I’ve been doing this online marketing “thing” for over a decade. When I first heard the phrase “content marketing” I was a little confused. WTF is that? I read the posts explaining it, but it left me even more confused. Why?

Because content marketing isn’t a new strategy, it’s merely a new word.

Why the fuck do we as an industry feel the need to invent a new buzz word for the same services every few years? We’ve been doing “content marketing” forever.

• Website = content
• Promotion of that website = marketing

Website + promotion of said website = content marketing.

External content marketing online is – and always has been – part of a good link building strategy. On site content marketing is part of a good conversion strategy and a good link building strategy.

But “link building” as a term has become dirty. So, we feel the need to “rebrand” it every few years with new terms.

Reciprocal linking morphed into “strategic partnerships” and “join venture initiatives”. Article marketing became “guest posting” and one way linking became “content placement”. Forum and blog links became “niche networking”. Writing something controversial or killer to get noticed became “linkbait”. But then linkbait also got a negative connotation and now it’s considered a part of? Yep – “content marketing”.

According to Wikipedia content marketing is “any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.”

In short, content marketing is to link building what an escort is to a hooker. Link building services and hookers – it’s very clear what happens with both. But content marketing and escorts? They’re much classier (wink, wink – nudge, nudge).

Yes, yes… I know. What makes content marketing different is that it doesn’t necessarily have to acquire a link to be considered content marketing and drive customers. I.e. if you publish a killer piece of content on Mashable, without a link – but a highly themed brand mention that causes consumers to seek you out, then you’re doing “content marketing”. Actually, there was already a word for that in the SEO world. It’s an unlinked “co-occurrence”. Unlinked mention of your URL? We had a word for that too – a “citation”. On site content marketing can help convert customers. We’ve long referred to that as conversion optimization.

In 2002, I was ranking for the single word “phentermine” – and I was doing it without comment spam. How? Back then we had a ton of “free sites” on the web. They told you where you could find free wallpapers, free graphics, free logo generators, free games, free chat software, etc. Almost every one of those sites had a category called “Misc Freebies”. I created a five page printable weight loss journal and listed it in every “free site” I could find. In several, it became a “popular listing”. A few months later, I was number 3 for the word phentermine. Crude content marketing. It’s always been there folks. We just didn’t give it a shiny new word.

Let’s just be honest here for a minute. 94% of the website owners rushing to grab a seat on the content marketing bandwagon are doing so with one primary objective – to get links. The methods may have evolved, but the core concepts are the same.

Because as long as links are the number one factor in search engine rankings and as long as search engines are the number one way to drive a website traffic online – that’s the end game. No matter what we decide to call it.

Hooker, escort – your objective is still to get laid by Google.

#endrant

Now I’m off to go build a fucking content marketing page on PushFire, because as much as shake my head at the term, it’s gained traction with the clientele of our industry (and I totally get why other agencies are doing the same – I do). Same services, same goal – different packaging. And I’m going to promote that page with the same concepts many of us have been using for over a decade.

The post Content Marketing is the “Escort” of Online Marketing appeared first on Sugarrae.

Today Debra Mastaler tweeted a link to an article in The Atlantic about the latest up in arms cause in the tech industry – the “bias” against women speakers at tech related conferences.

For the record, I love Debra Mastaler. She’s been on SEO conference panels since before there were dozens upon dozens of conferences surrounding the topic and well before anyone started insisting that “more women” be on them. She made the cut because she was – and is – extremely talented at what she does. I admit I am kind of surprised she backs the premise of the above article. But, I guess there had to be something we’d disagree on after nearly a decade of harmony in opinions. ;-)

The newest target under attack is the Edge Conference. At the time that I am writing this, 22 of the 23 speakers are male (the one female speaker had yet to submit a photo, so if you click through to The Atlantic’s article, you won’t see her in the screen grab). The article suggests to all men who aren’t “women haters” (my summation, not a quote in the article) that they should refuse to speak on conference panels in the tech industry unless at least one woman is on the panel with them.

Are you freaking kidding me?

We see what we want to see

Of course, some people look at the lineup and immediately assume highly talented women are being “excluded”. Of course, they don’t know that for a fact. For all they know, 95% of speaker pitches came from men and thus why they ended up with a 95% male speaker line up once they whittled down the list to the best pitches.

But let’s say a larger percentage of the pitches came from women. Then people are also assuming that of the pitches that came from women, 100% of them were awesome pitches that organizers passed up solely because the presenter would be wearing a bra.

The Edge Conference organizers tweeted at Matt Andrews, a Guardian web developer who wrote the (non Atlantic) post linked above attacking the lineup that…

“Inexcusable is pretty strong. I don’t feel need to defend this, but am happy with our process.”

And Andrews was quoted as responding with:

“I don’t know what their selection process was, but if it was me organising it, I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women.”

All I could do was shake my head. Google is sending 8 representatives to this conference. Why is no one asking Google why it didn’t insist on sending a certain % of female representatives instead?

Is this really empowering women? Or marginalizing their achievements?

So – assuming that Edge Conference took what they felt were the best presentations for their audience (not taking gender into account at all) – we expect them to cut four “better” presentations to simply “put more women on the panels”.

Not only that, but the one woman who made whatever the cut was based on her own talents and merits would then be accompanied by four other women who are there “for the sake of including women” – which in turn, to me – makes it look like she is only on a panel to fulfill the “women quota” rather than the actuality – that the organizers thought her pitch kicked ass enough to make the cut.

Years and years ago, Danny Sullivan used to have several blogrolls when he first launched Search Engine Land. One of those blogrolls was (lovingly) called “Old Farts” – meaning people (about 14 or so) who weren’t associated with agencies (at that time) and had been around the block a time or two whose blogs he thought were worth reading. I was the only female on that list when it first debuted.

At a conference shortly after a woman was complaining about that blogroll (seriously) saying how it needed more women on it. I took offense to that. It’s well known that Danny has long had women speakers at his conferences and as columnists on his site – he’s far from “sexist”. I earned my way onto that list. And here is someone telling me people who didn’t should be added simply so I wasn’t the lone female on it?

In three words? That’s some bullshit.

Let’s look at a non-tech example. My friend Amanda (who is in a “tech” career) is a graduate of the Citadel. For those who don’t know, the Citadel is the toughest military college in the United States. It was also an all male school until 1996, when its first female student won a legal battle with the school to be allowed in. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled that the formerly all male college would need to change its admissions policies to accept women.

But they didn’t require a percentage. The courts merely said they had to let qualified female applicants in. Aside from separated living quarters, there were no special rules made for those female applicants at that time either. For instance, if a woman wanted in, they were going to have to get the standard issue buzz cut, same as their male counterparts.

Amanda entered the Citadel in 1999. There was one woman in the Senior Class at the time she entered as a Freshman. She entered with 30+ other female cadets. When she graduated in 2003, she was one of 14 women who did so. In short, 4% of the Citadel’s 2003 graduating class were women. And Amanda busted her ass to be one of them…

Can you imagine if the Citadel were required to ensure 20% of their graduating classes were female? People might look at Amanda and wonder – did she really have what it took, or was she merely allowed to graduate to fulfill a quota?

How would that be fair to Amanda, who’d earned her walk across that stage? And are we really suggesting that her massive achievement be downgraded to the possibility of being speculated as nothing more than “quota fulfillment”?

Where does it end?

So here we are. Women should get special consideration – and a forced percentage of inclusion on conference panels – according to the articles above (however, it’s ok that BlogHer currently only has one male speaker – but I digress). So where does it end?

(I know Edge Conference is in London, but my examples below are based on US numbers and conditions because I’m American and we hear this same argument regarding US conferences all the time.)

Once we add five women, are we sure that one of them is a single mom? We wouldn’t want to leave out that demographic and have people assume the only women who can make a conference panel are single ones without kids or ones with partners at home to lessen their load.

There’s also no African Americans on the Edge Conference’s roster. I don’t see any people of (obvious) Hispanic descent. Why is no one up in arms over that?

Unless someone looks really, really good for their age, there’s also no one 55 or above representing senior citizens. Does this mean it’s high time that the AARP get involved to ensure adequate representation in tech for their community?

Let’s not discount looks either. Of those who have been assigned to speak on the conference panels, are all of them good looking? We need to ensure people don’t think that’s the only reason they’re on the panel. Are we sure we’ve included a few people that are less attractive? Should we require headshots to be submitted prior to speaker approval?

Do we have anyone who is obese on the panels? We need to ensure that the overweight population is represented – after all, almost 36% of people in the United States are obese. Surely that same percentage is represented in speaker pitches.

Another 10% of people between the age of 18-64 in the United States have a disability. Are we adequately reflecting that in our choice of conference speakers?

Be prepared to eventually see a checkbox on the speaker pitch forms asking you about your sexual orientation too. We need to make sure members of the GLBT community are included on each panel as well – and we’re going to need at least one from each of the four that acronym represents.

Do we not see the problem here?

No one should ever be denied a speaking slot BASED on any of the above. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

But conference organizers shouldn’t have to pick speakers to fulfill an “equality quota” either. They should pick the best speakers, for their specific event and topics, that successfully get people to shell out their money to attend.

Conferences are a BUSINESS. I highly doubt that most conference organizers care if you are a purple asexual hermaphrodite, providing the quality of your presentation puts butts in their seats.

When I attend a conference, I’m not there to see a proverbial rendition of We are the World. I’m there to learn. I’m there to be inspired. I’m there to increase my bottom line. The speakers I want on stage are the best possible choices to fulfill those needs. Period. And I certainly don’t want to be sitting in the audience wondering who is there on merit and who is there to fulfill a quota.

Do you want to see more women showcased in the tech space?

Asking men to partake in reverse gender bias isn’t going to do that in a way that empowers anyone. But there are plenty of things that you can do to help achieve that result.

• See a conference panel you think a woman you know would rock? Let her know about it and encourage her to pitch – and pitch well.
• Know of amazing female speakers? Make your favorite conferences aware of them and tell them why being able to see them speak would be a draw to you purchasing a ticket to their conference.
• Stop supporting publications that attempt to convince the female tech and business population that they’re inferior to men.
• See tech industry professionals being showcased on a blog somewhere? Write in and suggest some kickass women that would also make great interviewees.
• Have a daughter? Encourage her to enter the space. Until females represent an equal number of the population in this industry, they’ll never represent an equal number of those showcased within it.
• Are you a woman in the tech space? Want recognition as a powerhouse? Want to speak on conference panels? THEN GO AFTER WHAT YOU WANT.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s up to you to stop letting them.

The post Women, Tech Conferences and the BullSh!t Surrounding It appeared first on Sugarrae.

He’s been gone for four months now. But the impact he had – and has – on my life is visible every day in who I am as a person and who I am as an entrepreneur. I learned more from him than I’ve ever learned from anyone and I thought I’d share some of the lessons he taught me below.

#11 Not everything in life will go according to plan

When I had my son, I wondered whether he’d he be athletic like his Dad. I planned how I’d teach him his ABC’s and envisioned his first day of preschool. I just knew he’d excel in street smarts like me. And then he had a massive bilateral stroke. Everything changed. The plans were gone. Following the old plan wasn’t an option. His stroke forced me to create a new one and set new goals, for both him and myself. The ability to be flexible was crucial in being able to find happiness in my new alternate reality.

You can have the best idea. The best plan. The best intentions. The greatest strategy laid out. And everything can still be turned upside down at a moment’s notice as a result of any unforeseeable event. Your ability to be successful in life hinges not on being able to create and execute “the plan”. It hinges on you being able to adapt and change to make the best of the hand your dealt.

#10 Complaining changes nothing – action changes everything

In the weeks after being told my son would be severely multiply handicapped his entire life – that he’d never even know who I was – I did a lot of crying and a lot of complaining. A lot of why HIM – why ME? But it didn’t matter why. This was our new reality. What mattered was finding ways to help him. When I realized how much the “system” for kids like him sucked, I volunteered on local committees dedicated to improving that system. When I felt alone at dealing with his condition, I created a support group to find other parents and allow us to help each other move forward.

When things go wrong, you have two choices – complain or act. The former gets you no where, the latter will get you everywhere. All the complaining in the world won’t change a bad situation. Complaining makes you a victim of your circumstance. Acting is what puts you back in control of your situation.

#9 Your situation does not determine your result – your attitude does

If I had sat on the couch eating bon bons and collecting money from the system for the rest of my life – no one would have blamed me. I’d been in foster care since I was 13, I was on my own at 17. I was married at 19 with a severely handicapped child by the age of 21 and we struggled to pay our electric bill every single month. I have a GED, no college and was a waitress the day my son suffered his stroke. But soon after he was born, I knew that if I wanted him to have the best opportunities possible in his situation, then I needed to change mine to be able to make those available to him. I still remember the day I sat on my front porch, looked at the sky and thought “the only person who is going to get us out of this situation and change our lives is me”.

Much to the chargin of everyone who likes to find excuses on why they aren’t successful or look for the advantages someone else must have had because they are, your situation does not determine your outcome. I don’t care if you have no money, no education, if you had a bad upbringing… whatever your excuse might be, no past or current situation defines your future. Your attitude about whether to “take” the situation as an excuse or grab it by the balls and succeed in spite of it is what determines where you’ll be in ten years.

#8 It is possible to say nothing and influence everything

In the 15 years my son was on this earth, he never said a word. Yet he influenced thousands of people in the ripple effect his life created. He changed hundreds of lives. He changed so many mindsets. I learned that influence has as much to do with what you say and do in life as does with who you simply “are” as a person. Never underestimate what effect “leading by example” has on everyone around you.

#7 You’ll never know what you’re capable of until you try

If you had told me 15 years ago that today I’d be a CEO of a very successful company and be able to give my kids the life they have, I probably would have laughed at you. Me? I’m just a waitress. But my son’s stroke forced me to aim high. A bath chair alone was $300. Which might have well been $30,000 to us at the time. Starting a business was never my “plan” – and I certainly didn’t know if I was even capable of doing it – but I had nothing to lose by trying and everything to gain. To quote Eminem – “Success is my only motherfucking option. Failure’s not.”

No entrepreneur has ever taken “the leap” with a guarantee of how it will all turn out. What most successful entrepreneurs have in common is not the secret to success, but rather the willingness to fail – and miserably.

#6 Other people’s opinions don’t matter

Having a severely handicapped child showed me how many good people there are in this world. But it also showed me there’s a lot of assholes too. One day I’d taken my son to the grocery store. He was in his wheelchair with a feeding pump attached to it because he couldn’t eat by mouth. As I stood at the deli counter waiting my turn, a woman looked at him – not bothering to even attempt to hide her disgust – and leaned over to her husband and said “I can’t believe she brought him in here.” I wish I could say that was a lone experience, but it wasn’t. But you know what? Fuck them and fuck what they think of my son.

When I did my post on 48 things I’ve learned as an entrepreneur, one of them was “If they don’t sit around your Thanksgiving table, then their opinion of you, your latest post or your latest presentation doesn’t mean JACK SHIT in the grand scheme of things”. And it’s the truth. Never be afraid to go after what you want in life because of what “other people might think”. Because the truth is, what “they” think? Doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now. And it shouldn’t matter to you either.

#5 You can’t change the past but you can help shape the future

The cause of my son’s stroke is and now always will be “unknown”. There is nothing I could have done to prevent it and there is nothing I can ever do to change that it happened. However, what I can help change is whether or not more parents and children go through it – which is why I’m so dedicated to fundraising for childhood stroke education and research.

Focusing on things you can’t change is a complete waste of your time, your energy and your sanity. Instead, focus on what you can do to help shape and change the future. It might be the future of your company, the future of your self or the future of a cause that is close to your heart – but whatever it is, the past is set in stone and only the future has the ability to still be molded.

#4 Self education is one of the best ways to empower yourself

When my son was six weeks old, the doctors told me they wanted to do a surgery to put a permanent feeding tube in him. I agreed. When I went back to the local Ronald McDonald House (RMH), I talked with a few parents I’d become friendly with about the surgery. One mom looked at me and said, “but he still eats by mouth, why do they want to put a feeding tube in?”. I responded “because they said he will stop eating eventually”. And she said, “then put it in when he does”. I answered, “I can do that? I can decide to wait?”

She went to the RMH parent library and brought me back a book called “Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Parents’ Guide”. I read it cover to cover and realized I’d been depending on the knowledge and decisions of others vs. arming myself with my own knowledge to allow me to make my own decisions. From that point forward, I read everything I could get my hands on regarding his condition. Knowing what I was doing and understanding the decisions I was making – and what decisions I had the ability to make – was the best thing I ever did for myself – and my son.

When I set out in starting my business, I had no formal education. If I needed to learn HTML, I taught myself how to do it by taking an online course. When I needed to learn SEO, I read everything I could find and then tested everything I read to find out what information was good and what information was useless. When I needed to learn “business” I followed the same path. Educating yourself – and continuing to do so every day – is one of the best things you can do for yourself – and your company – as an entrepreneur.

#3 Your biggest setback can either break you or fuel you – it’s up to you

I had two options upon hearing my son’s prognosis. I could let it break me or I could let it fuel me into improving our lives. It wasn’t a conscious decision that I even realized I was faced with making at the time, but it was one I made nonetheless.

No matter what setback you’re handed in life – or in business – you have a CHOICE as to how you let it affect you. You either let it knock you down for the count or push you to keep moving. Never kid yourself into thinking you don’t have the ability to choose which one occurs.

#2 Tomorrow may not always come

When my son turned 11, he had become too big for me to lift. I was a single mom at the time and after blowing my knee out three times, I realized I could no longer lift him on my own. Letting him go live with his Dad (who could easily lift him) was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. When I had my youngest son in 2011, there was a ton going on. I went to see CJ often and my older children saw him during the summer when they went to visit their Dad, but my youngest had yet to make the 1100 mile trip to meet his brother. We’d finally planned the trip for December of 2012 during winter break. On November 29, 2012, CJ passed away. Regret is not a dish swallowed easily.

For some reason, we always believe “we have time”. You haven’t started your dream today, but you will soon. You didn’t take that risk for your business today, but there’s always next week, right? But, tomorrow is not guaranteed. Don’t wait to go after your goals and your dreams. The only things we are guaranteed in life is death, taxes and RIGHT NOW. Right now – THAT’S when you have to start.

#1 You can survive anything

There were so many things in my son’s lifetime that I thought I’d never be able to survive. His stroke on October 18, 1997. His diagnosis on November 11, 1997. His numerous hospitalizations and near death experiences. And finally, his passing in 2012. But if my son could get through each of those experiences, I sure as shit could too.

No matter how bad things may seem. No matter what challenges you face in your life or in your business. No matter how dire a circumstance you may encounter. When life knocks you down, get back up and ask it if that’s all it’s got. Keep moving. You WILL survive.

The post 11 Things My Son Taught Me about Life & Business appeared first on Sugarrae.

There was a site clinic going on at PubCon and a speaker was unable to make it at the very last minute. I was a moderator at WebmasterWorld at the time, but had never spoken. Brett Tabke came out into the hallway, saw me and said “come with me” – next thing I knew, I was on stage. A few months later, Chris Sherman gave me a slot on the SES Toronto (now SMX Toronto) link building panel where I gave my first actual presentation. (For the record? I. Was. Terrified.)

And so my “speaking career” began.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people speak. I’ve been on a lot of panels with a wide variety of speakers – both awesome and, well, not. I’ve also moderated panels and picked the speakers. Some were awesome choices, some I’d never ask back on a panel I was moderating again.

Now, before I share what I’ve learned, I’d like to be clear on one thing…

I think that I’m actually a horrible “speaker” in that Toastmasters would give me a definite thumbs down. I talk too fast, I rarely make it through a session without dropping an inappropriate word, I say “uh” a lot… in short, I think I’m asked to speak on a regular basis based purely on my knowledge and not because I have awesome public speaking skills.

I point this out because I want people like me to know that speaking at search conference – in my opinion – is more about what you’re willing to share, your enthusiasm for the topic at hand and your ability to speak with some personality more so than whether or not you are the President of your local Toastmasters club.

With that, here are some tips I’ve learned over the years to landing a conference panel – AND (more importantly in my opinion) being asked back again.

Getting Ready to Pitch

Pick something you know like the back of your hand

So, pitching has opened and there is a panel on the agenda you’ve had your eye on – one you know you’d be perfect for. And then you realize that the session is already full. And you may be tempted to pitch for a different panel you “sorta” know. My advice? Unless you can rock – and I mean ROCK – a topic, don’t pitch for it simply because you want to speak.

Understand that Q&A panels are not as easy as you might think

A panel that allows you to speak without having to go through all the effort of a formal presentation? Score! But keep in mind that Q&A panels (like site clinics) – while free of all the Powerpoint preparation – are not for everyone. They require you to be very quick thinking and quick witted as well. Nothing is worse on a Q&A panel than what I refer to as “dead air” – where a question is asked and all the panelists stare at each other trying to think of something to say. If you pitch for a Q&A panel, make sure you’re awesome at “thinking on your feet” so to speak.

Pitch the moderator with a concept, not a book

As a moderator, I don’t want to read through your entire presentation during the pitch phase. I want to know why you’re qualified to speak on the topic, I want to know the angle you’re going to take and see an outline of what you plan to discuss. Most importantly, I want to know what you plan to TEACH the audience. What will they take away from your session that they can actually implement and use to help improve their efforts on the topic.

Don’t send a sales pitch disguised as a presentation

Moderators are not dumb. Most of them have been moderating panels for a long time. If your pitch centers around your products, services, tools, etc and not around giving the attendees actionable, useable information they can implement without shelling out cash to your company, you’re not going to get picked to speak.

Take. Your. Time.

Don’t be in such a rush to be one of the “first” pitches that you send in a pitch that isn’t well thought out or is riddled with grammar and spelling errors. I’m not saying that I’m viewing your pitch like an English professor (Lord knows I’d be in a glass house throwing stones) – I’m simply saying that obvious effort in your pitch is something I’m looking for. If you submit a half-assed pitch, I have no reason to believe you won’t do a half-assed presentation.

Preparing to Speak

Understand speaking is a privilege, not a right

Thousands of people are paying thousands of dollars to attend a conference to hear YOU speak. Give them the courtesy and respect to prepare well and prepare hard. Turn in your presentation on time and show up with some room to spare before your session. While a moderator may have chosen you to speak, it’s the feedback from the attendees that will decide if you ever land another panel again.

Find out your time and ensure you stick to it

Depending on the session, you’ll likely have 10, 12, 15 or 18 minutes to speak. Keep in mind that it takes the average speaker about one minute to go through a Powerpoint slide. If you have a 12 minute speaking slot, you should have about 12 slides. You cannot get through 34 slides in 18 minutes. Be respectful of the other speakers and don’t eat into their time – or into the audience’s opportunity to also hear what THEY have to say.

Your presentation should be bullet points, not a transcription

When creating your presentation, don’t put every word you plan to speak on the slides. The slides should be filled with short points that you then elaborate on while speaking. If you’re essentially “reading” your slides, then there’s way too much wording on them.

Ensure your contact methods are on each slide

I’m not saying to have your phone number, address, email, Twitter and Facebook on each slide. But keep in mind people are likely liveblogging and livetweeting your session. Having your company URL and personal twitter handle on the bottom of each slide ensures the people doing so can mention you by name (or know where to link to). It doesn’t guarantee that they will, but it increases the odds.

Help promote the conference AND your session(s)

The more people that attend the conference – and your session – the more people there will be to fill out feedback forms telling the conference organizers how you rocked it – and the more people you may have potentially interested in whatever it is you’re there to promote. Personally, I tweet about the conference being open for registration in the months leading up to it. On the days leading up to it, I make my social networks and following aware of which panel(s) they can find me on. On the day of, I tweet out before every session I do where, when and why they should find it.

While You’re Speaking

Understand you don’t need to beat people over the head with your company

Too many people think that speaking at a conference is all about promoting your company. It is, but it isn’t. You don’t need to shove your company in peoples faces to get them interested. What we do isn’t easy. And a lot of people realize that after spending days attending conference sessions. They realize they need help. And often times, they seek out those that have been the most forthcoming in sharing their knowledge to help others vs. the guy who did nothing but drop promos for and “push” his company.

Be respectful of the other speakers on your panel

Do not argue with other panelists during a session (I’m not talking about playful banter that is attempting to bring humor to the panel). People did not fly all the way out there to watch an episode of Jerry Springer unfold on stage. If you disagree with something another panelist has said, I’m not saying you can’t say so. I’m saying say your peace – respectfully – and move on. The audience will get there are differing viewpoints. You don’t need to waste valuable time with needing to prove “you’re right”. If what the other panelist said was actual misinformation vs. an alternate way to skin a cat, you can share your opinions on it with the moderator after the panel.

Don’t name drop

Don’t tell the audience how you and Matt Cutts are BFFs who share midnight phone calls to discuss the algorithm (we know that’s not true). Stand behind your skills and not who you know (or pretend to know). Name dropping doesn’t make you look special, it makes you look pompous at best and foolish at worst.

Don’t assume the audience knows everything that you do

Referring to something “Matt” said? Try to remember to refer to him as “Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam Team”. On a beginner track panel and referring to “Panda”? Maybe follow up your first reference to it as “the Panda update – which was a filter that aimed to punish sites that had a heavy amount of low value or duplicate content”. Not everyone in the audience spends their entire day immersed in the search world.

Always have a backup plan

It’s happened before. A moderator doesn’t do a great job of ensuring the content of panelists presentations don’t clash before the show. You’re sitting there, awaiting your turn to speak and to your shock – and likely horror – the panelist before you is up there giving a presentation that literally mirrors your own. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve seen it happen. In that moment, you have two choices – you can give your original presentation and bore the audience, or you can get up, laugh off the overlap and do your best to give an “on the fly” verbal backup presentation. The best way to avoid this? If you have an underactive moderator, be proactive in contacting other panelists to find out the topics of their presentations before creating your own and/or letting them know the topic of yours.

After Speaking

Make yourself available

Be approchable after the session, because audience members will likely have questions they want to ask you, especially if you gave away some great information. However, be mindful that there is probably another session after yours. If there are multiple people looking to chat with you, or you’ve spent a long time chatting, be sure to take the discussion out into the hallway to allow the next panel time to get ready and prepare during the break between sessions.

Have plenty of business cards

I admit to failing at this time and time again. I have a horrible memory and will often forget my cards. Do as I say and not as I do. ;-)

Never – EVER – reuse the same presentation

If you’re asked back to speak at a future conference, never give the same exact presentation you gave at the last one. Update it. Improve it. Even if it kicked ass, there’s always a way to make it even better.

Think I missed something?

Please feel free to leave additional tips in the comments!

The post What I’ve Learned about Landing and Speaking on Conference Panels appeared first on Sugarrae.

In doing some keyword research today, I was a little startled to see tens of thousands of searches being performed around the basis of submitting your website to search engines. Thousands of those revolved around looking for actual website submission SERVICES.

It’s 2013. A lot of us have been doing “this” – SEO, affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, etc. for a long, long time. And we often forget the outdated crap – and scams – that newbies to our world encounter as they’re trying to find their way and learn the ropes to promoting a website online.

Search engine submission is outdated crap that turned into a scam.

Outdated because somewhere in the late 90′s and very early 2000′s submitting your site to search engines WAS a legit way to get indexed.

A scam because the companies still attempting to sell you those services know that they are now complete rip offs.

Because in this day and age, the only two engines that matter – Google and Bing (and some may argue Yahoo, but it’s powered by Bing) – will find and index (put into their results) almost anything all on their own.

Whether or not you actually rank for the words you want to comes down to building quality inbound links to your site.

They not only won’t help – but now they can actually HURT you

It used to just be that these services weren’t “harmful” – just simply useless. But in the post Penguin era (Penguin is the name of a filter Google created to punish sites that have a lot of what they consider crappy links), they have the potential to be dangerous.

Let’s just pretend for a moment there were thousands or tens of thousands of search engines you could potentially get traffic from if you submit your website to them (there are not)…

A lot of these services also offer to submit you to hundreds or thousands of directories. Not only will almost all of these directories never send you a single qualified visitor, but getting a ton of links from said crappy directories can actually hurt your ability to rank in the REAL search engines.

Planning to purchase those add on “FFA links”? You might as well light any chance you have of ever ranking in Google on fire and walk away now.

Still nervous Google or Bing might not find your website?

You don’t need to, but you can directly submit a website to Google here (which essentially amounts to making a Webmaster Tools account). And you can directly submit a website to Bing here. Yahoo is powered by Bing, so submitting to Bing is the same as submitting a website to Yahoo. AOL is powered by Google. Ask.com is irrelevant (sorry Ask).

No other search engine these crappy search engine submit services claim to submit you to matters – at all.

So do yourself a favor and avoid these services like the plague. Otherwise, your money and your website might end up in the virtual version of this…

The post Search Engine Submission Services? DON’T – Here’s Why… appeared first on Sugarrae.

To be clear, this isn’t an “outing” post – even though I could do so – I just don’t believe in “outing”.

This post is a lesson for people hiring link building services.

People often wonder why some link building companies are so expensive when there’s TONS of other companies offering to build links at a fraction of the cost.

I’ve got one word for you – quality.

This morning I had an email exchange initiated by a link builder posing as a woman. She had social media profiles on Twitter and Facebook. She interacts. And she’s the perfect example of when link building goes wrong.

She had retweeted two of my tweets this morning and then sent the following email via my contact form (that I now know was definitely written by someone else but her)…

“Dear Editor,

I have been following your blog sugarrae.com for a while. I can say without hesitation that you have done some remarkable work and put a great and informative content on it. Moreover, I have noticed that you are accepting guest posts as well, so I thought of contributing my ideas to your blog. I have done a comprehensive research on the topics that are related to your blog and can offer you a piece of them.

It will not only attract more visitors but also help them get the informative stuff on the subject. Please let me know if you can accept my blog post. I assure you that the content will be informative, relevant, unique, and will provide help to the blog visitors. Furthermore, being a professional writer.

I Hope for a positive and professional response from your side.

Thanks & Regards,
[Fake Name]“

My son had woken me up before 5AM, I was feeling a bit snarky, so I responded with the following…

Dear Link Builder not named [Fake Name],

1. Had you actually followed my blog for some time, you’d have addressed me as “Rae” and not “Editor” since it’s a personal blog – with no editor.
2. You waited a good amount of time after following me a few days ago before contacting me as a “long time reader” – which was good – most people wouldn’t know what you were only following me to create a “connection” to have a better shot at me accepting your guest post – I had to “more” my followers 4 times to find you.
3. The amount of time you waited between retweeting a second random article of mine and filling out my contact form was too short. I personally would have waited 30 minutes to an hour. Seven minutes between retweet and form submission was too short a timespan. If the “editor” hadn’t clearly given away you had never even looked at my blog before, that timespan would have given away that you copied and pasted an email because you didn’t have time to write that whole thing out in that timespan.
4. “I Hope for a positive and professional response from your side.” < Never insult the blogger. By telling me you're "hoping" for a professional response, what you're really saying is you think I might send an unprofessional one. Why, I don't know.
5. Never, EVER pitch an SEO blog. Ever. Had I wanted to be an ass, I've have said yes to the post. Then had you send it. Then I'd have used parts of your bio to find all your other posts and could have potentially outed some of your clients had I posted about it. Pitching SEO blogs in general is dangerous with this kind of craptastic link building.
6. Your profile image is Mandy Moore. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

You're honestly lucky you didn't end up on my blog.

Cheers,
Rae

And that would have been that. Until, “she” responded with something that floored me…

“Thanks for reply me,

I Wish to doing more business with together, I have a good blog network to post your article, So are you doing to deal with me then reply me.

I send my all list to you.

Thanks
[Fake Name]“

Wait, what? So I responded…

Are you seriously kidding me right now? Is this some kind of online version of Punked?

And “she” responded back…

“No I am serious to talk with you, I have really good blog network for you to post your article Rae….”

[blink] I answered…

“So wait, you want ME to post an article somewhere on YOUR network now? Are you for real? I’m speechless right now.”

And “she” answered…

“Yes right,

Dear tell me theme you like to post your article i show you okay”

Awe. Shock. Amazement. I responded…

Well since you said Dear – I’d like to post an article on Link Building Do’s and Don’ts.

“She” responded with the following. Underneath it, was a list of 10 URLs.

“I send my site okay… Check all okay”

Ok, you’re just fair game now. Actually, you were fair game a while ago. I’m blatantly mocking you. You are responding STILL trying to get a link. So I respond…

Do you want to post on my site too?

“She” asks me to send her a list of my blogs. I tell her I have one blog – Sugarrae.com. “She” responds…

“Okay fine….SO please tell me which type of article do you consider on your site? And also send me require of article length and you adding one link on my website.”

I answer…

One on How to Build Links the Right Way. 300 word minimum.

And “she” answers…

“Hello,

please let me know are you accept affiliated marketing article on your site then i go ahead to write for that..”

And I replied…

Yes, that’s fine. But I need it soon – I have a post to put up about this.

About 20 minutes later, “she” responded with…

“Hello Rae,

I am interested to write an article on “How to Build Links the Right Way”, once you ready to post my article on your blog on this topic.

Don’t worry, I’m a good blogger and have had my posts featured on

[3 known blogs in the SEO/Social Community]

Let me know if you are interested, I already know your blogging style, plus I understand what your readers love… as I am one.

Waiting for your quick and positive response.”

Funny thing was, all three links she sent were posted by the same person – a man who (headdesk) owns an SEO company – but not “her”. So I sent her an email asking who [man's name] was. “She” told me…

“Absolutely right, He is director of my company and I am working and writing articles for him.”

And there you have it folks. Some dude using a network to build client links and using his own horribly bad link builders to even build links to his OWN company.

The Lesson

This is what you get when you try to take shortcuts.

This is what you get when you worry only about the cost of link building and not the effect it has on your brand, your legitimacy, your SEO, your reputation and your livelihood.

This is what you get when you worry about building links solely for ranking purposes and not building an outreach program – internally or by using an external service – that takes more than simply “does this site have PR to pass?” into account.

This is what you get utilizing link building services that keep their costs low by using non English speaking employees to do the job a person actually educated in English, Journalism and/or Public Relations should be doing.

The post Link Building Services – You Get What You Pay For appeared first on Sugarrae.

To me, there’s no better recipe for monetization than taking a product I love, walking you through it, showing you what you can do with it and making a commission if you find that the product might help you enough to actually purchase it via my affiliate link.

(Not quite understanding how product reviews can earn money – AKA new to affiliate marketing? See my post on what affiliate marketing is.)

But I’m also a big believer in doing targeted product or service reviews.

Detailed reviews.

And most importantly? HONEST reviews.

It can be tempting for a blogger to review everything possible on the net – spew out five paragraphs that merely reword the content readily available on the product site, use screenshots taken directly from the product site and recommend a product that they’ve never even actually used – much less spent their hard earned cash to purchase. AKA to flood the web with bullshit reviews. I’m against that mentality.

But I’m all for real reviews – done right.

Below, I’m going to walk you through how to find products or services that will fit your audience, how to craft a real review of that product or service, how to make it a review worth sharing and show you the results of an average review post I’ve done here on Sugarrae.

Edit – Note – Before you start reading…

Joost de Valk brought up an important point. I don’t JUST post reviews on Sugarrae. I spend time building traffic, a following – a brand – for various reasons. These reviews are able to take advantage of the strength of my site – I don’t want to imply that it’s as simple as start a blog, slap up reviews, make money. It’s more like start a blog, build a blog, work hard and then you’ll be able to monetize with some reviews. This is no “4 hour work week” bull. Don’t get me wrong – some weeks I work less than 4 hours – and some weeks I work 80. I’m able to work when I want to. But I busted my ass for over a decade to get to that point. You can read my whole rant on this topic if you’d like. ;-)

Finding products or services to review

Before you go writing up reviews, you need to make sure those reviews are relevant to your audience. For instance, I love the Perfect Meatloaf Pan (seriously, that thing rocks), but I wouldn’t post a review about it here on Sugarrae. Why? Because my audience isn’t here to learn about new cooking products. They’re here for information about SEO, affiliate marketing, online marketing in general and learning how to make money online.

So the reviews here on Sugarrae relate to products and services surrounding that. WordPress themes like Genesis, plugins that cloak affiliate links or guides to getting started in affiliate marketing – those are all relevant products to my target audience.

On the work at home mom site that I own with Missy Ward, I’ve reviewed products like baby monitors and Care.com – because those are things that work at home moms might be interested in.

Whatever topic your audience comes to you for, products and services that fill a need that is directly on those topics – or can be indirectly related to those topics and easily tied in – are what you should be reviewing. (Know now the products or services you’d love to do a review for but don’t know how to find the affiliate program? Check out this post.)

Creating the review

Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to reviews

If you take nothing else away from this post, please let it be this – always, always be honest in your reviews. I always say (and always will) that it is never worth selling out the trust your readers have in you for an affiliate commission. If you review a product and later your opinion changes? Tell people so. New products can always been found – trust is hard (if not impossible) to replace.

I always pay for the product if I recommend it

I know, I know. If you have a popular blog, then you’re likely getting offered freebies of products or free memberships to services to review them. But, I have a general personal rule about paying for any product I recommend. If it’s not a product or service I’d spend my money on, then what business do I have recommending it to my readers?

I’m not saying you can never take a free product or free access to something to check it out – especially if it’s offered. I’m simply saying that if you love the product or service (and believe it’s worth your readers spending their hard earned money on) you should then pay for it before publishing a review on it – or expressly state on the review that you didn’t.

Example – I’ve taken several paid plugins for free to check them out at the plugin owner’s request. If I love the plugin and want to recommend it, I buy it after the fact, before I publish the review. If I don’t like the plugin, I don’t. But I also sure as hell don’t make a post recommending it. Some might call that dumb or altruistic. But, that’s how I personally roll.

Use images that make it obvious you actually USE the product

In 96% of my reviews – be it a product or service – I use images that make it very obvious I have actually used the product myself. It takes minutes (or less) to take a picture or a screenshot and upload it. I feel that the difference pictures obviously showing MY Crazy Egg tests vs. the generic images I could pull off the official product or service site make a world of difference. (Now if only Crazy Egg had an affiliate program.)

Always show both the pros and cons of a product

This also falls under the “being honest” section above, but it also serves another purpose. No product is perfect. It may work perfect. It may fill a huge need in your business or life. But, there is likely something you either don’t like or would add to almost any product.

Being upfront about what those negatives are is not only honest, but it helps earn the trust of those reading said review. If you’re telling them the truth about the negatives or “wish it also did [this]” then general logic would serve to assume that you’re also being honest about the positives of the product or service.

I own a lot of review sites in various niches and I can tell you that I sell plenty – plenty – of products that don’t have a 100% or even 60% rave review. People typically understand that no product is perfect. Their real question is will this product serve their particular need or solve their particular problem.

Making the review worth sharing

Getting detailed with it (to the tune of “Getting Jiggy with it” – nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah – nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah)

Doing a detailed review takes a lot of effort. Depending on the product or service and how many features or aspects there are to it, I can spend anywhere from a few hours to an entire day doing a review post. But, I feel like it shows.

When you read the “BS review” mentioned in the intro and have the same visitor come across your much more detailed and thorough review, I personally feels that it not only ups your “trust score” with the reader, but they also are more likely to feel you’ve “earned” any commission generated through their purchase if they understand the concept of affiliate marketing.

Show them how to solve a problem or fill a need with the product or service

In my Crazy Egg review, I showed people how I used the data Crazy Egg collected on my site to make more money. In my review on Eclipse, I explained to people WHY I cloaked my affiliate links with Eclipse – I identified a (real) problem they may not even know had existed and gave them a solution for it. In my Care.com review, I shared tips on finding and interviewing a nanny (that I found out through a lot of experience with the process).

In my Raven Tools review I explained how I used the service to organize my (as anyone who builds links can tell you, what can be very messy) link development efforts. In my (since partially retracted) PopUp Domination review I showed people how I used it and the actual results of using it.

I believe that people share my reviews more for what I teach them they can do with the product than the actual standard product review itself.

After the review goes “live”

Allow your readers to comment honestly

Honestly, I’ve been asked more than once if I delete negative reviews or comments about a service I affiliate for. The answer is HELL. NO. First, there’s actual data that shows people are more likely to seek out a product or service to review it if the review is negative. People expect to see negative reviews or comments. I as a reader often immediately suspect any review of a product that does NOT have at least a negative review or two.

Secondly, if people have a negative experience with a product or service I review, especially as a personal blogger on a site like Sugarrae, then I want to know about it. If the overwhelming experience is negative, then I need to look into why – and if I find it to be a trend – it may be time to change my stance on recommending the product or service.

Staying legal

The FTC recently came out with new guidelines (and then last week, even newer ones) that require bloggers and website owners to make disclosure if they were compensated in any way (so affiliate, sponsored posts, company sent you a free item for review, etc) for any kind of endorsement they make.

If you do product reviews that include affiliate links, you fall into that category, so you’ll need to ensure your blog features a disclosure page or notice. I wouldn’t use mine as an example (no, seriously, don’t go my route LOL), but my friend Missy has a very well done one on her site.

Review Case Study

I took an average review off the Sugarrae site. Meaning, it wasn’t in the company of my highest earning reviews, but wasn’t one of my lowest earning either. So, let’s take a look at my review of Raven Tools, which I wrote in mid 2010 – approximately 2 and a 1/2 years ago. It’s only been mildly promoted – meaning I didn’t do as much to get it a strong ranking as I did with other reviews.

I rated Raven 4.5 stars. I love the service and we whitelabel it for PushFire as well as use the Raven API to create our own tools built in house. I included various tutorial videos in the review (this is one of those places it’s hard to use personal screenshots as I recommended above due to not wanting to share personal information).

At the time of this writing, I rank around #6 for “raven tools review” in Google and #4 for the same phrase in Bing (though I don’t know what SEO inclined individual – Raven’s target market – uses Bing – sorry Bing).

These are the traffic stats on that page since the day I wrote the review. Caveat 1 – I had a different URL structure for a while so results 1 and 2 refer to the same post. Caveat 2 – also included is the blog post I did regarding the auction of the one year of Raven Tools service that Raven donated to support my Stroke Walk. I linked directly to them in that post vs. affiliate. But, I did do an extra post that promoted their services due to their generosity I wanted to be upfront about (it included one affiliate link and 4 non affiliate links to their site). See below (click to enlarge):

So a little over 7900+ to the specific review page. To date I’ve had 5,389 people click on my affiliate link, which has resulted in 486 sales for Raven. The post took me about four hours to write. To date, I’ve made $3,882.34 in affiliate commissions.

About 70% of them came from my review (I also advertise Raven on my sidebar on some site pages – and not others – and have a link here or there to them within posts, etc). So the review resulted in approximately $2700 in commissions. $2700 / 4 is about $675 per hour. That’s how much I’ve earned per hour so far for the time invested in writing that post. And that review is not done earning passive income yet. And it was done honestly and ethically.

I tend to focus more on my various other review sites than on adding reviews to Sugarrae, but it all adds up and some reviews and/or product types are much more popular than others. Some reviews make less than the above. Some have made *significantly* more.

The post How to Create Passive Income with Profitable (Yet Honest) Reviews appeared first on Sugarrae.

Tips & Tactics

There are going to be a bit random, but here we go…

HTML5 and H1s

Duane Forrester said while on stage during the Excellent Search Adventure session that when it comes to HTML5, Bing will only look at the words contained in the first H1 on the page. Any subsequent H1s will be seen only as styling and design elements.

Links still matter

Both Duane and Matt Cutts said during their Excellent Search Adventure panel that links still play a larger role than social in both Bing and Google. Matt said on a later panel that he didn’t see links (and their value in Google) going away anytime soon – or even close to soon. They simply are looking for better ways to validate them and spot obvious manipulation.

Disavowing a domain versus a URL

I don’t like the disavow tool, but for those who do, I figured I’d mention that both Matt and Duane mentioned several times that rather than disavowing individual links from a domain you don’t want links from, you can instead disavow links from an entire domain at once.

Facebook Promoted Posts

The keynote with Grady Burnett of Facebook was really, really interesting. A lot was discussed, but the biggest “I can implement that now” thing I took away from it was about Promoted Posts. Facebook says they launched Promoted Posts with small businesses in mind. Over 500,000 Pages have used the service, with 30% being new advertisers and 70% of those becoming repeat advertisers. The cost is sliding depending on how big of a following you have. I talked with several people over the next few days who seemed to feel the Promoted Posts were worth the cost for them – so it’s definitely something I’ll begin experimenting with.

Facebook ad campaigns targeted to the media

In the last session, Marty Weintraub did an awesomely energetic (as always) presentation on the power of aiming Facebook ads for client campaigns towards the national (or local as the case may be) media. But, be sure to have something awesome to put in front of them.

Promote your site, not your social presences

Keri Mogret presented some information she’d learned earlier (sorry, can’t remember from who – edit: I now know it was from Jennifer Evan Cario) – but it was about keeping your promotions on your blog. I.e. Don’t tweet a link to a video you’ve done on YouTube – tweet a link to a post on your own blog that embeds the YouTube video. It’s easy to forget that your blog is the only one of your social presences you truly own – and if you drive traffic from one social network to another, your blog should always be the middle man in between.

The Authorship Conference

This conference had SO MUCH talk about Authorship and Google+. Matt said several times that giving and flowing trust to people was definitely one of the things Google is working towards.

Google+ pages can act as people

Mark Traphagen pointed out during his session that in recent weeks, Google+ “pages” (or whatever a business page is referred to) have been changed to allow businesses to interact on Google+ in the same way people can, without the former limitations business pages used to have.

New Google+ cover photos

Google+ came out with GINORMOUS new cover photos. This was discussed a bit at the conference. As an FYI, Cypress North has a fantastic guide on the topic – complete with a downloadable template and inspiration.

Logged in vs. Logged out

My take on why Google+ matters after watching several sessions on it. The results change dramatically for folks logged into Google+ – and that’s easy to benefit from if you’re working your Google+ profile and posting and promoting high quality content in your niche. It may not matter when it comes to strangers who haven’t circled you, but it can greatly increase your visibility within your network – which can in turn result in links and publicity.

Tools & Resources

Help for hacks

In one session Matt Cutts displayed several specific examples he asked us not to cite outside of the session of sites that had been hit with various types of hacks. Hacking can affect your rankings and your CTR and the problem is a bit more common than one might expect – happening to brands both large and small. So, Google created a specific resource to walk webmasters through identifying hacks and achieving recovery from those hacks.

Pingraphy

Struggling to find the time for Pinterest? Jennifer Lopez (from the Moz, not the block) shared a tip during the last session about a site called Pingraphy she’d learned about earlier in the conference from a session by Brent Csutoras. The site allows you to upload pins in bulk and schedule them. She then begged us to use this for good and not evil. :)

Insight

Some good points – to me anyway – were made during the conference.

Understand who your competition is in social

Annalise Kaylor made a very smart comment regarding Facebook. To paraphase – if you’re Coke on Facebook, your competition is not Pepsi. It’s her cousin and her favorite TV show and her friend’s vacation photos. Understand that – and work it to your advantage. Another smart point she made? Facebook is not a strategy, it’s a tactic.

Don’t bet against Google+

We like to joke about the Google+ network, but Todd Hartley smartly pointed out that if you’d told us five years ago that Facebook and Twitter would be an integral part of the marketing strategy for a company, we’d likely have laughed… “Don’t bet against Google+”

Best Overheard of the Conference

[Mics go out in the Future of Search in 2013 panel]
Greg Boser: “Google Censorship!”
Duane Forrester: “I guess the sound in here is ‘not provided’ Matt?”
Danny Sullivan: “I’m sure the sound is working just fine in the PPC session!”
[The whole room roars with laughter]

SMX West 2013 – All in all

This was one of the best SMX conferences I’d attended in years. I spoke on four panels back to back on the last day and was exhausted by the end (but loved every second of it!) but I came away with a lot of interesting tidbits – some published above, several more that were said in confidence during networking at the bar. I’m not sure what the Third Door Media crew did this year as far as strategy, changes and improvements, but it clearly worked. :)

Have a Takeaway to Add?

P.S. If you were in sessions I wasn’t or heard a nugget I didn’t and want to share, feel free to do so in the comments. :)

Cheers!

The post My SMX West 2013 Takeaways appeared first on Sugarrae.

On March 1, 2013 a group of people sat in the CopyPress office looking at the prototype for a bamboo keyboard and mouse that Charlie Qi, one of our employees, had created when he went home for Chinese New Year.

The item was sleek, but not totally unique. There are several bamboo keyboards on the market, that are essentially what you would by for $10 in plastic form, but made from bamboo. They look sleek and are made from a renewable resource.

This prototype we had on our hands was different in some key ways:

1. It worked off a very different design. It was a mix between an Apple keyboard and your standard laptop keyboard, except it used the plastic scissor switches that are accustomed to Apple computers
2. We had put together a Bluetooth, Wired, and Wireless version, so you could use it on an iPad or other device.

I really didn’t know if this was enough to set it apart from the competition, and furthermore we still had the question about how we would distribute such a product. Several other people in the project have experience in importing and exporting, however distribution deals in the US were a new concept to us all.

I felt the best way to get brutally honest feedback was post an image of the setup to Reddit.com on my personal account.

First I uploaded it to Imgur.

Then I added it to Reddit > Hardware…

and to Reddit > Entrepreneur for advice…

…and based on feedback we also posted to Reddit > Mechanical Keyboards to see what they thought…

As you can see the reaction was pretty amazing. We got a ton of feedback, and drove over 30,000 pageviews to the Imgur image.

I spent most of my Friday night and Saturday morning that weekend answering comments and a slew of personal messages. What’s interesting is I didn’t set out for this to be a viral marketing campaign, I just wanted to get clear feedback.

There wasn’t a product page up, and nothing linked to.

A lot of the advice I got was similar to the following…

We took at the mounting pageview count, and thought we needed to act fast.

We quickly contacted our manufacturer and made sure we could make some basic feature changes from what we had heard in the threads, including the development of a mechanical keyboard at a great price point.

We took a series of pictures, and opted for IndieGoGo.com, because we were more interested in pre-orders since we could fund our first product run ourselves.

And then we failed.

We are 8 days into our campaign and we have only sold 9 units. From what I have been told, if you aren’t around 30% to your funding goal in Day 1 you have little chance of driving visibility from IndieGoGo.com itself.

So we were 100% reliant on Reddit.com traffic.

I reposted our work over the few short hours we had gotten feedback, and we got the exact same amazing support…

However, this didn’t equate to sales, and the fault lies with us. From this experience, a clear formula has been laid out regarding Crowdfunding, and I thought I would lay out the basics for those of you looking to plunge in.

Tip 1

Pre-Launch PR is Something Every Campaign Should Look Into – Does every successful Crowdfunding campaign use PR pre-launch, I would say no, but from what we saw you have a small amount of time to make a big impression, and PR can help here.

I would stick to the hits, blogger outreach, product giveaways, social ads. I wouldn’t try to get to aggressive on sites like Reddit.com. I want to stress that what we saw was 100% organic, and we were super transparent about what we were doing. I don’t condone Reddit spamming.

Tip 2

Creative and Copy is Everything – This is where I failed hardest, and the irony of me working for a content based company does not escape me. We were plagued with people wanting better imagery, video, and copy. We ran before we walked and it bit us hard.

IndieGoGo actually does a great job laying out what you should do and supplying examples.

Tip 3

Working our Inner Circle – We completely rested on the traction from Reddit to push the funding. The reality is we should have been working Facebook, Twitter, email, and phones to get our networks to help support us. I did do some Twitter posting, but most of my time was spent responding to Reddit comments and questions.

Tip 4

Remember the GoGo Factor – I didn’t even really know what this was until it was too late. The GoGo Factor decides what funding campaigns will get visibility through the IndieGoGo.com home page.

The reality is that if we would have held off on launching our campaign and subsequent Reddit x-posts to get,

1. A high quality video
2. High quality images and imagery for specs
3. Clear specs, and component information
4. Create a compelling story through our copy
5. Setup an off-IndieGoGo page to seed via blogger outreach and product give aways
6. Have an email list of our network queued to push hard, along with personal social network accounts

We would have seen a ton of success if we could have had the same Reddit traffic.

So in our failure comes some really valuable lessons on not only how to manage a crowdfunding campaign, but also how to run a product launch of any size that has some early social traction. Patience is key, and we didn’t have any.

The post Learn to Master Crowdfunding through My Failure appeared first on Sugarrae.

Quick disclaimer. 1. I blocked all logos, brands and URLs from the Adware. This is about how it can affect your channels and steal from you. 2. If you want anything explained or are confused, leave a comment and I’ll respond and explain it in a different way.

Adware terms and definitions

Here is a glossary with jargon from the post you may not understand.

• Toolbar, Browser extension, BHO (browser helper object) – These are types of Adware that appear on your or inside your browser like firefox, safari, internet explorer, opera or any other type of browser you use to go online. They are used to activate upon reaching a merchant’s site and set a cookie, overwrite another channel and to modify other websites, search engine’s and user experiences online.
• Couponware, reminderware, loyaltyware – These are forms of toolbars normally used by coupon, loyalty and cash back or charity sites to make the Adware sound happy and positive. If you think about the name, it is meant to activate when the person hits your site to show coupons, remind you of coupons and cause a potential full priced customer to now get a discount, reduce your margin and cost you money.
• Shopping windows and helpers – These are small windows that stay open and display ads as you browse the internet, entice you to click on them when you reach a Merchant’s website or show coupons when you hit a site they are affiliated with.
• PPV, CPV, PopUps, Pop Unders, interruptive, interstitial – These are types of Adware that react based on the content of your site, the search querey you run on search engines like Google or the URLs of the Merchants. This is Adware and not PPC or real search marketing. It has no way to activate without stealing traffic and using someone else’s hard work.
• Reminders – These are things that pop up when the Adware recognizes a URL or site or they change colors to let you know you can save money. They are smaller and can come in the form of icons, characters or even people that pop up out of the bottom of your screen or on your desktop and can still be nasty pieces of Adware that are hard to remove.

How Adware can steal from you and hurt your bottom line

Affiliate marketing, when managed properly is one of the best channels you can rely on. It provides you with a network of content sites and search or social media marketers that send new and incremental customers to you on a rev. share or no risk basis to your company.

Unfortunately, almost every program I see is overrun with coupon code box poachers, trademark bidders and/or Adware companies. These types of partners are what give a negative name to some people for Affiliates.

However, if you find an ethical Affiliate Manager or Affiliate Management Company you can have a value adding program and your other channels will have an accurate measure of their success, without their sales being poached by Adware and coupon partners.

Here are 5 ways Affiliate Adware effects your company and/or your revenue.

5 types of Affiliate Adware and How it Works

1. Adware poaching sales from paid search

One of the scariest things for a company to see is the loss of revenue from an Affiliate Adware application taking credit from a sale that should have been from SEO. In the image above you’ll see I did a search query for a fairly expensive term.

You’ll notice that next to the company’s own paid ad there is an icon. The icon is there to help entice a click. As the ad is clicked (with or without the icon being clicked depending on the application) the person (with many of these types of applications) is redirected through the Affiliate’s link to set their cookie and then to the Merchant’s site or landing page. T

hey no longer go directly from Google to the Merchant but the Merchant still pays for the Google click. Because of the redirect, the Affiliate’s cookie is now set and if a sale is made the Affiliate will get credit for a sale that the Merchant paid for with a PPC ad that they paid for.

Instead of giving credit to PPC (depending on your company’s internal tracking) the sale is now given credit as an Affiliate sale, your company has now spent money on a PPC ad, the commission paid to an Affiliate, a discount if any coupons are used and also a network fee (depending on the network you are on).

This is a huge loss, especially because you have to spend money to convert the sale with PPC and now incur additional costs for a sale that was stolen from you. An even less value adding scenario is if it was a URL or trademark bid.

If the ad or click came from your trademark, this is a returning customer or someone who saw your ad and was coming to your site anyways. Now you have to spend all of these fees again for someone who already knew about you and was coming to shop anyways. This is a very large revenue loss and the money should never have been given to the Affiliate Channel.

These Adware applications are live on many of the major networks and numerous Affiliates that run these applications are partnered with hundreds and even thousands of Merchant’s meaning they are probably in your company’s program and poaching sales that other channels like PPC should have earned. One thing to look at with transactions is an attribution line or what other channels, besides Affiliate the same is credited to.

This same sale may end up being credited through Adwords because it did start with a click from Google PPC, and unless their tracking is overwritten, it will also appear inside the Affiliate Network. What you need to look at in this case is the adwords click and when the Affiliate cookie was set. This will show you the theft.

The cookie can be set on your site or just after or during the click from Google. That is a huge sign that it is Adware or coupon box poaching and you are being stolen from. Now your attribution is messed up and your company doesn’t know where to properly spend it’s money.

It may turn out that PPC is a lot more profitable off of numerous terms than you previously thought were break even or just not working. This also costs the PPC department money, Google money when the company thinks PPC isn’t working as well and credits the wrong channel.

2. Overwriting SEO generated sales

In the image above you’ll see that there are regular search results showing up like you would expect. However there is an Affiliate toolbar or browser extension on the person’s browser and icons next to the SERP results. When I click on the link to go to the site, I first redirect through the Affiliate’s site and then go to the Merchant’s site.

Because of this, you tracking may show that the sale was referred from the Affiliate’s site, may not show that it was actually your own SEO work and because a cookie is now set, the Affiliate will get credit for the sale if the customer purchases. This path would eat the sale from SEO and give credit to the Affiliate, if the person hadn’t been to your site before.

There is no way to know that they actually came from search, unless you have them tagged from somewhere else. Analytics is not dependable either, unless you get 100% of search queries and the Adware application is not blocking it.

Now your SEO department is losing sales and you are spending money on sales that were never earned in the Affiliate Channel.

3. Adware replacing Google Adwords Ads with Bing Ads on Google Search Results

This is a scary one for PPC people and for Google. The screen shots are being provided by Kellie Stevens from AffiliateFairPlay.com as I don’t want to download these applications onto any of my systems. What happens is that a Bing partner has created an application that is showing a bing ad over the top of Google search results.

By pulling what would have shown in Bing and recognizing the querey done on Google, the Adware application knows what ads to show and can stop your PPC efforts from getting all of the exposure off of your top terms.

4. Affiliate Adware overwriting another Affiliate’s cookie

This is a scary one for any legit Affiliate. If you follow the three pictures, in the first one I am on a well known Affiliate Site for mobile phones and accessories. I go through a post and see an ad or Affiliate link. (In the top picture you’ll see a text link.) When I click on the link an Affiliate Cookie should be set for this Affiliate.

Without Adware on my browser, this Affiliate would get credit (unless the person sees a coupon code box and the Affiliate Manager or Management Company allows coupon sites to rank for URL or trademark + coupons, etc. which lets people who leave for a coupon site enable the coupon sites to poach the sale.

This is another type of theft that ethical and well managed programs do not allow. You should try typing these terms into the search engines and if any active Affiliates are showing up for your company or programs you promote. If active Affiliates are showing up, you are potentially losing sales from your channel or your own sites and losing sales or money to couponers who add no value to these sales.).

Because I have a toolbar on my browser, when I go to the Merchant’s website a few things can happen depending on the application.

1. The toolbar redirects through their own link or takes me to their site first and then redirects to the Merchant’s site to look like a real referral and so they can steal the sale from the legit partner.
2. If there is no redirect, I may be taken to the toolbar Affiliate’s own site first and shown a coupon code to get me to click. This would also be bad for the legit partner.
3. When I get to the Merchant’s site, a screen or ad would show that either displays a coupon code, says coupons are available or says click her to get cash back. This click could also replace the original Affiliate’s cookie and steal their sale.
4. Parts of my browser and toolbar will change colors letting me know I can save if I click on it.

This is one of the more common types of behaviors you can find on almost all major networks. With the toolbar I downloaded above, almost all of the things above have happened. I was taken to the Adware Affiliate’s site, the legit referring Affiliate’s cookie has been replaced and I was prompted to click and get coupons directly on the Merchant’s site.

This particular well known site and name brand does this over SEO and SERPs, PPC, Comparison Engines, Internal Email Lists, Social Media sites, etc… The reason it does this is that it waits until it sees the Merchant’s URL and then activates. Because of this it can overwrite and steal from any and every channel including offline advertising.

This is also one of the reasons many people think that Affiliate Marketing doesn’t work and they don’t use Affiliate ads on their site.

With coupon sites ranking for the Merchant’s trademark + coupons and these Adware applications, the cost to your company is huge.

1. You will scare off legit value adding partners.
2. Your company loses sales to people who never sent you a new customer and poached sales from you.
3. You are paying commissions, network fees, discounts or coupons, salaries and sometimes bonuses on sales that were never earned.
4. Your competitors that manage their programs correctly will gain the value adding partners and it will be twice as hard to get them to rejoin your program since they don’t trust you because you allowed this to happen in your program.
5. Affiliate’s and site owners talk to each other and your company can be blacklisted for other programs that carry the same product lines, and you’ll lose the trust of that entire group and network of potential value adding partners. The smarter smaller companies will get the sales and you’ll be losing customers you would never have had without them.

5. Injecting ads and copy into Merchant’s sites, other sites and over other ads

(Please refer to the screen shot in section 3 for the injection over Google.)

In this case the Adware application is showing ads on top of another Affiliate’s ads and/or over their site and the Merchant’s site. This can also happen on any other site you are looking at.

This type of Adware can also have the capability to read the content of your site and turn your own Affiliate links into their Affiliate Links, replace your cookies or ad links and ads to your copy when you didn’t actually place it there. Not only are they taking credit for your hard work and you pre-selling the products or services, they are injecting ads and copy onto your site changing the user experience.

This can increase your bounce rate, hurt the site experience and cause the user to not want to come back again. Here are a few more negative things that can happen.

1. If you have advertisers or get paid on a click basis, your ads are being blocked and your Advertisers are not getting the click throughs or exposure they need. The visit should however still show impressions if you sell ads on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.
2. If you wanted an ad free and clean site, this visitor isn’t being exposed to your copy or content the way it should be seen. Instead they are seeing what the Adware creates and a distorted version of your site.
3. If the ads are something you are opposed to or the ads that are shown are offensive, the people visiting could now associate that with your site and you could lose a reader or visitor for life.
4. If you had your own links or Affiliate ads on your pages and site, this Adware can now replace it and take credit for your sales and steal your commissions.

I have never seen an Adware application that was positive or beneficial to a Merchant or a legit Affiliate.

Because the networks don’t educate you on Adware (Two of the largest networks in the USA have parent companies that run their own toolbars in their networks and in almost every other network) and because most Affiliate Managers have no way to be trained in Adware and incremental value, it runs rampant in the industry and can steal from every channel and legit partners.

Steps to see if your Affiliate program is adding value

The first step in seeing if you have a value adding affiliate program is to run a few quick tests.

1. Type in your URL + coupons into Google and Bing. If the top ten results or any of the ads are active Affiliates, you have an issue and are being poached from in my opinion.
2. Go through those top ten sites and ads and take the company name and search the name or URL with the term toolbar, download, uninstall, etc…. Another option is to look for browser extension or helper on their site. This will normally pull up results and show you if you have a partner with toolbars, etc. You will have to download them and test them to see if they are active and how they work. Some Adware sites actually hide them from the main site and use other ways to install Adware onto computers. I have an example below.
3. Check the FAQs and Terms of Service for the sites. Some of the sites that use downloadable software will have instructions on how to use it, install it and how to uninstall it from your computer and browser. See below.

On a final note, not all visitors actually start from, use or have ever even heard of the site they download the Adware from. I was at a Kristin Chenoweth concert and she usually brings a charity for rescued animals with her to help rescue animals (which is awesome).

The charity she brought with her in DC was handing out cards for an Adware Affiliate asking people to just log on and download the browser extension. In exchange for the download, the Adware Affiliate will donate an instant $10 to the partner. When you read the actual page on their site it says for a new person who isn’t part of their network they will get the $10. They also emphasize that you have to add the Adware to your computer so they can get a donation. If you don’t add the Adware then they will not get donations.

This pulls at people’s hearts and really gets them to install the Adware, not knowing what is actually happening to their computers. Above is a screen shot directly from the animal rescue’s site with the Affiliate’s name and URL blocked out.

Why Networks and Affiliate Management Companies Don’t Kick Them Out

This is something that most people wonder when they find out what is happening. The truth is that not everyone has your best interest in mind. You or your Manager doesn’t know how to look for it and the sales look like real referrals so it is very hard to catch. Because you don’t suspect anything, they assume you will never find out.

Other times the networks parent companies have their own applications and are running it in their networks and other networks. Depending on the network your program is on, or if you are in house, they are probably in your program as well. The more programs they join and add, the more they can poach and earn.

Now you pay them for sales they didn’t earn for both commissions and for network fees if you are on the network they own. If they poach from your PPC or paid channels, you now lose money from that channel and if the person uses a coupon code you lose even more margin possibly making the sale not profitable anymore.

When you are on a network you are also probably paying to help to support a compliance team which is clearly not in your favor or best interest if this is happening. It’s the same as the Networks not educating Merchant’s on how to stop coupon sites from ranking for your trademarks. The reason they don’t is that they’ll lose a ton of money.

The only legit Affiliate Management Companies you will find are the ones that walk you through this and help you remove the theft. The networks usually don’t like us very much because we remove the theft from Adware and coupon sites ranking for your trademark or URL + coupons, etc.

If you are being managed properly, your top ten and probably twenty Affiliates will all be content sites and you will be able to see where your banners and links are. If this doesn’t sound like your top ten or twenty list, you more than likely have an issue and need to rethink your strategy and your program.

This Affiliate industry is one of the best because there is no risk, unless you have an uneducated manager or someone who simply doesn’t have your best interest in mind managing your program. It is important to run the tests I mentioned above and see what is happening in your program.

If any of these are happening, you probably need a new manager, new management company or you can contact someone like myself and I will help to educate you and work with you or your in house Affiliate Manager to clean out the theft and help build a value adding program.

Quick summary

Adware can be installed by downloading a game, a screen saver, installed in the form of a shopping helper, coupon finder and even just as a browser extension from a well-known brand. It can show ads on a site, not show anything but force a click or perform an automatic redirect.

It can activate the minute someone hits your shopping cart by targeting the coupon code box, the URL or the keywords on the page like check out, confirm, your order, etc. Other forms will modify search engines like Google and some will just pop up over a Merchant’s site, redirect through an Affiliate link and take credit for sending the sale, even if they never click the link.

No matter how you define it, in my opinion it will always hurt you as a Merchant and costs you more money than it will earn you.

The post How Affiliate Adware Affects Your Revenue appeared first on Sugarrae.