO changes do you want to make to your sites? Make a list of everything that you would like to DO as a result of what you learned at Affiliate Summit and who you met and then prioritize them with a system like red, yellow, green or 1, 2, 3. Anything that will then help you start going down the list in order of importance as time allows.
• Start Looking at Affiliate Summit West. Incredibly, it’s only 5 months away. Think about whether you will attend, how you need to budget it now, and what you want to accomplish between now and then.

It goes without saying that things like catching up on sleep will have to be a part of the plan the next couple of days, but hopefully this will help you get started mapping out what you need to do for your business. What other tips do you have for people who are feeling overwhelmed after Affiliate Summit?

As I am preparing to leave for New York this weekend to attend Affiliate Summit, I am reading through all of the planning and packing and party posts. I’m going through my usual motions of getting a hair cut, picking out some new clothes, and figuring out where I left my Poken again. It all of a sudden occurred to me that I am not sure why I am going to Affiliate Summit this time. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t know what the benefits are. It’s the one conference that I never miss. Rather, I need to figure out why I personally am attending this particular Affiliate Summit.

When I first started going back in 2006-2007, I was attending in large part to educate myself. I visited almost every single booth and attended sessions all day every day. I was also starting to network but was so overwhelmed with the basics that I didn’t do as much networking as I would have liked.

From 2008 to 2009, I stopped attending as many sessions and started focusing more on building and strengthening my network. The “parties” (mainly non-conference activities) became more important for me because I spent time caring more about the people involved in the business. I’ve found that even if someone isn’t a “business partner,” some type of business eventually comes out of most of the connections I have made at Affiliate Summit. Even if it doesn’t, my network of affiliate marketing friends is such a huge support to me in life in general that they are a priority to me now.

In the last year, I’ve spent more time on establishing my own place in affiliate marketing. Writing some articles for Feedfront, speaking at Affiliate Summit, and being a part of the mentor/newcomer program have allowed me to get my name out. In fact, I spent a good part of my time at the last few Summits just focusing on trying to be helpful to everyone else in the hopes that good karma would come back to me at some point.

Now it’s time for Affiliate Summit East 2010. I need to go into the conference with a purpose so that I can come out of it with a feeling of whether or not I achieved that purpose. My first instinct is that I need to do a little bit of everything that I have done in the past–attend some sessions to learn to be better at what I do, network with new people to expand my business, and strengthen my relationships with current friends and business partners. Maybe I have finally gotten to the point where I can take advantage of the full potential of Affiliate Summit?

What’s your purpose in attending Affiliate Summit? Is there anything that I am missing?

Affiliate Summit is almost here again and many affiliates and merchants are getting prepared. From clothes to business cards to travel plans, a lot goes into preparing for the conference. I’ve been attending Affiliate Summits regularly since 2007 and am finally starting to get the hang of it without too much stress. Here is a basic time frame of what you should be doing if you are serious about making the most out of the Summit:

Anytime: Start following the #ase10 hash tag on Twitter. In addition to seeing who else is attending, you will get good tips about transportation, sessions, parties, and more. Also join the Affiliate Summit Social Network to begin your networking.

One month out: Finalize your travel plans. You’ve missed the Early Bird rate to stay at the conference hotel, but you may still be able to get rooms at the Hilton at regular prices. You should also be nailing down your flights so that you are sure to get in and out at the dates and times that are most convenient for you.

Three weeks out: Order business cards, a Poken, or both. Decide how much information you want to share with everyone, including cell phone, email, and address. There are pros and cons to all of the above! I tend to only share my Twitter, email, and blogs with everyone and give out my phone number more sparingly.

Two weeks out: Read through the agenda on the website and determine which sessions you would like to attend. Read the various posts on blogs (you’ll likely see them on Twitter) that give more information about the sessions and the speakers. You’ll even find podcasts that may give you information that you won’t find anywhere else or give you a sneak peek into hearing more from the speakers. Determine your sessions first so that you know when you will have free time. (I’ll post my thoughts on sessions next week). Then start contacting your merchants and setting up individual meetings with any of them that you will not see at the Meet Market or in the Exhibit Hall. You should also start seeing a lot of information about parties at about this time. Many of them will overlap, so you will have some tough decisions to make! Order electronic items that you need like a backup battery for your laptop or cell phone.

One week out: Start gathering up your clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Shop for things like mints, gum, and eye drops as well. Read my previous post “Real Scoop on Preparing for Affiliate Summit” to see what I think about packing.

Final days: Make a list of all of the merchants and networks that you want to be sure to meet up with, including ones that you already have relationships with and ones that you want to meet. Set your business on auto-pilot or delegate as much as possible because you will want to spend every minute possible taking advantage of the conference and not doing your normal work.

I love Affiliate Summit and always get so much out of it. I hope that you will, too! Are you planning on attending? I’d love to meet you. Do you have other tips for those preparing to attend?

As the owner of a rewards site, I do not have a choice but to work with many different affiliate networks. That said, if I had the choice I probably wouldn’t work with a few of them. Affiliate managers and merchants often ask me which networks I like and which I do not like. Rather than complain about what I don’t like, I decided to put together my “dream network,” or what it would look like to take the best components of each and put them all together.

(As a bit of background, I’m not a “Super Affiliate” by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some good niches and databases. I don’t market to a million people or do paid search at all. I’m pretty much your average content affiliate.)

Personal Communication: Hands down, ShareASale and buy.at do the best job of communicating on a one-on-one basis with affiliates. They make it easiest to talk to them via email, forum, Twitter, Facebook, and just about any other way that I could possibly want to talk to them. I know that I can get in touch with at least one person with either of these networks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Troubleshooting and Problem Solving: In a way this goes along with communication, but ShareASale definitely stands out for this. I’ve sent messages via ABW forum or Twitter and gotten responses from the management team there within an hour. Actual responses to my questions and not just passing the buck. Some networks make you wait 1-2 business days for responses. That isn’t acceptable when our industry never stops. Even worse, some of the networks hide behind “help desk” email addresses and names and you can’t just communicate with someone until you get an issue resolved. It’s infuriating and it can result in lost revenue for all of us (Linkshare, I’m talking to you specifically on this one). Trouble ticket/help desk systems can work well when there is accountability behind them but they aren’t helpful when you have emergency situations or not actual point of contact.

Finding and Applying to Merchants: While no one network stands out for this, some are definitely better than others. Commission Junction makes it easy to search for and apply to a whole list of merchants at once. I also seem to get good results on my search terms, even if I do not know the exact merchant name that I am looking for.

Coupons and Discounts: This is huge for us at Sunshine Rewards and we need to automate as much as possible. It doesn’t do us any good when we get hot coupons but can only download them once a day. We end up loading the coupons manually from the emails before we can download as much as 24 hours later. Because of this, I favor the networks that allow coupons to be downloaded as they are added such as Linkshare and ShareASale. The one way that Google excels in that they allow you to decide which types of coupons and discounts you want to download.

Reporting: Obviously most affiliates are going to favor real-time reporting over batch reporting. I like when I can manipulate the data in different ways easily. ShareASale and buy.at are the best for transactions coming up quickly. Commission Junction is great for allowing easy downloads that can be manipulated in different ways. Linkshare has the easiest way to find individual product sales, which can be important for some of my niche sites.

Credit Disputing: Often we have to report when we do not get credit for a purchase. Some networks do not have a mechanism for this at all. Both Linkshare and Commission Junction make it easy to file disputes for credits, and Linkshare even lets you “escalate” a denial for further review. This helps keep track of outstanding issues and ensure that they are actually getting to the merchants.

Newsletters: I would much rather get links in a newsletter than have to click on the “Get Link” in an email to generate the links. I don’t know how much this depends on the affiliate manager, but it seems like the Google, ShareASale, and Linkshare links are most likely to come right in the newsletter. I also like the ability that some networks have to send the newsletters to multiple people in my company because I am not the one who pulls the coupon links from the newsletters.

Video: I haven’t been using too many videos through the networks lately, but ShareASale makes it easiest for me to add their links to my own videos and many of their merchants have video links now. buy.at has a new video tool but I honestly haven’t used it because I haven’t come across any good videos for merchants that I am running with them. Video on the networks doesn’t matter too much to me because I find people click on the links around the embedded video anyway.

Advanced Tools: I love the Linkshare LinkGenerator and CouponSnap. As a blogger, there is nothing simpler than navigating to a page and then clicking on the little box on my browser to generate my link. If every network had these, I would do a lot more product reviews. ShareASale offers a pretty easy way to generate a link to a specific page as well, although you do need to go into the interface and do it. I like that deep linking functionality to pages where I want to refer my visitors to a full category of products. All of the networks are hit or miss to me on how easy it is to pull links for individual products. It seems that a lot of that comes down to the merchants as well.

I could go on for hours about other features and each of the networks specifically, but you would get pretty bored. These hit the high points for me. What would your dream network look like?

I love Disney fireworks! My favorite part of our trips is always the chance to see fireworks over the Magic Kingdom. “Wishes” always brings a tear to my eye, and the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party fireworks are not to be missed. I was upset when I found out that we were going to miss the new Summer Nightastic Fireworks by only one night on our recent trip. We had stayed a week and on our last night, we went to see “Wishes” and I loved it as usual.

The next day, we sent the kids off to my mom’s house and planned on spending our anniversary dinner at the Polynesian and then watching “Wishes” one last time from the beach. However, when we checked in at the Poly, I found out that they were doing a soft opening of the new fireworks one night early and we could, indeed, see it! We headed to Kona an hour early and were lucky enough to get in so that we could make it over to the Magic Kingdom to see the new parade (which was too short, in my opinion) and then the fireworks. We parked in front of the castle about 3 hours before the fireworks to ensure a great spot.

We were not disappointed! I loved the fireworks–even more than “Wishes.” Maybe not quite as much as MNSSHP, but probably close. The fireworks were definitely less traditional than “Wishes.” There were some interesting effects regarding Cinderella’s Castle.

I found this video from Inside the Magic on YouTube. It’s not one that I took but is from about where I was sitting. If you are not going to make it to the Magic Kingdom for the Summer Nightastic Fireworks this year, you should definitely check it out!

I love a good book series. There’s something about being able to connect with characters from book to book that just takes me in and holds me. I have quite a few series that I have read regularly or completely and would recommend to friends. A few are pretty obvious, but some of the others may interest you as well!

Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling) My favorite of all favorites. It took me a long time to read these because I kept saying I didn’t like “kid” books. I ended up loving them so much that I cried when I was done and couldn’t think about reading anything else for weeks. For a year, I compared every book I read to Harry Potter. The early books seem to be written a little more for kids and young adults. The later books are, at times, very dark with heavy themes. (7 books–series complete)

Twilight (Stephenie Meyer) Not much I can say about this one. You probably know more than you want to about it. (4 books plus a novella coming out–series complete?)

Vampire Academy (Richelle Mead) This series has blown me away. I picked it up on a lark at the grocery story and ended up reading all of them that were out in a matter of weeks. They are vampire books but like none other that I have read. By the 4th book, I was loving them as much as Twilight. (5 books–more to come)

Sookie Stackhouse Novels (Charlaine Harris) I also picked these up at the grocery just because I was looking for something new and saw that the “True Blood” series on HBO was based on them. I had not seen the series but figured I would read the books first. They are a quick read and kind of fun. More vampires but a lot of other creatures as well. (10 books–more to come)

House of Night (Kristin Cast and P.C. Cast) Eight books in this series so far. They are a quick read about (guess what??) vampires. The vampires are “fledglings” in a vampire school. A little romance but the teen crush variety rather than a lot of the “true love” variety. (8 books–more to come)

Hunger Games Trilogy (Suzanne Collins) This series was recommended by a friend who actually got it from her daughter. It’s geared toward young adults but also has some very adult themes. In particular, I think it has a lot to say about reality television and to what extent we get wrapped up in it regardless of the impact it has on the people involved. (2 books–last one coming in August)

Wake Trilogy (Lisa McMann) This is a short series of quickly read books about a teen girl who gets sucked into people’s dreams when they fall asleep. I’m actually reading the last of them right now and anxious to see how it ends! (3 books–series complete)

Shiver (Maggie Stiefvater) Supernatural but with no vampires. A lot story about teenagers with some big problems. I liked the book but am not sure about series potential. The sequel, “Linger,” comes out July 2010. (unknown series length)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Rick Riordan) A fun kid/young adult series based on mythology. This one was fun to read with my 9-year-old daughter. A number of my friends also read them alongside their school-aged kids. (5 books–series complete but a follow-up series starting in the fall)

Beautiful Creatures (Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl) Only the first of this series has come out yet, but it is a great read. Unlike most of the others, this book is written from the teen boy perspective. He falls in love with a girl with supernatural powers. It’s supernatural and romantic at the same time. The second book will be available October 12. (one book so far)

Undead Series (Mary Janice Davidson) More vampires and an interesting take on it all. These are very light-hearted. They are sometimes known as “Betsy the Vampire Queen.” I’ve read half of them and will likely read the rest when I have time but am not itching to read them all like the other series listed. (8 books out, 9th book being released July 201)

Kingdom Keepers (Ridley Pearson) These books take place in Disney World, so Disney fans will enjoy them. I know as many adults who loved them as kids who did! The stories are about kids who are trying to save the parks from evil that comes out at night. (3 books so far)

Those are my favorites! Click here to see what else I am reading.

Every time I hear about Shop Local campaigns, I feel a twinge of guilt. After all, I earn my living by encouraging people to shop online. I teach people how to get free shipping so that they do not even have to visit their local stores. And yet, as a small business owner, I want to encourage people to support other small business. How do I reconcile all of this?

Without a doubt you can save money online. My first thought is always that if I can save $10 by buying something online, that is $10 more that I can spend on something else. Chances are pretty good that I will then end up spending that $10 at a local restaurant, or maybe at the hairdresser. If I hadn’t saved that $10, I might not be spending it in those ways.

My second thought is that you can shop online and still support small businesses. Those businesses may not be in your hometown, but you are still supporting companies besides WalMart and Sears and Kmart (who I honestly wouldn’t care to ever shop at again). At Sunshine Rewards, we definitely go out of our way to promote the small businesses that we come across as long as they provide a good shopping experience for our members.

The one things that impacts where I spend my money most is the relationship that I have with the seller. For example, I will only buy my contacts from my optometrist. I know I could get them cheaper online. However, my optometrist is a really great guy and goes out of his way to take care of my eyes. For that reason, I want to give him my business. Conversely, I buy all of my makeup online because I have a great relationship with Sephora–they give me good deals and free samples and don’t make me nervous when I am browsing.

It’s a difficult decision to choose to save money by shopping online when you know that there are stores in your community who probably sell the same things. Moreover, a true “Shop Local” purchase would be to bypass your local Borders and get all of your books at the higher priced locally owned bookstore. I’m sure that there are people who do that, but I’d go broke doing that with as many books as I buy a month.

Do you shop online? Do you try to Shop Local? Do you feel guilty for not shopping locally?

Over the past few years I have been lucky enough to serve on the Affiliate Summit Advisory Board and see submissions for Affiliate Summit sessions in advance. I always considered it a preview of sorts for the upcoming conference and would jump in and start reading them as soon as they were posted.

This year everyone is being given the opportunity to give their feedback on the sessions for New York. Over 100 speaker proposals were submitted. These will be narrowed down through visitor voting, the Advisory Board feedback, and the conference itself.

Although I have seen a number of posts and Tweets about the voting (including great posts by TrishaLyn Fawver and Adam Reimer), there are not all that many people voting. It’s incredibly easy to vote. You create an account on Slinkset (if you do not already have one) and then simply click on the arrow to the left of the session to turn it blue if you want to vote for it. You can also leave comments.

I won’t say what I voted for, but I do find it interesting that there are quite a few in the top 10 that I did NOT vote for (for various reasons). Maybe I don’t find the same things interesting as other people do? Or maybe my personal preferences for speakers (or against) can sometimes get in the way? At any rate, that is why we need more people in there voting–we need the feedback from as many people as possible to truly represent the variety of people who will attend the conference. I’ve seen people complaining after Affiliate Summit before that there were not any sessions that interested them or they didn’t understand why X, Y, or Z topic were left out. Now is the time to give your feedback.

Click here to visit the voting site. If you are so inclined, here are my two sessions:

Podcasting 101

Strategies for Marketing to Women

I’m pretty sure some of you are going to disagree with this post. In fact, I might even lose some customers over it. And yet I feel strongly about writing it. I love free stuff as much as the next girl. But at some point you have to step back and evaluate the expectations that we all have now when it comes to getting something for nothing.

I love getting free samples of products because I never know what I might buy. I’ve found many of my favorite foods and beauty products from trying out free samples. It’s good business for companies to give out free samples to people in different ways–gift with purchase, a sample and a coupon, a free trial of a service, etc. It gets the product in the hands of the consumer and if the product is good, enough people will buy that product in the future to justify the expense of  giving away the freebies.

Sometimes the free stuff isn’t even related to the product being sold. Our local hardware store used to have a popcorn machine set up for customers to get a bag of free popcorn while they shopped. It probably kept people in the store longer and some parents probably preferred to shop there when their kids were with them just because the popcorn kept the kids happy while the parents did what they needed to do. The popcorn was in no way related to hardware but was cheap and worth it.

Now here comes the part that drives me crazy. Because of all of the above, people start to expect that they will be given something for free all the time and actually get irritated when they do not. They also find ways to work the system so that the businesses get nothing out of the free stuff. There are people who collect up the free samples so that they never have to actually buy the products. They send their kids up multiple times so that they can get more than the “one per person” allowed. They go to the hardware store for “snack time” every afternoon and go straight for the popcorn and back out again with no intention of ever even looking around the hardware store. These are the people who are ruining it for everyone else.

I own a website where we have a free game on the site that 600 people can play a day. I figured out recently that over 500 people had figured out a way to ensure that they got the free money every day and none of my other customers had a chance. Those 500 people do not use my business in any other way. Over YEARS of membership, they have done nothing but the free game and cashed out for prizes. So I changed up the game so that other people had more of a chance to play. Now I’m getting email messages from people telling me to “go to hell” and people are posting on message boards that it isn’t “fair” that I am taking away their free money.

When did “free” become the expectation and not the added surprise, the unexpected bonus, or the reward for loyalty? When did people start thinking that they DESERVE to be given free stuff by companies for absolutely nothing in return. Business is tough even in a good economy and even tougher right now. A company needs to show a return on investment for all of their marketing, and this kind of “free” doesn’t allow for that.

By the way, I heard the hardware store isn’t giving away the free popcorn anymore. I can’t imagine why.