Making money with Amazon even if you miss the direct sale

Until recently, I’d almost given up on being an Amazon affiliate. It wasn’t necessarily hard to get people to click on links but they rarely seemed to buy what I was offering them.

However, times have changed. I can’t think of any of my family, friends or acquaintances that isn’t aware of the Amazon brand and hasn’t bought at least one item from them.

What I’m discovering more with Amazon is that, while the basic rules of affiliate success remain the same — including traffic, deep-linking, compelling and relevant enticement — Amazon is one of the few big names that rewards you even if your visitors’ first clicks don’t make a sale.

Granted, you only get 24 hours from a visitor landing at Amazon from your site in order to earn commission from items placed in their basket, but there’s also a 90 day window of opportunity if users add something to the basket on day one but don’t purchase it immediately.

I used to think that Amazon had less earning potential than pay-per-click advertising such as AdSense or Chitika, because someone not only has to click but also purchase before you earn any money.

Thing is, I’m finding that if I can get people to visit Amazon, I have a good chance of earning commission on everything they decide to buy, even if it’s not something I initially recommended.

Looking a what people order, a number of items are either the exact product I recommended, or something closely related. The other items are seemingly random.

So, with decent traffic and a positive push towards Amazon from a wide variety of your blog posts, you do have the potential to earn, letting Amazon do its usual great job of drawing people further into its site and towards the “Add to Basket” button.

I know some other affiliate programs also offer this kind of deal. It’s worth looking into. If you’re transparent about your links and recommend stuff that you own, or would buy yourself, then regardless of whether your visitors buy those items when they go to a merchant site, they’ll hopefully remember your site as a useful source for genuine product recommendations.

Income from Amazon is still far more unpredictable than from other forms of advertising I run on my blogs, but I now believe it has much greater earning potential too.

Now to drive the traffic in.

What’s your experience with Amazon or other affiliate programs and indirect conversions like this?

Would You Withhold Information If It Meant Saving a Life?

A lot of bloggers tend to be trigger happy with publishing information. There’s always the desire to be the first to post about breaking news, especially if it’s fresh and yet unpublished by the more mainstream news sources. Bloggers and editors of new media publications take pride in this. But how far will we go with the desire to be first? What if it meant possibly endangering the life of a person–a fellow writer or journalist at that?

Back in November of 2008, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan. His employer, the New York Times, has struggled to keep this information under wraps for about nine months until Rohde’s escape from his captors just a few days ago. The reason: word going out would potentially endanger the life of the kidnapped reporter.

However, some Wikipedia editors (which means virtually anyone who knows how to edit content on the site) felt the need to make the information public, and Wikipedia’s administrators likewise fought a “convoluted game of cat-and-mouse” in preventing this information from being included in Rohde’s Wikipedia page. They were met with much criticism and outrage from these editors. And the administrators felt they could not arbitrarily suppress this information without attracting too much attention. So they kept trying, keeping a low-profile, and trying to stick within the limits of Wikipedia’s terms of service.

In hindsight, the Wikipedia editors who wanted to include the information on Rohde’s kidnapping probably meant no ill will. But looking at the big picture, their actions could have, indeed, led to trouble on the kidnapped journalist’s part. Even if this piece of information on Wikipedia will probably not have any direct bearing on the captors’ activities, it could perhaps be a catalyst to bigger things. People do trust Wikipedia, after all (or at least that is my perception), and if adequate sources are cited, then bloggers, Twitterers and social media users of all kinds would post, link and discuss. And as the Times’ executives fear, the publicity could, indeed, “raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival.”

As a social media user, what do you think if this dichotomy between security and freedom of information? I know this has been a pressing issue in many oppressive regimes where information is curtailed in the name of national security or such ideals. But when the risk is concrete and identifiable, and when you know that someone could, indeed, die if you leak out sensitive information, doesn’t that make you think twice before hitting the “save” or “publish” button? Which do you value more: freedom of information or life?

At the very least, this makes me realize that I should be more mindful of what I post online, whether it’s on a blog, Twitter, Flickr, and other public places.

Would you withhold information if it meant possibly saving a life?

Review: Using the iPhone OS 3.0 for blogging

A few months ago, just after the upgraded iPhone operating system was announced, I speculated on whether iPhone OS 3.0 would make the iPhone a better blogging platform, basing my article purely on the specifications Apple provided.

Now that iPhone 3.0 has arrived, here are my initial thoughts on whether the iPhone is good for performing a variety of common blogging/social media tasks.

Blogging

A number of applications already exist to integrate with popular blogging platforms such as WordPress and Movable Type, and it’s possible to access most admin panels via the Safari web browser.

The main improvement here is the ability to use the landscape keyboard in more applications, though it should be noted that a number of third-party apps already offered this functionality.

Those blogging via email (where a blog can be updated by sending email to a private address) will likely find landscape mode in Mail improves their typing speed and accuracy.

The ability to cut and paste text from web pages and other applications such as the notepad is useful for those who quote other people, though it can still become tedious to do this task because, if you’re following web etiquette and attributing your sources, you first have to copy the text from Safari, go back to your blog app, email message or other Safari tab, paste that text, then return and copy the URL of the original web page to create the link.

Those creating large link lists will likely find this extremely irritating, unless an app exists that can speed up this process (if it does I haven’t seen it).

So, those relying predominantly on text are better catered for thanks to copy/paste and the landscape keyboard, but unfortunately image processing is still far from ideal.

Because iPhone 3.0 is so new, not all third party blogging applications will support direct pasting of a copied image from a web page.

The only other options for importing images into blog posts is to take a photo directly with the iPhone’s camera or add one from the photo library. It works, particularly if you’re liveblogging or using images of your current surroundings, but makes it difficult if you need to edit images first.

Video bloggers who have bought the iPhone 3G S should soon be able to upload videos to supported services, though we’ll have to wait for developers to update their apps to allow this.

Moderation and Admin

I’ve found the iPhone is most useful for those little administrative jobs that need doing, such as moderating comments, deleting spam, quick fixing typos and other non-network intensive tasks.

Nothing particularly outstanding has been added to help with this, except features that have already been mentioned such as the landscape keyboard and copy/paste functionality.

Microblogging

The iPhone is already well served by Twitter applications, and solutions exist for other services.

I’ve not yet seen any of the Twitter apps updated to allow push notification of new tweets. I expect it will happen, and this alone will make staying in touch very useful.

Podcasting

Apple’s built-in voice recorder is a bit of a letdown. It does the job but is very basic in comparison to some third party apps such as Griffin’s iTalk.

Nevertheless, if you don’t want to use something else, the built-in app will capture live audio and let you upload it to your computer for subsequent processing.

Room for improvement

Here are some additional features that could make the iPhone even better for blogging tasks:

• Multi-clipboard: The ability to store and retrieve more than one text block/image at a time would aid in quoting and source attribution amongst other tasks.
• Hardware keyboard: Now that Apple has allowed third-party hardware development, an add-on QWERTY keyboard would allow much faster entry of text. It could either plug directly into the dock or possibly work via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Could include a built-in stand.
• Access to file system: Adding images from the photo library in dedicated blog apps works, but it would be useful to be able to insert images directly into blog posts when using a blog platform’s web interface via Safari.
• Instant Messaging: Meebo was due to be released as a native app for the iPhone, but it doesn’t appear to have made it into the first 3.0 release. Though it is available for the iPhone, making it native would likely afford it more system privileges.
• Application switching: Even if Apple won’t allow more than one third-party app to run at once, some tasks would be so much easier if you could quickly switch between recent applications (Mail, Safari and WordPress app for example) without having to navigate in and out of the home screen.

Conclusion

The iPhone still isn’t the greatest mobile blogging platform available. It’s great for microblogging, blog admin and quick posts including live photos. Other tasks take a bit more work – good in an emergency but you probably wouldn’t want to rely on it long-term.

That said, it’s a mobile phone and pretty amazing when you consider just what you can achieve on it.

Success in the Business of Blogging is More than Passion

Over the last four years, I have watched as many successful bloggers stopped blogging, and new bloggers took their place. Having success in the business of blogging requires more than passion, and I think that is something far too few people make sure to mention.

If you want to have a successful business where your primary product is your blog, then you might want to think long and hard before you dive in.

Creating a business from blogging is like any other business. You need to think about what you are trying to build, and come up with a plan to get there.

Organize Your Thoughts and Ideas
If you can write down an idea map, or even just a procedural list of your goals and how you want to accomplish them, you’ll be further along than many. Giving yourself clear points of comparison is key. While many people become successful by accident, there are just as many that do so because they know what they want.

I consider myself fairly successful in the niche that I targeted, but the wider web audience don’t know me from Adam. The reason for this is that I wasn’t trying to make myself successful and well-known in all niches, but instead, I focused in, and since the competition was less in the niche I chose, I was able to make great strides and earned enough community clout and success to keep myself employed for the past four years.

Network, network, NETWORK!
If there is one tip regarding business success that I enjoy giving out, it is to network with others. I feel like I go back and forth between being an introvert and an extrovert, but in the end, I have met many people, and connected with my fair share. I can pull out an e-mail list of network connections, and if I’ve done things right, I can get more than a few of them to help me out, give ideas or feedback, and even help promote my work. Network connections can mean the difference between getting your site, business or idea in front of a few hundred and a few hundred thousand.

Timing and Luck
With success, there is always an “X-Factor”. You can do everything right, and keep within budgets, meet metrics, and never see the doubling effect growth curve that some of your competitors might see, and that is because there is something to be said for luck and timing.

Many people recognize the name Jeff Chandler within the WordPress circle of enthusiasts, and I would hazard a guess that more recognize his name than my own. I’ve been using and talking about WordPress since I began, four years ago, while Jeff is relatively new to the software and the community. What he was able to do in such a short amount of time was bring a community and brand around himself in a way that I’ve never been able to do. I’ve had more people recognize me as the co-host of his successful podcast, than for any of the other projects I’ve ever done.

Other Factors
Of course there are many other factors regarding success in the business of blogging, and for each person, the goals or point of success might be different, but what far too many people forget is that blogging can be a business, and like any business there is more to it than just creating a product, or being a service. Marketing, network connections, skill, timing, luck, and a savvy mind can help your business go a long way.

Would You Pay to Read Someone’s Tweets?

Would you pay to read someone’s tweets? For some time now, enterprising individuals have been trying to find the holy grail of Twitter monetization. Some have been blatantly spamming advertisements through @replies. Some have indirectly monetized their Twitter accounts by using it as a viral marketing tool. Still, others have created Twitter clients that are funded by advertisements.

Will you dare to venture into Twitter monetization by limiting your audience to paying subscribers? This is what TwitPub aims to do. It’s supposed to be a

marketplace made for Twitter so users can buy and sell premium tweets.

Is this a viable business model? It could be, if you are in the business of dispensing important, expensive advice.

While TwitPub’s activity may not be all that impressive, their service may have potential within the political and financial realms (as people would pay to access gossip and financial advice, especially in this economy).

I come from a school of thought that says the moment you set a price to your content, you would have already devalued it. For one, you are limiting your audience severely. Secondly, you won’t have as much interactivity and viral marketing potential if your content is closed. Of course, this may not necessarily be true in all cases, but unless you’re really famous and powerful, I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in paying to read your tweets. And if you’re already famous and powerful, you probably don’t need anyone paying a few bucks to read your tweets or to send you direct messages.

Would you pay to read someone’s tweets? And would you pay to get your direct message sent into someone’s inbox?

Passion versus Pay versus Profile: Blogging deal or no deal?

You’ve a finite amount of time to write, you have to pay the bills, but perhaps you don’t love the subject as much as you used to. How do you know when it’s the right time to leave a project?

This post is primarily targeted at bloggers who have one or more regular, paid writing positions with a blog network/company and may be considering their current position.

It might also be useful for those bloggers running their own blogs (over which they have complete editorial and publishing control).

Passion | Pay | Profile

Blogging for a liveable wage isn’t easy — at least if you’re keen to do it ethically and above board.

Getting a paid writing gig with a large company can get you money and exposure much more quickly than you’d likely attain it (if at all) by publishing your own blog.

You’ll likely have access to on-tap resources to help you improve as a writer. At very least, you’ll probably be working for an editor who will critique your work, give you post ideas, and generally encourage you onwards.

Assuming you applied for the position because you had a decent amount of knowledge and passion for the subject, it’s the near perfect experience.

Isn’t it?

The longer you blog for high profile sites, the more you’ll be noticed. The more you’re noticed, the more opportunities present themselves. You also have the potential to earn more, either because your payment per post increases (often with a new position) or your posts become more popular and you get a proportional share of revenue.

The trouble begins when your passion goes, the amount of work you’re required to do is worth more than you’re being paid, or you don’t believe the work improves your own profile – only that of the company you’re working for.

It’s worth reassessing the work you’re doing on a regular basis. Think of it as a self-appraisal — when you work for yourself, no-one else is going to appraise everything you do.

Consider:

Passion

• What are your main passions?
• Do you want to blog about all of your passions?
• Are you blogging about something you have little interest/enthusiasm for?
• Are some passionate blogging subjects worth keeping for yourself rather than giving to someone else? (in other words, should you be running your own blog instead of relinquishing control and writing for a company?)

Pay

• Are you still being paid enough for the work you’re doing?
• Would you be able to make more money working for someone else or for yourself, or changing project priorities to give more room to new money-earners?
• Is the work you’re currently doing taking so much time or energy that you have no resources left to do things your heart tells you to?
• Are you sacrificing long term gain (sidelined projects) for short term gain? (fixed pay working)

Profile

• Is your blogging gig still giving you, as a person / brand, the exposure you desire?
• Do your efforts seem to be rewarding the company’s profile at the expense of yours?
• Would your personal brand be improved by moving on?

Contracts and Bridges

If you have a written contract in place then you need to consider that before taking any action that may breach the terms it lays out.

You may have a notice period which must be worked out before you can leave. If you want to change the level of work you do for someone else, it may have to be negotiated and a new contract drawn up.

If you have a verbal agreement then you may have no legal/contractual obligations, but think very carefully about burning your bridges with any one company. You never know when they may be a useful contact or source of work in the future.

Final thoughts

These are just a few points to think about, whatever situation you’re currently in.

It may be that you don’t think there’s anything wrong, and if you’re enjoying what you’re doing and getting what you want, digging around may not be helpful (if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it).

Then again, if there’s even a niggle that you’re selling yourself short, skimping on projects you really care about because you’re bogged down by a regular contract, or running yourself ragged without the passion to energise you, then it really is time to sit down and consider what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

The three elements — passion, pay, profile — need to be weighed together, and any decisions you make will be based on your current situation and how much of a risk-taker you are.

Doing a regular check-up like this will help to ensure that you’re giving your best and being fairly rewarded, while still enjoying blogging. After all, that’s the main reason you started, right?

How to Find People to Follow on Twitter

We’ve all heard of how awesome Twitter is for social media marketing, but you may not know how to get started. One of the most important and basic things for Twitter marketing is finding people to follow.

Here are a couple ways to do that, so you can start networking with active people in your industry.

1. Search Twellow.

With the popularity of Twitter, Twitter profile directories have started popping up. Twellow is my favorite one. It’s pretty easy to use. Just enter the name of your niche in the search box and you’ll get a list of profiles that are interested in your niche. The profiles will be ordered by followers so you can easily follow the most popular ones.

2. Search Twitter itself.

You can use Twitter’s search function to see which people are currently talking about your industry. Simply search for the name of your industry or other related keywords. Then, check out the profiles and see how often they actually tweet about your niche. The ones that are big fans of your industry are great candidates to follow.

3. Check out bloggers.

Check the active blogs in your niche to see if they have a Twitter feed or a link to a Twitter account. Many bloggers have become active on Twitter, so this method is an easy way to find people to follow.

4. Find out who other people follow.

Once you’ve found some quality Twitter profiles, browse through their friends and see who they follow. I’ve found great people through this technique. Oftentimes, there are quality Twitterers that are under the radar because they don’t follow a lot of people. However, you can find out about them with this technique since many people usually follow them.

If someone follows a lot of people and you don’t want to wade through all their friends, you can ask them for the top 10 people they like to follow.

Over to You

How have you found people to follow on Twitter?

This is a guest post from TwitQA.com, a twitter tool where you can ask and answer questions.

Getting Links to your Blog

Is your blog not experiencing the volume of traffic that you would like to see? One of the major flaws that many blog owners do not consider is the importance of links and linking. Links are to a blog, what highways are to the automotive world. Without highways, information, people, and goods cannot reach their destination. The same is true when talking about links. You can post the most credible or well written blog on the internet, but without proper linking from your post, or to it, the information you have provided is simply that: yours.

Links take readers of other blogs and different miscellaneous websites to areas of the internet that they normally would never have gone. Your blog might just be one of the areas that are outside of their comfort zone. These internet users are crucial to your blog’s survival. One of the most important reasons why it is essential to build a large linking network to your blog is how much higher you rank in search engines.

One of the methods that search engines like Google and Yahoo! use to rank their pages is how many other websites link to it. For example, a site that has fifty sites linking to it is more likely to be higher on a search engine list than a website that has ten. Keep in mind that this is not always the case, but this is definitely a good rule of thumb.

Another element that is crucial to the growth of your blog is the quality of the links that you provide. While gaining reputation through other websites, you have to ask yourself if the websites that are linking to you are doing you any good. If your blog is on the best Super Nintendo games of all time and you are getting links from sites that focus on the poverty of developing nations, then search engines are not going to take your blog seriously. If, however, you can find a way to talk to Nintendo itself and convince them to link to your blog, then your credibility and influence is going to be greatly affected in a positive way. It takes a combination of quality and quantity for your blog to gain strength on multiple search engines.

Again, it is the goal of a successful website or blog to be first on a search engine’s results, or at least on the first page. While this process may take a while, if you produce quality content, then you can be sure that you will succeed.

The most important part about linking is actually convincing someone to link to you. There are two methods that almost all blog owners use, due to their ease and effectiveness. One method is to actually write on someone else’s blog; a quick article is usually sufficient. This is a quick and easy way to simply show the bloggers on that site that you exist, and as long as you produce great content, then many of them will stop at your blog regularly. The more direct route that many blog owners use is to just simply ask another website’s owner if he/she would be willing to link to you. Sometimes this method works beautifully.

Sometimes the person you asked may want to barter with you, such as an exchange of links. Just remember, the worst thing that can happen to you if you ask someone is that they will just say no. Simply thank them for their time and move on.

Eventually, your blog will begin to contain multiple links to and from many websites. Keep in mind that linking is equally affected by the quality and quantity of your linking potential.

How much traffic is Bing sending to your blog?

I thought it would be interesting, a couple of weeks in, to see how much traffic Microsoft’s new Bing search engine was sending to a range of blogs I have stats access to.

While it’s very early days and the sample size I have access to is fairly limited compared to the web statistics collection companies, it does suggest that Microsoft has a long way to go to begin challenging Yahoo, let alone Google.

Bing’s highest share was on my personal blog, which covers a range of topics including technology and current affairs. Even there it mustered just 2.35%, putting it in second place behind Google’s massive 93% lead. It seems to have taken some market share from Yahoo and AOL.

On a site about families and relationships, Bing accrued 0.5% of the share in the past two weeks. Here it possibly took a little share from Google, though the giant still had over 90%.

On a large general consumer technology site, Bing managed 0.67%, putting it in fourth place, though it took no share from Google or Yahoo.

Bing did less well, accruing just 0.46%, on an iPhone-related blog, while on a blog about high definition TVs it scraped 0.69%.

Hardly anything to write home about.

iTWire reports that StatCounter search engine market share data also showed Bing got just a fraction of a percentage point.

It’s hard to get an idea of the keywords and phrases someone uses to find each site differs between Google and Bing because Bing’s sample size is so small. The fact is, with such a huge market share and history of crawl, the list of keywords from Google is huge and far more varied.

When it comes to how many pages have been indexed and listed (using the “site:” modifier, which isn’t perfect), Google often seems to return more results than Bing, though some larger sites have more returns from Microsoft’s engine.

It’s unfair to draw conclusions just a fortnight after Bing launched. At one level, I’d like to see Google’s dominance challenged just a bit by some other players, as it reduces our reliance on one company to send visitors to our sites. At the moment, though, Microsoft is playing catchup with everyone else.

Have you noticed any significant influx of visitors from Bing or is Google still your main search engine traffic driver?

Do You Tweet to Read or Do You Tweet to Write?

I’ve observed several celebrity Twitter users to have a friend/follower ratio that is heavily skewed toward the follower side. This means they have a huge following, but follow only a very few people. While most do reply to tweets related to them or directly sent to them as @replies, a lot are probably just using Twitter to post updates about themselves (which is understandable, especially for folks with a very public life). Some others are most likely marketers. They don’t engage in conversation much, but they do post a lot of quotes, retweets and links.

On the other hand, some Twitter users I know are more of readers rather than writers. They seem to have a lot of followed folks, but only a few followers. And they mostly engage in conversation when the topic interests them.

I’m part of the second group. I must admit I’m not too fond of tweeting out of the blue, about what I ate for breakfast, musing about the weather, or complaining about the chores I’m currently doing. I mostly scan and read updates from my Twitter friends–mostly on my mobile phone using Gravity–and reply to or retweet interesting messages. I also try to get ideas for blog posts or articles from my friends’ feed or from searches relevant to my interests. For me, Twitter is not a platform for simply shouting out my ideas, but rather a community with a rich cloud of information ready to be harvested and processed.

What about you? Do you tweet to read? Or do tweet to write?