On the quick flight from Charlotte to New York City this morning, I did what I always do on my infrequent trips. I caught up on my reading of FeedFront.
This morning a couple (slightly dated) articles that stand the test of time stood out.
The first article is by Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit and Feedfront itself. The article is titled “11 Ways I Drive Traffic to Sites”.
It is from the January 2012 issue (17) and in it Shawn has a quick bullet list of ways he brings traffic to his site.
The list reads as such and you can get the details of HOW TO USE THE LIST! at http://feedfront.com/traffic (btw I love how they put links to articles online in their physical magazine!)
- Site Scrapers and Syndicators
- NetworkedBlogs on Facebook (btw I read Shawn’s blog this way all the time)
- Twitter Tools
- Aweber RSS to Email
- YouTube Descriptions
- Meetup.com
- LinkedIn Applications
- Paper.li
- Flickr Links
- StumbleUpon
- Podcasting
- Facebook Ads
I use several but not all of those services as well, but I found it extra interesting that Shawn had SiteScrapers listed first. Most people view scrapers as the devil incarnate, but Shawn is putting the devil to work for him!
Also, his list was a reminder to me that I need to use Aweber or MailChimp (wearing their t-shirt) as I type this now to work a newsletter and an email subscriber list to keep in touch with people long after they have forgotten where my website is.
I already use YouTube quite a bit, but I have also let my Meetup.com account stall. I still pay for it, but I’m not using it. I need to either do something useful there or save the $200 per year expense of running a group.
How to Link from a Podcast
Next, (I literally flipped the page) I found this great tip from Dave Jackson that I plan on employing immediately for a new project I am working on with Adam Daniel Mezei http://twitter.com/gtowna .
Dave mentions that in a Podcast if you share a link, a person may not be able to click it because they are in a car, exercising or just away from a smart device (how is that possible!).
It is still a valid point in 2012.
He goes on to provide the good advice that you should always get in the habit of telling people they can find more on a product, service, website, show etc on YOUR site where the links will be available.
This helps the audience get used to finding good things on your website, remembering where your website is as it is the only one they need to remember from your podcast, and makes for a great habit in general. As Adam and I prepare to cover a number of great things online, the urls would normally be flying from our lips, but we can drive more traffic and help our audience remember the urls by not asking them to remember the urls since they will only be listed on our website! Or maybe in a quick link to a batch of bit.ly links in a youtube description or anything easier than dropping links throughout a show.
Tracking Affiliate Link activity on Your Site
An earlier tip in that article (writing this review in a mixed up order as I first read the magazine, dog earing things while electronic devices are turned off, then rip out the pages, and type them up later. I chuck the magazine so I don’t have to lug too much weight around NYC, every extra ounce I shed is more energy for me to smile and network with people later)
… I was saying that Ryan Healy offered up a terrific pointer in his article “How to Maximize Your Blog’s Affiliate Revenue” when he recommended the http://LinkTrackr.com service to help you track the activity on your affiliate links. You can do quite a bit through Google analytics and their events tracking, but that is not ‘easy’ to setup. Once you get it, it is awesome (check out Yoast’s plugin for google analytics it helps a bit).
Repurposing Blog Content as an eBook
Finally that brings me to a tip by Deborah Carney who wrote the FeedFront article “Three Ways to Repurpose Your Existing Content”.
She reminds us that a blog article is not the last step in the evolutions of an idea. If you have a good blog article, repurpose that and serve it up to a larger audience as a
- eBook
- Podcast
- or Video
I recently had one of my best performing articles that provided great tips and help to a great program that performed awesome from an affiliate marketing perspective. They were my top performing affiliate for 2011 and that was with 4 months of activity. Then they shut down the program after 13 years of activity!
Well, I can’t do anything useful with that program anymore, but the tips, recommendations, advice and tutorials still rock. Maybe now is the time to offer those up as a quick eBook primer on the topic for a very small amount of money. (i’m thinking a $1)
I’ve never done that type of thing before, but I definitely have the skill sets to make great iBooks and Kindle ebooks and many other formats. I know how to embed video in my ebooks as well so this could be a bit of an interactive book if I so choose. Maybe I should sell it for $5… Oh the grandiose ideas I have flying in the air in the back of a jet next to the lavatory (unoccupied in case you need to use it).
Seriously, it is a good idea, and not difficult to even resell through an affiliate program even!
That’s the end of my tips. This podunk flight with Delta doesn’t have wifi, so I have to backup this post and publish it when I land. Hope it helps you as much as I already know the tips from Feedfront will help me.