Sugarrae aka Rae Hoffman

How to Promote a Brand New Blog

During PubCon last week, Vanessa Fox and I managed to sneak away to lunch alone to have some catch up time since both of our schedules are a bit insane.

After I calmed down from being attacked by a random sparrow (it was a really, REALLY big sparrow, ok?), the topic of conversation turned to Vanessa launching her new blog this week (uh, at least that’s the plan), Nine by Blue.

We were discussing proper and effective tactics to use for promoting new blogs and I made the mention that bloggers could take a lesson from actors, writers and musicians when they launch a new blog as far as promotional tactics. We discussed the similarities and while most are in tune with launching a brand new blog, most of these tactics can be effective for any website.

Promos and Trailers

Long before their newest album is complete or the movie is even 1/8 of the way to completing shooting, Studios and record labels are releasing movie trailers or plastering bookstores with posters advertising their impending release.

Bloggers can use this too by starting to “promo” a website before it’s fully completed. Add a blurb about your new site to the bottom of your latest blog post. Brian Clark was hyping people up to his impending launch of Lateral Action at the end of his Copyblogger posts (and possibly others) long before the website was launched.

Vanessa was using Nine by Blue branding on presentations with a link to her feed while the website was still in development. Lisa Barone let you know she might be blogging on her own domain before she ever even wrote a post.

Being in development certainly hasn’t stopped anyone from developing links and buzz in traditional media, and it shouldn’t stop webmasters either. Just be sure to remember that there is a difference between hype and buzz. You want to develop the latter and not the former.

Guest Appearances

Every time a starlet has a new movie at the box office or a band has a new album on the shelves, they start making the “guest appearances” rounds. And while they definitely aim for the highest exposure possible, like daytime television shows or late night TV, they don’t pass up radio appearances, autograph appearances and local newspaper or magazine interviews either.

Bloggers can get “guest appearances” by doing guest posts, offering interviews if their name or company name is recognizable, doing podcast or internet radio appearances and any other opportunity to put their new blog in front of people. Aim high but don’t overlook low hanging fruit either. When you’re just starting out, even a blog with only 100 people reading it offers you access to 100 people you’re not currently reaching.

For more established blogs, a general rule of thumb might be that anyone with more subscribers than you or a different, but related, market you’re not currently reaching is worth working to obtain a “guest appearance” on.

Sponsorships and Buzz Events

I’ve seen plenty of instances where video games or movies will sponsor larger events or create specific buzz events (many might call them launch parties) aimed at gaining interest. For instance, the video game “Gears of War 2″ recently sponsored UFC 91, whose fan base is heavily comprised of their target market.

Bloggers can do the same thing by stepping up to sponsor a contest in their target market – even if they’re completely new to the scene. Buzz events many times, to me anyway, can be correlated to “link bait”… if I’m going to launch a blog, I’m going to make sure I have a few really strong and very well done “buzz pieces” ready to go with the aim of getting ~~social~~ media attention and being put in front of potential readers.

The words “link bait” tend to have a negative connotation online, but I see no difference between a “buzz event” offline and a piece of “link bait” online. Both are lame when done wrong and can be amazingly effective when done right.

Street Teams

A “Street Team” is best defined by Wikipedia:

“In many cases, an influential teen referred to as a neighborhood “tastemaker” was sought out or pinpointed by a record label to be used as a conduit to their respective neighborhood, due to their stronger influence over other teens that looked to them for “what’s hot” or “what’s the next hot thing”. The tastemaker was directed to create a team on the streets to make an unsigned music artist more popular through word-of-mouth and hype.”

Replace “influential teen” with “popular or semi-popular bloggers” and you’ll quickly see that a Street Team is equivalent to an offline Linkerati. Instead of writing posts that are distributed to followers via an RSS reader, they create buzz about events by plastering the streets with posters and talking to everyone they come into contact with to promote the band.

“Usually unpaid, street teams for bands and artists are still often comprised of teenagers who are rewarded with free band merchandise or show access in exchange for a variety of actions.”

Street teams place stickers and posters in their communities while the Linkerati put up buttons and badges promoting your blog. Street teams bring friends to the shows while the Linkerati sends links of your first few initial kick ass posts to friends or in round up posts.

Street teams convince friends to buy band merchandise while the Linkerati convinces people to sign up for your blog RSS feed. Street teams phone your local radio station to request the band’s songs be played while the Linkerati submits your posts to social media websites and send around the link to friends they know have accounts.

Street teams bring vinyl and CDs to local DJs in the clubs where they work while the Linkerati link to your blog from larger websites they may do columns for. Street teams put up posters while the Linkerati showcases you and your blog via individual blog posts. Street teams post to band forums and bulletin boards online while the Linkerati do the same.

Street teams can make (or break) many bands and the Linkerati can do the same. Bloggers can rally the people they know love their content or their product offerings and organize them via personal emails to be their street team on the web. If you’re starting out with no contacts, then you might consider finding services that connect you with a “street team” (you’d just better be sure you have something worth promoting before you do).

If you have any other legit techniques for promoting a brand new blog, feel free to add to the list below. And if you liked this post, be a member of my street team and pass it on. ;-)

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

How to Promote a Brand New Blog

Vegas PubCon 2008 and UFC 91

I’m writing this post from the Las Vegas airport. I should have been home last night, but Air Canada decided to ~~cancel~~ “delay” my flight by about 13 hours.

While Vegas is my favorite city in the states, it becomes very… old, after about five days. I’m on day seven. I’m ready for this trip to end.

That said, this was easily the best trip to Las Vegas I’ve ever done, and I can’t count how many times I’ve been there on two hands.

The conference itself was pretty cool. I did a video interview with Vanessa Zamora from Search Engine World (she’s an awesome chick) and did my traditional site clinic panel. I was also threatened by a bird in a back alley (I’m so dead serious - it fluffed it’s wings, squawked and ran at me, on purpose).

I unfortunately missed fight club due to a hotel snafu, so no one got a chance to kick my ass in the literal sense. My ass was however kicked in the proverbial sense afterwards when the guys returned to tell me how they’d met one of my favorite fighters, Mac Danzig (yeah, I have no shame).

DK arranged several gatherings throughout the week open to all conference goers so that those who didn’t make it into private parties had somewhere to go. Good man. Many, including myself at times, could learn a lot from his humility.

Newer Sugarrae hire, Deanna deBara decided she would pony up to going drink for drink with me. The results were as expected, though I gotta say, I didn’t expect her to be in bed before ten. ;-)

The Thursday night party at Rain was amazing. No other way to describe it. It was easily the best Search Bash I’ve ever attended (and I’ve attended most). I had a lot of fun there before ducking out to head to the Hard Rock to see some non conference friends before heading to the Venetian to catch the end of the poker tournament before heading to bed.

Friday morning, after dragging my industry children from their nice cozy beds, I had a good breakfast and headed on over to “PubCon proper” (what I call the Pub portion of the event that gets back to its roots). So off the Hofbrauhaus we went. I’m curious as to WHY this was the venue chosen by PubCon.

We had the entire back room, which was plenty big, but it was setup to almost look like a picnic in a park. There were only two kids of beer (light or dark) and no ability to buy hard liquor. Since there were tables everywhere, no one was really moving around and, you know, networking.

I felt like I was out to lunch with several hundred people, not at a bar drinking and socializing. I love PubCon, we all know that, but I was highly disappointed by this years “PubCon proper”.

Most who read this blog know that I stayed a few days extra to attend UFC 91. I had an absolute blast. On top of having great seats (though the Vegas crowd was no where near as “electric” as past crowds at past live UFC shows I’ve attended), we were able to hit the after party (I may have ~~pounced on~~ met CB Dollaway in the hall on the way there) at Studio 54 where we had a kick ass table directly in front of the DJ (who was amazing) and the dance floor where I proceeded to spend most of my night.

Because I know all the guys behind MMA Training, I was lucky enough to meet, have dinner and hit Studio 54 with Sam Stout, Mark Hominick, Chris Horodecki (who is fighting in Japan next week - I wish him luck) and Nick Johnson who has helped George St. Pierre hone his Greco Roman Wrestling.

Absolute fucking blast this week. Thanks to all who contributed to it.

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

Vegas PubCon 2008 and UFC 91

Win a Chance to Kick My Ass

You wish. ;-) So, I found out through the grapevine that there is going to be a “Fight Club” during Vegas PubCon. What that means is that for a paltry $150 dollars, you get a shot to meet and get some training from Shawn Tompkins, one of the best MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) coaches in the industry.

To put it in terms you can understand, this is like getting to spend an hour getting training in a very small group from the Aaron Wall of MMA. And I, with some thanks to Purpose, Inc., am going to give you a chance to attend this for free.

I repeat - this is a chance to:

Hang out in a small group with some of the top bloggers you read every day to experience some business, pleasure and networking
Meet one of the most legendary coaches (who is also a fighter) in the sport
Check out one of the most state of the art facilities in MMA, Xtreme Couture Vegas
Probably catch a glimpse of a few fighters you may recognize since there is a UFC event (UFC 91 to be specific) happening in Vegas that weekend (I’m attending UFC 91 live, daver is not)
Watch Pam and I “GET IT ON!” - it’s going to be hot!

In addition to some kickass MMA training on Tuesday, November 11th at 2:15 p.m., there will also be the, what is now pretty much traditional, Purpose Inc. poker tournament on Thursday, November 13th at 9 p.m. which is being sponsored by some kick ass folks, including:

So, how do you get a chance to attend this once in a lifetime (for many) training with tough as nails coach Shawn Tompkins? Well, I asked Sugarrae’s newest addition, Deanna, and our conversation went something like this:

Deanna says:
Wow, that’s so bad ass
Deanna says:
Well, it needs to be a contest I can win
Rae says:
You can’t win, you work for me, not allowed
Deanna says:
OK, then I quit
Rae says:
Ha ha - NO
Deanna says:
So off the top of my head, people in this industry are pretty technologically oriented and probably not the scrappiest bunch (and I sit right beside them, trust me)
Deanna says:
Why don’t we run a contest where the people who enter need to write a short blog post about why THEY need to learn how to kick ass more than anyone else
Rae says:
Great idea, but I’m too tired to look up Google’s stance on when people get links through good old fashioned promotional giveaways… let’s have them leave it as a comment instead
Deanna says:
How do we pick a winner?
Rae says:
We’ll pick someone randomly
Deanna says:
OK, cool. Can I quit now?
Rae says:
NO

So there you go guys. All you need to do is LEAVE A COMMENT about why you need to kick ass more than anyone else and you get a chance to win a ticket to an unbelievable and small networking opportunity that will be fun, have hot women in attendance (and Shawn isn’t shabby himself either ladies) and will give you some martial arts skills. And seriously, do you really want ME getting MMA training without you learning some type of defense to it?

Remember, only one person will win, you can’t work for Sugarrae (sorry Deanna) and you MUST actually be going to or connected to PubCon in some way. We’ll pick a winner out of a hat on Monday morning.

And you must leave a comment (aka an entry) about why you need fight training… “enter me!” isn’t going to work. Follow instructions or I’ll find you after the training you didn’t have a chance to win and hand out some beat downs. ;-)

You can also skip all the bull, pony up some cash and simply buy your ticket here.

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

Win a Chance to Kick My Ass

Five Suggestions for Pepperjam Network

Recently a new merchant we’re working with made the move over to Pepperjam Network (they’re an affiliate network and yes, that’s an affiliate link), which forced us to get familiar with them.

After a few days of working with their backend a bit, I have a few suggestions the honchos over there may want to give some thought to. I could have sent this privately to Pepperjam, but figured other indie affiliate managers might be able to pick up some helpful information from this as well. So, here are five things I’d change if I were part of Pepperjam’s management team:

1. Sex may sell, but it doesn’t inspire confidence

I know sex sells, but when I visit their homepage, it is so obvious to me that they’re attempting to game their “never got a date in high school cause I was managing the AV club but how do you like me now that I’m an affiliate rockstar” constituency.

Oh sure, I’m a woman, which means I must be all in a huff over the “objectification of women”… not. Actually, I’m probably the opposite. My problem with it more is that I don’t want a bimbo managing my affiliate account and I don’t think most other professional affiliate marketers do either.

Deep down, I know the girls featured on the homepage likely aren’t bimbos, but using them in a “sex sells” fashion certainly doesn’t go to show me their qualifications to help me make a lot of money.

There is a reason booth babes come from modeling agencies and that most companies don’t put their cute account reps in tank tops, mini skirts and a pair of four inch fuck me heels. Because while sex may grab my attention, it doesn’t get my confidence. I’d stop showing me how simple you think my mind is and show me how you can benefit my business.

2. Don’t make it hard for me to decline offers I didn’t ask for

I’ve been a member of Pepperjam Network a very short time, but have received over 60 ~~spam~~ messages in the backend from PJ merchants that have zero to do with any site listed in my profile.

If you’re going to let your merchants spam me without any rules regarding their actually needing to be related to my site, that’s fine. Hey, maybe some people like receiving the offers. But you damn well need to give me a way to delete all of that spam at once. Currently, I have to accept or decline each of the 60 plus offers I’ve been randomly sent individually.

Additionally, when I click on the “manage relationships” tab - instead of getting the obvious - a listing of merchants I have relationships with - I am instead first presented with my above mentioned wall of ~~spam~~ offers. I need to then choose the “active” setting from the drop down tab to be shown what I am actually looking for - my current merchants.

I get that you have other merchants that might be of interest to me, but I don’t think this is the way to present them to me. Explain to merchants they should only send offers to affiliates that have sites in their profiles that match their offerings, give me a way to delete all offers I didn’t ask for at once and please show me what I expect to see when I click the “manage relationships” tab.

3. Sorting saves time and increases satisfaction

Pepperjam has a listing of merchants with datafeeds easily accessible (which is awesome) but gives you no way to sort the listing of datafeed merchants to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for. I’d appreciate the ability to sort the list by merchant name and product count.

While we’re at it, instead of giving me information that doesn’t mean much to me, like program ID numbers, I’d instead like to see the commission rates of each program, cookie duration and network EPC (and also be able to sort by them).

The easier you make it for me to find datafeed merchants to work with than other networks do, the more likely you’d end up being my first stop when looking for new partners.

4. Don’t assume I know what you do

Pepperjam offers a ton of reports. The problem is that they don’t offer tutorials on what they do and what they’re useful for. They likely have the best SID reporting I’ve seen, but if you don’t know what SID reporting is, you won’t be told either.

While the backend has tons of resources for tools, industry information and motivation, it lacks the obvious - resources for getting the most out of the advanced reporting that Pepperjam offers. “Being better” is great, providing I have the knowledge to understand that you are.

5. Don’t make me want to leave as soon as possible

I get that you guys like your color scheme. It’s an awesome color scheme. But the white text on black background is horrid for those of us who use your site. I’m 31, have perfect vision and I get a headache after about a half hour of using the Pepperjam backend. I can only imagine what it’s like for those without perfect vision or young(ish) eyes.

I don’t wander around your backend and I don’t surf around looking to see who your new merchants are. I don’t even run all the reports I’d like to. All I want to do is get in, get what I need and get out before I start to feel physical pain from your color scheme. Sure, it helps you look different, but there might be a reason no one else looks like you.

It probably seems like I have a lot of complaints, but I actually think Pepperjam is a pretty decent network (if you’re not an affiliate and want to be, you can find their sign up form here and yes, it’s an affiliate link) and they have decent merchants. They still need to improve a few things… but if they do, they’d be a favorite network for me.

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

Five Suggestions for Pepperjam Network

#5: Only Wanting the “Thrill of the Chase”

While last in the list of reasons you fail at affiliate marketing from this week, it is the most common plague I see new affiliates suffer from. When you’re building a new affiliate website, you’re usually filled with motivation.

From design, to content, to strategy, to promotional avenues, you’re filled with ideas and excitement. You talk about the site incessantly to friends, business partners or your significant other.

You pull more than one “all nighter”, staying up until 3 a.m. finishing up a section. You scroll up and down the page simply admiring the product of your work. This site is going to be big.

You take off that robots.txt and anxiously wait for Google to spider it. You watch and make sure the pages get indexed and start seeing where your base rankings are. You might even launch an initial social piece to help start getting it some visibility.

And then it happens. The “development and launch phase” is over. The site is complete enough for the moment. It now needs you to market it. You’ll need to do boring directory submissions. You’ll need to start reaching out to other folks in the industry and pound the pavement to develop links. It all seems so mundane. Where is the excitement you felt a few weeks ago? It’s gone and your desire to work on the site wanes.

You procrastinate. You look for other things to do, possibly things on the site to fix to try and recoup some of the spark you had when you initially worked on it. But it doesn’t work.

But then, you get another idea for a new site. You’re feeling excited and rush out to buy a domain. You look up at the clock after what you thought was ten minutes and realize it is 4 a.m. And you watch history repeat itself.

Most affiliates who have failed to be successful financially with affiliate marketing, if they look at themselves honestly, can usually open a proverbial shoe box of these abandoned sites. Hell, even those of us that are successful have a few of these sites laying around.

I refer to this as “thrill of the chase” syndrome because it reminds me of the guy or girl who likes dating and wooing someone to be “theirs”, but soon gets bored of the relationship once the honeymoon phase is over and it starts requiring real effort to maintain and develop into something much more meaningful.

If you want success with affiliate marketing then you need to work through The Dip.

“It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.” - Seth Godin

I’m sorry if you were expecting secrets this week, but in reality, it is the obvious things that seperate success from failure in affiliate marketing.

Successful affiliates:

Work hard and reward/motivate themselves by playing hard
Stay focused on what matters
Don’t look for the easy way out
Never stand still
Work through the dip

All you have to do is decide if you want to succeed or fail in affiliate marketing and act accordingly.

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

#5: Only Wanting the “Thrill of the Chase”

#4: Falling Victim to Analysis Paralysis/

Whenever I get an email from a newer affiliate asking for advice on a site, it usually contains a 14 paragraph, in depth explanation of what they were thinking of doing and why no matter what route they take, it might be the wrong route because [insert reason generated after hours of contemplation here].

How can doing your research and looking at your plan from various angles possibly be a reason for failure at Internet marketing? When you become so worried that your next course of action will be the wrong one that you do nothing. A condition commonly referred to as “analysis paralysis”.

Before you fall victim to analysis paralysis (assuming you already aren’t), you should realize a few things. The reality of being an affiliate marketer is that you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to buy domains at 2 a.m. that you later look at going “what the hell was I thinking?”. You’re going to sign up with affiliate programs that never make you money even with a well trafficked website.

You’re going to build at least one website in your career (if you’re a long term affiliate, it will be many, many more) that gets no traction and in the end, has to be called a loss. You will have many bad business ideas.

But here’s the thing, you don’t want to be afraid to make those mistakes because, guess what?

YOU WILL LEARN SOMETHING FROM EVERY MISTAKE YOU MAKE.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” - Wayne Gretzky

You don’t need to do everything correctly, you just need to do it:

Find a topic you’re interested in entering
Do your keyword research
Do your competitive analysis (more on that in the coming weeks)
Make sure there are several affiliate programs and multiple advertisers in the space
Figure out how you can define a POD and compete long term in the space over time
Create a realistic budget within your means
Create a marketing plan (not a 14 page document, a quick bullet list of who you can reach out to will work)
Develop the alpha version of the site and ensure that basic SEO requirements are met
Start marketing that site
Keep improving it, keep marketing it
Keep your eye on the ball

Will you make mistakes? Yes. But being your own boss (what most affiliates aspire to be) sometimes requires making decisions based on the information you have and not the information you want. To me, making no decision is worse than making the wrong one.

Make the decision based upon your best efforts to gather the information you need to make one and if you’re wrong, don’t be afraid to admit it later and change course. Don’t let the fear of being wrong stand in the way of your success.

Last up will be the fifth post in the Reasons you fail at affiliate marketing series which explains what I believe to be the most common reason for failure, focusing on the “thrill of the chase”.

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

#4: Falling Victim to Analysis Paralysis/

#3: Looking for the Silver Bullet

I twittered a few weeks back that affiliate marketing (or any Internet marketing for that matter) is a lot like weight loss.

Tons of people has it as a goal, the majority won’t do the work it takes to achieve it and those who are in shape often have their figure chalked up to “good genes”.

Many people looking to lose weight are looking for the magic pill or the latest fad diet or five minute workout that will help them achieve their goal of looking good in a bathing suit this summer.

The obvious and definite path to weight loss - eating a bit smarter and being more active over a long period of time - is often overlooked in favor of the constant search for the quick and easy fix.

Many would be affiliate marketers looking to make a lot of money are searching for that awesome algorithmic loophole, latest fad social media site or e-book promising to show them how to make 20,000 dollars per month in five minutes per day.

The obvious and definite path to affiliate marketing success - reading quality information that one should then test for effectiveness along with working diligently to develop links, branding and presence to a quality site - is often overlooked in favor of the constant search for the quick and easy fix.

Listen up folks - there is no quick and easy fix to long term success in either weight loss or affiliate marketing. There are no silver bullets in affiliate marketing. Looking for them wastes time, wastes money and potentially wastes opportunities which you might never be faced with again.

Additionally, while running an Internet business certainly has less overhead than a brick and mortar shop, it isn’t free if you want to truly be professional. You are going to have to spend some money to make some.

The only way to achieve financial success with affiliate marketing is to stay focused and work hard and spend your time working on the things that matter.

Tomorrow will be the fourth post in the Reasons you fail at affiliate marketing series which focuses on what I heard referred to once as “Analysis Paralysis”.

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

#3: Looking for the Silver Bullet

#2: Playing the “Fame Game”

I’m going to keep this post short since I’m sick of constantly rehashing the topic.

Unfortunately though, it could not be ignored as a top five reason for failure in the affiliate marketing industry.

“What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.”- Lord Byron

In my experience over the years, there are two main reasons people seek fame in the Internet marketing industry:

To be as visible as possible to attract clients, larger consulting or project fees and to create a resume that is impressive to potential clients and/or makes you more valuable to your employer and/or building up a brand/resume for future needs should they arise. (Looking for visibility/branding)
To fulfill a need to feel popular and loved because you were treated like shit in high school or because you’re an attention whore. (Looking for Rockstardom)

It’s pretty well known that I think running around desperately seeking “Internet marketing rockstar” status is nothing but a huge waste of time that can only be described as ego food for the soul even though some people chase it as if Google’s algorithm is exposed once you land on the Search Engine Land blogroll.

“Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.” - Diana Black

Most don’t even realize they’re looking for #2 and will swear they’re after #1. But, come on, let’s be realistic shall we?

If you’re truly looking for visibility/branding, the following might actually help you achieve that:

Being able to show websites from your portfolio/clients that rank/proof you know what the hell you’re doing
Testimonials/recommendations from past clients or industry leaders
Speaking at conferences
Writer on a regular basis for a respected and widely read publication in the field
Guest posts on websites with a much higher profile than your own

Some signs that you’re fooling yourself into believing you’re looking visibility when you’re really looking for Rockstardom:

Running around Sphinn leaving fourteen fantastic comments per day, including one that pwns the latest troll
Bragging that you were invited out to the same dinner that Andy Beal attended at the last conference
Spending hours each day accruing mozpoints by commenting an hour per day at SEOMoz (assuming you’re not an actual mozzer)
Spending four days campaigning to win a “Semmy”
Spending weeks kissing ass so you get invited to that exclusive conference party
Patting Matt Cutts and other Google employees on the back for their latest “awesome post” in hopes that they might finally notice you
Blogging about a topic that once blogged about, will make something that financially benefits you or could potentially benefit you, suffer

I advocate becoming visible if you take on clients or have another valid, financially motivated reason for needing or wanting visibility. But be honest with yourself. Being visible has an ROI. Being a “rockstar” doesn’t. The first list is working hard. The second list is working soft.

If you’re new to this industry, not only can you not afford to be distracted by “Rockstardom”, but you also can’t afford to be impeded by it. If you’re playing the fame game, it becomes very hard to ask questions or ask for help/advice when you’re running around trying to prove you’re “the expert” all the time.

It also becomes very easy to get wrapped up in “industry drama” and you’ll quickly find, as I have, that nothing will waste your time faster then caring who said what about who and what so and so said about you.

There is no such thing as “famous” in this industry. Since my mother doesn’t even understand what I do for a living, I’m having a hard time buying into there being true “fame” in Internet marketing. And so should you. Paris Hilton is famous. Hell, even the cast of the Surreal Life could be called famous. We’re not “famous” and 99.9% of us never will be. Being financially comfortable however, if we keep our eye on the ball, is entirely within our reach.

“It’ll be tough to pay the bills with a wallet full of famous.” - Lee Odden

Next up, we’ll take a look at the third topic in the Reasons you fail at affiliate marketing series - desperately searching for the silver bullet. If you’re confused, stay tuned. I’ll explain tomorrow.

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

#2: Playing the “Fame Game”

#1: Working Soft and Playing Hard

When compiling a list of the top five mistakes would be marketers make, you definitely have to put working soft and playing hard at the top of that list.

I don’t know where it originated from, but the first time I ever hard “work hard, play hard” was during an in house consulting stint I did for a company. It was the favorite mantra of the company’s owner and one that his early employees took seriously.

The general sentiment was that he believed that employees who worked hard should and would be rewarded by being able to play hard. It was a doctrine many of his employees took with them when they left the company to move onto other things, myself included. In fact, for a handful of us, the phrase became more a way of life than a quotation to pin to your cork board.

When you see successful affiliate marketers tweeting the day away or taking a elaborate trip, it is easy to ignore the fact that they worked very hard for many years to get where they are able to do so. Successful marketers (meaning those successful in financial terms) are able to take the day off today because they busted their ass for five days six years ago to get into the position where they could.

During my early days in affiliate marketing, I often burned the candle at both ends. Many of my longtime friends can attest that I was often up until 3 or 4 am in the morning, working until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore. And those late nights couldn’t stop me from getting up in the morning either since I had kids to care for. And I’m not alone. Every other successful affiliate marketer that I know has a similar story of late nights and exhausted minds before they finally started to see the fruits of their labors and were able to live a different life thanks to all the hard work they’d put in.

If you’re in your early years, you can’t work soft and play hard. You can’t afford to be on Twitter a few hours each day. You can’t afford to be chatting on MSN all day about the latest gossip. You can’t afford to spend a few hours a day commenting on Sphinn. You can’t afford to sleep in during morning conference sessions.

To keep it simple - you can’t afford to fuck off. Period. You haven’t earned it yet. And if you don’t dedicate yourself to working hard before you play hard, you’ll always be faking it because you’ll never actually make it.

And once you are finally making more money at affiliate marketing than you did when employed and can take that leap to being your own boss? Never stop moving. Don’t get comfortable. Learn to delegate your responsibility so that you have more free time, but never let your business sit still.

I made this mistake about five years ago when I started to see what I thought at the time was insane success online. I got comfortable, stopped working as much myself and didn’t hire anyone to expand my business. When I look back and realize that I could have taken advantage of so many more opportunities and what those opportunities would be worth now, I want to kick myself.

Hard.

To this day.

Things change fast. We don’t know how long the affiliate marketing sector will have the absolutely lush opportunities it does now to churn out “unlikely success stories”. It is already harder today than it was yesterday. Think big and kick ass.

Work hard. Play hard. There is a reason it is said in that order.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how playing the fame game can hurt you, otherwise known as part two in the Reasons you fail at affiliate marketing series.

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

#1: Working Soft and Playing Hard

A Comprehensive Review of Compete Pro

When I (Melanie Nathan - hi!) mentioned looking into Compete.com on Twitter, Rae sent me an email offering to pay for my access to the Standard level of Compete Pro if I’d be willing to write a review about the service and explain to her and others what the heck Compete.com actually does outside of offer sparse, free data. Score!

I’ve spent a month checking out the nooks and crannies of Compete Pro. While there were some things I think could be done better, overall, I was surprised at the accuracy and usefulness of many of the tools and reporting that they provide.

The Good, the Bad, the Awesome

Consumer behavioral data is a powerful research source and Compete seems to have a large pool of data to fish from with over 2 million members. Unfortunately, the data is based on the daily usage of US users only, which leaves a lot of guess work if you’re a business that’s targeting other regions.

The upside is that their Site Referral tool is incredibly accurate. I ran many reports using my sites and the sites of others (who were nice enough to entrust me with their top traffic driving keywords) and in most cases 95% of the queries Compete.com said were the top 30 actually WERE in the real top 30. That’s some mighty awesome competitive intelligence.

The Sharpest Tools in the Shed?

Since I found their service’s to be pretty confusing at first (actually really confusing), I created a general breakdown of what the Compete tools are and what they do.

Site Analytics:

Get up to 2 years worth of data on one site’s traffic and page views or compare multiple sites at one time. Filter criteria to focus on visitors, engagement and growth for both daily and monthly time frames.

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The main downfall is that there isn’t any data available for sites that aren’t widely known:

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Search Analytics:

There are three main tools within the “Search Analytics” section; Site Referral Reports, Keyword Destination Reports and Comparison Reports.

Site Referral tool: helps you understand what keyword phrases drive traffic to either a specific site or an entire industry. You can enter an individual URL and get specific data tailored to that site or you can choose a category/niche from a comprehensive drop down list of industries to get more general data.

For example, according to “Site Referral” here are the top few keywords driving traffic where it comes to the Automotive Dealers industry:

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Even if the data isn’t 100% accurate it provides a nice list of related keywords depending on your industry or niche. These keywords can then be plugged into your favorite keyword research tool to determine their potential.

Keyword Destination tool: helps you understand which sites are capturing traffic from specific keyword phrases and the variations of that phrase. Plug in a keyword you uncovered using Site Referral and get a list of the top sites.

Keyword destination reports can also be helpful for identifying places to distribute content for a non-commercial term that relates to a commercial topic. You can find the sites that get the most traffic for the non-commercial term, sort them by overall traffic and start contacting them to offer them free content in exchange for publicity.

Keyword destination also allows you to search for complimentary keywords to find people you might be able to cross promote with. For example a site that features wedding supplies might do a keyword destination report on “photography” to find sites that may be willing to exchange links in a fashion that actually drives juice AND traffic between two worthwhile, complimentary sites. Same with finding places to advertise.

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Comparison tool: lets you compare two different sites to highlight gaps in search referrals that might represent new search marketing opportunities for your site. For example you can see by the screenshot below that 1800flowers.com clearly has the advantage over ftd.com for the term “flowers” but ftd.com has the advantage when it comes to the term “flower delivery”.

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Ranked Lists:

Another tool that Compete offers is Ranked Lists which are lists of the most popular sites across the Internet, ranked by; unique visits, visits, page views, total time spent on site or monthly attention. This feature could be utilized to judge your site’s presence in the context of its peers, find new domains to partner with or simply analyze Internet trends.

Choose to run a report on 25 domains or go all the way up to 500,000 domains (download this ranked list for the top sites in August 2008 by unique visitors for an example). If you don’t know what to make of the data (or you require more in depth data), they also offer a “Custom Analysis” solution (which I’m going to guess costs extra).

Referral Analytics:

Using this tool you can find out which sites are sending traffic to a specific website or which sites a website is sending traffic to.

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Compete.com also offer information on Paid Clickthroughs, but to me, the data is extremely inaccurate. I plugged in a few sites which I know do not spend a dime on paid advertising yet it says they do. For now though, I’ve decided to reserve judgment on this tool until I experiment more.

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Pricing

They offer a free (but limited) version of their service, which allows you to compare up to 5 sites at one time and export the data. You can also grab a free tool bar for your browser. With a paid plan though, you gain access to the rest of the tools and you’re able to generate more reports. The subscription is priced and billed monthly but it also offers an “Enterprise” subscription which requires contacting Compete.com for a quote to obtain pricing.

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Prices for their monthly plans range from $199 to $500 and are based on Intro, Standard and Advanced usage and also how many reports you plan to generate (you can generate 50 reports per month at the $199 level and 100 reports per month at the $299 level).

If you can do without the paid vs organic search breakdowns and can live with 200 sites for your ranked lists requests, the $199 plan should be sufficient for anyone without the need to run more than 50 reports a month (50 reports is a lot of data if you actually dig deep into what you learn from the reports and act upon it).

Also, I have to note that when looking for an easy way to cancel the Compete service to ensure it existed, I realized there wasn’t one. Unfortunately, at the moment, if you want to downgrade the paid plan you’re on or cancel the service all together, you have to email customer support at membersupport@compete.com.

While annoying, when questioned about this, Compete.com’s General Manager, Gregg Poulin stated:

“We are currently in the process of developing that functionality for end users to complete it through the interface. We outsource our billing/payment system and have hit some bumps in getting the two technologies to speak to each other – that will be resolved this month.”

I look forward to seeing them follow through on this point.

Learn How to Use Compete

Compete is a tad confusing to use – at first. Like many companies, they simply hand you their tools and tell you to jump right in. If you’re a data junkie, that’s not a problem, but if you’re new to all this then you’ll probably need some help getting started. Compete’s FAQ section answers a lot of questions. It’s full of basic information on:

Where Compete gets their data
How to use their individual tools
Ideas for how to read and interpret the results

The most helpful resource is probably their blog which is a wealth of information due to the case studies they regularly publish. Reading their blog will help give you a grasp on what type of data can be gathered and how it can be used to help sculpt your marketing campaign.

Who Should Use Compete?

I think any marketer or site owner can use Compete and be reasonably happy with the results. In my opinion, Compete.com is for people who need:

Either continuous access due to large ongoing projects or a month here/month there to look up info for ongoing smaller projects
Ballpark traffic details about popular/known sites
Help with brainstorming for new keywords
Help identifying new sites to partner with or advertise on

I think Compete.com is well-suited to the user that wants to use the tools to look for related topics, keywords and niches for new ideas to get an idea of what they may be up against and where gaps and opportunities may lie.

Note from Rae: As with all reviews done on this site, I was not “given” review access. I paid for it. Additionally, after playing with the tools for a month, I’ve found it a valuable tool for myself and my company and will be continuing my subscription. Consider this disclosure that the links to Compete.com are affiliate links since I myself like and use the service.

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

A Comprehensive Review of Compete Pro