Ron Davies

YouAskTheCoach.com You Ask The Coach #1 – Programs in Australia and Hosting. www.affiliatealert.com name: Roy ma custom question 1: Why most programs not work in Australia? custom question 2: How to found a free hosting company which totally free and unlimited host files? custom your site: www.allniches.co.cc

I receive emails daily from vendors soliciting me to promote or at least review their products. Unfortunately, that just goes with the territory when you have a face and more so a web site that is well-known in affiliate marketing, especially as it  relates to Clickbank.

Believe it or not, I have almost 2 dozen vendors that want me to show off their products at the Earn1KaDay IM Summit Conference in Orlando this month. Sorry, guys and gals, that’s just not going to happen. Nothing personal, and this is not intended to discredit or even just “dis” any of the products or vendors, but things simply don’t work that way.

We are all competing for the attentions of those that we feel can help us along, but there is due process in place (hint: fill out the contact form and be sure to send a download link to test the product- wait 48 hours or so, you know…be patient :>)

In any event, once in a while a product title or byline catches my eye, and I simply have to open the email and see what is being promoted.  After all, you never know when you will meet the next Seth Godin in your inbox.

Today’s product is one that claims Google is dead as far as affiliates are concerned, which of course concerns me quite a bit, at least if there is any truth to it.

The product is called “Yahoo Cash For Idiots“, perhaps a little less flattering than I might like this early in the new year, but I had a look at this fellow might be onto something. I have been a long time proponent of avoiding Google Adwords at all costs, even after one of us here attending a few very good workshops on the subject, the most notable being Perry Marshall’s Bootcamp at his place in Chicago 2 years ago, and all sorts or smaller less notable ones since.

Truth is, I am waiting with baited breath for somebody to come up with something better than Adwords- better than Adwords in that it works WITHOUT a dergree from Google on how to make it work profitably.

Conservative estimates put the money losers on Adwords in the 80% to 85% percent range, with about 10% breaking even, and the rest are, well, the Adwords Gods, or maybe just Perry Marshall and Seth Godin :>)

Enough belly-aching, I know. Back to the product – it is based on using Yahoo’s PPC program, which purportedly is much less expensive and easier to use, easier to be competitive in for keywords, and even better – the return on investment is actually a POSITIVE number for the average user. Shocking, I know! #;>)

Now the ad copy on the site is full or biased propaganda, and a few figures that had to have been pulled out of the air more or less, but the product and the premise is sound an logical. This in the face of hugely successful Adwords / Clickbank products like Commission Blueprint, which at very least is one of the most over-delivered products I have ever seen, even if I found the work a little too involved for me.

One of the claims on the Yahoo Cash for Idiots site is:

“Yahoo! Is A HUGE Unexploited Mine Of Gold…With No Competition… Just An Extremely Profitable Untapped Playground”

I guess that is yet to be evidenced, but something I am going to toy with for sure, given the less than Godin like results I have had with Google Adwords to date.

Anyway, if you are like I am in terms of success with, or rather without Google Adwords, this might be worth a look.

Cheers,

Let’s face it; it’s hard enough to get quality traffic to our blogs, the last thing we want to do is lose the opportunity to create a repeat visitor.

In the blogs I am asked to review, I often surprise the blog owners with questions they seem to feel are irrelevant, at least until I have improve their understanding of what makes blog visitors tick.

Most blog owners figure I am going to take a look at their themes, layouts, seo, plugins used, etc., and from there make recommendations on how they might improve the blog. The fact is I don’t even look at the blog until a dozen or so very important questions are answered.

One of the most important is “How do you respond to commenters, and how long does it take to approve and respond to their comments?”

To my surprise, at least when I was just getting into helping others optimize their blog performance from a revenue perspective, is how many bloggers either;

• approved comments daily and never responded to the commenter directly (I am often told they are too busy to respond to commenters, again, amazing to me); or
• they don’t moderate comments at all – a really big and dangerous no-no;
• approved comments and responded with a canned response like “thank you for your comment, we will get back to you as soon as possible” and then never actually get back to them (how would this make you feel as a commenter?); or
• responded to comments more or less sporadically, when they have the time, or when they happen to drop by the blog. (A really big problem with corporate type blogs where there often seems to be some confusion as to whom is responsible for responding to comments on the blog)

Now, we cannot and will not get into the business of isolating or selecting the right person to look after the corporate blog here, but want I do want to look at is a tool that can do a number of things for your blog comments including;

• let you know when there is a new comment without using email or actually visiting the blog; plus
• allow more professional and immediate responses to posted comments;

This little gizmo is called (take a big breath..)  “WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier” by the good folks at “HowToGeek.com”

It consists of two parts that work together;

1. a standard WordPress “plugin” that is uploaded to your blog’s /wp-content/plugins directory; and
2. a desktop application that sits in your PC or notebook tray area.

The plug portion has no configuration required other than to upload it and “activate” it as you would any WP plugin. The little desktop application is easily configured by telling a few things including:

1. the web address of your blog;
2. your admin username and password for the blog; and
3. how often you would like it to check your blog for new comments.

In other words, it is very easy to set up.

Now, to use it you do…nothing. As long as you have the app running in your tray, it will do all the work. When it checks your blog (this all happens in the background and is invisible other than the little WordPress logo icon in your tray) and finds no nw comments, nothing happens.

But, when it checks your blog and finds that there is a new comment, the little WP logo in the tray changes to a red notification icon, and a little box slides up from the bottom of your screen telling you there is a new comment.

Simply click on the link in the little box, and you are taken directly to the comment to approve, deletes, spam, or otherwise moderate it.

Too easy right?

I am going to do a little video for this shortly but it is incredibly easy to use.

Get the WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier for your blog, and start doing a better job of managing comments, and responding to your commenters.

They will reward you by coming to your site more often, if for no other reason that  because you are more responsive to them than your competitors :>)

[tag]affiliate marketing,professional blogging,blogging plugin,blogging theme,Canned Response,Repeat Visitor,Quality Traffic,Return Visitors,Helping Others,Wordpress Blog,Bloggers,Confusion,Email,Perspective,Blogs,Face,Opportunity,Corporate Type[/tag]

OK, so it is something readers have been asking me about for a year or so, so maybe it isn’t that big of a revelation.

Just the same, it is a big addition coming to the RonaldDavies.com site and I believe newer readers and members will find it very useful and informative.

I plan to stay in the path I am on with teaching affiliate marketing the way it REALLY works, which is NOT the way it is being taught almost everywhere else I read about it. Interestingly enough, the sites that are teaching it incorrectly are being run by people that have no real background in affiliate marketing, let alone any financial history to back them.

In any event, if there is a specific topic you would like to see covered on Ron T.V., be it affiliate marketing in general or as it applies to professional blogging, drop me a line and we will see what we can do. I have about a dozen email requests for topics here I need to cover for existing members, but we will get through those shortly.

Have a great day!

Ron