As an IT and marketing guy I’m often asked to setup new software or help integrate one system with another. This post is about Shareasale datafeeds: what they are and how they are used – from an IT point of view. If you still need professional help, there is a link at the bottom.
Summary:
a datafeed is just a file that affiliates can download that contains links and info on our products
once the datafeed is downloaded, affiliates can use it with special widgets on their site
some affiliates specifically look for merchants who have a datafeed they can download
if the datafeed is visible in our Creatives under Datafeed, then affiliates can download it
it is not an integration, it’s only a file that can be updated at any time, overwriting the old file
What is a Shareasale datafeed?
The Datafeed functionality allows merchants like us to upload lists of products to their ShareASale account and provides us with the ability to manage multiple stores and product level commissions as additional options. The Datafeed upload completely replaces the existing product listings in our merchant’s account with every upload. Any items not included in the uploaded file will be removed from the product listings. The full overview of the Datafeed specifications can be found at this Shareasale datafeed setup link.
Why use a datafeed?
It allows any affiliate that wants to feature a product on their page or through one of Shareasale’s content tools to display our products on their page. Some affiliates specifically look for merchants with datafeeds.
How long have they been around?
At least since 2013.
How do I check to make sure a datafeed is working?
It appears to be something only an affiliate can see, but the documentation makes it seem like it’s not an integration, it’s just a file that affiliates download and then use as a source file on their sites. So as long as it’s in your creatives and approved, then it’s “working”.
Why would it not be working or how to update the file?
We could find that either Shareasale has an issue with the file or the affiliates themselves have an issue with the file once they go to use it. Once we have feedback, we can upload it again at any time and it will overwrite the file that is currently in Shareasale. Here are some common datafeed problems to watch out for and here are some examples of how to create a product datafeed.
Conclusion
I didn’t know anything about Shareasale and I didn’t take the time to learn it before, but when I did take the time to learn it and build context I was finally able to know what a datafeed was used for and to tell whether or not the datafeed was setup correctly. This blog post is meant to help others like me who are tasked with setting up a Shareasale datafeed know what a datafeed is and how to check it so I have more context about what they are for and how they are used.
Professional Affiliate Setup Help
If you’re reading this you may be a merchant on Shareasale that is looking for an affiliate management company to help you get setup and build a network of affiliates to help market your products. This is not a sponsored post, but I have worked with Priest Willis and his team at Affiliate Mission and have been pleased with their work, their communication, and their integrity. I highly recommend Affiliate Mission for affiliate management and marketing services.
James Altucher used to email every single one of his web design clients everyday 10 things to improve their site. It’s about over-delivering and making your clients more successful. Imagine if I just did the things that it would take to make my clients more successful. Imagine if I just did those things and they became more successful. Would they pay me more because of it or would they think that they just became more successful without really trying?
In his post about 9 ways to guarantee success James talks about how doubt, laziness, carelessness, vacillating, and not making progress are all things that will stop your business in it’s tracks. When I used to read this stuff I’d think to myself, “MAN! WHAT IS MY PROBLEM? I can easily write about all of this, but I can’t seem to DO any of it! Maybe I should just go work for someone else because I’m too lazy to run my own business, can’t make a decision, and don’t have a product. The world needs employees too. I know I have to provide for my family, it just seems like there has GOT to be another way.” That’s what I wrote my wife back in January of 2013. I did end up getting a job later on that month and I’ve had one ever since (however, I still do client work on the side).
An Abundance Mindset
The world is HUGE and full of possibilities. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It means there are lots of problems to solve and lots of things to experience and lots of little niches to serve. But it also means it’s really hard for someone like me with their head in the clouds to actually stop, choose, and commit to any one thing. Is it because of risk? (I want to cry.) Is it because of desire and happiness? (I am a grown man.) When backed against a wall, I always come to the same conclusion: I’d like to build something. I’d like it to use the skills I already have. I’d like to have autonomy. And I’d like it to provide for my family. So far, the only thing that fits most of that bill is affiliate marketing, but it just occurred to me that writing books on a subject would also fit that bill.
What if I went forward with my Content Motors idea where what I do is write “market-desired content” for my own site and for-hire for other sites with the intent of turning the material into books? It seems too simple and it doesn’t motivate me. In the book, Drive, Daniel Pink talked about the “Goldilocks tasks” which are neither overly difficult (such as app design or e-commerce) or overly simple (like business analyst or IT work). The question is how I can have both autonomy, mastery, and purpose in a job/career? Checkside has done a great job of summarizing Daniel Pink’s theory of what motivates us.
Autonomy – provide employees with autonomy over some (or all) of the four main aspects of work:
When they do it (time) – Consider switching to a ROWE (results-only work environment) which focuses more on the output (result) rather than the time/schedule, allowing employees to have flexibility over when they complete tasks.
How they do it (technique) – Don’t dictate how employees should complete their tasks. Provide initial guidance and then allow them to tackle the project in the way they see fit rather than having to follow a strict procedure.
Whom they do it with (team) – Although this can be the hardest form of autonomy to embrace, allow employees some choice over who they work with. If it would be inappropriate to involve them in the recruitment/selection process, instead allow employees to work on open-source projects where they have the ability to assemble their own teams.
What they do (task) – Allow employees to have regular ‘creative’ days where they can work on any project/problem they wish – there is empirical evidence which shows that many new initiatives are often generated during this ‘creative free time’.
Mastery – allow employees to become better at something that matters to them:
Provide “Goldilocks tasks” – Pink uses the term “Goldilocks tasks” to describe those tasks which are neither overly difficult nor overly simple – these tasks allow employees to extend themselves and develop their skills further. The risk of providing tasks that fall short of an employee’s capabilities is boredom, and the risk of providing tasks that exceed their capabilities is anxiety.
Create an environment where mastery is possible – to foster an environment of learning and development, four essentials are required – autonomy, clear goals, immediate feedback and Goldilocks tasks.
Purpose – take steps to fulfill employees’ natural desire to contribute to a cause greater and more enduring than themselves:
Communicate the purpose – make sure employees know and understand the organization purpose goals not just its profit goals. Employees, who understand the purpose and vision of their organization and how their individual roles contribute to this purpose, are more likely to be satisfied in their work.
Place equal emphasis on purpose maximization as you do on profit maximization – research shows that the attainment of profit goals has no impact on a person’s well-being and actually contributes to their ill-being. Organizational and individual goals should focus on purpose as well as profit. Many successful companies are now using profit as the catalyst to pursuing purpose, rather than the objective.
Use purpose-oriented words – talk about the organization as a united team by using words such as “us” and “we”, this will inspire employees to talk about the organization in the same way and feel a part of the greater cause.”
Sharing The Vision
I am moving towards a location-independent lifestyle that involves travel and running a business online. Outure and Webories are the primary organizations I’m setting up to help achieve that goal.
Outure
Outure is currently an affiliate marketing store, but is more of a brand, is being treated as a brand, and may one day become an ecommerce store. It has an active Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook presence. It doesn’t have an active website, but I’ve hired a VA to help me build it out. Outure’s tagline is “Outdoor Adventure. Urban Exploration.” It covers the urban/city things you can do to play outside in an area like Indiana. It has two sections: Gear and Wear. Gear is stuff like foldable bikes, kayaks, camping, and equipment. Wear is stuff like jackets, boots, and clothing.
Webories
Webories is an organization that exists solely to support other organizations. Some of those organizations are what we would traditionally call clients. Other organizations are affiliate marketing sites that do not have their own brand, per se, but are make money off of keyword searches. Again, the VA will be a large part of getting Webories going again by creating shareable content for Webories organizations (including Outure). If it helps you to categorize things in your mind, think of it as one organization (Webories) of which we have our favorite organizations underneath.
What I’m Not Going to Do
Sometimes it helps to also define what I am not doing. I am not renting an office. I am not building a software company. I am not building information products. I am not going to promote Webories as a company.
What I’m Going to Continue to Do
Blog. Tweet. Tumble. Facebook. Use Aggie. Client work. Day job.
What I am Going to Do that I’m Not Doing Now
Here’s what I’m going to start doing that I’m not doing now: podcast. video. email marketing.
I closed my web design and IT consulting business in 2012 and plan on starting a new business in 2013. It wasn’t that the old business was failing. It was a success, I just wanted to do something different, something that was easier to scale up without adding employees (at least not right away), and the name (Watershawl) just didn’t make sense anymore.
I am a professional!Why Start Your Own Business?
One of my primary reasons for wanting to run my own business is to be able to hire workers just as I was hired when I first started out. I think of it as the natural progression of things and as a way to give back to the community who has given so much to me. The secondary reason is the scheduling freedom it allows.
With that in mind, here are some business ideas I am considering in 2013:
Start an eCommerce Business
I’ve done affiliate marketing for around four years now, but I’m ready for the higher margins associated with e-commerce. It all started when I realized that three of my clients were doing e-commerce and I kept getting job requests from e-commerce companies. After I continually got told I was over-qualified I began to realize that I should probably start my own e-commerce business. The only issue now is in deciding what product to sell, which is not easy. In fact, there isn’t much about e-commerce that is easy, but it is a proven business model.
Start an Alternative Energy Installer Business
When you consider how many homes and businesses still don’t have solar, wind, or other alternative energy sources connected to them, the opportunity seems huge, but when you look up on a cloudy, winter day in Indiana it seems like there could be better businesses to start. It may be better to start a business simply painting roofs white in the summer. There are companies in Indiana doing this though, mostly up north.
Start an eCommerce Consulting Business
When I think about all I’ve learned from e-commerce in 2012 and couple that with my web design, SEO, and affiliate marketing knowledge I seem like a good candidate for an e-commerce consultant or what the customer might call a ‘ecommerce web designer’. I have experience with WordPress and WP-Ecommerce, but I recommend BigCommerce or Shopify.
Start a Restaurant
This is one of the most capital-intensive and risky things you could do, but I’ve always had the desire to own and run one. I’d serve chili with cut celery sticks (like a Bloody Mary) and put sliced pickles in our grilled cheese sandwiches. And since community involvement is one of the trends in 2013 I’d hold contests for creating and naming new menu items. Scotty’s does a good job of this and with social media.
Start an ePublishing Company
I see a trend towards self-publishing ebooks and even traditional paper books, but although this process had become easier it still requires some graphic design, layout, and technical knowledge not to mention basic editing, sales, and marketing techniques. There could be a need in the Indianapolis area for a digital book consultant service based on some feedback I’ve gotten through presentations and meetings I had in 2012.
Start a Content Management Company
Content managers are relatively new job roles that are a direct result of the amount of information now stored in company Intranets, business blogs, and e-commerce sites. Because of the ease of creation and the fact that content marketing is so important to SEO, the sheer amount of content each organization has to maintain has created the need for content management services. This interests me because I like to organize the world’s information (like Google).
Start an Affiliate Marketing Business
Although I have been doing affiliate marketing for a while now, you could say I haven’t been too methodical about it. By applying systems, consistency, and dedicated effort to affiliate marketing, I could turn this side hobby into a real business. Although the margins can be lower than traditional e-commerce, there is no inventory to store and ship. This is the least capital-intensive, but still requires a lot of work to be successful.
Start a Business Consulting Company
I believe management is an important component of a business’ success. As a business analyst I helped business owners create systems to manage their business by analyzing, summarizing, and reporting on my findings to business owners. I did this as a technology consultant, but most of the time IT work was very little of what I did. There seems to be a need in the Indianapolis market for people with advanced Excel and Visio skills, but the trends are moving more towards analyzing SQL and other types of databases which require programming languages I don’t know.
Start a Dental Consulting Business
Independent dental offices are usually ran by either the dentist alone or the dentist and an office manager. They don’t usually have their own marketing or IT staff, but have the need for both marketing and IT services. There is a steep learning curve to understanding dental procedures and their specialized software (ex. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Practiceworks). It also helps to know HIPAA laws, CPR and OSHA requirements, and systems for how to greet, treat, and keep patients. On top of all of that there is staff efficiency, utilization models, report tracking, and HR issues. It is amazing how complex one dental office really is and so there are many ways to add value through consulting services.
Start a Mobile Device Consulting Company
I actually started one of these in 2011 called “Geek Hand”, but I may have started it a little too soon. Since then smartphones and tablet PCs have only grown in popularity and use. Businesses are now starting to give their employees iPhones and iPads instead of Blackberries and laptops. The value here is in helping businesses learn how to sync their email, contacts, and calendars with Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps. For screen repair I normally refer people to CPR in Carmel.
Bonus: Start an Import/Export Business
If you have the connections, the capital, and don’t mind travel, this is an exciting business model that is similar to affiliate marketing in that you take a percentage of each sale you make. The primary difference is you’re normally dealing in wholesale amounts, which means the payouts can be bigger. The key to the import/export business is to look for opportunities where you can add value to the transaction. For example, you might have identified a farmer who operates 75% of a given market, but has no email account. By being the connection between the farmer (the manufacturer) and an e-commerce site, you can take a cut of the goods shipped. Another example is to look for countries that used to not trade with other countries that have had a change and now have started to trade openly. One example is Vietnam. The service you will provide is in developing first-of-its-kind relationships between vendors in the US and suppliers in Vietnam. You will have to find global shippers, learn the laws of their country and yours, and make sure your packages don’t get stuck in customs!
If you read this, you might also be interested in 20 Good Business Ideas from 2011.
Is there any new money being injected into the system? Is any new wealth being created?
This is something I’ve heard time and time again over the last 8-10 months if not years. I’d like to share my thoughts on making money if you’ll bear with me here. The easiest way to make money is when someone is already spending it. In other words, the closer you are to a money stream, the easier it is.
Here are some examples:
-banks skim off the top of every transaction. They are right there next to the money so they just take some of it in the form of fees.
-real estate brokers skim money off of big transactions via commissions. Again, be there when the money is being transferred.
-stock brokers make money whether you do or not. They charge for the buys and sells. All they do is make money all day long.
Once you have this mindset, you can start to look for where transactions are already happening so that you can skim off of the top.
Examples include:
-affiliate marketing where you get in between a buyer and seller to make a commission off of that sale
-general contracting where you skim profit off the top of a large bid for smaller bid sub-contractors
-reviewing things you buy everyday to see if there’s any way you can get paid by spending money – use this for discovery only as you want to use other people’s money to make money
What I’m really talking about here is how to get money without taking it away from someone else. Is there any new money being injected into the system? Is any new wealth being created?
Napoleon Hill talks about a man starting with nothing but an idea for a service he can provide. He gets someone with money to pay for his service and thus income had appeared from an idea. But the guy who paid now has less money – unless that service allowed him to make more money.
There are three traditionally successful products and services that always have and always will make money:
save someone time or money
make someone more money
fix a problem or frustration
Now there are other things like teaching, the arts, and sports, but even those things solve problems of lack of knowledge, boredom, and lack of fun. Speaking of sports, there is no shortage of money being spent in that field/arena.
So how do YOU make more money?
become an employee
sell something people want
Being an employee is less risky, but you have less control, less freedom, and the moment you stop working, you stop getting paid. Being independent means more bosses, less frequent paychecks, but you get paid on value, not time and if you do it right, you get paid over and over again for the same work.
If I had to do it over again, I would have learned to code programs, but I’ve helped a lot of people by being who I am now. There’s a need in the market for people who understand technology and can talk to people. You are a great front man. I think you should run for office.
This past week I sold One Dozen Rubber Duckie Ducky Ducks in a nativity scene (set includes: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, 3 wise men, angel, lamb, cow, donkey and camel) without ever linking to the product. It would make most sense if it came from this website since I talk a lot about Erich Stauffer figurines and other collectibles, but it wasn’t. It was clicked on through my site on Coby Kyros Tablets. That’s right. Someone looking for information on Android tablets bought a nativity scene made of rubber duckies. But that’s not all. I have a site that exclusively promotes learning sets like science experiements for kids and yet MID Tablets sold a child’s microscope. Who did sell a Coby Kyros tablet? A page about technology consulting. This goes to show, it pays to post (and post often) #myBody. Here are some of the systems I use to use affiliate marketing to help transition to a full-fledged ecommerce company or “etailer“.
Systems for eCommerce/Affiliate Marketing
To run a successful online business probably requires some systems so I’ve been developing some and thought I’d share:
Post SEO optimized title and META description, reviews, a picture, and some original content (I use WordPress SEO by Yoast)
Install “Social” plugin by MailChimp + “Twitter Tools” to not only display tweets, but post to Twitter
Post also on Google+ and Facebook (and any other social network you can systematically stay engaged in)
How to Read the Amazon Associates Orders Report
*When I download the Orders report, I get a view of what people are clicking on, but not buying. I think the “Product Link Clicks” is a better metric for us to track since we can’t control what they do once they are on Amazon, but let’s read what Amazon Associates says:
Orders Reports display number of clicks for each product via a Product Link or add-to-cart button, number of orders placed through the Product Link, and the resulting Product link conversion. You can also see other items that were ordered after customers clicked through to other Amazon pages.
In response to marketing and distribution device about product development:
Sometimes you just have to write something, make a decision, just do something before the true answer will come to you. That’s how it is with me at least. A lot of times I won’t know what to do so I’ll just choose something and then it’s like the fog lifts and everything becomes clear. A lot of the time my first choice is wrong, but if I didn’t make it I wouldn’t have been able to know the right choice. In a small way that’s what happened after I emailed you last. I almost immediatly knew how I wanted to help you.
I’m starting an online store for coffee and tea accessories called pourjoy.com and would like to sell your steel balls as an accessory for making non-diluted ice coffee. I wouldn’t call it Balls of Steel though. I’d have to call it something else like “liquid metal” or “iced beans”. I’d see if your mom could buy like ten sets of them from you for me to sell in my store and that would be a good market test and potential new distribution channel for you. What I’d encourage you to do is to find ways to sell the same product as many different ways as you can.
Think about the movie The Hudsucker Proxy and how the circle is used first as a hoola hoop and then as a straw. If you haven’t seen it then Coca Cola is a better example. They sell you the same coke in a bottle, can, and by fountain drink. Mmmm. I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it. For your product I can see it being sold as ying yang balls, stress balls, desk toys, marble run accessories, a game of some sort, a drinking game, as a way to move large furniture, or as a way to shatter large panes of glass.
If you really want to sell a lot of these you’ll need to both have market demand and either large barriers between you and your competition or a huge head start. If you haven’t read how Warren Buffet picks companies, it’s very similar. He would want to know how hard it is for someone to make what you have or do what you do. He would want to see patents and large capital costs that make a virtual moat around your product protecting its business model for years to come. I guess I don’t see that with your product.
Have you considered getting into ecommerce or affiliate marketing instead of manufacturing? You know what ecommerce is, but you may not know about affiliate marketing so here’s a brief primer. Using Amazon.com as an example, anything I link to at Amazon with my code I get a percentage of if someone buys it. Percents range from 6-8% on average. With ecommerce the margins are higher, but so is the risk when inventory is involved. Some of that risk can be mitigated with drop shipping services, but the margins are lower.
I know I want to get into ecommerce and so I am leveraging my background and experience in affiliate marketing, SEO, and web design to learn ecommerce and make a go of it. I’d be happy to share with you what I’m learning and catch up with you in December when you’re in town. Your mom says you’re making a lot of money waiting tables down there and that you’re doing good in school. I know she’s really proud of you and wants to see you succeed and I do too.
Recently a former co-worker and friend asked me about how I started making money on the side:
I’ve toyed around with a lot of ideas around how to start making money on the side and how to then move from that being side income to my main source of income, but I haven’t pursued anything too closely. I’ve actually picked up a huge work load in applications support at my day job. I’m now the primary support person for items processing, online banking, telephone banking, the company Intranet, the new auto-dialer, all instances of Sugar CRM ( we currently have 3), the online survey tool, the online enrollment tool, and last but not least I’m the main IT contact for the website. So things got really hectic for me, but I’ve realized that if I let myself get lost in that chaos it will only become harder to start making income on the side. For now I’m learning PHP and MySQL and hosting a website using Apache so that I can hopefully branch off and do some freelance work.
So you’re making more working for yourself than you did at your day job?
Yes, I’m able to make a living off of doing web design and IT consulting full-time as an independent contractor. The issues I have are not unique to my business though and that’s managing cash-flow. What that means is that although I make enough over time, it doesn’t always come in at the same rate I need it to go out for bills. In other words, it averages out alright, but isn’t always timed right. For example, this month I’m scheduled to make a $400 profit over my bills (something that never hardly happened when I was at my day job), but right now I don’t have anything. It’s like that pretty much every month and that’s because I didn’t have a savings account when I quit and I still don’t. (EDIT: I do now.)
I don’t think the itch to leave will ever really go away (unless you die inside), but there are ways to test the waters before you jump in. First of all, start thinking of your day job as your biggest client and try to stop ‘expecting’ a paycheck and start trying to ‘earn’ a paycheck. This will put you in the mindset you’ll need when dealing with clients outside of a employee relationship. When I left I had one boss, but now I have over 20 (the number of current clients). My time is not my own. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. I have to work for them just like I had to work for my past employer. The difference is that if I work more, I get more (and I can charge more). I also get to sleep in and do whatever I want. 🙂
My recommendation to you would be to take advantage of where you’re at and LISTEN to what people are saying. What I mean by this is if you can start to hear what people’s problems are, stuff they complain about, and/or what their pain points are, that’s the beginning of discovering a product, service, or business that you could start in order to solve that need. You’re in a better position in some ways than I am for finding out that information. I would love to find out what problems commercial loan officers have or what problems their clients have. If you can find a problem that you can solve + a customer that is both willing and able to pay for that solution, you have a business idea. This is called customer development.
The key is to iterate your business idea until you have what’s called a product/market fit. Eric Ries talks about this in his book, Lean Startups, but you can also read Steve Blank’s work on it. They’ve worked together so they have similar ideas. But basically, the premise is to 1) discover a problem 2) hypothesize a solution 3) interview potential customers about the solution 4) refine the solution. Once you get to a product that the customer would be MAD at you if you took away from them, you have a product/market fit and then you get funding and build like crazy. There are other subtle variations (like starting with a product instead of a customer), but being customer-centric in everything you do will pay dividends.
One business idea that I don’t mind sharing with you is a “LED light bulb replacement service” where you go to a company like First Merchants and say, “I’d like to save you 40% off your lighting bill and would be happy to show you how it works by converting one of your branches to LED lighting at cost – if you like it, we’ll do the rest of your branches too, if not, we’ll go on our way and thank you for your time.” Essentially, you’re going in, finding out how many bulbs they have, estimating the cost upfront and the cost savings, and then swapping them out in one day. You can even do a buy-back on existing fluorescent light bulbs that you can either trash or sell to someone else. A similar idea is to paint their roofs white.
A typical day for me is waking up around 8, checking my email for emergency work, working on some projects for customers (usually web edits), reading up on subjects in my field, visit a customer at their location or at a restaurant for a meeting, attend a networking meeting or meetup at night, and then in bed by midnight. I recently joined a networking group called BNI and am active on Meetup.com. I run my own group called Indianapolis Marketing and attend several others as well as Tech Point meetings, which are put on by the State of Indiana. I use blogging to content market online, but that’s less successful than in-person networking for me. I’d be interested in hearing what you’re working on at work or in your ‘spare time’.
I know you sell your skills at SEO out to companies but I wasn’t sure if you were still scooping up domain names and putting content with ads up or not. Right now I have a few ideas that I’m going to try to do some research on what kind of market might be out there for these services and if it’s something I could/should pursue. For starters I’d like to design an app. In my head I could see where small companies would really enjoy and benefit from having someone build an app for them. I’d also still really enjoy designing a “portal” similar to what our company Intranet offers, but better on every level. Another thing similar to this is I’d like to design a workflow creator tool. The one inside our company Intranet is completely flawed and my employer began hunting for an outside tool to buy to fill this need. I also am looking at starting a few different blogs around things I’m passionate about such as weight loss, video games, “manly skills”, and adventure. I’m sure to really gain profit from these areas I’d have to really pin point a specific something inside of those categories but currently I’m just looking for experience. Once I see the possibility I think I could really define it more.
Do you still do the blog for money stuff?
I’m really glad they’ve plugged you in and are using you so much at your day job. The opposite of that is brutal and part of the reason I left. They weren’t using me at all and I had nothing to do. Let me tell you from experience applying at other jobs and learning what I’ve been learning over the last 6 months that any and all programming knowledge is the key to the future in the workplace. Make sure you’re learning as much as you can about PHP, SQL, and how to manipulate and query databases. The trends are all going towards software programming, big data analysis, and cloud computing. You’re in a good spot now, but you may be able to take what you’re learning and be more valuable elsewhere. That’s usually the only way to actually get a real ‘raise’.
I still have blogs that make me money, but it’s not my primary income and while it seems like ‘passive’ income, it’s really not. If I don’t keep writing and backlinking, the blogs stop making any real money after about a month of non-activity. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to have a blog and a strong social media presence because if they don’t, they don’t show up in Google where they need to. Think about it, there are so many websites out there now that Google can’t possibly keep them all at the top – so they favor the ones with fresh content. This applies to small businesses, blogs, or anything else online. Let me give you a real-world example:
I had a blog that was making $25 in October, but I wrote like crazy all of November and December. By the end of December, I made $600 from that blog, but after not writing anything for January and February, it’s back to $25. Now some of that was Christmas traffic, but it’s happening across all of my blogs. Unless I write on them and keep them relevant, they aren’t relevant. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of money to be made in blogs, but you have to do the same thing I told you with starting out a business. You have to find real problems people are having with the product, write to those problems with how your affiliate products are the answer – and the people will come. It’s still work though.
The best thing you can do is to just do something. You’re not going to get good at it until you try and fail. It’s okay to fail, it’s how you learn. I have way more blogs that failed when I first started, but I started two new blogs in December that now equal my top site. I learned from all of my mistakes and can now do it better, faster. As far as apps go, I don’t want to discourage you from trying, but there are some big learning curves and substantial marketing issues to overcome in the marketplace once you’ve made one. My advice there is to pick a platform, make a simple program, then make iterations of the program, making it do more and more or do a different programs over time, learning as you go. You can actually use your apps as a platform to market your new app releases, meaning your best app should probably be your tenth app (and it makes sense that it would be that way anyway).
I make more net now than I did “net” at my day job, but while my schedule is different, it’s sometimes twice the work. That’s because when you run your own business you have to work to get the business, and then you have to work to do the business so it’s almost double the work. At my past employer, the work came to me so half of the work was already done. I didn’t have to run an internal marketing campaign around the company asking for work and specifying why I should be the one to do it. Although, come to think of it, I probably should have. It would have riled a lot of feathers, but it strikes me as a better way to live within an organization. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll figure out what you want to do, but remember to enjoy the moments you have. Enjoy your family, and such.
I’ve been building sites with the thought process that content matters more than SEO. I’ve been doing that by solving peoples problems. I look for those problems by finding sticky posts on forums, reviewing Yahoo Answers questions, and reviewing search terms for people finding my site (only works after you have content).
Here are some recent graphs of sites once I started using this method:
What I’ve learned from that is that there are direct search results related to doing this strategy and I spend very little time backlinking because I don’t have to. They customers find me because I’m solving a problem for them – they look for me instead of me trying to bait Google to make them find me over someone else.
After reading what this sales guy, Frank Rumbauskas of Never Cold Call (Again), has written and listening to his webinar, I’ve realized that the crux of his premise is that by creating content on your blog or in an email or fax that you send, you’re answering a problem, fixing something that your customers care about.
The result is that you’re spending more of your time finding out what problems your customers are having, solving those problems and publishing the results so that other people who are looking for the same solutions find you and hire you. You’re no longer selling, you’re taking business as it comes to you, and it will.
Don’t get me wrong, SEO is not useless. In fact it can be often be very useful as 70-80% of all traffic is organic vs. paid. I make part of my living from SEO web design, but I also make part of my income from affiliate marketing. Those are somewhat in juxtaposition as I make money from people who want more organic results and from people buying ads that display on my sites.
As you may or may not know, I’m an Indianapolis web designer who specializes in making custom WordPress themes. I also do affiliate marketing and write on the side. This is one of those posts that’s more traditional to a formal blog, the kind that people like to look down on blogging because of – because the author is just talking about what “he had for breakfast”. Sometimes posts like that are useful if they give you insight into how other people are living and solving problems in their daily life. I’m hoping this post can be sort of like that.
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