Organizing Your Affiliate Business With OneNote 2007

Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 is an electronic notebook that can be used for organizing your affiliate business with to-do lists, notes and research, and so much more.

Product Name: Office OneNote 2007
Developer: Microsoft
Platform: Windows Vista / XP
Purpose: Digital notebook that organizes your notes, lists, audio notes, web site printouts, and anything else you wish to store digitally.
Price: $68.99 (as of 2008-09-01)

Introduction

When you run an affiliate marketing business, you have a lot of stuff you need to keep track of, including:

• To-do lists
• Affiliate program details
• Research notes
• Brainstorming ideas
• Keyword lists
• Membership usernames and passwords
• Etc.

It can be a daunting task to keep everything straight, but if you don’t, you end up being disorganized. When you’re disorganized, you don’t work efficiently, and so ultimately you lose money. Office OneNote 2007 is a software program that can help you stay organized in every area of your business.

Who Is This Product For?

In a nutshell… EVERYONE. There isn’t a person living who doesn’t need to stay organized. If you’re an internet or affiliate marketer and own a computer, there’s no doubt that you need to stay organized. So yes… that’s you!

If you already have software or a system for staying organized, and it works well, then you might not have a need for OneNote. However if you don’t have a system in place yet, or if your current system isn’t working that well, then you will want to seriously consider OneNote.

What Can It Do For You?

The premise behind OneNote 2007 is extremely simple:

• You create notebooks.
• Each notebook can have sections.
• Each section has pages.
• You can also create groups of sections containing lots of individual sections.

The beauty in the simplicity is you can use OneNote in the way that works best for your needs. It doesn’t “force” you to adopt any particular organizational method.

Key Benefits:

Here are some of the key benefits you get when you use OneNote 2007:

• Never Lose Your Work
  All of your notes are automatically saved in real-time. So you can work according to your own schedule, and you never have to worry about saving your work or losing anything.
• Stay Organized
  You can type anywhere you want on a page, just click and type. You can create as many pages and sections as you need. You can tag and flag selected text. You can organize things the way that works well for you, but if you misplace something inside of OneNote, it’s just a quick search away.
• Never Forget Key Tasks
  You can easily create to-do lists inside of OneNote, and checkmark tasks that are completed. You can even create Outlook tasks from inside of OneNote with a single mouse click.
• Remember Great Ideas
  If you’re like me, you often have a great ideas at times when you’re not ready to work on them. And if you’re like me, you sometimes forget those great ideas. With OneNote, you can easily type your idea onto a brainstorming list or page, and then move on to whatever else you were working on. Then later when you’re planning and researching, it’s easy to refer back to your ideas.
• Easily Manage Keyword Lists
  Forget about Excel or text documents for your keyword lists. When you manage your keyword lists in OneNote, you have your keyword lists, to-do notes, and project ideas all in one place.
• Work From A Single Workspace
  You can use OneNote to do nearly all of your work in one place. For example, if you had an affiliate campaign you were just starting, you could create a new notebook or section for that project. Then you would have pages for your research and brainstorming. Next you’d create a page for your project’s to-do list and keyword lists. Finally you could write your web site content (blog posts, content, etc) directly in OneNote, easily referring to your lists and research… all inside of one application! Then copy and paste your content into your web site or blog, and check off those tasks from your to-do list.

Unique Features:

OneNote 2007 contains unique features that I haven’t seen before in a single software application:

• Audio Notes
  Some people don’t like to type notes, they’d rather speak them. A lot of people own digital voice recorders for this very purpose. However going back through your recordings takes time and can be tedious. As long as you have a microphone on your computer, OneNote lets you record audio notes directly into the software. The audio notes can be stored on any page you want. Best yet, OneNote will scan and index the words in the recording and use them for search results. So if you spoke the phrase “Amazon affiliate program” in your audio note, if you later do a search for that phrase, your note will appear in the search results!
• Screen Clippings
  OneNote has the ability to create a screen clipping from anything visible on your desktop. The clip will then be saved as a graphic in your OneNote notebook. If the graphic contains any text, OneNote will detect that, so when you search through your notes, it will include the text from the graphic in the search results!

Are There Any Problems?

Sure, like all software, OneNote 2007 is not perfect. Here are some things I would improve if I were in charge of developing the software:

• OneNote doesn’t have an easy way to run in minimized mode. While there is a system tray icon running at all times, the actual software always appears as a normal application in your taskbar when it’s running. If you want to minimize the software, you have to close it. The program does launch extremely quickly, but still it’s annoying. I would add a ‘minimize to system tray’ option.
• Everything is contained in a single window. The software does have feature to launch a new window, but it doesn’t have any type of advanced window management. So if you want to view two different pages side-by-side, as an example, then you have to manually position the windows. I would add window management features like ‘view side by side.’

Conclusion

I realize this isn’t some sexy new affiliate software… it’s just some boring productivity software… right? Well here’s the deal: you need to stay organized.

It’s really that simple. If you’re not organizing your efforts, then you’re not working efficiently. If you’re not working efficiently, then you’re leaving profits on the table.

If you want to maximize your efforts and profits by staying organized, then Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 is a software product that will give you the tools you need to organize your work. It won’t make you money in and of itself, but it will help you stay organized so your money making tasks stay on track.

Value: 8/10
Return on Investment: 9/10
Ease of Use: 9/10
Overall: 26/30

Click here to learn more or purchase a copy:
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-OneNote-2007/

Bonus Savings Tip: OneNote 2007 is included as a part of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, which also includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This package costs about $20 more than the stand-alone OneNote software, so it’s a better deal if you want the extra software.

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How to Think Like a Marketer…

Here’s a post I wrote in the Wealthy Affiliate forums. I thought it would be helpful to my blog readers…

How to Think Like a Marketer:

Here’s the key in my opinion…

Stop trying to find a niche or a product to promote. Instead go find a problem. Seriously, just think about a problem people have in life. It could be a very generalized problem most everyone has at some point (e.g. not enough money, trying to find a boyfriend/girlfriend, etc) or a specific problem affecting only a certain amount of people (e.g. owing the IRS back taxes, adults with ADHD, etc).

Whatever, just find a problem.

Then go research your problem. Pretend that you suffer from the problem, and that you desperately want to find a solution to it. You want a way out. You want to find relief from the pain and burden this problem is placing on you.

So you go out and start doing Google searches. Not keyword research! Just pretend you’re a real person with a real problem, and start finding a solution like a normal person would through normal search engine searches (very few people have problems and seek solutions from the Google Keyword Tool ).

Start taking notes about what you find. What are the main web sites that deal with the problem? Are there support groups? Are there forums? If yes, join the forums and start reading and eventually asking questions.

Also through this searching you will naturally discover if there are products being promoted to resolve the problem. What are those products? Do they have affiliate programs? How good are the sites doing in offering the products as viable solutions to the problem?

Only after you have picked a problem and done this type of research will you begin to know if it’s something that you’re interested in pursuing, and if it will be viable. You’ll also pick up on how hungry people who really suffer from the problem are for a solution (i.e. do they just like to whine or are they really seeking a solution). Finally since you didn’t start with keyword research, your notes should contain many different areas of the problem, questions people are asking, tips and suggestions people offer, etc. You take that list and do your keyword research based on it (not the other way around).

So to recap, you don’t find a product to sell, or even a niche itself. You find the problem first. And you don’t have to think like a marketer. Instead you think like you’re a person with the problem, and you go out and find a solution to it. Then you can sound authentic when you finally begin writing articles and putting up a blog or a web site, or starting a mailing list, or whatever. Maybe you don’t have the problem yourself, but you’ve immersed yourself in it long enough to truly feel for the people that do, and you’ll have an attitude of helping them find a solution so they can get out from the pain and burden. When you truly can relate to and understand the mindset of the people who have the problem, and actually care about them and want them to find relief, you won’t have to sell anything. You’ll come across as authentic by default and they’ll be much more likely to trust anything you recommend.

My 2 cents…

PS. If you can’t find a quality product that solves the problem, then maybe YOU can create one!

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Prevent Indexing When Building a New Site

Whenever you’re building a new site, you always run the risk of having Google (or other search engines) indexing your site before it’s completed. While it’s not a death sentence for your site if this happens, things go so much smoother if you can prevent indexing until your site is ready.

So how do you prevent Google and the other search engines from indexing your site until you’re ready?

Read more

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Bad Advice is Bad Advice

If you’re into affiliate or internet marketing, you know there’s a ton of bloggers out there ready to give you advice, and a lot of it is good… but a lot of it is crap. What’s the worst piece of advice I read everywhere?

Read more

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How to Find a Niche

Travis Sago (http://www.bummarketingmethod.com/) wrote an excellent how-to guide for finding a profitable niche. You can view the PDF here: Bum Marketing Mindset.

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Content vs. No Content

Today I got into a debate on the BANS forum regarding the best strategy for deploying BANS sites. Basically, the debate centered around two schools of thought:

1. Build as many BANS sites as possible, as quickly as possible. Don’t worry about content or quality. The more the better.
2. Build each BANS site with a focus on quality. Add unique content. Ensure your site adds value to the visitors.

Read more

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Copywriter Secret Trick

CopyBlogger recently published “How to Be a Copywriting Genius“. If you write content for your web site, this is a must read.

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More ideas for Inbound Links

I previously talked about how to get inbound links to your site. Here are some additional ideas for getting inbound links to your site:

• Yahoo Answers
  Create a Yahoo Answers account and answer questions relating to your site’s niche. Try to answer around 5 questions every day with

Read more

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