31 December 2010 Update

Hi Jeremy,

I added two more posts in the Acer netbook category and one more in the deals category. Also made some posts to my Facebook page.

The carousel widget is exactly what I had wanted from my wireframe. I'm very pleased with it.

I will plan on getting a list of ideas for graphic templates done this week. I had a hectic week at work and home.

Happy 2011,

me

Memories of cha-ching

Back in 2002 -2004, I used to be able to log in to cj.com and practically refresh the page every few minutes to watch the total go up.

Just memories.

http://jeremypalmer.com/

Two posts, Nov 26, Nov 28, 2010.

Well, at least I got an idea that I should put an affiliate link to BOTW on my blogs. Hah, I just got a note from BOTW that I have affiliate funds less than minimum payout.

What is Tumblr? I mean, why would I use any product non-Google? I can quickly and easily set up both AdSense and Amazon for any Blogger blog I own, stats (use the beta dashboard and you'll see), I can add the sitemaps to my Google Webmaster Tools easily...

The WordPress blogs I have attached to sites are fine. I like having control of the hosting and content. I like not having a risk that Google will shut down my blog for some reason. But WordPress is constant upkeep. Update this plugin, update that plugin, update the database, blah, blah, blah.

And I won't be using one again as the main CMS for a website.

Wherein the author sighs and wonders where the heck 2010 went

Circular. Working on getting menus in WordPress to work wasn't what I signed on for. But when they still don't work, my motivation to write content sinks too low to get more done.

Of course, if there was traffic to the existing content, I'd probably have enough positive reinforcement to overcome the menu curse. But no, traffic is drips and drops.

No links coming in from qydj, and tomorrow is Dec.1.

It's difficult to feel at all optimistic. And with no optimism, it's hard to keep writing content and working on link building... which was supposed to be what I signed on for.

Update 5 November, 2010

Hi Jeremy,

Things accomplished:
1) I'm working on the questions for the showcase.

2) I finished my first ebook and posted it. For now since there is so little traffic, I haven't set up an email list, just a download and suggested people favorite the page and join the Facebook page for free updates. Here's the landing page: http://netbookguide.org/netbook-guide-2010-free-e-book/ .

3) I had some fun and played with making a text to video movie via Xtranormal.com and posted it to my YouTube channel. BTW, currently the links from YouTube channels are still do-follow. http://www.youtube.com/user/netbookguideORG

4) Submitted the free ebook to various ebook directories, such as http://www.jogena.com/ebookdir/computers.htm , http://e-library.net/search.php?q=netbook+guide&cx=partner-pub-3841787588316075%3A3xfxvk-veru&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=ISO-8859-1&I1.x=0&I1.y=0#242 .

5) Posted these and other amusing video clips on my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Netbook-Guide/162452683767371 .

Questions:

We forgot to discuss possible free options for an email newsletter to capture emails for brief follow ups after downloading the ebook. Do you have any thoughts on this?

all the best,

me

Update 22 October, 2010

Hi Jeremy,
Do let me know what time on Monday is good to talk, please.

Tasks accomplished this week:

1. Published four more posts on the site. Two in the deals category, one in the Asus category, and one in the Acer category. The Asus and Acer posts are based on the keyword research with WT.
2. Posted an update to my Facebook page about the deals.
3. Set up the links page and wrote to each of the sites requesting reciprocal links. One already linked back: http://netbook-evangelist.com/ .
4. Looked at back links on the sites that I contacted and applied to several directories. Accepted in to at least two.

Questions:
1. The links page always puts something as a "menu" at the bottom of the page. I changed it to the main navigation, but I don't really like having any menu down there. Any idea how to fix this?
2. As we get more into Q4, traffic becomes imperative. Do you recommend starting a ppc campaign at some point?

Hope to catch you soon,
me

Of balances between link building tasks and content building and WTF with WordPress

After reading in the partners forum that some folks are seeing spikes in traffic, I figure I'd better do something besides the web 2.0 profiles and posting in forums and no-follow ezine article links.

One of our tasks had been to make a list of top sites in our niche: forums, blogs, companies, etc.. So I started there and got the basics of my links page started. Then I wrote to each site the good old "Hi, I've posted a link to your site, I'd love a link back."

Then look at the backlinks to THOSE sites and see if I can get some of them, also. Two directory submissions, plus check on a submission from about a month ago. Oh, good, that one is in.

Then on to post some content and get all flustered about the Word Press side bars again. I hate them.

Since I got the site theme, I cannot get the sidebars to do what I want when I want. At some point I settled for one side bar for all pages, but then that got tweeked out again. The default side bar never shows in categories that have no defined sidebar. So I have to go in and define every single category side bar to have a side bar that isn't WP default.

So I found yet another subcategory that isn't pulling the default menu and I have to go put in menu widgets. Well, I also realized that product reviews are in one category, and the related products are in another. Can't have product specific menus in the review category, since all other reviews are in that category.... and this is what it's been like for months now.

On the good news side, I did have a first sale. Still hoping Q4 can recover the year's costs.

Update 15 October, 2010

Hi Jeremy,
Sorry I haven't been in touch much. I had the holidays to deal with among other things.

Tasks accomplished recently:
1. I did make single blogger sites for each of the models with keyword based domain names, linked them together and then linked to them from my Squidoo page. Within two weeks Google had shut down three of them for triggering the spam filter. So I removed the remaining ones immediately as well as the links from Squidoo. I see that domain squatting is not simple, and I don't think it's really my goal to learn how to do it.

2. Traffic on the site is still low. The webmaster tool in Google is showing more of the profile back links, as well as the ezine article links and such. I aggregated my profile URL's into an RSS feed, and went ahead and linked to that from my blog. Currently there are only 50 profiles, but the majority of the other sites that I checked on Knowem.com have little or nothing to offer. I subscribed to the newsletter mentioned in the  forums, Paulie Ciara's Backlink newsletter, and  try to choose one of those each week to add.

3. I am working on a downloadable ebook like I had in my wireframe. Mostly I am cutting and pasting information from my site so that it's not hugely time consuming. I signed up for the Netbook Buyers Guide ebook from NetbookReviews.com, and they do a nice set of follow up emails afterwards as well.

4. I made a Facebook Page.

Questions:

1.  I started the clustered posts, but I need to solve the menu problem for me to even easily navigate the site. What day would work for you this week for a Skype session?
2. I'm not too keen on signing up for a paid newsletter service before there's traffic to the site. I set up a mailing list in the Cpanel, but I am not totally familiar with the settings in cPanel, as I use different hosting. What are your suggestions for being able to capture email address for two or three brief follow up emails to folks who download my ebook?

Hope all is well after that fire!

Best,
me

Q4 2010 is here

I had a lot of personal holiday time last month, continuing frustration with menu trouble on the site with no time to schedule for a session with Jeremy to solve it, and using too much time on building profiles.

Hopefully I'll get the menu problem worked out this week. I am not happy having to deal with website issues, as it always saps my interest in content production. I have a lot of content to get written.

The link to my RSS feed for web2.0 profiles: http://rss.icerocket.com/xmlfeed?id=144499 . Not sure it's more than a huge waste of time. Good for branding if you are building a brandable site, I suppose.

Here's hoping everyone's Q4 goes well. "I'm dreaming of a black Xmas!".

Ezine Articles

Ezine articles are a decent way to get targetted traffic to your site. Of course, you have to invest time in writing a decent article. The higher quality the article, the more views you'll get, and if you use some marketing know-how, you can get some very high click through rates.

EzineArticles.com now offers their authors a Title Tool. They claim that these titles are gleaned from searches that land readers on the site. This may be true, but I haven't been impressed with the results.

I took two titles in my niche and wrote two original pieces. I'm a Platinum Author, so within 48 hours my articles were live. I have several pen names and have seen some articles get tens of views on the first day, hundreds in the first few weeks. Some of my articles have an outrageous 30% click through rate, and others a dismal less than 1% click through rate.

The titles that EzineArticles.com gave me didn't take off for views. I can't blame them for a lousy click through rate, that's more my hooks or lack thereof.

I then used some of the "templates" that EzineArticles.com offers and that I've found very helpful for both getting past writer's block and getting views. First one was their "7 things" template. The article is a lot more successful in views and click throughs than the first two.

Then I hit some keyword research tools looking for some keyword phrases that are getting searches. I can't tell you yet the results of the test, but I did write a new ezine article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Netbook-Computers---Asus-Vs-Toshiba&id=4965878

Life with Google

So I subscribed to an interesting newsletter about backlinks. Nice. Informative. Some great tips.

And some things that I could never stoop to on the internet.

I have some Google alerts set up, and at least one of them is largely full of reprinted articles. The same ones over, and over, and over, as if the articles had some interesting content. But they don't. All the links stripped, nobody notices that the products no longer exist. Today as I read through the newsletter I signed up for, I realized that largely these are Google bot bait. Yup, pre-scheduled PLR articles that nobody read because nobody cared.

Please, if you use the internet as well as market, publish unto others what you would have others publish unto you. I, for one, prefer real content, written by a real person. Thanks.

Forums are back up.

Come on back, everyone, let's exchange tips and info.

Update 20.8.2010 and Skype

Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the note and update about your computer and timing.

The kids are in back to school mode, so my work on the site is slow.

Summary of Actions:
1.  I updated all the buy links on all the pages, since I'd been waiting to hear about the server move before doing that. Since your note last week indicated we won't be moving server, I did get them taken care of. I noticed today that there are a number of programs that did not approve my application at cj.
2. In the process of adding another 10 WEb2.0 sites with the fellow I work with on fiverr.com. By building out only 10-20 a week, I think it's more natural. By paying him, I will save 50% over Knowem.com. Sorry that means in order to  check out the profiles you'd need to search for **** on the sites.

3. I only made one more forum post, nothing spectacular.

4.I did read an interesting article from SiteProNews, something I've been a subscriber to for over 10 years: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/15/social-media-marketing-doesnt-replace-seo/ .

Questions:

1. Thoughts on contacting the CJ advertisers who rejected the application?
2. Forums????
3. I looked through my emails and either I'm going senile or I wasn't aware you'd be out of communicado again. Having the forum up might help with communication, as you could just make one post for everyone to see. Your thoughts?

Timing for Skype:

Looking at my schedule, thinking that Wednesday evening my time might work best. Say 17:00 GMT+2 = 8 am your time. Too early? Otherwise I could do 20:00, which would be 11  am your time.

best,
me

Weekly Update 13.8.2010 and Skype?

HI Jeremy,

Sorry I wasn't able to get to Skype on Thursday. I've got some family issues going on with one of my teens. It was a slow week in terms of our site, sorry.

Summary of Actions:

1-  I didn't use Knowem.com's service. I use their site to get info on the various Web 2.0 services, since they present right on the site the Alexa rank, Yahoo links, and Compete.com data. I decided to see if I could get some help cheaper at fiverr.com, which was recommended by one of the partners in the forums. I posted a suggestion for a gig and got two replies and one person has worked out just fine. I basically try to do 10-20 a week, but didn't get any more done this week. The list from last week is the majority, and I am always ****  for the username.

2 - I made three more community postings, including changing my sig on that one site that didn't like the website in the URL. See what you thnk:
http://forum.***.com/6563372-post450.html
http://forum.***.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/507163-need-netbook-constant-travel-web-browsing-office-apps-form-included.html#post6563420
http://www.***.com/forum/general/3228-netbook-powerpower.html

3- I published another ezine article:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-7-Bestselling-Netbook-Computer-Brands&id=4819246

all the best,
me

Update 6 August, 2010

Hello Jeremy,

As per your email last week, here is my update email for the week:

Summary of Actions:

1- Continued creating social media profiles for my site. :
http://www.tweako.com/
http://wakoopa.com/
http://www.bizsugar.com/
http://www.epinions.com/
http://www.thisnext.com/
http://www.ecademy.com/
http://www.kaboodle.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://amplify.com/
http://www.mister-wong.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/
http://www.diigo.com/
http://www.gravee.com/
http://www.mixx.com/
http://www.plime.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/
http://www.cocomment.com/
http://faves.com/
http://jeteye.com/
http://www.searchles.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.connotea.org/
http://www.folkd.com/
http://www.kirtsy.com/
http://www.mylinkvault.com/
http://www.backtype.com/
http://www.glogster.com/
http://issuu.com/

2 - I've begun participating in some forum discussions. Here are some posts I made in topics related to my site:
http://www.netbookchoice.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=251&p=781#p781
http://www.netbookreviews.com/forum/introductions/3177-netbook-fun.html#post10086
http://www.testfreaks.com/netbooks/qa/19528-difference-between-intel-atom-and-intel-core-duo/?new_answer=12296

Questions:
1- Are the sites going to move server or not? If so, target date?
2 - Did you send out an email or make an announcement in the Partner Portal about your plans to be offline in July?  I totally missed it, if so.
3- Can you share general stats with us about where everyone is holding in the Partnership? It might be encouraging.


thanks,
me

10 days of silence again

Well, the email from the 19th of July stated that Jeremy would be in contact mid-week, but here it is 10 days later.

Still no forums. No further contacts.

Is anyone out there interested in starting our own forums to at least give each other support in what we can?

A sign of life

We received an email from Jeremy today letting us know that he'd been "off the grid the past few weeks", which sounds like since the last round of partner calls.

Hopefully the forums will be back up soon so we can get support from other partners.

If it was any quieter, I think I'd hear an echo...

Forum is still down.
No new partner emails updating all of us.
At least some new tasks appeared in the partner portal relating to link building.

JeremyPalmer.com has a new squeaky clean WordPress install, so hopefully that's a sign that there's been some progress with either moving servers or staying put on HostGator.

Are we moving all the partner sites or not? Nervous partners want to know.

New items in task list related to Organic Traffic

I forgot to mention that my whole reason for going to Knowem.com was Jeremy's suggestion in our phone call last week. I added the twist of fiverr.com.

A good sign today was seeing added tasks in the partner portal. Still no forum, and no word on whether the sites will indeed move server or not.

Knowem.com and Fiverr.com

Knowem.com has a huge list of Web2.0 sites and a service that costs a pretty penny. For essentially a dollar a site, you can have them initialize sign up, thus reserving your username.

This is helpful for branding, and most profiles give you a place to mention your website. This is helpful for building incoming links and possibly driving traffic if you are honestly active on the sites.

In the partnership forums (which are still down, by the way), someone linked to a site called fiverr.com. It's an amusing idea: Buy and Sell services for $5. In the forums someone pointed out that you can get article writing for $5 (which is a tad expensive if you are planning on paying for a lot of them, there are cheaper ways). But there are other services offered like commenting on your blogs, inviting 3,000 Facebook friends to your fan page, and such.

I didn't see one for doing Web2.0 signups, but there is a box in the far right hand column for "wishlist" gigs that you might like to see. So I put in a wishlist request for 10 Web2.0 signups for $5. Two sellers replied to my fiverr.com inbox (I had to sign up to post in the wishlist box)!

Hey, for $10 I could try this out and get 20 sign ups. 100 signups would then cos me $50, a savings of $49 over Knowem.com. I decided not to request them finishing the profiles for several reasons. One is that I wanted to check out the sites myself, since maybe something would be interesting (like kiva.org!). The other is that I wanted to change the password before entering more data. Hiring out someone to sign up was already enough information for them to have in their unknown to me hands!

One seller immediately sent me a gmail address to contact him/her. When I replied that I was new and didn't understand how to set it up so I could pay for the gig (that's what they call these at fiverr.com), s/he replied that it was no problem and I could pay directly to his/her PayPal account.  My radar went up.

The other seller tried a sample sign up, messaged me at fiverr.com to check if it worked and if I was still interested s/he would set up a gig so I could purchase it and s/he would do the other 9 sites. Now that was good marketing, and all according to the rules. So I approved setting up the gig, purchased it (your payment is through Paypal to fiverr.com), and s/he quickly, efficiently, and with good communication when more info was needed, did the job. So I immediately hired him/her for another 10 sign ups. I gave him/her good reviews for both gigs.

I also hired someone to read my Squidoo lenses, comment, and rate them. She left relevant comments that showed she really had read them, and I gave her positive feedback. Fun!

And that first seller? I reported him/her to fiverr.com and the account was closed within hours. I didn't mean to get someone booted, but that kind of behavior is what could ruin the investment that fiverr.com put into the site.

Another thing about Knowem.com. So they have data on all the sites and for the 100 site fee, you get the 100 most trafficked sites. Some Web2.0 sites just never take off and dwindle, so what's the point of a sign up. Okay, so I figured we had the skills from the niche selection unit to get an idea of a site worth a sign up. I didn't end up having to do all that work, though Knowem lists on their site the Alexa ranking, Compete.com ranking, Yahoo incoming links, etc.., so you can see for yourself pretty quickly which are worth a sign up.

And don't forget to sign up for Knowem.com itself!

Moving hosts.. shudder...

I got my reply to my ticket submission requesting a content review and Jeremy wants me to schedule a phone meeting. All the slots on his Jiffle calendar are post midnight my time zone, so I'll email to try to set something up for next week. 

He also mentioned that there have been some issues with HostGator for the Partnership project, so they'll be moving the sites. 

I backed up my site and am downloading the whole directory JIC. I can't imagine trying to move 59 database sites. 

Since I started hosting at FutureQuest.net, I've only had nightmares with other hosts. So yes, I pay a bit more in hosting, but for my peace of mind it's worth it. Today I just put in my request for MySQL5 upgrades on my sites so I can be a good girl and keep my WP versions up to date. I'm out of date on all of them.

59 sites to move. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I have to say. It's not like they're static sites, they're all WordPress based. I think I'm going to try some of the new dark rum based drinks I downloaded from recipezaar.com soon...

Oh thank heaven for friends who are WordPress gurus!

I used to be very active at ABestWeb.com back when I was supporting my family with affiliate marketing. I still have some good friends from there.

One is now quite a WordPress guru, so I asked her what she thought of my problem. After a couple of questions, she made a suggestion that worked.

Being more of a coder than a designer, I work in the HTML tab most of the time. Her suggestion was to actually add the link in the WYSISYG window, and it worked!

What was that mantra again? I know WordPress is supposed to be the best for a content management system, I know WordPress is supposed to be the best...

Forums down, sigh.

The Partner forums are down.  Been working on starting to add affiliate links and having some unknown problem in WordPress.

I put in a support ticket for a content review, since I am sure I need more, better, and some honing of what I posted. However since I am finding working in WordPress so challenging, I want to get focused with some constructive feedback.

Meanwhile I built a Squidoo page as a feeder to the site and unabashedly asked all my Facebook friends to at least click through, preferably add comments and rate the lens. That should start the lens rising slowly and hopefully by the time the site is actually ready for prime time the Squidoo page will be sending some nice traffic.

Also writing ezine articles, and taking advantage of the Title Tool at EzineArticles.com. So far I'm not impressed with the results of using the tool. Nice for brainstorming, but a quick look at Wordtracker or SEOBook has always been  successful for me at finding titles that get my article viewed.

The advantage of the Squidoo page is that it's very Squidooly to compose in the first person. I wrote from very much my own head space and experience, which was fun and informative.

Okay, back to WP. Guess I should put in a support ticket.

First draft ready!

Three comparison categories, three top contenders in each category. I have enough material to post a couple more reviews of products that didn't make my top contenders lists, too. Then I will have to check what's new again in the niche... it's a fast moving niche and my Google Alert comes in every day with more material.

I spent some time on the side bar widgets in WordPress last night. My default template still doesn't seem to take hold and I end up having to make the same side bar for every category template that I've used.

Then I also wasn't satisfied with how to link to the comparison pages in a navigation tab so I created a new subcategory called comparison under the review category and moved the comparison pages to that category. Beware if you put a slug in the box for a category, WP uses that for the link archecture and doesn't always find the right category template. Sigh. I made the plug the same as the subcategory and WP found the right page template.

Today I will request a content review from Jeremy's team. I reapplied at Amazon.com for Associate status for the site. They had rejected the application when the site wasn't functional. I also reapplied at Shareasale.com, for the same reason. I'm a long time affiliate, so both of them can look at other work I've done, but I wanted separate accounts for the Partnership site. Still have to reapply to the Ebay Partner Network for the same reasons.

Time to start getting preliminary feedback from social networking and driving some traffic from article marketing. Though all my friends on Facebook are actually people I know from my real life, some of them are in the market for this product, just as I was.  When I mentioned I was building a site to compare this product niche, many were interested. I plan on being shamelessly self promotional and asking everyone to click through, bookmark, tweet, Digg, and pass on to all their friends a link to my site. While this is not necessarily big time traffic, it should be a nice natural start to link building and traffic building. Not to mention free content review comments from people who know me. ;)

Okay, post product reviews before the comparison page...

Because that way you don't have to go back into the HTML of the comparison page to add the anchors.

I coded the comparison page and the three (well, two really, since one was also a winner in another comparison category already) review pages in DreamWeaver. Then posted the review pages one at a time. As I posted, I previewed the post, and copied and pasted the URL into the comparison table.

Then I posted the comparison table with all the links intact.

So it's mostly offline work on Good Olde DreamWeaver. Until I actually try to get these pages to look exactly right and the navigation just right... then I'll be spending a lot of time in my WordPress admin, I suspect.

A page a day...

Gone back to the baby step method of  "a page a day" so I can feel like I'm keeping a decent schedule for getting the site finished.

There have been problems with the CSS, I'm not always getting problems once I've pasted my HTML into WordPress, so rather than break my head on technical stuff right now, I'm posting the pages I need to get posted and will worry about the CSS and WordPress related style problems later.

Currently I'm working in Dreamweaver, my favorite since purchasing it in 2002 or so. Then copy and paste the relevant bits into a WordPress post or page. I've never used WordPress for a whole site, so getting the navigation elements and category structure is not coming totally easily.

But it will get done reasonably quickly with a page a day. More if I can get some days off...

What are the non-technical Partners doing?

Okay, so I had a few notes (always having expected a recording of at least one of the sessions of customizing  WordPress), and knew that the hero shot problem was a custom field... but what did he tell us?

So finally, the techy kicks in and I says to myself, "Self, where's the code?" I opened on browser window with the screenshot that my page  is meant to look like. Opened another tab in that window with the current page and checked the code. No URL for the image.

Okay, if I were coding this by hand... in the other browser where my WordPress administration is open,  go into the theme editor and check the template. Okay, there's the tag, oh, look, there's the custom field it's meant to call.

Open another tab in that browser to the post and add the custom field. Save. Whadya mean value for the field? Oh, I'll bet that's the URL. What did he say about Media? Try uploading the heroshot, even though it's on the server, can't figure out how to "attach" it, and by now a few neurons are connecting. The template includes the correct path to the images folder, so I just need the file name. Enter the file name in the value box for the custom field heroshot. Refresh other browser window... whalla, that one down.

Now my text is a dark gray on an almost black background. The screenshot is of black text on a light gray background. In the browser with the admin panel open, edit the post AGAIN, looking for background color in the WP text formatting area... (meanwhile already coding it in my head... oh, wait). If I were coding this in DreamWeaver, I'd just tweek the CSS file. Hmmm, the CSS that is called in the page template is not available in the termplate editor.

Open CSS file in my FTP client (could have used DW also), find the right div tag from the browser window with the current page open, and check out the code. Paste current CSS code into a temporary text note JIC, Switch the background and color, and sure enough, the CSS had been wrong. Now I've got the lighter background and darker text, but the lighter background is still darker than the screenshot.

Fire up Photoshop Elements (still in 3.0 so it isn't quite right in Windows 7, need to upgrade), open the screenshot, color pick that background color, copy and paste the hex code into the right CSS file, save, upload via FTP, reload the browser window.... finally at least that's right.

Meanwhile I notice the heroshot takes a bit to load, so I open it in  PSE to check the size... 154 kb. Dudes, I've been coding web pages since 1999 on dialup, optimizing graphics should be a habit. So I use PSE\s nice little utility "Save for Web", and even at 50% quality it's down to 29kb. Save as heroshot-lite, upload, change value in the custom field, reload, sigh of relief.

While PSE is open... open the logo, crop to the image, save as a jpeg for a favicon. Open up irFanView, size to 16x16 pixels, save as favicon.ico, upload to home directory. As someone who appreciates the visual cues on the browser tabs of favicons and favorites way too many pages all the time, I like to have a favicon for any site I'm working on.

I have miles to go figuring out the other templates I'd planned on using for review pages and product pages, and I can read CSS, HTML, optimize my own graphics, and use my FTP client to do on the spot editing of text files. I have no idea how lost someone might be if they have no real tech skills in this field.

Meanwhile I really, really need to be finishing up the content, which is meant to be my main task.

Deep breathing

 Mantra: I know WordPress is supposed to be easier for content management. I know WordPress is supposed to be easier...

Okay, first I uploaded the new theme not to a theme directory so I broke some stuff in the way the page was displaying until I realized that. No problem, create a new folder in the Themes directory and upload, then re-upload the default in the main www directory. Change theme in the admin section > Appearance > Themes.

But my templates seem to need me to finish tweeking them, and I am not grokking the custom fields. I'm frustrated since there doesn't seem to have been attached a copy of the call recording from Monday when I met with Jeremy and Ryan. And in our training videos, there's also not a video for Customizing WordPress. I barely recall that webinar (webinars are late at night for me, so even with notes I tend to need a refresher). My notes are too sketchy.

I've emailed for another copy of the call recording, and am going to upload my first drafts of some reviews for content so it's up... and hope my deep breathing helps me get a handle on setting up my templates and how to properly use my custom fields.

I'm not new at WordPress, but this way of using it as a CMS is far beyond what I've done with it previously. WP is quite impressive with what you can stretch it to do. But right now all I can think is "I could have coded this  in DreamWeaver by now". Normally that thought is reserved for trying to get a table in MS Word formatted correctly. ;)

Next Phase Starting!

I've been busy writing content, but haven't posted it yet to the new site. After last night's call with Jeremy and his assistant, the next phase begins.

The site template is finished and should be arriving in my email today. Then I'll upload it and begin adding my content and customizing the site.

So in addition to  continuing to create content, I guess you can call it Tweeking Time. ;)

I'm very excited to move into this phase.

I also have a personal interest in the nice (of course), and am hoping to make a personal purchase within the next month, so all the research is very fun to do.

Progress when there's time off the day job!

With Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday off the day job, I got some good work done on the niche content. Then total wipe out on Wednesday between the day job and family errands.

The content writing is going, though. Also as I get more and more expert in the niche, things fall into place better.

Now how to get more time off the day job...

Niche Content Creation

Holidays are gone and done, and I'm only slowly getting at my content creation. There's been a serious case at work almost every day. I come home and after chores and making dinner hit the computer.

It's going, but I think I'm going to take a day off the day job and make a shopping comparison day -- photos, videos, come home and put it on my external hard drive and make it fun.

Content Creation for Niche Marketing

That's where I am, but, ahem, have to do a lot of holiday preparation at home and had the day job eating up the rest of my time lately. So early next week I'll be organizing full steam on all my content for the site launch.

EFQM - The Europoean Foundation for Quality Management -- defining excellence?

Had to attend a lecture on the EFQM process that is being undertaken at my day job employer, and was piqued by the mission they have.

In the late 1980's Europe found itself being outdone in the business sector by Japan and the U.S. They decided to win back market share by promoting excellence in business.

What I liked about the EFQM model is that is based on facts and measurements (as Jeremy says, "If you measure it, it will improve"), and process is a large part of the level of excellence as well as results.

So the lecture I attended adapted the EFQM concepts to a medical environment. Hmm... so really we could adapt this concept of "defining excellence" (or measuring excellence and the processes necessary to achieve it) to running a website. :).

Here's a PDF of the 2010 EFQM model . I think that this would be a great way to measure excellence in a content website. If it can be adapted to medical care, it can be adapted to niche marketing!

Granular tasks for Site Launch

I've had affiliate accounts for over 10 years, though I closed my LinkShare account in about 2005. For the Partner Project I need a new Google Account so I can share this with Jeremy's team for analytics, Adwords, etc.

For some reason, I was having trouble getting the new Gmail address. Not sure why, and after two tries, Google informed me that my cell phone number (they wanted to send a verification SMS) had opened the max number of Google accounts allowed. Grr. So then I tried at the day job, since I could at least send and SMS to a friend's phone. Low and behold the verification was sent to my Yahoo email address that I put in as my contact. Okay.

Then after adding my billing information to AdWords, I remember that you can invite others to your AdWords account. That makes a lot more sense to me than giving a team of people my Google account password which would access all things Google in that account. I sent off an email to Jeremy inquiring about this option.

After signing up at Commission Junction, I recalled that there also is the option of adding users with their own access to the same account. Again, much more sense than giving a team my log in information, it would seem to me.

Then on to ShareaSale to open an account. Late at night, after my full day of work at the day job. Okay, at the end they want to send a verification to an email address at the domain itself. Fine, I had set up one POP box on top of the default. Just to be sure, I put in the default address.

No email from SAS. Okay, dufus, did you test your email? No. So I send from my new Gmail account to the default email address. Bounce. Oooof. I had not been able to set up my Windows Live Mail with the information on the site, but I figured it was just some glitch... now I realize that there's a serious problem with my email on the hosting account. I send an email to the host with the error message generated in the bounce, and get a copy of the inquiry from an email associated with Jeremy! The email says, "Your inquiry was sent to the server administrator because no contact information was configured on the server. Attached is a copy of your inquiry for your reference:". Oh, man, I don't have access to the domain registration, that's Jeremy's part of the partnership.

Maybe this is a problem with cPanel? I try setting up a forwarding and still get a bounce. I can log in by webmail to both email addresses, but nothing has arrived.

By this time I realized it was time to get some sleep and see what the next day will bring. At this point I do have the new Google account and Commission Junction set up, and most of the tasks for the WordPress install accomplished. I want to double check my categories before checking it off of the task list, though really they can be changed later also.

And here we are in the middle of March. I think we are going to need to extend the Partnership to three years. ;)

Starting the Site!

Woohoo! Access to my cPanel (oh, good, it's improved a lot since the last time I had to deal with a cPanel host. I generally host at FutureQuest.net, who has their own proprietary control panel), domain name set up, email address set up (no autosetup for Windows 7 yet, and I'm not getting it set up right, will just probably forward to a gmail address), first draft of site design approved.

Another good discussion with Jeremy about the importance of excellent content (check out this article on fast food content) and going over the website design. Cleared using a Squidoo page as a temporary landing page for some ezine articles, later to use the Squidoo page primarily as a funnel to our partner website.

I also have not yet opened separate advertising accounts and affiliate accounts yet for the partnership, so I need to start doing that. Now that I have a web address to call home, it's time to start getting to that, too.

In the mean time, I had a cold last week and didn't get much but basic slogging through the day job and trying to get well again. Still coughing a bit, so hopefully I'll be totally better soon and have more energy. Thinking about how best to start getting some time to go and do some video and photo shoots for our website, too. To fully research this niche hands on, I need to get out of my little town and into a big city. Good excuse for an excursion!

Excellent vs. Good Content

A bit of an eye opener webinar last night. Admittedly I have been a "back burner" affiliate for over 3 1/2 years now since going back to a day job full time. In that time it has become nearly impossible to make money with what Google considers to be "thin" affiliate sites, and even "good" affiliate content has a lot of competition.

Jeremy emphasized the need for excellent content rather than just good content. It's a lot of work. On the other hand, it's doable. Unlike having to learn a new programming language every few years or the newest internet traffic trick, you can learn to produce excellent content once and continue to do so for the long run. Sure, you may have to learn a few new skills as time goes by (video was NOT a viable media for common use 10 years ago due to bandwidth and storage limits, for example), but the general skills learned are constant.

I actually realized how much more I could build up the content on my remaining affiliate sites. The original content is there on many of them, not all, but mostly it's good content, not excellent content. And one site that has some excellent video content really needs more excellent written content to support it.

But right now my main focus is the partnership site. With a full time job and a commitment to 10-12 hours a week for the 2010 Partnership, I don't have a lot of time to fiddle with my remaining affiliate sites right now. That's okay. It's never too late, and I've only kept the ones that I felt I could eventually commit to developing in terms of content.

Excellence is a far more demanding goal, but in many ways, it's a far more worthwhile goal.

A three webinar week

We really are a bit behind schedule. Sites are nowhere near being finished, at least not if partners are waiting for task lists to complete. We haven't had any new tasks for awhile as the Wireframe Wizard was built.

While I have been spending time anyway on the project by immersing myself in my niche, I still need to finish my wireframe. I sent a first draft sitemap (using Mindjet) and content inventory sheet (using Google Docs) and a link to my swipe file at Evernote to Jeremy for feedback. Actually, since I know he's really busy, I just asked him to let me know if there was mission critical corrections to make.

No response, so I'll go ahead with a wireframe based on that content inventory and sitemap.

Of Niche Immersion and Wire Frames

There aren't currently any new tasks, so I have been immersing myself in my niche. I'm using Evernote to put together a swipe file of site design "do's" that I'd like to incorporate into our site.

Here's a good blog post on how make and use a swipe file for inspiration during website planning: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/06/02/swipe-file-for-inspiration/ .

So I've been visiting sites and making note of things that I like (like the design, like the navigation categories, like the search feature, this one is along the lines of what I'd like to do with a different focus...). I keep in my Evernote file a screen capture, the URL, and notes about what I liked.

Then I also keep a Google spreadsheet with extra notes about sites, and have sorted my keyword intent spreadsheet to narrow down categories. This is all giving me a clearer idea of how I want the site to develop.

The clearer a vision you have of what you want from your site, the more information you can provide designers who will code the site. I'm in general not a visual person, so spreadsheets actually help my creativity.

Jeremy is coding a WireFrame Wizard, and for very good reasons. It's not ready yet, so I am using this time to get a clear picture of my niche and what I want for our site. A long cry from some thin affiliate sites I put up in 2004 or so in about 4 hours from domain registration to full site up on the web. Hopefully with longer term success, too!

Niche Marketing -- you need content

I'm caught up on our current tasks, and am trying to wrap my mind around wire frames. I haven't done them previously, most likely to the detriment of my sites.

Mean while, I wanted to share one of the tasks we had in researching our niche. Make a list of 10 forums and blogs in your niche and then note 10 topics that are most popular on each site. Boom, 100 content ideas. This gives you a glimpse of the customers out there and what their questions are, what interests them, and what bothers them in your niche.

There you have 100 article ideas that already serves the community interested in your product. Or perhaps less than 100, as you may see some of the same topics come up over and over. That's also important, as those topics are the ones that you really want to make sure you address with your content.

Jeremy has begun providing our task worksheets in .csv format rather than an online form to fill out, which I prefer. I open the form in my Google Docs and work on it from anywhere. In fact, on my new desktop I haven't purchased MSOffice, I've gone with Open Office and Google Docs. Since I still have a day job, I like having my documents "in the cloud".   

Niche Selection Pro Milestone finished!

Niche selected!
A 1-on-1 call with Jeremy was great. First, he is so polite, positive, and friendly. He said, "Nice to meet you", but of course his voice was familiar to me. Shortly after he was nominated for the Horizon Award in 2005 with Commission Junction, I recall listening to a podcast of an interview with him. And of course, I hear his voice on the  2010 Partners webinars.

Even with the worksheets, I was still feeling not totally confident about choosing a niche. "What if" kept running through my head.

So when Jeremy asked about my enthusiasm for one of them (it is based on a wish list purchase I'd like to make), that helped put the pieces in place. Now I can focus and start pulling all the tools and skills together on this one niche topic.  Bonus for the niche is that Jeremy has researched a similar niche previously, so he has a lot of information to share.

I do seriously hope this ends up being worth his time. He's got phone calls to make, webinars to give, record, upload, the partner portal to keep up... and the deal is only 10% of the website profits for him. I'm sure he did his math before taking this project on, so here's hoping everyone's successful so it's well worth his while. On the partner side, the training and information we're getting is invaluable.

USP development - a Unique Selling Proposition

You hear about USP from all the good marketers. After measuring niche demand and analyzing the competition, we have to start honing in on a USP.

Jeremy has been great about providing the framework for each step as a worksheet format. Part of the step of building a USP is the SWOT worksheet. Essentially, you examine your Strengths and Weaknesses, which are things related to you and thus under your influence. You also examine your Opportunities and Threats, things which are not related to you and thus beyond your influence.

"If you measure it, it can change" is one of Jeremy's sayings.

The SWOT worksheet is interesting, because sometimes when you see things in your own writing, they sink in better, hah. Like realizing that your audience is not reachable (Threat), or that you don't have experience in the niche (Weakness), or that the subject is something you're going to explore in any case (Strength), or that you are pretty sure you've spotted a new trend on the rise (Opportunity).

I'm caught up on the webinars (need to catch the tail end of the Q&A from last Thursday, as I really needed to get to sleep, but was there for the content), and made some good headway on the niche selection. I am still lacking some confidence on any one of the niches I'm thinking of. Hopefully a 1-on-1 call will help clarify that.

Niche Selection continued

I'm a bit behind.
The day job had a ton of work last week, three malignant cases in one week, plus research samples. I was beat by the end of the week.

The last webinar was posted and I'm watching it. Also working on the niche keyword traffic and competition evaluation.

My computer was at least 8 years old and getting so slow that every time it actually booted I considered it a minor miracle. So I took a calculated risk and purchased a new one for my business. Dual core, 4 GB RAM, and Windows 7 are the bits that I remember off hand.

Unfortunately, not everything is Windows 7 ready (this happened to me in 2002 when I purchased my XP machine, too), and one of the toolbars that Jeremy recommends for cometition evaluation is not yet ready for either IE or FF on the new Windows box (the Compete.com toolbar).

Then each of us is to schedule one-on-one time to speak with Jeremy. Since I'm running a bit behind, I will aim for later this week. I'm glad that working "in the cloud" is getting more common. It actually makes it easier for me to grab a bit of time on a list or a document when I'm away from home, too.

Working with a human, not a superbeing alien ;)

Jeremy is so much like the rest of us in terms of sometimes getting caught up in technical details and not always seeing into the future. ;) What a great thing! Imagine if you had partnered with a superbeing alien who never made mistakes and couldn't imagine getting stuck on a technical detail. That could be a nightmare for us mere mortals.

Our 3rd webinar was on Wednesday 13 Jan., and I just had to sleep (I'm in GMT +2 and it didn't start until 11 pm here). I logged in to the Adobe Connect site to make sure my system was set up, but then I really had to get sleep, since I had to get to my day job in the morning, grab a sample and travel to another town over an hour away to learn some new techniques and get help with analysing the sample. It just wasn't a night to try staying up until midnight and risk the lack of functionality the next day.

This was the first time on Adobe Connect for many of us. Evidently GoTo Meeting is a problem for chat on Mac clients. Since there are some Mac users among the partners, Jeremy decided to go with the across platform functionality of Adobe Connect.

However the new technical glitch is the recorded files. Evidently they're huge. So he's going to re-record them, and I missed the Q&A because I couldn't make the live webinar.  Not everything is possible all of the time. I successfully logged in and saw chat fine in Chrome (my current browser of choice, because it's a LOT faster than IE or FF, though I MISS MY GOOGLE TOOLBAR TERRIBLY IN IT).

Still in niche selection process. I'm excited to see the new worksheets up, because this will break down into tasks the process of niche selection. I've gone through a lot of these steps before in my own business, but I see that just putting things in spreadsheet format itself is also helpful for getting a clearer picture.

More after I complete some more tasks and see how things are going on the niche selection unit.

Niche Selecting - Studying Supply and Demand and a story of adult diapers

We had a webinar introducing some of the methods for researching niche ideas in terms of supply and demand. I  have to admit that this used to be a lot easier 10 years ago. Back then there were a plethora of ppc engines that you could buy decently targetted traffic for a penny or two per click. You could get away with lukewarm ads and mediocre ad copy and still make a profit. Plus, competition in organic results was also less back then (when the dinosaurs roamed the internet all of 10 years ago, lol).

I finished the inventory task list that was useful for brainstorming niches that we may be interested in. I did some preliminary competition research using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google organic results and was pleased and surprised that some nerdy keywords might have enough traffic to be a decent niche. One of them, however, is the name of a band -- beware inflated traffic markers when your nerdy keyword is the same as some band.

Reminds me of a time when I was doing  a lot of keyword research in Wordtracker.com, and found that there was a small amount of traffic with almost no competition for "adult diapers". I hired someone to make a comparison spreadsheet for me of adult diapers from a CJ.com merchant, wrote up content, integrated it into one of my affiliate sites... In my mind's eye, aging Baby Boomers were searching for a convenient and discreet way of ordering adult diapers for their parents who now needed these items. Ordering online would allow them flexibility, save them a trip to the drug store, and having things delivered would be one less thing to have to worry about with their beloved aging parents.

My conversion stank on that excellent landing page. Like worse than I could have imagined for this targetted page with all the information someone would need to order adult diapers for their aging parents!

A quick search in Google organic results showed me that (cough) the folks searching for "adult diapers" might just not be exactly those busy executives with aging parents that I'd thought. It might have been a fetish keyword phrase that was not being met at *all* by my info page.

Sometimes your competition on a keyword phrase is really, really important for you to understand the head space of your customer.

I found the band in the top 10 organic results for my nerdy keyword, so I knew my traffic volume was probably at least partly inflated by searches for that band.

I look forward to Jeremy's expertise in breaking down the research into measurable, doable bits. Truthfully, competition research can be dull. Or intimidating. I remember looking at keyword phrases 4 years ago and feeling like everyone in the top 10 organic results seemed to have a million incoming links, a Page Rank of 5 or 6, and be willing to pay $5/click in ppc. Who can compete in that kind of atmosphere?

First Webinar on Niche Selection

Let me start this post by saying that Jeremy amazes me.

I recently read a free report by Brian Tracy on goal setting as part of my local dream team (mini Mastermind style group). I worked about half way through it and got stuck on the goal setting process. You see, my goals were not tangibles like increasing sales of my beret pattern or losing 20 lbs (both of which I would also like to achieve), but things like launching my children successfully, finding meaning and fulfillment in my job, and having a life long love relationship with God.

Try to figure out individual steps to those goals...

But my dream team colleagues gave me an extra nudge (isn't that what a dream team is for?) and made the suggestion of "measurable" tasks.  For instance for the goal regarding my relationship with God I am already using the techniques enumerated by C. Robert Cloninger and the products produced at www.anthropediafoundation.org/ . So I can set measurable goals such as doing one act of kindness a day, one act of hope a day, and doing one "Quieting the Mind" exercise a day.

Well, I listened to the recorded webinar (couldn't make it to the live one), and behold, Jeremy has broken out niche selection into measurable tasks. Great! "If if is measured, it can improve" is his motto. So there are a lot of measurements in this process to keep us all aware of what can be improved. I like it.

Okay off to start on my tasks. 

Task for today, sign up for the first training webinar

Friday starts the live training. I'm one of those who will miss the live session, so I'll have to rely on the recorded file later.

I really likes webinars. My favorites have been from MarketingExperiments.com. They do a very nice job. I've also attended non-marketing webinars, such as those for members of HeartMath.org, but those sometimes had technical glitches.

The 2010 Partnership webinars will be through GoToMeeting.com . Looking forward to it.


While the 2010 Partnership Application Page states that Jeremy will "Give you one of the niche ideas and business plans from my whiteboard, or help you refine and build your existing niche idea" , currently we are looking at spending time learning more about how to chose successful niches.  This fits with his previous products and projects in his true goal to succeed by helping others be successful. The Cap'n is aimin' to teach us to fish, not just hand us a fish to farm.

First Step, a Written Agreement

I have to say that I am glad that there is a written agreement for the partnership. I read it slowly and surely, as it is slightly in legalese, that language that uses a bit more formal verbs and nouns than most of us do in daily practice. In my opinion, it's a Good Thing, this agreement.

An email went out today announcing a timeline and clearly defining stages of the partnership. Whew, that's good, too. It's January 5 where I am and we haven't started the Boot Camp. I was a bit concerned I'd missed something. Not a worry, there is a time table, and I haven't missed anything.

Besides the time table for this week and a general time line for the two year project, we had a basic task to get the agreement signed.

I built a Squidoo lens about this the 2010 Partnership with Jeremy Palmer: http://www.squidoo.com/jeremypalmer2010 . That may seem circular to you, as the first thing you see is the entries from this blog. However, I will be developing this blog and the lens slightly differently. The lens will keep track of other things I find online that are relevant to the 2010 partnership. This blog will be more about my personal journey.

I got accepted!!!

When I got the email from Jeremy Palmer (I'm on his mailing list as a customer having purchased High Performance Affiliate Marketing when it first came out) that he was offering partnerships for 2010, I actually didn't jump right away. http://2010.quityourdayjob.com/

I hummed and hahhhed.

I've had to go back to full time employment since June 2006, and my goals include doing a Ph.D., not exactly quitting my day job.

But I really don't like working a 40 hour work week, and my profession doesn't pay well. Wouldn't it be grand to work because I like it and only work the hours I need to get the work done and have enough income from another source? On the other hand, I return from work pretty exhausted to a home life including making dinner, dealing with teenage children, and often more household chores on top of that. How could I possibly make a commitment to another 10 hours a week of my life?

So I left the application page open in a browser window for a few days to think.

I decided to apply. I had been working on goal setting for the last few months, and having a sustainable online income could only help all the goals.

I applied, choosing the 3 payment plan. Not cheap, but Jeremy has guaranteed making back the deposit. I know I can make that much, I already do, in a year with my own sites that remain from my previous online business.

And then I waited. When I checked the page after not receiving a reply in 24 business hours, it said they'd gotten swamped with applications and the application page was closed.

Oh, no, what if I'd applied after they closed it. I'd left that browser window open.

So I waited more. A week later was Christmas day, so I waited the weekend.

I wrote to Jeremy, attaching a copy of the PayPal receipt, since it is in my corporation's name.

Jeremy replied and had a few more questions, but seemed positive.

I replied to his questions and added two of my own.

One of them was about blogging this experience. ;)

I'm accepted! Whooo hooo!

I can't tell you how much this has given me hope that I will once again have an online income that is significant.