Just a few minutes ago Greg Hoffman (one of the better affiliate managers out there) put a post on Facebook: “As an affiliate manager, I don’t give a rats ass about Pinterest, but I’m glad you like it so much“.

And then a discussion cropped up about how an affiliate manager can benefit from Pinterest. Very good question. I don’t want to get into another Pinterest post but the question is valid so I will tackle it on a bigger level: Is Pinterest a viable traffic source and should affiliate managers be concerned with where traffic is coming from for their affiliates?

Well, yes, Pinterest is a viable traffic source. Depending on the niche and how it is used it can bring in some very solid traffic. According to Shareholic it produced more referral traffic than Youtube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined. And over on Mashable there is a good infographic about Pinterest and traffic. So yeah, it can generate traffic. It still lags behind Facebook, Twitter and other more established social sites but it is growing very quickly. I have no idea if it is sustainable or just a flash in the pan but for now it can be a good source of traffic.

So the second question: Should affiliate managers be concerned with where the traffic comes for their affiliates? The simple answer is Yes. Here are a few quick reasons why:

1. To develop terms of service for their merchants – Do you think there were many PPC restrictions back in 2000 when Adwords started? Probably not. But now nearly every affiliate terms of service contains some restrictions on what words can be bid on, if direct to merchant ads are allowed, and so on. There are a few merchants who have some restrictions on posting links on social media sites and now affiliate managers and merchants need to decide what to do with sharing and curation sites like Pinterest. If an affiliate managers doesn’t know about it how can they advise their merchants?

2. Help their affiliates generate traffic – Of course an affiliate manager isn’t there to hold the affiliates hand and give them all the training on every traffic source but the more traffic sources an affiliate managers is familiar with the better than can direct their affiliates. This doesn’t just go for Pinterest but includes SEO, PPC, Facebook, Youtube, PPV, display advertising, and anything else that can generate traffic and sales. Obviously an AM won’t be an expert in all these areas but they should at least be capable of looking at them and figuring out how they can help their affiliates.

3. Combat fraud – If there is traffic and sales to be generated there is sure to be someone who will be looking for a shortcut. An AM should be aware of any suspicious spike in sales and traffic and research it to see what the affiliate is doing. I haven’t heard of any affiliates who are doing anything too shady on Pinterest yet but you can be sure it is coming. And an affiliate managers needs to be aware of Pinterest (or any other traffic source) so they can follow up on any suspected fraud.

4. Open up new traffic channels for a merchant – Many AMs are responsible for a merchant’s PPC efforts, social media, and other traffic generation methods. Every traffic source an AM knows about the more services they can offer to a merchant. And most likely they won’t handle it directly but will outsource it to someone else but if, during a sales presentation, an AM can show the potential of a place like Pinterest and develop a marketing strategy using that traffic it is yet another value added to the deal.

Basically I think that an AM should be concerned about new traffic sources like this. If they don’t care about it now they will be in trouble in a few years if they have to play catch up. They don’t need to be experts in every form on online marketing but if they aren’t aware of what is going on out there with new sites like Pinterest they could be missing the boat on the next long term, sustainable traffic source.

Well, let’s first start off with a recap of last week and how I did. I had 6 main things I wanted to work on last week and while there are always gonna be other things that come up week by week I really want to try and start knocking more and more stuff off my list systematically rather than just whatever I feel like working on if that makes any sense.

Here is a recap of last week:

1. Finish up some work for a local client – I got the site done and now I just need to move it over to their host. But a majority of the heavy lifting is done on this one. So I will give myself a “complete” on this one.

2. Set up sites for 4 incoming NFL rookies – I got two sites set up, one mostly set up, and one more to go. The sites are nowhere near complete but I did get over half done of what I wanted but still I have to give myself an “incomplete” for this one.

3. Write 2000+ words for an ebook – Only got 500 words done. It is some OK progress but I need to do much better this week. Incomplete.

4. Write 8 product descriptions (200-500 words) – Never got started on this. Fail. Incomplete.

5. Update the datafeed on 5 old sites – I got two sites updated but they were some of the bigger (150,000+ pages) and more time intensive sites to update so I will give myself a “complete” on this one.

6. Work on getting a new client – I have been talking to a couple local businesses about this so I will say complete.

Overall I completed a bit more than half of what I was hoping to. Not good. I will need to do better this week. Yeah, I did get some other stuff done that isn’t on this list that needed to be done so the whole week wasn’t a waste. But I do need to do a better job this week.

So here is my to-do list for this week:

1. Get the first draft done on the ebook – I am guessing I have at least 2,000 words (maybe up to 5,000) to go to get the first draft done. It isn’t hard to crank out 500 words so I just need to do that a few times and I will be done. This is one of those projects that just hangs there taunting you and you always know you should work on it but you avoid it whenever possible. It would be nice to get this one off my plate.

2. Update 5 more old datafeed sites – This should’t take more than a couple hours. Just have to pick the sites I want to update.

3. Transfer that client site – Site transfers are the type of thing that can go super smooth or they can totally take way more time than they should. Hopefully this one goes quick. Once I transfer it I will need to meet with the client and teach them the basics of WordPress so that might take up a decent chunk of time. I will only be showing them how to add posts, add pages, and simple stuff like that. I really should have charged them more. Seems like I always undervalue my time on projects like this.

4. Write Product Descriptions – Any more than a few a day and I start losing my mind. So if I can get 8-10 cranked out this week I will be happy. I will probably need 30-50 for the site so ideally I can have that site launched by the end of February and then add to it as I go. I really want to do a good job writing these descriptions so they will take a bit of research which could be time consuming.

5. Come up with a plan for an old site – Maybe I should just let this old site go but I just can’t let go! It was one of my first affiliate sites to make any sort of decent money and it has been performing very well up until a few months ago. Panda killed it and I need to rebuild the site, restructure it, and make it more Panda friendly. If Google wants content, freshness and links I really gave them none of that. They loved this site for so many years and then kicked it to the curb. How can they be so shallow and callous? Time to spruce this site up and get it cranking again. I have until April to get this site back and ranking and I really want to do it right.

6. Start revising my datafeed ebook – Last summer I wrote about 20,000 words on how to build a successful datafeed site. The final product was pretty rough and I never really did anything with it but I think it could be useful to some people so I need to dust it off, clean it up, and do something with it.

I think all that could keep me nice and busy this week. Lots of writing in there and hopefully I can focus enough to crank a lot of it out so I can spend next week doing some more exciting stuff.

What else should I do this week?

From everything I have seen Genesis and Thesis are the two most popular premium WordPress themes out there. I use both of them regularly (this site runs on Thesis) and regularly recommend both of them (and not just because I get an affiliate commission).

Overall both of these premium themes are very SEO friendly, somewhat easy to use, flexible. But what makes me decide to use one vs the other? Here are a few strengths and weaknesses I see in each for different applications. And yeah, I know there are probably ways to make each of them do what I want in certain situations and from time to time I do mess around with the PHP code and CSS but for the most part I usually want to just install it and go.  And keep in mind I am speaking in big generalities here. But here is when I use each theme and what makes me decide to use one vs. another:

1. If I am going to update the site on a regular basis (like this site) I will use Thesis. I think overall the layout is more conducive to a “real” blog. I like the nice,  clean layout, I like how everything is displayed, and I like the simplicity. Order Thesis today

2. If I want something that looks a bit more complex I will use Genesis. With Genesis when you get the “Pro Pack” you also get access to 45 different child themes. These all look quite different, all have some cool widgets and features, and are all suitable for different projects. BTW, on February 1st the price of the Pro Plus pack will be going up. For the next few days you can get the Pro Plus pack which includes Genesis and 45 child themes (plus all future child themes) for $299.95. And if you use the code TEN you can save 10%. So if you are thinking about getting it do it now and save yourself a few bucks. Order the Genesis Pro Pack today.

3. For a datafeed based site I will usually use Thesis. I like the way the archive pages are displayed in Thesis and the layout is a bit more functional for me when I am dealing with a bigger datafeed based site. I do have some datafeed sites using Genesis but for the most part I use Thesis for those ones.

4. For a hand written content based site I will usually use Genesis. I really like some of the fancy widgets and sliders and stuff you can use on the Genesis pages with many of their child themes and think that in many cases it can add a nice finishing touch to a site.

But then again a lot of what I use is just based on what I feel like at any given time. And many times I will start building on Genesis but switch over to Thesis and vice-versa. I really do like having the flexibility of both premium themes at my disposal and I would definitely recommend having multiple options to work with whether it is these two or some other premium themes.

The Genesis Pro Pack is a bit spendy at $299.95 vs. $164 for Thesis but the abundance of child themes makes the price much more tolerable.

Order Genesis Today

Order Thesis Today

So what factors do you consider when deciding which theme to use for your affiliate sites? Leave a comment and let me know.

Like I mentioned in a post last week I want to keep you updated on what I have planned for this week. After looking at all the stuff I have to do I decided a set schedule of tasks isn’t the way to go. I just need to prioritize the different projects and sites I have out there and start working down the list.

Also it is hard for me to really work on any one task for more than a couple hours so rather than say “On Tuesday I will write 5000 words” or whatever I just want to make more weekly goals than daily tasks.

So for this week I have a few tasks I need to get done:

1. I have a local client and I need to finish their site. It is mostly done but I do need to move it from the test server to their server and that can always cause a huge set of headaches. Hopefully it all goes smoothly and doesn’t take more than a couple hours.

2. A few weeks ago I registered 6 domains of college players that should be coming out in the NFL draft this April. Two of them decided to stay in college for another year (How dare they get an education and not let me use these domains this year!!!) but there are still four of them who will be drafted in the first round. So I need to get some sites built for them. I don’t think I will do too much monitization on these sites yet (there can be issues using the names of college players like that) but I will get the framework of the sites built, start adding in some content (mock drafts, teams that could use them, etc) and once they get drafted in April I can load them up with jerseys, shirts, etc. But for now I want to get some content on them and start the aging process.

3. Write 2000+ words for an ebook. I have about 1600 words done but haven’t written on this project in a couple months. I would like to get more content in it and hopefully be done in a month or so. I am guessing it will end up around 8,000-10,000 words when it is all finished. I am not totally sure what I will do with it (give it away to build an email list, put it up on Kindle, sell it for a few bucks, etc.) but it will be nice to get it finished so I can start working on the sites related to it.

4. Write 8 product descriptions (200-500 words) for one of my old domains I need to revive/rebuild. There has been nothing on this domain for years but it was registered in 2005 so it has some good age to it. I want to use this domains to pick the best 8-10 products in each category for this niche, handwrite some content, and see what happens compared to just throwing up a 5,000+ item datafeed. It will probably take at least a couple weeks before I have enough real content to set this site up but I want to have the content ready to go for it.

5. Update the datafeeds on 5 old sites – I probably have about 20 that could use an update but I will start with these 5. For a couple of them it will just involve downloading a new feed, making a few modifications, and loading it up. Others might take a bit more work. But I should be able to spend less than 3-4 hours on this.

6. Work on getting a new client – Since I will be finishing up that one client this week (well, mostly finishing. There will be a bit of ongoing work.) I want to find one more client to take on. Maybe it will be another local company I can do some SEO stuff for, maybe it will be some sort of consulting work, maybe I will work with some affiliates to review their sites and help them improve, or maybe I will help out a merchant. If you are interested in any of these services or if there is anything I can do for you be sure to check out How Can I Help You.

Maybe I am being too ambitious, maybe I am setting the bar too low. I guess we will see on Friday when I recap how this week went.

Many times in the past, either here or on Twitter, I have railed against the bad affiliate management out there. It is just a part of doing business in this industry but you can’t escape the fact that many affiliate programs are being mismanaged by people who really don’t know anything about the affiliate industry.

Affiliate program management isn’t just a position in your company you can throw anyone with a couple spare hours a month. It is much more than just looking at the sales reports and telling the higher ups in the company how many sales were generated. Affiliate program management is a very specialized marketing position that should be filled by someone who knows what they are doing.

One problem is there is very little quality training or educational opportunities out there for affiliate managers. Most affiliate managers I know basically just learned on the job or were just thrown into the position without knowing what they were doing (read Daniel Feinberg’s story) and had to learn on the fly. There have been a few training opportunities in the past and there is always some great information at Affiliate Summit for affiliate managers but just like most other professions an affiliate manager needs some sort of training.

Recently there have been two big steps forward towards properly training affiliate program managers. We need more of these but these two are a start:

1. Affiliate Management Days – Geno Prussakov has started a conference specifically for affiliate managers. It is a two day intensive training conference with some great speakers like Todd Crawford, Sarah Bundy, Karen Garcia, TimAsh, Rebecca Madigan, Sam Harrelson, Kim Rowley, and others who have many, many years in this industry and have some awesome knowledge to share. 

I recently asked Geno three questions about this conference and here is what he said:

Why do you see a need for this conference? 

Because affiliates need educated affiliate program managers. Remember the quick Twitter exchange we’ve had between you, me and Tricia Meyer? That one exemplifies the (crying!) need perfectly well.

Besides the educational component, Affiliate Management Days, becoming a regular conference (we’ll start with two conferences in the U.S., but hope to gradually add a third one, as well as an international one) will provide something else. The industry is dynamic, and new threats, issues, and challenges spring up nearly weekly. AM Days is also meant to become a professional forum for affiliate managers and merchants to discuss the most pressing questions, and collaboratively come up with solutions to the biggest problems.

Is this for experienced AMs or people just looking to get into affiliate management?

Both. If one takes a look at the AM Days San Francisco 2012 agenda they’ll see that we’ll give attendees some choice there. The keynotes will be perfect both for people who are new to affiliate marketing, and to the savvy and experienced ones. While with breakout sessions we’ll offer two tracks, and regardless of an affiliate manager’s (or merchant’s) professional maturity level, everyone will be able to pick something of interest.

What do you hope people will take away from this conference?

Three things: (1) inspiration/motivation, (2) a truly holistic approach to affiliate as a way of online marketing, and (3) actionable knowledge — to come back, apply it, and reap higher revenues, as a result.

So all in all this will be a great place for current and prospective affiliate managers to gain knowledge, information, and connections with other great people in this industry.

Today is the last day to get the early bird registration ($1,195) and tomorrow it jumps to $1,495 so save yourself $300 and register today.

2. Affiliate Management Trainers – According to their site “Affiliate Management Trainers (AMT) was created to fill the need for professional and personalized affiliate management training for Internet Retailers around the world.”. So here we have a group of experienced affiliate managers who want to train other affiliate managers.

They are offering one on one training as well as other consulting services. From what I have seen a brand new affiliate manager will learn much more from a one on one approach like this than they could ever learn in a classroom.

Sarah Bundy, Matt McWilliams, and the rest of the trainers are some of the top affiliate managers in this industry and have a ton of knowledge they can share with anyone who wants to learn.

I really do believe both of these opportunities will help train up some new, awesome affiliate managers. How many affiliate programs are out there? 10,000? 20,000? And how many quality affiliate managers can you name? 20?30? Maybe 50? There is a huge need for trained affiliate managers out there and Affiliate Management Days and Affiliate Management Trainers will both help get those people a head start on their job.

Just to illustrate how there is a need for quality affiliate managers: I recently talked to a local manufacturer/merchant about their affiliate program. They do have a private program but they don’t publicize it at all. Overall they have about 20 affiliates that barely produce any sales. I offered to help this company get their affiliate program up and running, recruit new affiliates, set them up on Shareasale, and as much else as I could do for them. I am by no means an expert in affiliate management and I was gonna cut this guy a great deal since I would also be learning on the job.

But as an affiliate for the past 14 years or so I do have quite a bit of knowledge and experience that would have been valuable to them. But they decided to just let their website manager run the program. I have little doubt I could have turned their affiliate program into a very viable sales channel for them and am pretty confident I could increase their affiliate revenue by at least 10x what they are doing now but they decided to let someone who has no clue about affiliate marketing run their program. Just imagine what a properly trained affiliate program manager could have done.

Sadly this is not an uncommon tale. We need more good affiliate managers!

Like I have mentioned somewhat recently, I have a ton of domains I have registered and have never really done anything with. Some of them were part of a bigger project that never got off the ground, some were just domains I stumbled across, some were just ideas I registered before giving them much thought.

In order to protect myself from registering so many domains I will never do anything with I have come up with the following three questions I want to ask myself before buying a domain:

1. Are you really gonna build that site? Is this really a project you will sit down and work on from start to finish?

2. No, really, are you gonna build a site on this domain? It seems like such a good idea right now. I really do need to register this domain because this site will be awesome.

3. Dude, seriously. Are you gonna build the site? Well, OK. Probably not. I guess I can pass on this one.

Pretty simple thought process there that could save me hundreds of dollars a year.

But seriously, is it just part of the affiliate business that we register domains with visions of grandeur but never even get around to setting them up on the server? Or is there a way to focus on current projects and only get a new domain when a site will actually get built?

This is something I have been thinking about a bit lately and while I am sure I will fail and fall back to registering any domain I think of here are a couple safeguards I want to put in place for myself to keep me from buying so many useless and unused domains.

1. Write 10 pieces of content – Blog posts, product reviews, informational articles… I don’t care what I write I just want to have some content ready to go when I register the domain. If I do this there is a much greater chance of me actually building the site.

2. Create a graphic – I suck at graphics. So if I take the time to make a header or some sort of graphical element to the site there is a very good chance I will build the site. Or even if I just pay someone to do it I wouldn’t want that money to go to waste.

3. Prepare the datafeed – If the site will be based on a datafeed I want to have the feed ready to go when the site is up. So many times I will get nearly everything ready to build but then lose steam fixing up the datafeed.

Basically I want to have some sort of investment in the site before I buy the domain. Yeah, there will be some hot domains I will want to snap up as soon as I see them and won’t have time to do this other stuff but for the most part I want to have put something into the site before the domain gets registered.

What else can I do to invest some time or effort into the site before I get the domain?

A few days ago I got an affiliate agreement update from a merchant saying “Submitting affiliate links to social sharing sites such as Pinterest, Reddit.com, Digg.com, Twitter, StumbleUpon.com, and others is prohibited”.

I put up a tweet about it and Scott Jangro expanded on it a bit and I figured it was a topic worthy of a post here. Also Eric Nagel wrote up a post about affiliates and Pinterest yesterday and I have heard from a few people it was a good point of conversation at Affiliate Summit this year.

If you don’t know Pinterest is one of the latest social/curation sites out there. Generally speaking it is a place for women to post recipes, fashion ideas, home decorating ideas, and stuff like that they find on various sites and blogs all in one place. It can be a very useful tool for someone trying to decorate a baby nursery for example. Rather than bookmarking dozens of pages from various blogs you can just “pin” an image to your Pinterest board.

Can affiliates use Pinterest effectively?

Or say you are looking to organize all the recipes you want to try sometime in the future. I know I will look at a recipe online and think it is something I want to make sometime and then leave and forget where I found it. With Pinterest you can just pin all those recipes to a board and have them all in one place for when you need them. Of course people can follow your pins, repin them, like them and so on so there is a pretty decent social aspect to the site as well.

But what does this have to do with affiliate marketing? 

Well, pretty much every platform like this has been abused utilized by affiliate marketers with varying detrimental effects. Generally speaking, if there is a place to post a link you can bet there are affiliates out there who will post as many as they can.

With Pinterest it really wouldn’t be hard for an affiliate to take a merchant datafeed, write some sort of auto-pin script, and flood Pinterest with thousands or even millions of pins. It wouldn’t take long before Pinterest becomes useless.

So that gives some great justification for the merchant mentioned earlier prohibiting affiliates from posting links on social sharing sites. If users were to see tons of links all sending them to one merchant the backlash would be at that merchant, not the affiliate. I can’t blame that merchant at all for updating their terms of service and I fully expect to see many more merchants follow suit.

Does that mean that Pinterest can’t be used by affiliates? Of course not. There are many ways affiliates can effectively use Pinterest. Here are a few ideas I have thought of. Of course I am not the rule maker for Pinterest and you can do whatever you feel comfortable doing but these were just some thoughts I had as I figure out how to use Pinterest myself:

1. Don’t be a tool – This applies to nearly all forms of social media. If you go in and start pinning everything on every site you have you might be a tool. Space your pins out, don’t just blindly pin all the pages on your site, and try to use Pinterest as the makers intended.

2. Create some topical boards for your pins – Here is an exampe: I have a site selling Seahawks gear. There are probably 1,000 products on the site. Rather than just post every page I want to break it down a bit and create some more topical pages. Since Pinterest is slanted towards women right now (I think 70+% of the users are women) I wanted to make something that could relate a bit more to them. So I created a board dealing with decorating a bedroom with Seahawks gear. I then went and pinned a few items from my site. http://pinterest.com/drcool73/seahawks-bedroom/. Eventually I will go in and add some more products from other sites so everything isn’t just coming from my site.

But rather than just throwing all the Seahawks stuff on that site on one board I want to break it down so people will follow my specific boards and repin specific items.

3. Think like a woman – Since the main audience in Pinterest is women you need to think like a woman. What would a woman want to share? What are they interested in talking about? What are they likely to re-pin? For some of us that is hard but for many of you it will come pretty easy.

4. Engage other users – Just like any other form of social media you need to engage others. Repin stuff other people post, follow others with similar interests, and connect with users just like you would if you were to use Facebook or Twitter effectively. If you can get some of the heavy hitters to share your pins that can be a good generator of traffic.

5. Be careful about direct to merchant links – Rather than linking direct to a merchant site make the links go to your site. It would be very easy for Pinterest to decide they want to make money and start overwriting affiliate links. And currently some of the direct links don’t track properly. Some like Amazon do but just to be on the safe side I want to send people to my site and not directly to the merchant when I can.

6. Make yourself worth following – If you just pin garbage nobody will share your stuff. To really be effective on Pinterest you want other to follow and repin your pins. So make sure you are posting stuff people are interested in.

Those are just a couple ideas I thought of off the top of my head. I (like most people) am just starting to use Pinterest and I am sure as it grows and matures the rules will change and there will be new ways to use it to generate traffic to your affiliate sites.

I think Pinterest and affiliates can co-exist very well assuming both parties are responsible. If Pinterest decides to just flat out ban affiliate links or starts overwriting tracking codes that would be bad. If affiliates start auto-pinning everything under the sun that is bad. Both parties need to act responsibly and sooner rather than later.

So how do you use Pinterest? Do you see it as an effective way of generating traffic to your sites? Is it just a waste of time? Leave a comment and let me know.

Last week I wrote a post about the recent butt kickings I have received. My motivation to succeed is higher than ever right now due to these two recent events and for the past two weeks I have been working on a plan.

Of course this plan is totally subject to change and as usually happens there will be something that comes up that will drag me away from this plan. I know myself though and if I don’t have a plan it is way too easy to just sit here day after day and piddle away on some of my projects and never make any real progress.

I am guessing there are some other people in the same boat as me and while my plan might not work for you hopefully you will be able to take something from it.

1. Organization – When it comes to organization I am HORRIBLE! I have so many projects in various states of completion and disarray. I need to get all that stuff organized and come up with some sort of plan/schedule for either completing those projects, scrapping them, selling them, or something. I have well over 100 sites and I would guess much less than half of them are really worth anything at this point. So I need to:

List out my domains

• Designate each with either fix (rebuild, update, clean up, etc), sell, scrap, build, or hold.
• Start working down the list of the fix and build sites. Hopefully crank out at least two a week.
• If a domain is worth selling list it on some of the domain selling sites
• Scrap – Don’t waste money renewing the dang thing!

Develop a plan

• Create some sort of checklist for my sites. I am always forgetting some simple aspect of building the site as I go along. I need to be more organized in this to make sure I don’t forget to add Google Analytics or change the permalinks or something simple like that.
• List out potential merchants for the domains and apply for the programs. Too often I wait until I am building the site to get my merchants lined up and by the time I get approved I have moved on.
• Datafeed? Daily posts? Regular blog type site? What do I want to do with each of these sites?
• Anyone I can partner up with on these sites?

Get Cranking

Like I said in my previous post, I have been lazy and complacent. Part of the solution for me will just be to work harder and more efficient. I will probably have at least 50 sites I need to build and that will take time. Some of them might only take a couple hours but some might take a few days. I would like to think I can have most of them up and running by the middle of February sometime. But I do need to work harder on the stuff like this that can become mind-numbing after a few sites.

2. Stick to a Schedule – Working from home it becomes way to easy to get a late start to the day and an early finish. But I need to treat this more and more like a “real” job and try to keep somewhat of a consistent schedule going. It is way too easy to run upstairs to talk with my wife and see my baby, way to easy to schedule midday meetings that take a couple hours out of the day, and way too easy to use the work day to run errands. While I will never give up the flexibility to do those things I do need to get them more under control.

Along with that I want to have some sort of weekly schedule. I am still working through that but something like this:

Monday – Work on sports sites

Tuesday – Work on baby (or whatever second niche I pick) sites

Wednesday – Build/Update old sites (At least one site a week, preferably two or three)

Thursday AM – Testing/Trying – new plugins, new link building, new WP themes, maybe try to learn some programming, etc.

Thursday PM – Writing – Got a couple ideas for some ebooks that would fit well with a few of my sites

Friday – Tie up loose ends, strategize, research, etc.

That isn’t the final schedule I will be working off of but something like that. Once I do get it figured out I want to post it every Monday on this sites with some details and then follow up on Friday to see how I have done. I am sure some weeks will be encouraging and some will end up being disappointing. But even this little bit of accountability will be good for me.

3. Do What I Should Have Been Doing All Along – There are many, many things I should have been doing for the past 14 years since I started doing this stuff. We all have those “If only I had started doing X when I began in this business…” moments. And I have those daily. Here are a few things I want to start or start doing more:

Build lists – Not every site will be a candidate for this but I do have a few of them where a list will be invaluable. So I need to dust of my Aweber account and actually use it. I already have a few great ideas of how to effectively use it for some of the sites so I just need to make that part of my weekly routine.

Write – Once again, this won’t apply to all my sites but there are a few of them where a couple good ebooks would be great. I can either give them away for a newsletter signup or even sell them depending on how they turn out. But if I could get a topical, focused ebook of some sort written every month? Awesome.

I also need to just do more general writing for the sites. It can be so hard to crank out content day after day but if I were to even write three or four decent blog posts a week over my sites and write 10-15 custom descriptions for products I think it would end up making a big difference in the long run.

Another area I need to improve in is link building. Whether that involves paying someone to do it or just taking the time to do it myself I need to do a better job getting quality links to my sites.

Better utilize social media. There is just so much that goes into this it is hard to write up quickly here. But it is an area I need to put more effort into and build a better social following for my sites.

If I can get those four things under control in the next couple months I will be happy.

4. Focus – It is so dang easy to lose focus. Every day there are new merchants to look at, every day there are new ideas that pop into my head, every day there are new promotional methods to test. But they are not all necessary. I need to forget about many of those for a couple months while I get all my other stuff in order.

Yeah, visiting Facebook and Twitter take time but I feel like those are somewhat of a necessity for this business. It is good to stay connected to the affiliate marketing community and those are the best way to do it. But do I really need to check Facebook every 15 minutes? Did the world change that much while I went to the bathroom or got a snack?

Having a plan and schedule will also help me focus. Having a list of tasks to get done before the day is over will help me focus. Even cleaning my office up a bit will help me focus. There will be day I just need to put the blinders on and get cranking on some sites.

I think those four main areas will help me turn everything around. If not I will need to find four more things to work on. I am hoping within 3-6 months I can replace the income I lost and hopefully even exceed it. We will see.

But I could use your help!!!

1. Ask me how I am doing – Facebook, Skype, Twitter, etc. Get ahold of me and ask me what sites I am working on, what projects I am finishing up, what I have planned, etc. Help keep me accountable! Please!

2. Follow along with me – Like I mentioned earlier, I want to post every Monday what I will be working on that particular week and then post a recap on Friday of what I got accomplished.

3. Work with me??? – Maybe you will see some of my sites that are similar to yours and you want to trade links, swap guest posts, share methods, or whatever. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you see something that can benefit us both. I really do want to help you as much as I can so let me know what I can do for you.

4. What works for you? – Are there any organizational tools or methods that have helped you? How do you keep track of all your projects? How do you stay focused and motivate yourself? Please let me know what works for you.

Thanks to all in advance. I will do my best to keep this site updated at least a couple times a week with my progress.

We all need some motivation from time to time. It can come in many different forms, it can come at any time, and it will look different for everyone. What motivates one person might not do a thing for someone else.

I should have paid the dollar years ago.

Usually around this time in January I have a ton of motivation after returning from Affiliate Summit but I wasn’t able to make it to this one. Conference like that are always great motivators for me and I usually come back with a ton of ideas. Some of them I will run with, some fall by the wayside but overall it is always great being around so many like minded people.

Since I wasn’t able to make it to ASW12 this time I had to see my motivation from elsewhere. OK, I didn’t really seek it as much as it jumped out at me from a dark alley and beat the crap out of me. But there have been a couple recent events that have me as motivated as ever. One event is a positive motivation and one is more of a kick in the pants, get your butt in gear type of motivation.

The first motivation (And this one is awesome)- On December 22nd I became a dad. My wife and I had a beautiful 8 pound 13 oz baby to take care of now. If that doesn’t motivate you I don’t know what will. When I was single just a couple years ago as long as I had a roof over my head and some food

How could you look at this every day and not be motivated?

on my plate I was happy and didn’t need much else. Now I have a wife and a baby I need to take care of. Along with buying diapers and all that stuff I need to think more about stuff like life insurance, college funds, Happy Meals, retirement funding, buying toys and clothes for a kid, paying for three Seahawks tickets instead of two, and all the other stuff that goes along with having a kid.

The second motivation (This one kind of sucks) – Within the last couple months my two biggest sources of income have pretty much dried up. First I had a site that was responsible for a big portion of my affiliate income that got hit hard by a Google update right before Q4 which sucked. I still think I can revive the site but for now it is buried in the SERPS. Second, a company that owes us quite a bit of money can no longer pay us. They were paying us monthly and now those payments are gone. I won’t get too much into the details of that one but it did come out of left field and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

With those two events my expenses have gone up and my income has gone down. Not a good formula.

Let me back up a bit. Why do I need motivation like this? Well, to put it simply I have been very complacent (lazy might be a better word) over the last few years. I had some decent income coming in so why worry? I let my old sites stay old and failed to get any new sites really cranking. I didn’t adapt and grow. That is it in a nutshell anyway.

Take this as a cautionary tale, take this as something you can learn from or just take this and mock me for being an idiot. Do with it whatever you would like.

But in many ways this couldn’t have come at a better time. I needed something to kick me in the butt and get me going and while I probably wouldn’t have chosen this particular timing I refuse to be bitter, resentful, or defeatist.

Tomorrow (or maybe next week) I will lay out my plan to fix this situation.

But for now here are a couple things I hope you can learn from my stupidity:

1. Find your motivation sooner rather than later. Maybe you want to pay off your mortgage in five years. Maybe you need more money to pay for a sick parent’s health care. Maybe you want to retire when you are 50 and devote your life to charity work. Maybe you want to have more money to give to your church. Maybe you just need to pay your bills and put food on the table. Find whatever it is that motivates you before you need the motivation and you will be in much better shape. I wish I would have been thinking about this for the past decade.

2. Never stop growing and adapting. Don’t just let your affiliate sites or projects sit there. GET WORKING ON THEM!!! Even if it is writing a couple new pieces of content a day or updating a few datafeeds or testing out some new merchants or whatever. And learn how to improve your sites. If you don’t have a mailing list for a site start one. Add a Facebook page for one of your sites. Test something new on a site every day. I don’t know what this will look like for you and your projects but don’t become stagnant.

What is it that motivates you? I would love to hear about the things in your life that make you keep pressing on and striving for greatness. Leave a comment below and let me know.

Like probably every other affiliate marketer out there I have amassed quite a bit collection of domains over the years. Many of the sites have been up and generating sales for years, many of them have just partially completed sites, and many of them have nothing on them. All of them were good ideas in my head at one point or another and some of them I have just lost interest in over the years.

But now it is time to part with some of my beloved treasures. I want to start cleaning my stuff up this year (more on that in a few days) so it is time to get rid of some of my domains that I realistically will probably never do anything with. Some of these domains have been around for years, some of them for a few months.

Also for some of them I will even give you the ideas I had for them when I started working with them and a few merchants you can use to monetize these domains. Obviously there are probably dozens of more merchants for some of these but I will give you a couple to get started.

A few of these sites have some content on them and if you twist my arm I might figure out how to send that over to you as well but for the most part I just want to get rid of these domains. So here is the list:

BigGamePartySupplies.com – I was gonna use this domain to sell cups, table cloths, serving dishes, napkins, etc. for Super Bowl parties. I used “Big Game” instead of Super Bowl because of trademark issues but this is a site that if done right could get some very good traffic in January and early February leading up to the Super Bowl. You can include favorite party food recipes (hot wings, nachos, etc.) as well to build out some content. I never got around to building this one

Merchants to use: Fanatics.com, PlatesAndNapkins.com, CelebrateExpress.com

GameRoomCentral.com – At one point I was using this site as a test site for some datafeed software. It has been around since 2005 so if you are looking for a domain with some decent age on it this would be a good one. It would be a great site to sell stuff like foosball tables, air hockey tables, poker tables, table tennis, bean bag chairs, dart boards, and so on.

Merchants to use: Wayfair.com, Hayneedle.com

Kids-Bed-Linens.com – OK exact match domain if you don’t care about hyphens. I am usually fine with them. Using the Google keyword tool the phrase “kids bed linens” has 22,200 monthly searches so there could be some good search volume on this one.

Merchants: Landofnod.com, Laylagrace.com

Living-room-lamps.com – Another exact match domain with about 18,100 monthly searches. This was gonna be another datafeed site but I never got around to building the site. There are dozens of decent merchants and thousands of products you could use for this site.

Merchants: Wayfair.com, 1800Lighting.com

Sweetheartflowers.net – Just in time for Valentine’s Day. Yeah, it is a .net domain but it is still a pretty good one for Valentine’s flowers. I did quite a bit of PPC to this one for a couple years around Valentine’s Day and it was very profitable at the time.

Merchants: FTD.com, Flora2000.com, FlowersFast.com

ValentinesFlowerDeliveries.com – Another good Valentine’s flower domain. The average man spends about $150 on Valentine’s Day and there is over $15 billion spent worldwide on Valentine’s Day. You could also build out some sort of local site (seattle.valentinesflowerdeliveries.com, denver.valentinesflowerdeliveries.com, etc.) and sell listings to local florists.

Merchants: FTD.com, Teleflora.com

WorldWideFlowerDeliveries.com – I used this site for some country-specific PPC ads. Find a merchant who delivers flowers world-wide and target different countries.

Merchants: Flora2000.com (on Shareasale)

AluminimStockPots.com – I actually built a site on this one but one of the merchants I was going through shut down their affiliate program. There are some decent programs you can use for this one though. The site made a couple sales but I never really did much with it. You can target home cooks but also target restaurants and institutions and maybe get a few big orders.

Merchants: KaTom.com, ReStockIt.com, Wayfair.com

BumboBabySeats.com – Bumbo seats are a fairly popular baby item. My niece got one and I thought it could be a good product to build a site around. I started on this one but got distracted with other projects. There has been a few recalls on this product so you might want to consider that but it is a pretty good product.

Merchants: Amazon.com, BabyEarth.com

EverydayFantasy.com – I was gonna use this site to promote FanDuel.com which is a fantasy sports site that has daily games. But you could also use it for fantasy novels, fantasy home decor type of stuff, or anything like that. This is a bit more of a brand-able domains than most of the others on the list and could be a pretty big site if you were to use it right.

Merchants: FanDuel.com

HomeMortgageYes.com – I have had this domain since 2004 and used to use it to generate mortgage leads. It did very well for a couple years but then the mortgage market got too competitive for me to spend time on. But this is a nice aged domain that could be a good site to feed links to some of your other sites. And there are still plenty of mortgage lead affiliate programs out there.

GolfGearReviews.net – I started this site last summer but never had enough time to do enough golfing to get many good reviews done. “Golf gear reviews” gets about 4,400 searches a month and golf is a multi-billion dollar industry so this domain could have some legs to it.

Merchants: InTheHoleGolf.com, TGW.com

LegWarmersForBaby.com – Surprisingly there is 22,200 searches per month for this key phrase. Personally I think the product is pretty ridiculous but they are a very popular item. I got started on this site but never got it finished.

Merchants: Babylegs.com

Grass-Fed-Steak.com – This is one of those sites where I took the time to create a lot of content and then the merchant discontinued their affiliate program. It is getting about 200 or so visitors per month from search engines and has a few decent links going to it. Not sure what other grass fed steak merchants are out there. Omaha Steaks has some and you can get some through Amazon so those would be a couple options.

LivingRoomTableLamps.net – Another lamp domain. Pretty similar to the one listed above. 6,600 searches for this exact match domain per month so there is some OK volume to work with. I briefly started working on this site but never got too far before I got busy with other sites.

Merchants: Wayfair.com, 1800lighting.com

RealChocolateCoveredStrawberries.com – I was gonna build this site to sell products from CCBerries.com since their unique selling point is they use real chocolate to cover their berries as compared to their big competitors who use some sort of fake chocolate. It is pretty interesting that on berries.com they never really say “chocolate” on their site. Everyone just assumes they cover their berries in chocolate but there technically is no chocolate. I briefly started building this site but never got around to finishing.

Merchants: CCBerries.com

ShureWirelessMicrophone.com – Good exact match, product based domain name. 12,100 searches monthly for that phrase and Shure is probably the most popular brand of microphone out there. I built this site using datafeedr but didn’t like it and didn’t renew my service. So I haven’t updated this site in quite a while.

Merchants: Zzounds.com, SameDayMusic.com, Musiciansfriend.com

So there are a few of the domains I will be getting rid of. If you are interested in any of these just fill out the form below and let me know which one you are interested in and how much you are willing to pay. If you have any questions on any of these you can ask in the comments. Hopefully you will be able to make something out of these domains. There are some good ones and some mediocre ones but hopefully you have some ideas to make them great.

Let me know if you are interested in any of these domains

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