I was reading my review of 2008 this morning and had a few thoughts. I started out 2009 all gung ho and really didn’t end up doing as much as I wanted to. 2008 was really the year I found out what worked and where I needed to go but all in all 2009 was not as big of a growth year for my business as it could have been.

My income went up by 30% yes but not because I did very much that was new… older projects and web sites just had time to marinate and get better with age. I did not not add any new info products to my line up.. I just have the three ebooks and they continue to amaze me with steady sales. I still giggle when I think how I hoped the sales would at LEAST be able to pay for the shopping cart I use to sell them. Those books were one of the single best things I ever did business-wise.

I guess a big part of why I didn’t really reach all of my goals would be because we moved to a new town. Our expenses doubled and it made us more reliant on my income for mundane things like bills. Instead of spending time dabbling in new income streams I had to stick with what I knew would pay the rent. I also moved away from my extended family and starting spending nearly every weekend traveling back to see them.. that took 3 days off my normal work week… since I usually do work (a least a little) every day.

But I did accomplish some new things. I added a new niche site that did really well. During the peak for that niche I earned $450 a month from that one site. In off peak months it makes anywhere from $20-$60 so I am really happy with it and have already added a similar site that was earning money from the first week.

I also revamped my Squidoo efforts. At one point early in the year I got discouraged with my Squidoo earnings and I sold off half of my lenses. Then a few months later I got an invite to an exclusive group within Squidoo called Rocket Moms. It was basically a group project to give Squid moms a special place to house their lenses and encourage them to make more. I made some new lenses during the Rocket Moms challenges and they started to do pretty good. I decided to try and become a Giant Squid… which meant I had to have at least 50 quality lenses. I bought about 10 lenses and reworked them and I made the rest.. about 30 in all! Anyway I am a Giant Squid now and I am working my way to the Giant 100 club.. I have about 70ish lenses right now. I am making MUCH better money than before and my lenses direct traffic to my other blogs. I am a happy Squid.

Now at about 6 months or so into our new house I am finally getting down to business with new growth projects… better late than never right? Last year I bought a site for $500 and pretty much just sat on it. I re-did the design and added articles sporadically but that’s about it. Even with that teeny bit of attention though it has earned a modest amount of money via affiliate sales and the list attached to it is over 2000 strong. This past month I converted it to a blog and I hope to dedicate as much time to it as I have my other blog. It has the potential to be just as big, if not bigger… I feel it in my bones.

I also created a couple new blogs in an entertainment niche that I am passionate about. I finally made that leap after I started to see how well my Squidoo lenses on those topics were doing. Squidoo is an excellent place for market research too!

My love of seasonal affiliate sales has only grown as well. In addition to having another great xmas season, I also had a great Halloween, and a great back to school season.

Going into 2009 I know that I need to take some risks and work a whole lot harder if I want to double my income again. I plan to create a new ebook and have the topic picked and the cover designed… I just need to write the book! I am going to really focus on blogging for 6 blogs… 3 in the natural niche I love and 3 in the entertainment niche I love. I want to add a few more static product sites since those have performed really well for me. I have big goals again this year but let’s see if I can generate the steam to see them through.

There are two main ways that a site visitor can subscribe to your web site/blog or your “feed”.  They can subscribe by adding it to their feed reader or they can subscribe by email. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Personally I choose to subscribe to my favorite sites using a feed reader. My personal favorite is the built-in Internet Explorer feed reader. Most of my own readers also subscribe via feed reader. I do have the option though for email subscriptions. Some people like to be notified of new content with an email either daily or weekly. Others, like me, may subscribe to so many RSS feeds that they would be bombarded with emails. I like to read on my own time.

But it is still important to let your visitors choose for themselves. You can allow for email subscriptions through services like Feedburner or FeedBlitz. I chose Aweber to manage my RSS email subscriptions because it allowed for many options that other places didn’t offer and it has ended up being a very savvy way to market to my readers. For one monthly price I can host as many newsletters and feeds as I want so if you have more than one site…Aweber is awesome.

When my readers subscribe via RSS they get an email about once a week with links to all the content for that week. I set it up to look like a newsletter rather than a random group of links so that I can get my affiliate links in front of more eyeballs each week. My main blog has about 1400 email subscribers and this is what they see every week. It matches my web site colors, it links to new and fresh content, and it has affiliate links or text link ads from advertisers. Ever since I switched to this format for email subscribers I have had better retention rates and more sales. Even if MOST people like feed readers it is just silly to let pass an opportunity to email your readers directly on a regular basis.

12 tips to increase your traffic conversion:

1. Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes your product or site different, special, better or more desirable than others? That’s your USP. Now get the answer to that question down to one or two concise sentences. If you have trouble figuring out what your USP is how can you possibly be telling your visitors why they should stick around?

2. Sound friendly, but not slick. Your sales copy needs to sound like one friend excited to tell another friend about a great buy. This is especially important in affiliate marketing. If you are recommending a product, your visitors will respond better to a friendly voice..not that of an oily salesman. Avoid sounding like a high-pressure infomercial.

3. Ask for help. Give the viewers a reason to interact with you by asking for their opinion on a survey or product rating. You get useful information and keep them thinking about your product longer. People love to have something to contribute.

4. Simplify the offering. If you have three different products to sell, use three websites. Don’t make the mistake of trying to offer too much at once and confuse your audience. This might work for major retailers, but they already have a brand and a following.

5. Leave some open space. Prepare a sales page that’s easy to read with wide margins. You don’t have to fill every inch. That can get overwhelming! Leaving some white space helps the reader to better focus on the copy and feel as though reading it is a manageable task.

6. Strut your stuff. If your product has a good rating or endorsements from satisfied buyers, then let them brag about the product for you. This increases consumer confidence in YOU.

7. Cast with plenty of bait. In your sales letter and squeeze page, put out the “bait” for your offer over and over. Don’t skimp on bait. Better too many offers than not enough to convert that buyer who is still uncertain.

8. Find problems. Even after your sales page is complete, keep thinking about other problems that your product can solve. You might get a hint of new ways to promote your product by asking buyers how they use the product. Asking for feedback from your peers is another great way to get some insight. I recommend Mom Masterminds.

9. Use highlighting in moderation. Yes, highlights draw visual attention but too many highlights or excessive colors can frustrate online readers. Highlight the most important points only.

10. Package deals are increasingly popular. After presenting your USP, sweeten the offer with a package including several free items as part of the “Buy Now” deal. Limited time offers create a sense of urgency for the buyer to act. Make sure the offers are relevant to the product though.

11. Ask for the order. An old principle of sales that must never be ignored – ask for the order, ask again then ask again. Many people won’t act until the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th offer.

12. Say “Thank you.” Have a gracious, personal sounding, “Thank you” email with the order confirmation. It never hurts to show appreciation! Remember this isn’t the end of your relationship…just the beginning….so make a good impression.

While I do have some ideas and plans for NEW stuff I have also been starting to really examine ways to improve what I already have going for me. I started with my naturemoms.com site. I have been going through the site page by page…adding content, tweaking Adsense, examining the Adsense activity with Adpsy Tracker, adding new affiliate promotions, chucking affiliate promotions that didn’t perform very well last year, and generally just improving each page. Oh…and I added a nifty script to the footer that will keep my copyright date current. Thanks Lynette!

I had quite a few slap on the forehead moments when I realized that I was ignoring some prime affiliate promotion opportunities and I had tough decisions to make about dropping certain products and promotions. For instance, I had a quite a few banners promoting Earth Mama Angel Baby products but yet my last check from them was only $9.00….blah. So I decided to give up that real estate to a new product and test the waters.

I worked on that throughout January and still have 1/3 of the pages left to do but I am already seeing results. My Adsense revenue jumped $80 from the previous month and that particular site became my top Adsense earner. Amazon sales jumped about that much too and since I am switching out my Amazon tracking IDs I am better able to see where the sales are coming from. As suspected, one site dominates. So when I focus on my other big content site next month I will step up the Amazon promotions.

I am also “improving” my attitude about outsourcing. I am very much a control freak and I like to be able to everything myself. With the exception of a few tiny things I do EVERYTHING myself… BUT last month I made the leap and signed a 2 month contract to outsource some things that were weighing on me. Already I can see that it will be well worth the expense.

Here is to mining for the gold you already had!

It is actually very easy to do. Just login to your Amazon affiliate control panel, choose the appropriate tracking ID, and then start creating product links. Copy a text only version of the link and where Squidoo directs you to “Enter your poll response options” you enter your Amazon link instead of plain text.

Here is a picture of the process:

And here is a picture of the poll after the page is published and you get some voters. The best part about this trick is that the full affiliate commission goes to me. I don’t share it 50/50 with Squidoo as I would with many other modules.

 In case you were wondering these two images are from different Squidoo Lenses. Hope this helps you boost your Squidoo profit!

Technorati Tags: Squidoo, affiliate links, Amazon, modules, poll

I made some big boo-boos in regards to properly tracking where my sales come from though. Until very recently I never really took advantage of their tracking codes so that I can see which sites, Squidoo pages, blogs, etc are pulling in the sales. Depending on the product I can pretty much guess some of the time but not all. The need to use these tracking codes became really apparent after I received several offers to buy one of my sites. I am not ready to sell for personal reasons but I realize that since all offers were nice 5 figure sums I would need to demonstrate the site’s ability to turn a profit and it is kind of hard to do that when all of your sales from your large network of sites all get pooled together. So I have started using Amazon tracking codes and will begin the tedious task of replacing existing links very soon.

It is actually pretty easy to do. When you log into your Amazon affiliate control panel you will see a blue box at the top that shows you are logged in under your affiliate ID. Beneath that it says Tracking ID and hyperlinked next to that it says “Manage”. Click on that and you will see a listing of all your tracking codes. You should have at least one. Then click on Add Tracking ID and you will get to add a custom tag that describes whatever site, page, blog, etc you will be creating links for. I just created one recently for my Squidoo pages so it had the word Squidoo in the tag.

Once you have your new tracking code you use the drop down box (inside the blue box) and you select you select the tracking ID of your choice and start building links with it. Easy as pie….if only I had done this from the beginning.

Technorati Tags: Squidoo, Amazon, affiliate marketing, tracking IDs

Another forum I occasionally visit is the Warrior forum and I am usually disappointed by the “type” I meet there. A few weeks ago I dropped by and saw a popular thread about making money on Craigslist. I read through the thread and I was disgusted. Basically the concept they were promoting was too pretend you have a dog to sell, then when people email you about buying your dog they get an automated response from you that thanks them for writing but the dog is gone…but hey check out this awesome dog training book. The idea is that you can make tons of sales from people who buy the dog training book you offer instead of the dog that never existed. This tactic might very well work but the thought of making money doing a bait and switch just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. The marketer promoting this dog training book probably doesn’t even know if it is any good. Money is all that matters.

Just a few days ago I visited again and ran across a post that promoted spamming blogs with trackbacks as an effective method of traffic generation. What??? Those trackback spammers have got to be the most annoying people out there. I spend a lot of time deleting their handy work when they spam my blogs. Yes you may get traffic and your Alexa ranking my be improved but this is really just the lazy marketer’s best method for traffic generation. Thanks but no thanks.

Another post that caught my eye on that same day was from someone asking how to build incoming links to his web site. ALL the responses he got suggested spamming with comments or trackbacks or buying links from link farms. No one (except me) suggested adding quality content and useful information to his site that visitors would want to link to on their own. Am I naive? Am I destined to only be half as much as I could be because I won’t buy into these practices that I consider shady and underhanded?

I would like to think that time will prove I am building my business’s foundation on rock and they are building theirs on sand.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, warrior forum, mom masterminds, black hat, Craigslist

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I was looking at my own records this morning and saw with jubilation that last month I made nearly 5 times what I did in January of this year! I was happy to see that my income streams are coming from varied places too…diversity is always good.

Here is an overview of where MY money came from last month:

Google: 28.5%

Amazon: 18.4%

Advertisements purchased directly on my sites: 16.5%

Misc Affiliate Commissions: 14.9% (lumped into this category are monthly earners like Text Link Ads, AuctionAds, Mom Masterminds, Aweber, the Natural Moms Business Guide, Moms Talk Network, etc.

Shareasale – 10.5% (I earn commissions primarily from about 4 different companies that use Sharesale to manage their affiliate program).

My own products: 11.2% – I would love for this number to go up obviously.

This month will be interesting for me to track too as it looks like Clickbank will be another monthly check for me as well.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, lynn terry, income, wahm, info products

Green is the new black and there is gold in going green!

Now is the time to start a web site or blog selling and/or promoting green information and products. You can start your own online store and sell the products vital to green families or you could concentrate on writing content about these topics and make money with affiliate links. The possibilities are really endless. This is one reason why my friend Carrie and I started Natural Mom PLR recently, so we could help other moms start to make money in the natural mom niche. We provide content for them in this niche to help them get started building their web sites or grow their exisiting ones.

Today I was contacted by a television producer. First his assistant called me and set up a time for me to speak to one of the head honchos and then today we spoke. He was very interested in hearing all about my business, what I do, how I have built a community and a green network, and how I would plan to grow my green sites. He also wanted to know what my vision for the future was as a leader in the green movement. He was kind of vague as to his reasons for wanting to know the ins and out of my business but I suspect it could have something to do with major networks trying to get a foot in the door by buying up established sites. Just take a look at treehugger.com. This site started out as a small blog run by an environmentlist and grew to a very large and popular group blog with many writers. Last month treehugger.com was purchased for  a very large amount of money (think millions) by The Discovery Channel. Many of the bloggers are still running the site…they are just getting paid to do it full time now!

Very soon there may be other major companies and networks looking to appeal to green consumers too and they might want to scoop up YOUR established site or even pay you to do what you already love doing! So get started now….the future could mean great things and do not forget to check out Natural Mom PLR to help you get started.