Warning: Don’t Be Seduced By StoreStacker

A new affiliate tool has just been released, and you’re bound to be bombarded by a ton of marketers telling you how great it is. Do not listen to them!

The product is called StoreStacker. It promises that you can easily and quickly setup affiliate stores using products from many sources. You can even auto publish content by scraping other’s RSS feeds. The whole thing is automatic… just set it up, walk away, and enjoy the commissions.

The trouble is this method NEVER works. Sure you might install 20 stores… or 100 stores… and find short term success, but you’ll never build up a source of long-term stable income.

Do you really think it’s as easy as buying a piece of software, installing it to a domain, picking a niche, and setting up scraped RSS content? Listen, I know how strong the desire can be to find a silver bullet that will earn you a lot of money for little effort, but that silver bullet doesn’t exist.

If you want to buy StoreStacker, then that’s fine, as long as you understand that if you want long term success, you will need to treat it like any other authority site. You will need to publish original content that provides value to your niche and your visitors, which takes time and effort.

Please… if you are reading this… do not be seduced by StoreStacker. I won’t tell you not to buy it, but I won’t be recommending it either.

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3 Key Steps for Success on the eBay Partner Network

Ever since the eBay Partner Network (ePN) fired a bunch of affiliates, there’s been a lot of discussion on whether or not affiliates can trust the ePN going forward. What you need to realize is that it doesn’t matter if you can trust the ePN. What matters is that you position yourself for success.

“It is not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.” –John Wooden

Step One - Understand Your Surroundings

It’s nearly impossible to succeed at anything in life unless you have a working knowledge of the subject. For example, if you wanted to build a house, you’d need to understand community regulations and zoning laws, drafting and design, construction materials and equipment, framing, concrete work, dirt work, and so on and so forth. There’s a lot of information a person needs to understand if they want to successfully build a house… especially one that won’t blow over during the first storm.

The same holds true for affiliate marketing. If you want to succeed, you need to understand as much as you can about it. That means reading blogs like this one, purchasing training materials like Wealthy Affiliate, understanding how to build and maintain web sites, marketing strategies and techniques, and on and on. There’s a lot that a person needs to know to be successful.

Specific to the eBay Partner Network, you need to understand what eBay expects from affiliates. You need to know how to “play the game” so that eBay’s happy, your visitors are happy, and most importantly, so that you’re happy and earning commissions.

Now I can hear what some of you are thinking, because people are posting this same thought on the various forums and blogs: “how the blank can I know what they want when they don’t tell us?”

Well they did tell us, but people seem uninterested in trying to understand what they said. Unfortunately that’s not an excuse. As with everything in life, if you don’t understand an aspect of something, then you have to figure it out if you want continued success. If eBay didn’t give us detailed specifics, then we all need to analyze the situation. Read between the lines. Put yourself in their shoes and try to determine what they really mean.

Step One’s Action Item: Make the effort to figure things out going forward. Excuses and complaints won’t help you. Learn as much as you can and adapt to changes as they occur.

Step Two - Focus on Your Site’s Visitors Instead of eBay

This should be a no-brainer, but it isn’t. Here’s what happens… someone wants to get started in affiliate marketing. They find out that the eBay Partner Network is a good program to join, so they get signed up. They want to make money, so their focus is on setting up web sites for the ePN so they can start earning commissions as soon as possible.

Trust me when I say that you won’t send “engaged” traffic to eBay with that approach.

Think about it, if your main focus is on making money with any specific affiliate program, you’re not going to come across as someone who’s site really values the people who read it. You just won’t.

They always say that if you want to sound pleasant over the phone, you should be smiling, even though the person on the other end of the line can’t see you. The same is true for your affiliate web sites. If your focus is on making money, trust me, your visitors will figure that out.

So what can you do to change things? Simple… you build web sites that provide value to your visitors even if you removed each and every affiliate link or eBay product listing. The more engaged you are in your niche and with your visitors, the more engaged your visitors will be when you send them over to eBay.

Step Two’s Action Item: Make sure your site provides value to your visitors. This requires adding content, more content, and even more content. Focus on making your site the best it can be for the people who visit it.

Step Three - Get Real and Face the Facts

This last step deals more with your perspective and attitude more than anything else. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are few guarantees in life, and that includes affiliate marketing. The sooner you come to grips with that, the better off you’ll be.

Instead of worrying about the ePN, you should focus your energy on the things you can control. What are those things? Well for starters, you decide which niche to focus on. You control the content that gets published on your site. You get to choose which affiliate products that you feel will benefit your readers the most.

If you take charge of the aspects of your business that you can control and come to grips with the aspects that you can’t control, then you’ll be a step ahead of the average affiliate marketer. People who’ve had the most business success tend to be the ones who are fluid. They’re able to adapt to the changing landscape around them… even reinventing themselves and their businesses when necessary.

Step Three’s Action Item: Focus on the aspects of your business that you can control, and change your expectations regarding the aspects that you can’t control. Understand that things change, and that keeping a positive attitude and rolling with the punches will give you the best chance for long term success.

Conclusion

It’s my sincere hope that the three steps outlined above will help you understand how to succeed not only with the eBay Partner Network moving forward, but also with affiliate marketing in general.

Personally, my plan is to continue focusing my sites on the visitors, even on the sites that promote or feature eBay product listings. And if the ePN ever decides to fire me, then that’s okay, because I will continue to focus on my niches and my readers first. If I do that, then monetization, commissions and earnings will come.

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Crazy End Of Summer Directory Submissions Sale

If you’ve been reading my blog the past several months, or know me from the BANS forum, then you know I’ve offered my own directory submission service. Well, I’ve decided to stop offering this, and am retiring from the directory submission service.

The good news for you is that my friend Lora is going to take over the business from me. She lives a mile and a half down the road from my house, and she’s already helped me with customers’ submission work (especially when I had a lot of orders at once). So Lora knows what to do, and she’ll do a fantastic job going forward.

Lora has decided to run a sale on the submission prices, and you can find more information on her site: Crazy End Of Summer Sale : Directory Submissions.

Are Directory Submissions Worthwhile?

Having said all that, you might be asking if directory submissions are even worthwhile nowadays. If you do a Google search, you’ll find lot’s of editorials stating not to bother.

Here’s my take on directory submissions… they’re one piece of the larger SEO puzzle. In and of themselves, you won’t rank high in the search engines just from directory submissions, but they definitely can help. They contribute by giving you more backlinks. Backlinks are backlinks, and every one helps.

If you had to spend an entire evening submitting your site to free directories yourself, then I would agree that directory submissions aren’t worthwhile. However you don’t have to do it yourself. You can have Lora perform the submissions for you very inexpensively.

So for what it’s worth, I plan on continuing to submit my new sites to free directories, and personally plan to have Lora do the submissions.

(Full Disclosure: I am not getting anything in return for recommending Lora’s service. I was just happy she was willing to take over the business… )

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What’s Worse Than Being Fired By eBay?

I realize that if you were just fired by the ePN, you’re probably in a foul mood… angry at eBay… and wondering what to do next. But imagine how you’d feel if you just lost your house to a flood, because that’s exactly the situation Rochelle is facing this weekend!

If you don’t know Rochelle, she is one of the nicest and most helpful contributors there is on the Build a Niche Store member forum.

I’ve worked with Rochelle in the past on some instructional blog posts, and I can tell you she’s a great person!

I encourage you to visit her Niche Store Strategies blog and offer any words of encouragement that you can.

Hang in there Rochelle!

(PS. Thanks to Mark @ The Niche Store Builder blog for the heads up!)

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Fellow BANS Member’s Take on the ePN Firings

Yesterday I blogged about how eBay has recently fired many affiliates. Well if you use the Build a Niche Store software and participate in their member forum, you’ve no doubt seen the many posts from members who are angry and trying to figure out what to do next.

Soggy from the BANS forum has recently written a very informative post on his blog titled “Build A Niche Store Has Your Best Interest In Mind.” In the post, Soggy answers the question “what to do now?” with some practical steps.

Some of the steps Soggy listed are:

“I would take a good hard look at your stores and see which ones are viable in adding additional affiliate programs. Take an inventory of all sites and look to find matching product lines offered by other affiliate programs.”

“Stay active on the BANS forums as the dynamic shift is beginning and you do not want to miss a thing.”

I encourage you to read the full post for yourself.

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Masking Affiliate Links with WP-Affiliate

If you use WordPress in any of your marketing efforts (and you should be), you probably need a way to mask your affiliate links. If that’s you, there’s a free plug-in you need to know about called WP-Affiliate.

WP-Affiliate let’s you setup blog-wide masked (cloaked) affiliate links. Basically you enter in the anchor text and the actual URL, and the plug-in will give you a masked URL you can use within posts on your blog.

So as an example, if you had an affiliate link that looked like this:

http://www.affiliateproduct.com/myaffiliateid/?=myaffiliatetrackingid

WP-Affiliate could transform that link to look like this instead:

http://www.mydomain.com/recommends/affiliateproduct

I think you’ll agree that second domain looks much nicer, and would provide a better experience for your blog’s readers. You can actually see how the plug-in works by clicking any of the links on this post!

Installing and configuring WP-Affiliate is really easy… just upload the plug-in to your site, activate it from the admin dashboard, and then setup your links from the options area in the write/edit post page.

The downside to WP-Affiliate is that it won’t automatically link your chosen anchor text. You use it to create the links, but then you have to manually add them to your post. It does have a shortcut to send your link to the editor window, but that is still a manual effort.

However considering how well it does what it does—and especially considering the price—I plan on using WP-Affiliate on this blog, and I encourage you to do the same!

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eBay Partner Network Sends Affiliates Pink Slips

The eBay Partner Network (ePN) affiliate program has recently “fired” many of it’s affiliates. They were given their seven day notice and told to remove all of their affiliate links. (You can read the reactions of frustrated users and eBay’s response over on the ePN discussion board.)

Note: for the sake of full disclosure, I want to make sure and state that I’m still an eBay affiliate myself. I have not been “fired,” but I know many people who have.

The letter that “fired” affiliates received from eBay reads in part:

During a recent review of eBay Partner Network publisher accounts and site metrics data for clicks your account drives to eBay.com, we determined that the traffic generated from your account is significantly less engaged with the eBay site as compared to the standards set by our other affiliates. While we appreciate your efforts to drive traffic to our Advertiser sites, we do not think that it is mutually beneficial to further our business relationship at this time. As a result, we will be expiring your eBay Partner Network account in 7 days and we request that you remove all of your eBay Partner Network affiliate links by that time. Payment will take place as per the Network Agreement for any traffic driven to eBay Advertiser sites prior to the expiration date of August 27, 2008.

One of our account managers will contact you if a more appropriate business opportunity arises to work together again in the future.

Regards,
The eBay Partner Network

Basically, the affiliates were kicked out of the program because eBay deemed the quality of customers they were driving to eBay weren’t good enough. Apparently the problem was that these customers didn’t become repeat buyers.

Now there is a lot of anger being thrown eBay’s way by affiliates in the various forums, and that is completely understandable. People are either mad at being removed from the program when they felt they did nothing wrong, or they’re scared because while they didn’t get their pink slip today, they worry it’s only a matter of time before it’s their turn.

My Thoughts on the Situation

I don’t want to jump on the anger bandwagon and state the obvious. You can read the comments on the ePN forum for that. What I want to do is offer some of my own insights into the situation. Bear in mind that some of these insights might seem random, but trust me… they’re not. I am choosing to focus on the broader issues involved here, which are all related together, instead of elaborating on just one or two sticking points.

What type of affiliate sites have you created…

• I noticed that many BANS users have been banned, but no one on the phpBay forum has come forward saying they were affected by this. Neither tool is better than the other, but clearly it’s far too easy for the lazy affiliate to create an eBay affiliate store with BANS, whereas phpBay depends on a blog to function.
• Based on that observation, I think the days of the affiliate “e-commerce” site are over. You know… the sites that emmulate an e-commerce store, but instead of selling and shipping their own products, the items for sale are affiliate links to another site.
• Quality niche content is crucial. Not only will you drive the most targeted niche traffic to your merchant, but it will also rank well in the search engines over the long haul.

How many eggs were in that basket…

• I’m afraid that far too many eBay affiliates put all of their eggs into the eBay basket. That is, they depend on the eBay Partner Network for most–if not all–of their affiliate earnings.
• THAT IS A HUGE MISTAKE!
• The ePN Agreement states that eBay can terminate their relationship with you at any time, for any reason, within 7 days. You have no recourse, so you can’t depend solely on them for your livelihood.
• Therefore it’s crucial that you diversify your affiliate efforts… especially if you depend on your affiliate earnings to buy food and pay the mortgage. Remember there’s still merchants at Commission Junction, Linkshare, Clickbank, Amazon, and many other quality affiliate programs. If you haven’t already, it’s time you start putting your skills to work promoting affiliate products from other programs besides eBay (and you should start diversifying immediately).

It’s still okay to promote eBay products…

• If you weren’t “fired” by eBay, then you are still okay. That doesn’t mean you’ll be okay tomorrow, so be careful. However if you already have successful eBay promotions running on your sites, there’s no reason to pull them down out of fear. Simply start diversifying and be prepared should the worst happen.
• Remove your poor performing “e-commerce” style sites now before they cause you trouble. Replace them with quality niche content. If you’re not an expert in your niche, then hire others to write the content for you. Become a resource in your niche, and the traffic you send to eBay is likely to continue to weather these storms in the future.
• Sign up for the PepperJam network. Nobody at PepperJam is getting expired like they are at the ePN. So there’s always that option.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more and more about this in the coming days, and if anything significant occurs or I have additional insights, I’ll be sure to blog about them.

In the meantime, I would love to read your comments regarding this situation…

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3 Tools for Your Affiliate War Chest

I’ve recently obtained three tools for my own personal affiliate war chest. I plan to post an in-depth review of each tool after I’ve had more time to work with them, however I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you wanted to check them out now.

JohnCow’s “Build a Business Not a Blog” eBook
This eBook is full of amazing information on how to setup and run a blog as a business. It teaches you everything from which plug-ins to use, to how to build up a visitor base and monetize your efforts. The best thing about this eBook is the price… zero.

Traffic Travis
This is an amazing software tool that I just purchased a few days ago. It does keyword research, SEO analysis, but the best feature is the PPC spy tool! You can enter in your list of longtail keywords, and then schedule Traffic Travis to check the running Google PPC ads for those keywords each day. This helps you determine which longtail keywords are making others money. Truthfully I’m not sure how useful the keyword and SEO tools are going to be compared to other tools I already own, but the PPC tool is the reason I purchased the software.

Blog Mastermind
Blog Mastermind is a coaching program that teaches you everything about setting up a successful blog. This isn’t a typical blogging eBook or anything like that… instead it’s a full coaching program. There’s 27 lessons, 5 advanced lessons, over 30 hours of audio, hours of video, live student/teacher Q&A conference calls, and more! I’m not going to say any more about this now, because I just purchased it a week ago, and quite honestly I’m already overwhelmed with the quantity and quality of the material. I just need to work through each lesson one at a time, and once I’ve gotten through more of the material, I will keep you updated on my progress. I’ll know soon enough if the coaching is worth the investment I made in it.

Well that’s it for now. Stayed tuned for those in-depth reviews, but in the meantime, you now know the tools I’ve been using lately to boost my online profits… so enjoy!

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Gears Slowed Down My WordPress

I’m using WordPress 2.6 to power this blog, as well as several other blogs I run. Being the techie that I am, when WP 2.6 was released, I had to try out all the cool new features. That included the new Turbo feature utilizing Google Gears. Yay… new stuff to play with… and severely slow down my blog’s admin interface.

The Turbo feature uses Google Gears to download many backend parts of the WordPress administrative interface to your local computer. That way when you want to do something… say publish a new post… WordPress doesn’t have to download files from your web site. They’re all sitting nice and neat on your hard drive for quick and easy access.

Or that’s how it’s suposed to work.

In my case, when I would do something new like click to write a new post, or click the “Save” button, my browser would grind to a halt for upwards of 30 seconds. This happened for me on two different computers (my new laptop and my older workstation) under both FireFox 3 and Internet Explorer 7.

Since I’m no idiot, after 3 weeks I finally decided it was time to disable the “Turbo” feature so my administrative interface would be fast again.

Except for one problem… I can’t read. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to disable the “Turbo” feature, even though when you click on the “Turbo” link in the Dashboard, it tells you what to do. I even spent time searching Google for instructions on how to disable the darn thing, but was coming up empty. Of course I was! The instructions are right in the WP Dashboard! I was just in too much of a hurry to actually read them.

So just in case you can’t read either, and found this blog post by searching the web trying to figure it out too, I’ll let you in on the secret. In FireFox, you click on the Tools menu and choose “Google Gears Settings.” Then simply click the remove link next to your blog in the list. Pretty simple really.

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Useful Free Online SEO Tools

I was browsing some SEO forums when I came across a thread listing many useful free online SEO tools. Here are the ones I bookmarked and plan to use myself:

Dig PageRank Checker
This web site will scan many Google datacenters and check your site’s pagerank at each of them. It’s really easy to use and the results come back fast.

Backlinks Checker
This site is probably my favorite of the new tools. It will scan for your site’s backlinks, and then produce a report with each of the URLs, the number of other links on the same page, the anchor text used for the link, the page’s PR, and whether or not the link is set to ‘nofollow.’ Very useful information!

Lynx Viewer
This is an online version of the text-only web browser. It’s useful because search engine spiders can only read your web site in text mode. So you can use this tool to see how your site will look to the search engines.

Cubestat
This tool is more fun than practical… unless you’re selling your web site. It estimates the value of your web site based on factors that I didn’t take the time to understand. I have no clue if the data is worthwhile, but it’s fun to plug in your own sites, those of competitors, and any other big name web site to see it’s estimated value.

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So there you have my newly discovered list of free online SEO tools. If you know of any other free SEO sites that are useful, please share them with us by leaving a comment. Thanks!

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