Sugarrae aka Rae Hoffman

Affiliate Datafeeds and Duplicate Content

The other day I posed a question on Twitter; “If you could learn more about one aspect of affiliate marketing, what would it be?” and a large portion of the responses I got back as a result were about using affiliate datafeeds. Even more specifically, several of them revolved around datafeed usage and duplicate content in regards to SEO.

I’ve used (and still use) a lot of datafeeds in the construction of my affiliate sites and have learned quite a bit in regards to using them over the years. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pass along some of what I’ve learned to help a few Twitterkin out.

Information for Merchants

The first and foremost rule merchants need to follow to protect themselves is that you should never, EVER give your affiliates an exact copy of the datafeed you use on your own site. While Google does their best to figure out who is the original owner of duplicate content when they find it, bottom line is that a lot of it comes down to site age and strength.

What that means is that the older and stronger (in regards to quality links) a site is, the better the chance it has of winning out as the “original source” of the content, and as a result, being the page to appear in the search results when that content is deemed the most relevant for the users query.

Top affiliates have been at this game a long time and as a result, many have aged, strong sites. If you give them an exact copy of your own feed, you could end up knocking your own site out of the search results for your terms.

Does that mean you shouldn’t offer a datafeed to your affiliates?

HELL NO!

Datafeeds are a valuable tool for affiliates, and one you should be offering if you have a large inventory of products. The key is to provide affiliates with a datafeed without potentially harming your own rankings. And that means creating a separate, rewritten datafeed for your affiliates to use with rewritten product descriptions.

And no, you don’t need to create a separate feed for EACH affiliate. You simply need two versions of your feed. One for you (the merchant) and one for all of your affiliates to use. They’ll find some tips on dealing with their own potential duplicate content issues with other affiliates below.

And while I have the attention of a few merchants, here are some additional tips on creating happy, profitable affiliates.

Information for Affiliates

Now, you’ll have to respect that I can’t give you EVERY tip I’ve learned over the years about using datafeeds… a girl has to keep some form of a competitive edge. But I can share a few things with you and folks can feel free to leave more tips in the comments below if they’d like.

Accept that the feed isn’t “plug and play” when it comes to SEO

Using an affiliate datafeed acts as a solid foundation of content for your individual product pages and is not “your content” if you want to do well with SEO (and aren’t the “strongest” affiliate site using the feed). You’re going to need to create additional fields in the datafeed and fill it with unique content.

That content can be additional information about the product or uses of the product, additional information that describes the product or anything else you can dream up. But you need to value add to make the content “technically unique” AS WELL AS “conceptually unique“.

Switch things up

Don’t display things in the same order that they appear in the feed. If there are 8 different fields describing the product, switch up the order in which they appear from the feed or randomize how they appear from the feed if you have the programming skills to do so (we’re talking height, width and depth type fields here and not placing the height above the description).

Change up the image names

I don’t ever leave the images on the merchant’s server. I always download the images to my own site (and size them properly, if they aren’t already) and give them new naming conventions. It helps separate you from every other affiliate site out there using the same feed.

Change up the affiliate links

Even ignoring the duplicity of the datafeed, you should be running your affiliate links through redirects in a blocked folder for your own tracking purposes.

Add value

Every time I say this phrase in regards to affiliate marketing, a Googler gets their wings. But you need to add some additional value to the feed if you want your site to pass a hand review (even if you’re not in a competitive – aka “watched” field, you never know if your competitors agree with me or not).

This might be giving visitors the ability to leave reviews, this might be giving users the ability to compare prices between different merchants, this might be a lot of things. But differentiation on a true scale, in addition to the technical differentiation listed above will put you a long way ahead of your competitors that are too lazy to do so.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Affiliate Datafeeds and Duplicate Content

My First Affiliate Summit Experience

I know, I know. I’ve been an affiliate for over a decade now [I'm not old, I'm not old]… how have I not attended an Affiliate Summit before? I must have been asked that question thirty times this week.

I really don’t know… I think because I’ve always been an organically focused affiliate, I’ve tended to mingle within the SEO community more than the affiliate community.

That said, I was asked to speak at ASE, had always wanted to attend the conference and figured now was the time to pop that cherry.

The Organizers

I was actually impressed with how well the conference was organized. Aside from a lack of a “schedule at a glance” in the conference bags (maybe we were blind), it was a well oiled machine. Check in lines were short even though the place was packed. Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were on hand and mingling up a storm with any attendee who wanted to meet them. And it was the first conference I’ve ever attended where I didn’t hear a single complaint about the WiFi.

The People

First, let me say that Affiliate Summiters are a very attractive group of people on a overall whole. ;-) Secondly, from all the folks I talked to, PPC is definitely the weapon of mass choice for these conference attendees. I’d say one out of every fifteen people I spoke with was a primarily organic affiliate. The average age was also much younger than any other tech conference I’ve ever attended (not saying that’s a bad thing, just saying).

The Expo Hall

You’d have thought there was money falling from the sky in the expo hall based on how packed it was. I’ve seen an expo hall with that many merchants before, but I’ve never seen one that large that was literally packed to the rafters. It was almost impossible to walk there were so many people. And while SEO conferences have increasingly reduced swag giveaways over the last few years, it seemed that every single merchant with a booth was giving away swag at ASE – and nice stuff too!

Some of the merchants were a bit, uh, on the shady side. But, all the big players were there, including CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Linkshare and the like. I had some good conversations, found some interesting programs and was able to get faces to match the names of folks I’ve been receiving support from via the networks over the years.

I won’t lie – at first I was like, who charges 100 bucks just to get into an expo hall (that was the cost if you didn’t have a regular conference pass and ONLY wanted to hit the expo hall)? After seeing the expo hall, the free drinks flowing and the networking going on within it, I can say that I honestly get it now.

My Session

I spoke on an Organic SEO site review panel along with Michael Gray, Michael Streko, Frank Watson and Chris Pearson – who “moderated” ;-) the panel. The room was packed with people standing at the door for most of the session. To be honest, I think we made a great panel, because all of us on it are affiliates ourselves, with almost all of us earning our primary full time livings off the trade.

In addition to being very experienced with building out successful affiliate sites, we’re all also very experienced with SEO. I think it helped us look at sites in a way that even a good SEO, who doesn’t have heavy experience in the affiliate realm, wouldn’t have been able to. It’s an affiliate conference, but an SEO panel. I hope we brought some additional value to those in attendance because of our combination of experience and success with both realms. I love doing site clinics – I love thinking on my feet.

If you want to read the best liveblogging coverage of the OTHER sessions that occurred, head on over to Outspoken Media and read the ASE 09 coverage there.

The Parties

First, let me admit that I hate the “exclusive gatherings” parties a lot of merchants put on. That goes for every conference, not just Affiliate Summit – where they only invite 200 people (and usually the same people) and want to seem exclusive and elite. I hate elitist bullshit and don’t think I’ve attended one of those in a long time. I’m at a conference to network with folks I don’t know, not reciprocally back pat those I do.

That said, I wasn’t there for the entire conference, so I have no idea how many “open” parties there were. But I did attend one party, which was open to anyone who went to their booth and grabbed an invite – the Shareasale party.

It was held on the roof of the Empire Hotel, drinks – both beer and liquor – were served free of charge for four hours, there was a DJ, plenty of areas for the smokers and it was a really, really good time. Shareasale definitely earned some good will with me via being generous enough to host it and they’ll be getting more business from me in the future. It was really well done.

Overall

To be honest, I had a damn good time. It was good getting out of my conference comfort zone and Missy and Shawn put on a damn good show. Hopefully I’ll be asked to return for another site clinic during the next ASE. ;-)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

My First Affiliate Summit Experience

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

About a year ago I did a case study on the use of Twitter by BBGeeks.com – a site I own about BlackBerry phones. We were using Twitter as sort of a guerrilla marketing tactic to increase traffic to our site and more importantly, promote our brand.

The results were encouraging – we’d acquired 500 followers in a short period of time and found they were actually visiting our site and engaging with us as a result. The initial results were promising enough that we kept with it, kept learning, kept testing – and we’re very glad we did.

We went on building our brand via being an “online help desk” of sorts for BlackBerry issues, much like we did in the previous case study:

One of the BBGeeks.com staff was the voice of @bbgeeks on Twitter.
We continued in our belief that our goal should be for him to become a BlackBerry trouble shooter (.i.e. help people) first, promotional evangelist (i.e. drop links) for BBGeeks.com second.
None of our tweets were automated, not even links to our blog posts – if we didn’t feel it was worth dropping by hand, we didn’t drop it.
We continued to seek out BlackBerry users via various search methods.

We had built our following up to about 5000 people by February of 09. Our traffic from Twitter continued to grow from the time we’d last graphed it and we were starting to get excited about the possibilities even larger follower counts might bring:

In March of this year, we really “geared up” our efforts. We began to be more aggressive in seeking out followers:

We began to seek out the Twitter accounts of our major competitors and follow their followers… if they were interested in the competition enough to follow them, chances were, they’d be interested in us too.
We ran contests to get people to retweet about us to their followers.
We sought out top twitterers we knew had an interest in BlackBerries.
We continued to be extremely helpful to anyone would could, and in turn, those folks often told other folks about us when their friends had BlackBerry issues arise.

Within a month, our follower count had gone to five figures and over the next few months, it continued to rise steadily:

Our traffic from Twitter also severely increased over those next few months:

Now, if we go by Danny Sullivan’s theory that analytics under-counts Twitter traffic by as much as 500%, our actual traffic numbers from Twitter, in theory, may have more resembled the below during that timeframe:

At the time this post was written, BBGeeks has over 19,000 followers on Twitter. Based on internal data that I’m not willing to share (hey, you can’t expect the entire farm for free), I can tell you that Twitter traffic converts higher than any other social network we track to date, by leaps and bounds. Twitter traffic actually clicks on our affiliate links, on our contextual ads and uses our coupon codes (we run Twitter only coupon codes sometimes).

In addition to the direct revenue Twitter brings us, it also helps increase our brand, gives Google signals of our authority and trust and it has been directly responsible for many links we’ve acquired.

Twitter also helps us develop content that contributes heavily to our long tail search volume on the site from various search engines. As I mentioned in my last case study:

We get tons of content ideas from the various questions and problems we see our followers and the people we are following experiencing.

My theory is that if folks were looking for answers to specific questions and/or problems on Twitter, non Twitter folks were likely typing those same queries into search engines as well. So we started a dedicated section of our site we refer to as the Twitter help files.

In it, we round up the various questions we receive each month, the answers we’ve given and develop and entire post of “long tail” information that is helpful to search users. Additionally, the folks who help us out by asking us these questions get some promotion to our large readership as well.

Win, win.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

Testing

Please ignore :)

Testing something

Thanks.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Testing

Thesis Tutorial – Creating Custom Categories

I get asked at least once per week how I got the custom content on my category pages (you can check out the affiliate marketing category here on Sugarrae or the SEO conference category on Outspoken Media to see examples). The answer are custom category hooks and the instructions for creating them are below.

Now first, I’d like to say that having custom categories is possible in any Wordpress theme. So, if you’re not using Thesis, all you need to do is duplicate the basic category.php template of your theme and and then customize it for each category, name it category-#.php (with # being the actual number of the category you have customized that template for) and upload it to your theme file. Wordpress by default will first check for a category-#.php file before it renders the plain category.php if a custom one does not exist.

That said, if you plan to customize every category on your blog, I’d highly suggest switching to the Thesis platform. Why? Well, if you go to change blog layouts or designs in the future, you will have to re-create every single custom category template in the new theme. With Thesis, if you change the design, the hooks still remain. You do it once and don’t have to worry about it again.

For those of us already on the Thesis theme, adding the hooks to do the custom categories is fairly easy. However, please note that you need to be on Thesis 1.4 or higher for the instructions below to work. If you’re still using an older version of the theme, you need to upgrade. I’d also recommend reading hooks for dummies before attempting the below so you get an idea of how hooks work so the code below makes more sense.

Creating Custom Categories

Let’s say you want to add some custom text to the top of your “apples” category page, above where the listing of your posts in that category appear and different custom text to the top of your “oranges” category page.

Step 1: Open your custom_functions.php file (thesis > custom > custom_functions.php) in your favorite editor

Step 2: Underneath the example code already in the file, place the following code (this code assumes your blog is in the root):

/* Custom Categories */
function custom_archive_info() {
if (is_category('apples')) {
?>
<div class="post_box top intro_block">
<div class="headline_area">
<h1><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>
</div>
<div class="format_text">
<p>YOUR CUSTOM APPLES TEXT HERE</p>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}
elseif (is_category('oranges')) {
?>
<div class="post_box top intro_block">
<div class="headline_area">
<h1><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>
</div>
<div class="format_text">
<p>YOUR CUSTOM ORANGES TEXT HERE</p>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}
else
thesis_default_archive_info();
}
remove_action('thesis_hook_archive_info', 'thesis_default_archive_info');
add_action('thesis_hook_archive_info', 'custom_archive_info');

The /* Custom Categories */ is a label for the code below so you know what it is at a single glance. This is not part of the actual “code”. The word “function” tells Thesis you want it to do something. The custom_archive_info is what I decided to name that function.

The if (is_category(’apples’)) tells Thesis the category archive page you are looking to alter is the apples category. It goes by post slug of the category. So if the url of your category page is www.yourblog.com/category/learning-seo/ then you would use if (is_category(’learning-seo’)) in place of if (is_category(’apples’)). This line says IF the category is “apples” then insert the custom text below.

Now, the next portion of the code is an “else if” statement. If the category is apples, then it will insert the specified text outlined in (is_category(’apples’)) OR if (elseif) the category is oranges, it will insert the specified text outlined in (is_category(’oranges’)). The last portion of the code (else) basically says if it is anything else aside from the categories specified above, then use this default code (which happens to be the regular Thesis category page).

So you start with the initial “if” statement (the first category that you specify – choose any one you want) and then all subsequent categories would be “elseif” statements followed by the “default” “else” statement of what to use if you haven’t specified anything specific.

You can add more categories by simply adding more “elseif” statements:

elseif (is_category('yet-another-category')) {
?>
<div class="post_box top intro_block">
<div class="headline_area">
<h1><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>
</div>
<div class="format_text">
<p>YOUR CUSTOM TEXT FOR THIS CATEGORY HERE</p>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}

Between the first “elseif” statement and the “else” statement in the example above:

elseif (is_category('oranges')) {
?>
<div class="post_box top intro_block">
<div class="headline_area">
<h1><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>
</div>
<div class="format_text">
<p>YOUR CUSTOM ORANGES TEXT HERE</p>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}
ADD MORE ELSEIF STATEMENTS (AKA CATEGORIES) HERE
else
thesis_default_archive_info();
}

The last two lines of the initial code example above:

remove_action('thesis_hook_archive_info', 'thesis_default_archive_info');
add_action('thesis_hook_archive_info', 'custom_archive_info');

Basically tell Thesis you want to remove the “thesis_default_archive_info” function (the default category instructions) from the “thesis_hook_archive_info” and replace it with the “custom_archive_info” function (which contains the new category instructions you just made).

Creating Custom Tag Pages

If you use tags instead of (or in addition to) categories and would like to create custom pages for those as well, just replace:

(is_category('yet-another-category'))

with:

(is_tag('tag-slug'))

If you’re using the Thesis theme already and have read my other Thesis tutorials you’ll probably find this process pretty easy. If you haven’t made the switch to using Thesis yet, I’d highly recommend you read my review of the Thesis theme, as well as the tutorials to get a sense of why I am such a loud-mouthed and enthusiastic evangelist for this theme.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Thesis Tutorial – Creating Custom Categories

James Cook of Kawink Wants to Know What You Think

So, this morning I received an angry email from some guy pissed off that I wasn’t responding to his emails requesting support on the Customize Your Community plugin that I paid to have developed and had given away for free (that says it accepts donations, but of course, he didn’t donate) right after I had it developed. His email said:

“Rae Hoffman-

I am confused your website comes off as really credible and you seem to be connected some what to the blogging/internet arena but you have ignored 2 different emails sent telling you that we are having a problem with your plugin…I wonder what your community would think of that?

James Cook
www.kawink.com”

Well, my thought is that folks might think that people running a real business should hire a programmer and not send a blogger emails threatening to expose them for not providing free support. So, my response was:

“I think my community would be kind of surprised at the audacity that you demand I help you troubleshoot a plug-in I paid xxx dollars to have developed that I no longer support because I no longer need it that you didn’t bother to donate anything to but feel entitled to receiving support for.

In short, don’t threaten me asshole.

Rae”

So what say you community? What do you think?

UPDATE:

He responded to my email with the following:

Rae-

I will not even lower myself to start slinging names back and forth however tempting it might be. Who threatened you? Myself and others who use word press ‘QUITE” often will email developers of plugins if they have issues and in “MOST” cases will get emails back fairly quickly “ATTEMPTING” to help “OR” simply saying WE DON’T OFFER TECHNICAL SUPPORT after all who would know the plug-in better than the person who built it or paid for it in your case….In any case most fellow Bloggers try to help out their fellow Bloggers. Your a real piece of work Rae it took the last email in order for you to respond back within minutes yet you could not take the time to help someone reaching out to you for help…which ironically is why the world is in the exact shape that it’s in right now is because of selfish people just like you.

I have 50 niche blogs and I will make sure I attached a post to ALL of them with our communications and your choice language as a lady…and even if just one person pulls up this post and sees you for your true colors I will be pleased. People dont email you nor any other developer knowing how much the person paid to develop thier plugin or any of that other stuff “RAE” or even with the “AUDACITY” in mind you spoke about they email you because they simply may need your help…and our IT person tried to trouble shoot it first but the next logical step is to contact the developer????????? Here’s a tip take the down the plugin OR post the contact info of who developed it before you crash or ruins someone else’s blog since your not updating OR supporting it…we lost 100’s of would be registars on just 2 of our blogs because your plugin most likely does NOT work with current versions of word press and it was NOT until someone took to the time to email me saying your captcha IS NOT WORKING….

Get a clue…with your attitude it’s amazing how you have done so well…but then again I was just telling my wife how it always seems to be the most arrogant and selfish people who rise to the top, sometimes it really makes everyone else scratch their head in disbelief…

I will email you a link to the post…

Have a fabulous day fellow blogger glad our experience with other developers has not been like this…

We wish we could take back our vote for you as we had voted for you thinking how great your blog was and all the other yada yada stuff thanks for flashing us your true colors now your marked and we see you!

CEO SMEECEO…

Note: Spelling errors and typos are obviously his, not mine.

Guess I should send him the link to mine…

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

James Cook of Kawink Wants to Know What You Think

PRWeb Review

I’m often asked when I mention doing press releases for website promotion, branding and visibility what online press release distribution services I recommend, if any. The truth is that I’m a longtime user of PRWeb, have spent thousands of dollars running press releases with them and am pretty pleased with their services.

When I first started doing serious press releases several years back, I signed up with PRWeb – partially because they were very visible at industry conferences like PubCon and partially because they offered (and still do offer) a series of free webinars that explained how to use the service.

I was making the leap from being a small site affiliate to creating true affiliate brands and knew press releases had to be a part of my marketing strategy. With the roles of traffic and branding playing a larger and larger part in top search engine rankings, utilizing every opportunity you have to get publicity, including press releases, is becoming more of a necessity.

The PRWeb offerings

PRWeb has tried to simplify their offerings over the years to give you a choice between four main press release packages:

Standard Visibility aka the $80 level
Social Media Visibility aka the $140 level
SEO Visibility aka the $200 level
Media Visibility aka the $360 level

While the site touts tons of features for each, the main (read, important) differences aren’t that difficult to spot.

Standard Visibility ($80)

The cheapest of all the available options, standard visibility gets your release listed on the PRWeb network (which gets about 2-3 million unique visitors per month), in Google News and Yahoo News. Additionally, you’ll also get access to basic statistics about how “well” your release did such as headline impressions (cumulative, by week and by day), full page reads (cumulative, by week and by day) and the ability to compare the statistics of one (or more) press releases to another (useful in identifying the best days of the week to send out releases and which features help make your release more appealing).

Social Media Visibility ($140)

This option gets you everything included in the Standard Visibility package with a little increased distribution. Specifically, your release will be sent to an additional list of about 35,000 opt-in journalists, a “media digest” list (a list of about 4-500 regional reporters or 150-300 vertical reporters – your choice) and will also be distributed on the Pheedo network (which means your release will receive exposure on the relevant high profile sites in Pheedo’s network).

SEO Visibility ($200)

The “SEO Visibility” package, in my experience, is often the most misunderstood. PRWeb, along with every other known press release site, has long been treated differently by Google. The links from within your press release, with or without anchor text are not going to give you much (if any) “inbound link value” in the eyes of Google. Then why bother with the SEO Visibility package? A few reasons.

The SEO Visibility option comes with everything included in the Standard and Social Media Visibility options as well as distribution to an additional regional or vertical media digest list (for a total of two), inclusion with relevant premium vertical publishers (like Entrepreneur.com) and the ability to embed an image within your release.

In addition to that increased distribution, you can also specify anchor text for your links, keywords to include in the url of your release when published on PRWeb. If the links don’t “count” then why does either of these options matter? To begin with, at first glance, a press release looks much neater and more professional with “anchor text” vs. www.mydomain.com/the-long-ass-url-to-the-feature-were-announcing.html as the links to the features, people or products being announced.

Additionally, PRWeb has numerous distribution channels and should someone from those channels decide to publish your release on their own site, you’ll likely find more value in that re-published release linking to you with anchor text rather than long and ugly url strings.

Specifying keywords to use in the url of the release hosted on PRWeb will increase (however slightly) the chances that your release will rank well in the search engines based on the domain age, trust, branding and traffic of PRWeb.

Additionally, you also get access to additional statistics called “Search Engine Hits” (which is a bit misleading since it is actually search engine visits, not “hits” as traditional SEO folk would identify “hits”). You’ll get to see the percentage of total search engine traffic each of the major engines sent to your release (Google News, Google, Yahoo, MSN and “other”) as well as the top 20 keywords that drove that traffic. Unfortunately, while they show you the % of traffic each engine sent, they don’t show an aggregate number of “total search engine visits”, which PRWeb says they’re working on providing.

Media Visibility ($360)

This package includes everything in the three previous packages, but with some additional “heavy artillery” distribution via the Associated Press and by having your release sent to a distribution list that includes the top newspaper in 100 designated marketing areas (DMA). It also includes the ability to include video with your release, access to additional geographical statistics (which is essentially a Google maps mashup showing you the location of people who have read your release) and the ability to export all of your statistics (you can find an example export here).

What to watch out for

PRWeb makes it incredibly easy to get your release in front of the right people (your release will need to do the rest) but it does have a few caveats you should be aware of.

Linking limitations

Links, even with the SEO Visibility package are limited to 1 per 100 words. PRWeb’s reasoning is that Google News seems to prefer this ratio and anything above it risks the release not being included in Google News. Since press releases traditionally are supposed to be short and to the point, you might find you quickly run out of links and are then editing your release to bulk it up to get another link or two in. However, note that if you contact PRWeb and explain you’ll take the risk of not being included in Google news, they will allow your release to go through providing the number of links isn’t excessive (aka obvious spam).

RSS groupings

PRWeb has the ability to group your releases, which is especially useful for those submitting releases on behalf of clients. However, note that underneath each release published is a section called “Other releases by the member” where other releases in the same grouping appear. So if you don’t want sites connected publicly, be sure not to connect them in your account by putting them in the same RSS grouping.

Editorial Scores

PRWeb doesn’t give much information about how it doles out editorial scores, only that each release receives a score of 1-5 (with 5 being the best) and that an editorial score of 4 or higher is required for your release to be distributed to Topix, Yahoo News and eMediaWire. If you get a score below a 4, you’ll want to edit and improve your release and submit it for another review to ensure maximum exposure. That said, I’ve never really had a problem getting an editorial score of four or above.

Three power user tips

PRWeb is releasing a “Tweet It” option for your press releases that will tweet your press release for you the second it goes live. Be sure to take advantage of this brand new feature. Twitter is awesome at spreading news in a viral fashion.
Press releases are listed on PRWeb based on who paid the most. You can buy additional “stars” above the four packages listed to show higher than other folks if you’d like. Whatever package you buy, you might want to consider paying a few dollars above the package price. So, if you buy the 200 dollar package, pay 203 dollars. This will bump you above all other press releases who only paid the 200 dollar base price without you having to buy another entire star for 40 dollars.
If you’re interested in trying out PRWeb, I’d suggest signing up for an account and then attending their free daily webinars as soon as possible before spending any actual money submitting a release.

My experience

As I mentioned, I’ve been using PRWeb with success for a few years now. Our releases are well written (we do them in house) and always submitted at the 200 dollar (SEO Visibility level) though I admit I didn’t realize everything that came with the Media Visibility package until I did this review and will likely use that level for our next “big” announcement.

The statistics of our last five releases published are as follows with the most recently released press release listed first:

(impressions/reads/email forwards/prints/pdf)

116561/1990/0/17/0

146304/2229/0/17/40

107428/1542/0/14/40

128481/1824/0/15/26

98241/2122/0/9/27

Our releases all have gotten us several links a piece and we also have three business deals that have been very good for our sites that came from releases we’ve issued putting us on that company’s radar in the first place. Press releases, and PRWeb as a distribution method, have earned their spot in our marketing budget.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

PRWeb Review

Thesis Tutorial – Customizing the 404 Page

A few weeks ago, I published a Thesis theme tutorial that showed you how to do advanced ad targeting. The tutorial showed you how to assign ads to be different based on the category the posts were filed in, as well as change them on a post by post basis.

While “You 404′d it. Gnarly, dude.” is a semi-custom page since it does keep with your theme and design, you may want to give it a little bit of your own personality and wording to make it truly “custom”. Below, I’ll show you how to do it.

Step 1: Open your custom_functions.php file (thesis > custom > custom_functions.php) in your favorite editor

Step 2: Underneath the example code already in the file, place the following code (this code assumes your blog is in the root):

/* Custom 404 Hooks */
function custom_thesis_404_title() {
?>
YOUR 404 PAGE HEADING HERE
<?
}

remove_action(’thesis_hook_404_title’, ’thesis_404_title’);
add_action(’thesis_hook_404_title’, ’custom_thesis_404_title’);

function custom_thesis_404_content() {
?>
<p>WHATEVER YOU WANT YOUR 404 PAGE TO SAY HERE</p>
<?
}

remove_action(’thesis_hook_404_content’, ’thesis_404_content’);
add_action(’thesis_hook_404_content’, ’custom_thesis_404_content’);

The /* Custom 404 Hooks */ is a label for the code below so you know what it is at a single glance and is not part of the actual “code”. The word “function” tells Thesis you want it to do something. The custom_thesis_404_title is what I decided to name that function.

You’ll notice this code has two functions. One controls the 404 page heading (custom_thesis_404_title) and one controls the 404 page content (custom_thesis_404_content).

The code is pretty self-explanatory on how to edit. The two lines underneath each function tell Thesis to remove it’s default thesis_404_title and thesis_404_content and replace each with the custom versions. (See hooks for dummies for a more detailed explanation of how this hook “works.”)

Custom 404 pages are your only chance to turn a lost visitor into a site user, so you want to make sure you serve up something that makes a good first impression. If you need some 404 inspiration, check out these 100 awesome and creative 404 error pages.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Thesis Tutorial – Customizing the 404 Page

Affiliate Summit West – Day 3 Mini-Recap

Hey, affiliate kids. I’m about to head to the airport to start my trek back to the East Coast, but first, let’s recap Day 3 of Affiliate Summit, shall we?

Sadly, due to my flight and this silly little thing called “lunch” that the speakers seemed to be really interested in, I was only able to make it to one session today: Amazon Widgets for Fun and Profit.

I was more interested in the “how to use widgets” angle of this session than I was the Amazon part, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.

What’s a Widget?

They’re rich Web gadgets or mini applications that improve the richness and functionality of your Web site. In a nutshell, they allow visitors to interact with the data that interests them from wherever they are on the Web. Widgets allow others to share your data on other Web sites and they allow you to take advantage of other people’s data.

For example, in the session speaker Zahid Khan told the audience how they could take advantage of the many widgets provided by Amazon to help increase the functionality and usefulness of their Web site. Basically, you get to bring Amazon to your site and to your users, which can help increase both clicks through rates and conversions.

Widgets allow you to display product information in fun, interactive ways, to encourage users to play around with your site, to increase your own functionality and to serve as content. The great thing about widgets is that they’re highly customizable and available in many different sizes, colors and themes so that they can become part of your site and virtually indistinguishable from your own content.

Best Practices for Widgets

Select the right widget for the job: There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits all solution. You have to take into consideration what you’re doing. What are you trying to monetize? Is it a product-focused site? A personal blog? A movies/music site?

Place it in the best available spot: The center-of-page size widget is good for one-off, very topic-specific widgets. Meanwhile, banner/sidebar-sized widgets are best for products that are relevant over a long period of time. Use free-size widgets when you control the size of the ad spot.

Personalize the widget control: Add user comments to your widgets. Your customers are more likely to engage with your products when you’ve endorsed them with user comments. If you don’t have time to add individual comments to each product, personalize the title of the widget. It’s easy to do and helps get around ad blindness.

Change widget content regularly: Handpicked wins over automated selection any day. Related to this, if you do use Amazon widgets on your site, Widget Source is a way to easily change widget content programmatically in the code. It will also give you total control over the look and feel of the widget and opens up the door for you to create some really cool mashups.

Make The Widget Part of Your Site: During the session, Zahid went through a number of Web sites and challenged the audience to spot the widget on the page. And it was hard to do. That’s one of the powers of widgets – how easily you can customize them to really become part of your site and make them indistinguishable from your actual site content.

Widgets are really one of those things you should be paying close attention to right now. I was actually surprised that there were only 30 or so people in this session. Maybe it’s simply because it was the morning on the last day of Affiliate Summit or maybe people just don’t get it. Personally, I work for a company that’s a huge proponent of building widgets for clients. I guess the rest of the world hasn’t caught up yet. Their loss.

And that’s it from me from Affiliate Summit. I hope you enjoyed the daily coverage and thanks to Rae for giving me a shot to experience it. Even if I did had to run around Vegas on a broken foot.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Affiliate Summit West – Day 3 Mini-Recap

Affiliate Summit West – Day 2 Recap

…And we’re back with another day of blog coverage for Affiliate Summit West. If you missed Day 1, feel free to go check it out. Otherwise let’s get on with today’s big takeaways. This blogger hasn’t eaten since last night’s French fries dinner and her tummy is starting to rumble.

Ready? Okay.

Facebook’s ad platform is a gold rush for marketers

I’ll be honest, I kind of wrote off the whole Facebook ad platform thing when it came out a year ago. Social media + ads just never seemed like a winning combination to me. However, it seems I was wrong. [See, Rae, I can admit that. Now you try.] **(Note from Rae: I never dismissed Facebook, so nothing for me to admit.)

During the panel speakers Zac Johnson, Jeremy Schoemaker, Alex Schultz, and Dan Murray all commented on the power found within the ad platform and its ability to blend high conversions with click prices that can fall as low as just a couple of cents. Alex went as far as to say today’s Facebook is very similar to what AdWords was back in 2002-2003. It has that same gold rush feel.

Why should you pay attention to Facebook’s advertising platform? Because there are 150 million active users, with half signing onto the site daily. It’s an engaged core network filled with real people. The targeting offered by Facebook is the real bread and butter and why people should be paying attention. Facebook basically allows you to name any interest and then it will grab out all the people who have listed that in their profile. It gives you a huge ability to increase conversions if you’re smart enough to create a separate landing page based on interests.

Combine the engaged user base, the targeting, the high quality reporting and the fact that you can get single cent CPCs if you do it correctly – and Facebook starts to look like a virtual goldmine. Jeremy said that there’s a huge marketing imbalance that makes it a great opportunity until the rest of the world gets caught up, especially for targeting folks on a local level.

If you’re not yet playing with Facebook ads…you should

Show you’re listening, and affiliates will empathize.

One of yesterday’s big takeaways was creating relationships with vendors. Today, a lot of the conversation was centered on the act of communication itself.

In the Facebook session, Alex Schultz spoke about some of the problems users have had in the past with Facebook’s ad program: The ad review is inconsistent, there’s no bulk upload option, they put restrictions on the type of ads allowed, there wasn’t enough support people to go around, etc. Complaints like that for an ad platform that is barely a year old could kill it. But it hasn’t killed Facebook, because Facebook listens, and as a result, they’ve been able to not only improve on known complaints, but also to steer the conversation.

Jeremy noted that he even though he’s not a big Facebook ad spender (maybe $500-$1,000 a week), he often gets emails from different Facebook support people curious to see if he’s okay or if he needs anything. It gives him an outlet to bring up small issues before they become larger and it shows Jeremy that they value him. It keeps communication open and promotes goodwill.

People buy from people…and video captures that

Last week on the We Build Pages blog, I wrote about why sites should be creating compelling video content for their Web site. Today, I received another lesson in the importance of video.

Why is online video powerful for affiliate marketing?

If you’re an affiliate, you want cutting edge content on your Web site that you don’t have to create yourself so that you can focus on driving traffic.
If you’re the merchant, you want to grab eyeballs and get people back to your Web site to collect the conversion.

According to speakers, Jonathan Stefansky, Melissa Salas, Michael Jenkins and Marty Fahncke, video creative is phenomenally more successful in generating clicks and conversions than simple text. By adding video to your affiliate site, you’re being given a better way to convert those eyeballs.

The word everyone is tagging on to talks about online video is “potential”. Marketers aren’t in it for what’s being brought to the table today, but what it can do in the future. There’s a great opportunity here because people are so hungry for video. YouTube gets more search traffic than Microsoft with 77 million uniques. That’s how badly people want to watch video. You just have to figure out how to capitalize on that thirst.

We’re in a bronze age where nearly anybody can create content. The Web is a text-based medium for the most part. Today’s panelists believe that this going to be completely revolutionized where there will be much more audio and video content in the future.

How to be successful

Dave Taylor rocked the Using Social Media with Affiliate Programs session this afternoon, offering up tips for how affiliate marketers can use social media to grow their site. The thing with most affiliate marketing is that everyone is selling the same product, at the same price, with the same boring ass stock photos. If you’re going to grab the commission, you need to have something unique to offer.

You need authority, credibility and trustworthiness.

You get that by being an influence leader. You go where your customers are and start talking. Today’s social networks are all interconnected and bleed into one another, so it’s important that the message you’re putting out is consistent. You have a genuine presence and invest time in paying attention to your customers.

That’s how affiliate marketers can be successful in social media. And hell, that’s how you become successful in whatever you’re doing. Sounds simple, right?

And that completes our coverage of Day 2 of Affiliate Summit. Come back tomorrow to watch us finish it up. I’m gonna go hit the bar now.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Affiliate Summit West – Day 2 Recap