This month’s Revenue Magazine (a magazine about affiliate marketing) has an article about Jeremy Palmer. It’s called: Jeremy Palmer, The Million Dollar Man.

Had I written the article, I would’ve talked more about Jeremy’s credentials and less about his history. He is a Google Adwords Professional and a Yahoo Search Ambassador. He’s been featured on the home page of Commission Junction. He won their Horizon award for innovation last year.

Jeremy is a professional affiliate marketer in an industry with a lot of rogues. That is the angle I would’ve taken. From the article it almost sounds like accidental success. However, I know him to be very focused and hardworking.

Jeremy is from and lives in Utah. He is one of about 100 super affiliates in the country. Most super affiliates don’t give interviews and shun the limelight. It’s often a solitary job and is very competitive.
Jeremy Palmer’s secrets from the article:

• Use a web site template (such as dollartemplates.com or 4templates.com) and make small changes so they fit your purpose. His example: if you’re promoting online dating sites make a version of the template for each city in the US. i.e. one for LA singles and another for Salt Lake City singles. “Each page should just do one thing.”
• Talk to affiliate managers and establish relationships with them. Network. They know a lot more about their programs than you do and can help you succeed.
• Rather than building a lot of sites, use your stats to improve the ones you have. Test. I know Jeremy tests and improves his sites constantly.
• Build a site around a specific merchant’s products or services rather than put a merchant on an existing site.

Jeremy is big building landing pages and buying traffic (PPC advertising) to them. You’ll find tips on both in Jeremy Palmer’s ebook, “High Performance Affiliate Marketing”.

The book is best targeted to newbie to intermediate affiliates. If you’re advanced don’t expect to learn a lot. He doesn’t go into his specific methods but does a good job at helping you create a solid foundation as an affiliate.

Perhaps the best part is that he updates the book (I believe they are free to you after purchase). Also, participate in the private forum. It’s there to help guide you and Jeremy regularly posts on it.

Affiliate Marketing eBook by Jeremy Palmer

I’ve been blogging about it for weeks…

U|Tech Internet Marketing Conference web site is up and taking registrations.

Reserve your spot soon because we have limited seating. Take advantage of special pricing before September 15.

Our keynote speaker is Paul Allen. He will speak about 21 Tactics you must be using to market your web site.

Expert speakers will teach you all about Internet Marketing for your business. Our sponsors will help you apply what you learn.

I hope to see you there!

U|Tech Internet Marketing Conference
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Salt Lake Community College – Miller Campus – Sandy, Utah

Thank you for all the hard work from everyone on my team including Chris Knudson. Special thanks to JibberJobber’s Jason Alba. He went the extra mile on getting programming resources (outsourced in Mexico).

Watch the front page of the site for updates.

Get in on the buzz: www.UTechConference.com

I once used Skype to talk to people in other countries when I was bored (hard to remember being bored now!). I didn’t pick it up again until today. I had a 3-way conference call with 2 of us in Utah and a developer in Mexico. Then one from China with me and someone else in the eastern US.
Crystal clear quality. I couldn’t believe how good it was. We had one patchy spot on the call from China, otherwise a lot of fun. Plus totally free for me (since they called). My headset cost me about $20, along with the free Skype download and I was logged in and ready to go.

If you need to ask me anything or call, my Skype ID is newspapergrl. I’m newspapergrl on MSN also.

Call ordinary phones anywhere in the world from your computer for the price of a local call. It’s free to call anyone in the US from Skype to their phone, or free computer to computer calls: www.skype.com

Did you know people download 1-2 million podcasts every month? And they are listening to all sorts of content. Podcast advertising is beginning to displace radio ads.

The most popular podcasts are news, tech, and “how-to”. Ideally you work advertising into the content. But if you do paid advertising, keep it under 6 seconds. I also read that most people listen to the entire podcast, commercials and all. You can have a potential customer’s full attention which is tough to get these days.

What is geeky today will become tomorrow’s mainstream. The technology will become easier to use so more people will use it.

Instead of dowloading individual podcasts, you can get them fed into your ipod or mp3 player. You won’t have to find the content, it will come right to you. Instead of collecting email addresses, companies will collect RSS feed subscribers. That will be the new list.
Businesses are using podcasts for all levels of corporate communications. Podcast to communicate with customers, clients, and for customer service. Rather than search through and read long help documents your customers can quickly listen to the answer.

Why are podcasts so popular?

• easy to implement
• not very expensive
• another way to package content you already own
• efficient
• effective 1-to-1 communication

Listen to this podcast about podcasting for business.

MarketingSherpa interviewed Joe Raffetto a top affiliate on how to improve your affiliate program. He said go to CJ and personally email affiliates who fit your product. Then follow up with a call. I get the idea there are too few phone calls in this industry. Affiliate managers want to talk to affiliates. Affiliates are used to being somewhat invisible. They both need to talk.

I like how he suggested that you meet in person at industry events, maybe even paying the affiliate’s way. He also talks about which affiliate programs he thinks are run best.

Other points:

• Make sure your program is worth investing in. Good affiliates will only spend money on affiliate programs that convert. That means merchants who have tested their creatives and have some real value to offer affiliates.
• If you’re serious about affiliate marketing show it by hiring a dedicated affiliate manager (if you live in Utah RMAMA is a great place to recruit them, email me for details)

I’m listening to Tony Robbins, David Pogue, and Sir Ken Robinson on Ted Talks. Amazing quality of production and great ideas.

David Pogue is a New York Times reviewer geek who plays the piano and. He sings hilarious songs like this one about Bill Gates: I Write the Code that Makes the Whole World Run (I’m getting profit from everyone). It’s sung to the tune of I Write the Songs by Barry Manilow.

David recommends a voice recognition software package called Dragon Naturally Speaking. They don’t have an affiliate program so you cannot tip me for this free advice (there’s a new definition of affiliate marketing: Affiliates are like online waiters who get tips for good recommendations). It even has macros.

If I used this program to blog I’d be a better speaker and writer. Because the way you speak and write are different. I like to make them match so my writing really is my own unique voice.

I hope every speaker at UTech will shoot for this level of quality. If we succeed at teaching people what they need to learn and entertain them doing it. They will come back and we’ll all do well.

Many very intelligent people aren’t good at conveying their ideas in a compelling, accessible, and entertaining way. I’m certainly not (that is why I’m writing). I have for pretty small groups for ideas I really believe in.

These are some of the great minds of our world. I highly recommend you listen.

Note: every single day people search on “flash testimonial” and find this entry. I’m curious, are you looking for someone saying it’s a good idea to use flash to build a website? Or, is it that you’re looking for a way to make testimonials into flash files? Please comment. The curiousity is killing me.

Please Comment Below 

I launched Affiliate Flash a few weeks ago. I plan to slowly build the content as I can. Yesterday Affiliate Flash got its first testimonial. I’ll put it up on the site. I also got a newspapergrl testimonial the day before. Thanks for the kind words.

Sometimes writing and blogging is like performing for an unseen audience. I know what articles are most popular from looking at my stats, but it’s good to hear from real people also. Last week I had lunch with someone I met from my blog. Fun times. As always, I appreciate your feedback.

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Janet, I just signed up for NewsFlash and I ADORE AffiliateFlash and your articles @ Newspapergrl which I find Very Informative and Creative. I LOVE your articles, girl! -Leslie

Best paying sites: CONTENT sites

Worst paying sites: Blogs and free sites

This is one affiliate program but I bet it mirrors the whole industry. This stat is from an affiliate manager:

“Earning around 70% of all commissions paid, the top-earning category of affiliates is content sites, which are informational websites with useful resources and articles – and I mean valid and original articles, not phony keyword-rich blurbs filled with affiliate links and sandwiched between a bunch of AdSense units.”
- Affiliate Marketing for Employment Blog

So there it is, a secret to your success. Build quality sites with useful information and original content. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme or shortcut, but a solid long-term approach.

I love to create buzz. When I got Omniture to come to my work and talk to us about web analytics I created a lot of buzz first. People were talking about it. I had never heard people be excited for a meeting but they were. Here are some buzz tips.

Become a source of buzz.

• Do a news release, add Trackbacks
• put some images on PRWebPhotowire
• add RSS feeds to your site
• blog back to your press releases
• publish NewsPad search results
• If it’s really good, submit it to delicious, digg, reddit and furl

Tip from sercrets of press releases: Read and use the tips PRWEB provides. Look for your inbox and read what they have to say. If you have questions, call them.

PRWeb has always been great when I’ve called them. I’d describe them as caring. That’s the vibe I got from every single person I’ve ever talked to there. That’s not the norm. I took note.

Please tell me the experiences you’ve had using press releases to create buzz. I know my friends at AvantLink have. Any else want to tell us how press releases have helped your business?

A MarketingSherpa study said top organic search results are clicked twice as often (20% of the time) as paid search results (10% of the time). If you have a top organic and a top paid position you get clicked on 60% of the time.

Another great tool is using press releases for higher search rankings. I’m a big fan of  this (check out the great tips from MarketingSherpa). That’s why I’m bringing in  PRWeb to talk about this at U|Tech this October.