Ian Fernando » wordpress

[Series] Affiliate Blog Income – Creating Your Presence

Ian — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:08:14 +0000

In continuation with the Niche Affiliate Blog income series, one of the first things I have done is registered a Twitter account for the domain. I wanted to make sure I was able to brand the site right away. I also created a Facebook Fanpage for it as well. I was going to use KnowEm to register all the other sites such as Youtube, tumblr, etc – but I feel Twitter and Facebook are one of the two biggest that I can stick to them.

Once I have created their pages and account, I decided to start getting followers to my Twitter account. For this I use Social Snipe to leverage users who are in need of help in the niche I am in. This makes a big difference finding users who are in need of help instead of just a generic term.

Utilizing such a program helps me find users who are already in need of something and want to be helped. If I find these specific users I can easily bring in traffic to my new affiliate blog site.

Facebook Fanpage

The Facebook Fanpage is just an extension where users can find the feeds of any new blog post that I write on the site. The Fanpage also allows me to communicate with the fans appearing on their walls etc. The only problem I found that was hard was to actually get fans to the fanpage. BUT…

…the best part about the fanpage is I get weekly emails on the summary of people that has interacted and joined the fanpage. I can also see conversions from the amount of facebook users that visit the fan page and how many of them converted into a fan. It is some neat stats. For every 100 people that visit the fan page just 1 converts – so I got to figure out a way to see why they are not converting into fans.

I think it is essential to use the Facebook Fanpage since it is just another extension to gain and find users.

Keep in Communication with Twitter Followers

Once I had about 100 users I started tweeting and letting my friend also tweet on my account. This way it creates some vibe feedback to the users. I also use Social Snipe to auto tweet certain messages during the day. Now I don’t even publish meaningful things – simple stuff on what I am doing related to the niche I am in.

I also use TwitterFeed to auto tweet new blog posts to my time line. So everyone is in the loop of what I am posting. Since it is a blog, the blog itself is a presence.

Blogging is Creating a Presence

The blog itself is something I am into and so I can easily talk and write about what I want base on the niche. I also use the blog to draw in users. The blog is not about just always banging out information. For example this specific blog is about my online marketing experience. But I do posts trips and vacations related to online marketing.

It is the same concept with the niche blog. I write about information but I also break it up and write about random comedic things related to the niche. The blog shouldn’t always be filled with information – it is a portal to share thoughts and ideas. Keeping it as you are a person helps a lot because the internet is filled with so many news, everyone needs a break from information.

Creating a Social Atmosphere

I also try to create and reply to tweets and facebook comments to engage interactivity. This creates a sense of trust to the readers and people who want to interact. I also reply to comments to ease the trust of the site. Engaging with the reader is important but also it is time consuming. I have one of my friends do easy response via twitter and the comment forms of the site.

Giving a Forum Presence

When I started in internet marketing, I did what everyone calls forum marketing. It is basically being in a forum and just interacting with everyone. The reason why this is important is because your signature is free backlinks to your site or topic. Also it is branding because the text of your site will be repeatedly shown within the forum.

Offline marketers say repetition of a commercial for a product is important because it will create them to buy later. It is a reason why Google came out with Ad Innovations. The repetition of an ad will lead people to click on your link/ad.

So I have registered the username in several forums to communicate and put my input on certain topics. I also have someone doing this for me as well. This will help ease of sometime for me and create other aspects of the site.

Now I can actually create a bigger presence if I need to by just registering all the accounts in KnowEm and syncing twitter account and facebook account to them. But I think since Twitter and Facebook are big in itself – I feel they are just enough to get a good presence out there.

[SERIES Contents]
Introduction to Niche Affiliate Blogging

Private Label Rights Made Easy with WordPress

Ian — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:55:59 +0000

The other day I wrote about why I think WordPress will be the next gen landing pages. I also mentioned about a very unique WordPress plugin called PLRtoWordPress. If you do not know what PLR means, it stands for Private Label Rights. These are license or rights in which you can claim the work, themes, articles, scripts. You are able to edit it as well and change the content of articles and other work. But PLRtoWordPress is a powerful plugin for PLR articles.

With the power of WordPress, you can have a blog in literally 10 minutes and have it working automatically with the power of this plugin. Mark from Affomatic saw the potential with WordPress in affiliate marketing and used it to his advantage.

I have used PLRtoWordPress and found it really damn easy to get content on a website that is dedicated to a niche. All you have to do once you have this plugin is gather all your PLR articles and upload them to your FTP, once that is done activate PLRtoWordPress and its done. (video below)
There are several options that you can adjust as well. You can let it know how often to post to the blog or website. Which is great because you can do it weekly or everyday. You are allowed to input HTML code and re edit the PLR articles to your liking. This is important since if you just upload the articles, you will be overlook by Google because of duplicated content.

The unique thing about this plugin is the way it reads the PLR articles and posts it. The reason I say this is because I have used the plugin other than PLR articles, I have used it to upload datafeeds!

It is a little manual but it gets the job done! I even threw the idea to Mark because its fairly easy to do. This plugin, reads the first line and says “THIS IS THE TITLE” then reads the second line of text as full content. So with the basic concept and seeing how it worked, I just thought of using it as a data feed importer for one of my sites and it does work – just think outside of the box!

Here is the video of the plugin, so you can see the back end and the plugin in action. Once you grasp the concept you can see why I was able to use it with data feeds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mark did a great view of his plugin and shows you it works with ease. I personally found it to be a good addition to an affiliate website or maybe even a landing page style site. You can do all the important part of creating the design and keyword researching, instead of creating content. Content is important for PPC stuff – but you shouldn’t waste all your time with it.

PLR to WordPress is a great plugin to have, especially if you are trying to quickly and easily get a site up and running in a couple of minutes. Affiliates should easily find this plugin useful, since it will save time. Just have to watch out for duplicated content within the SERPs. Other than that, this is a very simple and easy way to set it and forget it system!

Create Niche Review Sites With WordPress

Guest Post — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:46:02 +0000

When on the internet a lot of people look for information especially when trying to purchase something or even a service. I know when I purchase a TV or an electronic item, I tend to read Cnet.com and other electronics sites. I look for reviews by the network and more importantly – I look at the reviews of users that have purchased and used the product or service.

The same goes for looking at web services or web products. Creating a review site can be hard, you need to look for the right script, right platform, etc. But times has changed and you can have a simple review type style website in 5 minutes. With the power of WordPress you are able to create a unique style review site. How can you create a review site in 5 minutes? Simple, WP Review Site has a great plugin which takes care of all the hard work for you.

With affiliate marketing, this plugin can be an asset to your business. There are several offers and multiple offers out there that require either a website, content, etc. This is way too much work sometimes, even creating a simple LP can be a too much to do. Why create content when users create them for you. Opinions and what others are saying become more trusted than official websites themselves. Users are looking for experiences and what they have been through.

WP Review Site is a system that is simple to use and easy to setup. It even comes with 2 free premium templates for you to chose and play around with. All you have to do is grab it and upload it to your plugins directory of your wordpress site. Once that is done simply go to the settings of WP Review Site and fill in your specifics:

It is straight forward and you get to setup your rating board and even setup the CSS for it as well. You can customize it for your liking and simply just match the star system to your site. That is really it when it comes to this super and first review site plugin for WordPress.

Features include

Star Ratings to Comment Forms
Flexible Display Options
Sorts Your Posts by Weighted Average Rating
Add Ratings to Your Whole Website or Just Parts You Want
Rating Widgets For Your Sidebar
Affiliate Link Management
…and more

What WP Review site does is it takes the comments section and turn it into a user feedback form. The form properties are still kept the same but the addition of the ratings are mixed in, making it look like a user feedback form. You can simple deactivate the plugin and everything will be back to normal, there is no need to manually adjust code – the plugin does it all.

Benefits of a Review Site

There are huge benefits with having a review site and blending it with affiliate marketing. Sometimes you do not want to do work and most of the people are looking for information, especially if they have not heard of a product before. I know you as a person read reviews before purchasing a car or even an electronic item, users are just like you and are definitely looking for comparisons. Here is my version of WP Review Site Plugin: AFFpinions.com.

You see everyone wants to have the best and always want to join the best service or have the craziest sickest electronic device out there. With WP Review Site you definitely can create a great looking review site in literally 10 minutes. Some benefits to having a review site:

User Generated Content
With a review site – users generate your content. They are providing unique feedback to your website. I say unique because everyone’s experience differs from one another and definitely has more weight with SERPs.
Little Maintenance
Since the content is generated by the user, you simply just install and create the topic for discussion and leave it alone. Users create the content and you just watch the search engines get happy because of the constant content updates.
Faster Conversions
When a user does research they are more pron to purchase or take action. The reason for this is socially we depend on others to help us make a decision on a product. WP Review Site creates the sense of community, where users are providing feedback to a stranger and helping the end user make a more direct decision.

With WP Review Site, everything is there for your use. Some drawbacks I did find are lack of options – ability to add member sign up (the code within the template was removed, had to add it back in). Other than that it was easy and simple to install.

Using WordPress to Create a Niche Empire

Ian — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:45:35 +0000

As you know most of my websites are powered by WordPress. I look at WordPress as a content management system and not a blog platform. A lot of readers tend to view WordPress as a blog platform and not a CMS platform. I have written several topics on WordPress, like choosing CMS platforms and a list of plugins I use for my blog. WordPress has help me create several niche websites which most run on automatic and they are not scrapers! The sites I create with WordPress are merely several page websites. The reason I use WordPress over others is because its simplicity and versatile plugins.

Recently, Caroline Middlebrook has contacted me on her new ebook titled “How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress.” I had the chance to go and look over this free ebook and found it to be really informative! There are multiple blog ebooks out there that are being sold for $27 to $97! Caroline decided to beat the market by providing a really informative ebook about WordPress and how you can earn money from them. The best part about this ebook is it is ready for direct download which means you do not need to provide your email or tell any of your friends. Just wish it had some type of affiliate system tied to it =P.

The ebook is 41 pages long and these are the major sections:

Chapter 1: Getting and Installing WordPress
Chapter 2: Basic WordPress Administration. 10
Chapter 3: Installing a New Theme. 13
Chapter 4: Setting up Adsense On Your Site. 16
Chapter 5: WordPress Plugins. 20
Chapter 6: Creating Your Site Content
Chapter 7: Final Thoughts
Appendix 1: Uploading Using FTP.. 33
Appendix 2: External Resources

Overviewing the ebook, Caroline’s writing is very ‘teachful’ and informative, everything is step by step with images and context to help you along the way. I was kind of surprise to see this ebook is being provided for direct download and not use for growing her list or even an up sell. The ebook is very informative, targeting the newbies of blogosphere.

Conclusion, this informative ebook is geared towards on creating a blog from downloading to putting and using plugins to adding Adsense for income. There are multiple ebooks out there that will teach you the same thing but for a price and several upsales. Caroline decides to beat everyone by giving it to you for free!

What Kind of Niche Websites to Create:

Fan Base Web Blog: These specific sites are very popular. If you watch the Google Trends, you can see most searches are names on a per day basis or per hour basis. Everyone likes gossip for some reason, they want to know what it is a popular person is doing stupidly wrong or want to know whose baby is whose. These specific type of blogs are mostly opinionated tabloids and short stories. Also most of these blogs are also image and video driven. Since web 2.0 is the new wave on the internet, since we are getting lazy day by day. With everyone wanting to know what goes on in someone else lives is kind of strange to me, but they want to know everything about a celebrity or team player. These sites generate a great fan base of readers just wanting to know what kind of shoe the star wore 2 days ago.

Affiliate/Product Review Web Blog: Blogs are known to have authority no matter what your rank on the internet. It seems readers are geared to trust opinionated answers than reading facts. With a blog almost guaranteed to have good authority over someone else’s good content, means affiliate reviews are being done on blogs rather than creating the standard sales landing page. A blog shows interaction than a place white box with text in it. This is a reason why blog reviews or review me on blogs do better than traditional redirects or simple landing pages. The interaction of a blog and the authority it already deemed as being trustworthy.

Adsense Driven Blog: Adsense is the most popular thing to put on a blog, the reason for this is because Adsense is simple. Grab the copy and paste code and slap it on your template, boom you got a money making website. But there is more to just slapping the Google code. You will need to understand banner placement and color creations to make sure you get a high click through rate. Adsense is great for beginners but to really see high potential there has to be other monetization interacting with Adsense. What a lot of users do is scrap websites to give them content while the Adsense code generates income for them, I HATE THESE TYPES OF BLOGS!

How To Websites or Blog: Talk about FireFox or Macintosh or even how to create videos from your camcorders. These help websites are very popular as well because it teaches and provide detailed information on ‘how to’ do something. These are also very search engine friendly because of very unique content. So you know how to install windows on your PC and make it spyware free but what about creating a transparent screen for your laptop? The uniqueness of ‘How To’ can become very viral in such a short amount of time. Depending on the uniqueness of the topic and the ease of reading the text and content. Informative “how” websites are great to build just making sure you have a lot of unique content to write! I mean how unique or how many topics can you write about a marble counting machine?

Social Networking/Membership Blogs: These types of websites are always springing up, but using a blog platform such as WordPress can make life easier, users can simply just sign up and start writing for you. It can be content, short stories, small comments, etc. Or it can be a private blog for registered users only. These blogs have higher authority than traditional blogs because it is seen as “secret content.” I am not sure if that is the case but perception does mean a lot on the internet. Why do you think ebooks from gurus are seen as potential wealth secrets, because gurus have authority and are perceived as holding back secrets.

There are other ways to use the power of WordPress to your advantage, I currently am creating a new website with the use of WordPress to create an auto generated traffic/income web log. It will consists 2 of the 5 topics list above. With so many topics on WordPress and how to install it, Caroline free ebook will definitely help you with your success on creating your niche empires via WordPress.