Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Counting Down to #ASE11 and Getting Prepared

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With just a little over a week until I leave for Affiliate Summit, the excitement is starting to set in. Are you almost ready? The crazy planner in me is going through all of this:

Packing: I posted in 2009 in my Real Scoop on Preparing for Affiliate Summit article the kinds of things that I pack that you might not think about: comfortable shoes, eye drops, gum or breath mints, and bottled water. I also now include hand sanitizer and ibuprofen. Don’t forget business cards! I’m taking some postcard-sized promotional sheets this year about my company that give more information than what I put on my business cards.

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It’s All About the Cookies Combines Great Tips and Good Cause

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I have been waiting for my copy of It’s All About the Cookies to get here and when it did I got so excited that I grabbed the video camera and made a quick video review. (You know I’m telling the truth because my hair is in a ponytail and my office is a mess). I don’t care because the video isn’t about me, it’s about this awesome cookbook. What makes it so awesome?

First and foremost, the proceeds from the book go to Affiliate Marketers Give Back, which raises money for breast cancer research, treatment, and awareness. If you haven’t been touched in some way by breast cancer, you must not live on this planet.

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Free Images at iStockphoto

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I admit that I am lazy when it comes to photos and graphics for my blogs. I’m not creative and I don’t have time to search for a lot of free images. I’m also careful not to violate copyrights. So I use iStockphoto for most of my sites. 9 times out of 10 I can find what I need in there within just a few minutes. Their images give my blog posts a little life and my sites a more professional look (like the image on my tutoring site).

Up until today, I didn’t even realize that they have a referral program. But even better than the fact that I can get something for referring you (assuming you buy credits in the next 30 days), I found out that YOU can get 10 free iStockphoto credits when you sign up through my link! That’s a pretty good deal, especially if you are just looking to try the service for the first time or only need a picture or two. Take the free 10 credits and don’t feel bad if you don’t end up buying any more than that. It’s worth it just to try it out.

The price of their pictures depends upon the type of pictures that they are and the size that you need. I find that I only ever need the smallest sizes for my sites, so that keeps the price down. I also buy my credits in bulk because I know that I will use them. You don’t have to link back to their site when you use the images either (which is the major down side to a lot of the free graphics and free photo sites).

I’m excited to pass along the free iStockphoto credits to my friends because I know almost all of you could use them for something or other. If you are already using iStockphoto, leave a comment below with your experience. If you’ve got another site that you use regularly for images, post that as well so that we can all take a look.

Turning Around My Affiliate Marketing Disaster

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Last month I blogged about The Ugly Side of Affiliate Marketing and described some major issues that I was having with, among other things, with my Google Adsense Account and the eBay Partner Network. I’m happy to report that all of the problems have been resolved. However, it wasn’t without a lot of help and a lot of lessons learned–lessons that can apply whether you get hit with the nexus tax, unexpectedly dropped by merchants, or even dropped from entire networks.

I took the opportunity to discuss it with my Blogging ABCs co-hosts Deborah Carney and Liz Fogg. Here are some of the things that we talked about in the podcast that I learned from this debacle:
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Universal Studios (The “Other” Orlando Resort)

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Home from vacation and ready to share! The first part of our trip was to Universal Studios in Orlando. I have to disclose from the outset that we are a Disney family. We go at least once a year and are pretty fanatical. So a trip to Universal was really strange for us, and we were constantly comparing the two. I was surprised at what we thought!

The Hotel: We stayed at the cheapest of the three Universal-owned resorts on property, the Royal Pacific. I got a good deal booking directly through their site and it was worth it for two main reasons. First, we were close enough that we could go back and forth to the parks during the day via a quick 10 minute walking trail. Second (and most important), we got Express passes to ride almost all of the rides with very little lines and were able to enter the park an hour early. Aside from those two perks, the hotel was pretty average for its price range. It was themed much like Disney’s Polynesian. The rooms were kind of small, and I didn’t like that we didn’t have a separated bath. But the pool area was very nice with a huge play area for the kids, beach sand, and plenty of lounge chairs. They had refrigerators and internet access in the rooms for a fee, but we didn’t use them. We had groceries delivered by Mr. Grocers (bottled water, cereals, snacks) and it worked out perfectly. We ate in the restaurants a couple of times and the price was a little high considering what we got but not far out of line with other hotel restaurants. I would definitely stay there again but might try one of the others just to see what it is like. [Read more…]