I apologize in advance to all of my out of state readers but this story has to get out. I’m critical of the dearth of authentic food in my part of the state, ultra-conservative Utah County. How I’m still here is another story, but let me stay on topic. People seem to worship chain stores, blandness, and the tried-and-true. So many people love the ketchup-like salsa at Los Hermanos. The food tastes the same no matter what I order, but people still flock there. The Hare Krishna restaurant (Govinda’s) and my favorite pizza place went out of business years ago. Besides the Bombay House and now India Garden there wasn’t much going.

When my friend Kelly and I went for desert tonight we left in high spirits for a few reasons. We went to “Pudding on the Rice” in Provo. It’s out of the way. I figured since location often matters and it’s in a bad one, it would be out of business soon. Well I was wrong.

We were served by the (quite young and notably thin) owner. He graciously described the various flavors of pudding (from Castaway Coconut to Red Rum and The Rocky Road Most Traveled), letting us try as many samples as we wanted. I decided on smores, a chocolate pecan pudding with shavings of chocolate, graham cracker crumbs, and miniature marshmallows.

We questioned and praised him like two groupies. How did he decide on such a unique concept? who designed the decor? who funded it? are they planning to franchise? (yes). His wife made the various flavors of pudding in their kitchen! The decor is mod and hip, with a row of white tables that hang from the ceiling. Everything is streamlined gleaming white with circle motifs and lighted accents. They hired an architect to design the building. That stopped me. How many restaurants in Utah County hire an architect to build anything? It’s all track homes and boxy buildings.

The place had a steady stream of people of all ages. Just before we left we asked how long it took to get from concept to opening. Over 2 years. Somehow that made us feel better, especially Kelly who is trying to open her own store (and knows how much work it is before you even open). They’ve been open 6 months.

Next door is the best pizza in the county by far. We met the owner there too. He makes “homemade Boston Itailian Style” pizza. I got the deep dish named after the restaurant, Nicolitalia. Very good. Forget the locals favorite Brick Oven. His Boston accent completes the experience. He’s been there a year.

All this makes me wish I still had a gig writing restaurant reviews for Citysearch.

Add to these success stories J-Dawg the cracker box hot dog stand near BYU. It’s rumored the governor loves to eat there. It gives me something to be proud of. I’ve been looking for more success stories to talk about and tonight I found them.

I’ve been working extensively on our Google Adwords keyword list at work. I use our Omniture stats to look at the list of keywords used to find our site. It gives me ideas on what people want to know. If I search on “How to” then I get ideas for articles to write. I also search on “what” because those are often questions too.

Negative Keywords

Another way I search is for possible negative keywords. Since we’re an enterprise level company we want to eliminate words that suggest a free or consumer product. Or simply words that don’t apply. That way we’re not wasting money.

Day Parting

I also use the day parting feature on Google to turn off our ads during the night and on weekends when we get low quality clicks. The clicks were often for other countries. Not many administrators are searching for a networking solution during the middle of the night!

Long Tail Keywords

I also use web analytics to find the long tail keywords. These are keywords that are low volume but have less competition and are often very specific. You’ll probably notice when you look at your keywords a few branded terms account for a good percentage of the total keywords. In my case, around 30% come from maybe 4 terms. Then there is the long tail. These make up about 60% of the total keywords searched on to find our web site. Most of them only have 1-3 searches.

At my last job my boss told me to ignor those because they didn’t pay enough to warrant attention! Wrong. Those are the gold in your keyword list. Why? Because they often cost next to nothing and they often have little or no competition. True, you may not get the volume of searches, but if they are so specific that they convert well, who cares?

Save Your Cash for Keywords that Get Results

Pay attention to the keywords that people are already using to find your site. It can tell you a lot about your potential customers. You know these people came to your site. Why? It can give you ideas on what to write about. It can give you ideas on what keywords to exclude. Also, don’t ignor the key words or phrases that get low volume but are inexpensive. They may convert to sales quite nicely.

Since I became a mom a few years ago I’ve dreamed about getting more sleep. Once sleep is missed there is no making up for its loss. I got a cat in May but I recently found a new home for it. He regularly interrupted my sleep. When I don’t get enough sleep you may mistake me for scatterbrained or not that bright. Neither are true. I just need my sleep.

I dream of running a sleep center retreat where exhausted moms and others could go for some sweet slumber. Or to just take a nap.

he rooms would smell like lavender (a natural sleep enhancer). They would be sound-proof. You can choose from selections of gentle sleep-inducing music or relaxation meditations. Controls will help you get the exact right angle on the bed. The mattress can be heated or cooled. The theme: healing through sleep.

You could book a standing appointment/membership. It may need a daycare in a separate building. You can book nights too. Great gift certificate for the new mom: 1 completely uninterrupted night of sleep.

Perhaps we’d get some dream interpreters and have merchandise that enhances sleep. Fancy eye covers. Pillows of all types (ones that heat, ones that massage, goose down, etc). Soft blankets (satin, fleece, etc). There would be healthy food to eat that digests easily. Warm tea and drinks.

I didn’t know there was a name for making money off people’s need to sleep, but there is. It’s called sleeponomics. And people are making money off it. From mattresses to beds to sleeping pills and sleep specialists, they are cashing in on our lack.

A company named MetroNap makes sleeping pods for tired execs. I just read about it in Business 2.0 (my favorite mag besides Wired). The whole discussion and the work involved in doing something like this should’ve made me tired. But it didn’t. It made me dreamy.

Most of us would give anything to have gotten in on affiliate marketing early, before it was so competitive. There is still plenty of opportunity today. It just takes more savviness. Between keeping up with search engine changes and the rapid change on the web it’s not an easy job. The real opportunity may be to go international. Affiliates are finding less competition. With different timezones you might be up bidding (or use Google’s day parting feature) while affiliates in another country are asleep.

I found some great stats on internet useage from Internet World Stats. It shows the US with almost 70% penetration and 110% growth in the past 5 years. The rest of the world has about 13% penetration and over double the % growth.

I see this as a big opportunity for affiliates, especially if you speak another language (or operate in a country that speaks English, like the UK). I met a few people from the UK at a conference and they attested to the fact that in England affiliate marketing is still in its infancy. I know of one international super affiliate (he’s in South Africa), Vinnie Lingham.

Some questions to consider:

What are the issues affiliates doing business in other countries face?

Is it difficult to find and join programs in countries outside the US?

I will do more research on this. I’d love to get your feedback.

I’m looking for quotes on publishing a small run of paperback books. Anyone know where I could find a good, reliable source?

Significant news from MarketingSherpa’s SEO Guide Excerpt
This SEO guide was based on talking to almost 4,000 online marketers who are currently using the online marketing techniques reported. People who outsource their SEO efforts get significantly (around 30%) better results (place higher for important keywords) than those doing it in-house. Still the majority do both SEO and PPC in-house (70%).

Instead of expensive PPC campaigns, they reported on the effectiveness of PR news agencies. They found results from all of them but the best results were from Business Wire (pagerank of 8!). They also cited Market Wire, and PR Newswire. Incidently no mention of PRWeb (you need to get on their radar).

I still want to get PRWeb to speak sometime and I’ve tried to get Business Wire to speak at WOMA (Wasatch Online Marketing Association).

The PR news outlets get you on high ranking web sites (PRWeb has a PageRank of 7). It’s a great way to get a quality backlink or two. This is how you get on Google News, Yahoo! News, MSN and other search engine news sites. So that means when you are searched for your results may appear in the worshipped Google “One Box”. You can’t pay to get in the “One Box” right above the natural search results. It’s a collection of news, articles, and other links Google deems important.

They mention that B-to-C marketing is slowing in keyword buys but that it’s totally different in B-to-B. You have to buy the whole guide to get that data. Anyone have a copy and want to comment on this?

————-
Do you or your clients market business software, hardware, or related services? New Metrics Guide helps you budget, forecast, and benchmark your campaign results. Plus, find out exactly which tactics work best for lead generation.

Includes:
-> Response & cost data for DM, search ads, PR, email, trade shows, magazine ads, online ads, telemarketing, etc.

-> 185 tables & charts from 23 research sources

-> Real-life results from 826 marketers

http://www.sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?9204&p.cfm/2150

WickedFire is going to do a series of subscription sites. Each site will charge a subscription fee. Affiliates will be paid net 15 days from the date of sale. Not only that. they will pay residual so you’ll make money every month someone stays subscribed.

It looks like the subscription cost will be around $10 a month. I haven’t gotten into subscription models but there was a lot of people talking about them at the InternetMarketingSuperConference. Affiliates love to get paid quickly and make residual. If the quality of the sites is high it will probably be very successful.

Is anyone else doing this? Jon has been into online marketing for 11 years and knows what he’s doing. I’ll be watching this October to see the response.

P.S. Once I meet or talk to someone on the phone, they get on my radar. I had Jon’s site on my Bloglines but I didn’t follow his blog as much until I actually spoke to him. Now I have catching up reading to do.

They think it’s evil to sell, they hate marketing, they think they are superior…oh wait, that’s my list. Curious? Well read the official list of “Top 10 Reasons Geeks Fail at Online Marketing.” I can think of as many reasons why they might succeed…yes, technical skills can really help. Give me all the time and studying in the world and I won’t be a database programmer.

I’m going to have to add this blog to my reading list: Geekaffiliate Helping geeks make money from affiliate programs and Internet marketing. Also check out The Power of a Negative Review which makes some good points about authenticity. Note to self: add to AffiliateFlash.

T-Shirt Contest for my Blog Readers!

I really want a newspapergrl t-shirt (isn’t Christmas coming, newspapergrl fans?). I need one that says, “Out of Disc Space” or “Insuffient Memory”. But I want one that says, “I’m Blogging This” and then my URL when I change to newspapergrl.com.

Here are the t-shirt contest details: You email me your clever t-shirt saying. I will give the winner a FREE t-shirt in the color of your choice. I will post the most creative t-shirt concept with a picture of you wearing it and/or a link to your site.

Wish List for my blogging friends:

• Get a Day Job – Jibberjobber or Utah Tech Jobs (insert their URL on next line)

• I’m a Super Affiliate (with superhero graphic) – Jeremy Palmer (who advocates quitting your day job, so don’t wear this at the same conference as above)

• Splogger, If it’s not Black Hat I Won’t Touch it, or So Sue Me (Microsoft did) – Jonas. I just really like using the word splogger and most the world has never heard of it, so it will probably get noticed.

• Jordy’s picture from his blog with this caption: Web Ninja

• If You Fund my Business I’ll make you King – Kelly King Anderson for StartupPrincess

Leave your ideas in the comments or email them to me janet @ affiliateflash dot com. I will decide on October 16th, 2006, a Monday. So get your ideas in soon!

Enter as many times as you want. I am the judge but I may recruit some friends to help out. We’ll list the top 10 ideas on this site as well as a picture of the winning idea.

I found out about Spreadshirt (they have a blog), where you can design your own t-shirt. It’s like a mini Cafe Press site. If you’re geeky enough you can wear one like the photo below at the next Affiliate Summit!

Who wants to advertise that they’re a generic affiliate manager? You risk becoming an automatic target for disgruntled affiliates who have ever had an application denied. I’d put a company logo and/or phone number or even email address.

I admit it, I was geeky enough to buy a license plate holder with my URL on it. And I wear my “I’m blogging this” shirt which always gets attention.

Design and buy your own t-shirt at Spreadshirt!