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Save $50 on our Basic Hosting Plan – 4th of July Special Deal!

Mitch — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:28:03 +0000

Update! Due to high demand and user feedback, we have decided to offer this special offer and coupon for a few more days. Be sure to act fast, if you want to save $50 on your new Lunarpages-powered Basic hosting plan. Click the banner to order!

In celebration of Independence Day here in the USA, we are offering you a $50 discount for any new Basic hosting plan purchase! All you have to do is use the coupon code July4. That is a great offer for an even greater hosting plan.

The Basic hosting plan provides you with:

+ Unlimited Disk Space
+ Unlimited Bandwidth
+ Free Domain Name Registration for a Year
+ Unlimited Addon Domains
+ and a 30-day Money Back Guarantee!

You can see a full list of hosting features here:

Basic Hosting Plan Features and Information!

This deal is only set to go on until Monday morning, so if you’d like to save $50 on your next 12/24/60 month hosting plan purchase, you had better hurry!

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Unlimited Desktop Backup for Free from Lunarpages!

Mitch — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:38:10 +0000

Now, as a web host, we are always telling customers that one of the most important things they can do is backup their web site’s content. You can never have enough backups – because in the long run, you can never tell when the worst might happen. In the same sense, you should also be backing up the files on your own personal computer too. Now thanks to Lunarpages and the fine folks at Keepit – you can get unlimited desktop backups if you are a customer of Lunarpages.

For all new or existing customers, we are offering three months free of unlimited backup service at absolutely no cost at all. You will have three months to try Keepit out, and see why they are one of the best Online backup providers out there today.

Now, I know somebody is going to ask, “Well, how much is it after the three free months?” and I can answer that for you too. After the three free month trial is over, you can keep the service for a low $5 per month fee. That isn’t much to ask for when it comes to keeping your important files securely backed up off site, right?

Be sure to check out our newsletter feature on the Keepit offer, and if you have any questions on how you can gain access to this wonderful special, be sure to contact us.

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Using Social Networks to Build Your Brand

Mitch — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:29:13 +0000

By Mitch “The Marketeer” Keeler

There is no doubt in my mind that social networks of all shapes and sizes help, not hurt, you when it comes to building your own name, presence and fan fallowing with your web site. You have your MySpace, your Facebook, your Twitter and more.

I think you should get your name out there anywhere and everywhere you can.

I hate that AT&T commercial where the British-sounding guy is “trying to find the Internet”, the great thing for them though is that even though I hate it I have seen it so many times I have picked up on the commercial’s main purpose. It is for AT&T’s wireless Internet services.

You can use the various social networks in the same way.. hopefully you will be less annoying about it. Join up, toss your links in there and do your best to use the service to build new friendships, followers and fans. I know with my own presence on both MySpace and Facebook – I have entries from my RSS feed going right into my profile so now that group of people I used to go to high school with can now see just about everything I publish. These are eyeballs seeing my content that would not have without spreading out to the social web.

Finally this all comes down to, well what do you have to lose? So maybe you don’t get any followers or dedicated fanboys knocking on your virtual social door. You have gained a few more links back, and you now have a new place where people can find you. Your creating a new path to yourself so if somebody stumbles upon it they know exactly where to look for more. On the other side if things go well, then you might be able to get in better communication and contact with those who like what you do with your own web site and well, having fans is never a bad thing.

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7 Ways to a Better Web Site

Mitch — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:35:19 +0000

By Mitch “Self Helper” Keeler

The question is, “How do I make my web site better?” and the answer could be given to you many different ways by many different people. There are often seven rules I tend to live by when it comes to webmastering, so I thought I would share them with you so that you too can learn from my own trial and error.

1. Look towards your friends – Many people overlook their friends as people who can help with their web site. You can use your friends to write up content for you, hire them for work (design, writing or other) or even just ask them to spread the word around about your online resource.

2. Update on a schedule – You need to find a schedule for updating your web site and stick with it. If your web site it static (not updated often) then you might be able to get away with checking up on things every two weeks or so. If you have a lot of content being posted though, you need to set aside a certain time to work on the web site.

3. Do it right the first time – Don’t half way do things right and then think, “well, if it becomes a problem I can always fix it later” because chances are later will never happen because you’ll find something else to fill your time with. Even if it takes a little more time, doing it right the first go around might save you on time and aggravation later on down the road.

4. Branch out your ideas – Don’t be afraid to branch out to related topics. For an example, if you are running a web site about shoes and you want to add some more content to your web site, then why not talk about shoe laces or those gel thingies you stick in your shoes to make them feel better? Find areas you can branch out in so your idea well never runs dry.

5. Find others like yourself – You can’t run a successful site these days without socializing yourself. Get out there virtually or in the real world and meet others who do the same thing that you do. Talk about how they cover things, how you cover things and you might even build a business relationship that will benefit you later on down the road.

6. Don’t waste time on design – Having a aesthetically pleasing to the eye is a grand idea to be apart of, but if you have all cosmetics and no guts to your web site, then you are left with 9/10 of the Baywatch life guards.

7. Features are nice, but content is king – I feel like I have given this last tip the most, mainly because I would consider it the most important and if you can hit this proverbial nail on the head with your webmastering hammer you don’t need me helping you. Make sure the content you have is not just there to take up space. Make sure it is both quality filled and that somebody is getting something out of it. Check out each of your pages, and if you can’t say that somebody is better off by reading your page then you need to ditch it or re-work it till it is serving a purpose for the average user.

One more suggestion, not on this list, that I can share with you is have a passion for what you are doing. If you are working on a web site of any kind, and you don’t care about it – it will show in your final product. You have to think of your web site as a child of your own, and treat it as such. Take care of it right, and it will grow to become a success, no matter what your final target might be.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Various Lunar Goodies

Mitch — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:57:15 +0000

By Mitch “Better than a Newspaper” Keeler

There have been several little things to share going on here at Lunarpages, so let me see if I can sum things up:

Lunarpages February newsletter is out! There are tons of goodies in store for you too. You can browse though the links here or just visit web-hosting-newsletter.com for February’s issue and any past issues you would like to browse though.

Need a layout or design? Time to rejoice! Lunarpages now has an awesome designer’s directory.

In other news, Lunarpages has also started delivering Basic and Business plan customers unlimited addon domains. This is a feature that should come with all new orders and older customers will be upgraded to the new limit over the next several weeks. This is a feature you wanted, so we delivered.

The Lunarforums Site of the Month voting is underway. Be sure to vote, and check back on March 1st as I’ll come in on my day off to announce the winner. Really excited about the line up this month, and I am really looking forward for this to be a returning contest month after month!

Also don’t forget to check out our new free hosting downloads page to get tons of free and open source applications to help you with your own web site creations.

Be sure to check out the LunarNews post form this month’s newsletter to read up on more fantastic offers, upgrades, deals and specials from us to you.

Related Tips and Tricks:

Poor Boy’s Tips to Online Advertising

Mitch — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:38:42 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

I don’t like paying for a lot. Why pay for advertising and marketing when you don’t have to? Here are a few was you too can become a ~~cheapskate~~ thrifty Online marketing mind.

Hit up the Forums and Message Boards

Posting your links in forum or message board signature sections might be another way to keep people coming to your web sites. It doesn’t cost a thing – and if your an active member of several forums it is a good way to grab people’s eyes.

Advertise with Your Message Board Profile Icon

Message board icons or graphics are a good way to go too. Instead of just having a picture of yourself there – put in your picture and your domain really small on the bottom of the graphic. This way you can have a double wammy along with the forum signature link to get more attention without paying a dime.

Get Free Plugs on Your Own Blog (and other projects)

If you have a blog – another free way of gaining some press for your other projects would be advertising yourself. Point people on the sidebar to some of your other projects. If they like one of them, they might like the others – right? Also don’t forget about your RSS feed. If your using WordPress – this RSS Signature plugin will allow you to include a little more information (and linkage!) in your RSS feed. Like my Mama always said, if you can’t plug yourself – who can you plug?

Tell Your Friends to Tell Friend, to Tell Friends…

Word of mouth advertising is always a good way to get a project off the ground. If a lot of your friends share the same love for the thing you are putting out there they might be your best form of advertisements. Also begging your friends to tell other friends can be a little easier than begging to total strangers.

Have a Contest and Give Something Away

Everybody likes the chance to win, right? What Lunarpages is doing right now with the Lunarpages t-shirt design contest is a good example of this tip. Sure you might not have $400 or an XBox 360 to give away – but I am sure you can think of something of value you could give to get people excited about your project.

Related Tips and Tricks:

5 Things to Do After Launching a Web Site

Mitch — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:22:50 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

Gaining press and getting people interested in what you are producing are some of the hardest things to do once your Web site is finally up and running. Will they love me or do they hate me? Well first they have to find out who you are. Here are five things I always try to do when it comes to launching a new Web site or project.

1. Get the Web Site Finished – Nobody likes to get all hyped up over an idea to go find out it isn’t even done yet. It might sound like something most people would think of, but you’d be surprised by the number who do not.

2. Tell Your Friends and Family First – Word of mouth advertising is always the best, so when launching a new Web site or project this should be the first area you focus on when it comes to spreading the word about what you are trying to do. These people are also the easier to beg and plead with when it comes to asking to share it with friends and people they know that you do not. I’d much rather beg my best friend to do something for me than a total stranger.

3. Use the Social Web Experience – Now I am not going to tell you to go submit yourself to every social news Web site, because that it usually frowned upon. You can use some of these thing to your advantage though. Try to get yourself on places like StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. They can bring a lot of fresh faces to your Web site, especially if it leans a little towards the geeky side of things.

4. Find the Network for Web Sites Like Yours – Next step should be to find forums, blogs and other social means of communication on the Web and spread your message there about your new project or idea. Make sure you an established personality or member of these forums or groups that you post at before you start plugging yourself as well. Nobody likes to be the guy who makes his introduction while plugging something. It looks a little tacky.

5. Reach Out to the Press – Is there a certain group of professional press you can reach out to in your area of business? If so – you might hit them up for a review or a mention of your new project or Web site. If your Web site is about soccer, and your doing something nobody else has done before, some soccer news outlets across the Web might be interested in your story. It never hurts to at least pitch the idea to them. If they can’t use you now, they might keep you in mind for something in the future.

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affiliates love fairies!!

Tiara — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:20:56 +0000

by Tiara Rea
When I was a kid, Lisa Frank stickers were like, totally all the rage dude. Even though I was a pretty little girl with pink bows in my hair and little frilly white socks, I’d have punched any other kid’s face off if they tried to come after my adorable, big-eyed animal stickers! They are about as much a part of my childhood as pop rocks and bad Chuck E Cheese pizza, and those stickers were as valuable as my Wii is today. I hoarded mine in a clear jar I got from our basement and I think, funny enough, they’re still there. If I’d have wanted to give them out, I think my friends would have done anything I told them to.

Which brings me to the point of this blog – stickers are invaluable. This is what the following dream proves, which my friend and the newest sales rep at Lunarpages Web Hosting, Adriann, just told Amy and I this morning.

The dream involved Amy taking Adriann to some huge affiliate event, where she attempted to convince customers to become affiliates by offering them pretty, sparkly, fairy stickers!! When the affiliates stopped responding to these stickers, dream!Amy demanded that Adriann draw her own fairy stickers so they’d be edgier for our affiliates’ enjoyment.

Amy and I are currently re-thinking our Business Development model to include fairy stickers, as Adriann convinced us they worked out well in the dream.

Adriann is clearly now part of the Lunartic group, I think. ;)

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Set Smaller Goals, Get More Rewards

Mitch — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:37:34 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

What is the big secret to becoming a success Online?

Set reasonable goals for yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Web sites or Web projects that take off over night are few and far between. Unless you are some sort of underground Internet celebrity building a audience that cares about your product, your ideas or what you have to say is hard work.

In the past I have built several different audiences around several different projects of mine. Don’t be disappointed when after a week you don’t have thousands of people coming into your Web site hourly.

Now you want an example? Lets say you have an RSS feed for your blog and you want to have millions of subscribers. If you wait around for a million, chances are you’ll get bored and quit within the next few days. Instead of looking at the big picture, take smaller steps. Set a goal of maybe 10 subscribers to your RSS feed by the end of the month. This is a much more reasonable goal and it gives you something to get excited about when you reach it.

As time passes by you can bump up your goals inch by inch. Truth be told, the only time you should be worried is when you start loosing attention. If you focus yourself on small steady growth (instead of large leaps and bounds) you should be alright.

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My Favorite SEO Cheat Sheet – Ranking Factors Version 2

Amy Armitage — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:19:30 +0000

Author: Ben Welch-Bolen

The always amazing Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame posted an update to the search engine ranking factors list they keep. This is one of the most useful tools for anyone involved in search engine optimization. You can quickly check to see if something you are worrying about is important or not according to the experts. They rank all the factors in order of importance and have opinions from over 35 SEO experts.

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:

Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)

Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)

Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)

Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (4.1)

Age of Site (4)

Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)

Keyword Use in Body Text (3.9)

Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.7)

Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.6)

Learn more at the Search Ranking Factors Version 2 at SEOmoz. I use these daily as work to improve results in Google. Also be sure to check out this interview with Rand Fishkin Joe did here a while back.

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Web design, flash, animation and custom web development at its best.

Amy Armitage — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:46:43 +0000

Author: Samuel Feuer

We have just launched a new site that I wanted to showcase on this here blog. The site is dedicated to exclusive members only and was 100% custom built from the ground up by the MindSmack.com crew. Check it out!

http://www.privatepass.citi.com

Yahoo!

You can also check out some of our latest creations @ http://www.MindSmack.com

For those of you who are into the whole affiliate marketing thing or just love the web and feel you have some interest in meeting other web gurus who are into marketing and the like check out the eComXpo @ http://www.ecomxpo.com/home.htm

Now back to your regularly scheduled website programming…

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Elite Retreat Interview with Aaron Wall

Amy Armitage — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:54:44 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Today I interviewed Aaron Wall who is going to be a speaker at Elite Retreat in March. This is my third interview in my Elite Retreat series. Aaron Wall is the creator of SEObook, PPC secret ebook and is a talented SEO guru.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Aaron: Mostly organic search engine optimization, but I can answer most questions related to search marketing, link building, and blogging.

Joe: What real world value do you think your attendees will walk away with after your seminar?

Aaron: Last event we went through and pointed out marketing elements and conversion elements that could be improved to sharply increase the performance of the attendees sites. I think we can help people with anything from lead generation right on through to improving conversion rates and closing more sales.

Joe: You’re SEO book really catapulted you into being an SEO guru but would you place more emphasis on SMO or SEO these days?

Aaron: I think there was a time when SEO was harder because link acquisition was harder than it is today. If you are good at creating linkworthy ideas it shouldn’t be hard to get noticed in today’s marketplace. You can call that SEO or SMO but really it is just marketing…creating things people want to talk about and then leveraging that authority and market position for profit.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a site rank well?

Aaron: This question is so broad that it could take me 300 pages to answer it, but as a rough formula I would say create something the market wants, bake a unique marketing angle into your creation, participate in your market and get their feedback, and do things people would want to talk about (and thus link at). That is the basic process, and at the beginning you should do keyword research, market analysis, and plan out your information architecture. The process is also ongoing, where you use your current market feedback to evolve your marketing.

I also provide a free overview on Work.com

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Aaron: It depends on the vertical, the resources at hand, and the strengths of the site owner.

Joe: You have really been branded as an SEO guru but what other fields of search marketing do you excel at?

Aaron: I am pretty good at seeing the trends in how search will affect other markets. I also created a fairly well known brand in the SEO field, so I am probably pretty decent at branding and blogging.

Joe: How did you get involved with elite retreat?

Aaron: Lee asked me if I would like to be involved at a conference.

Thanks Aaron for giving me some time and talking to me about elite retreat.

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Elite Retreat Interview with Lee Dodd of LeeDodd.com

Amy Armitage — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:26:28 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

My second interview in my elite retreat interview series is with the well known social netowrking expert Lee Dodd who has achieved much success with sprint forums and is a current speaker at elite retreat San Fransisco in march. Lee’s expertise is essential for anyone considering creating and marketing a forum. Be sure to check out lee’s business bushido site to learn more about lee.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Lee: I plan on speaking about the growth potential of online communities in the first segment. I will basically outline the benefits of online communities, how to monetize them, dive a bit into SEO, and give a solid picture of the growth and earnings potential. The second segment will be dedicated to my tactics of both buying and selling web real estate.

I have bought and sold more than 60 web properties (websites) over the past 2-3 years. I have spent $xxx,xxx in acquisitions yearly. I have learned much through all of these transactions and will show our attendees how to buy and sell effectively without getting burned. There is plenty of money to be made doing this very thing. You can read more about me and the other speaks here:

Joe: What kind of real world value can attendees take from YOUR seminar?

Lee: I think the attendees will walk away with a solid understanding and plan of attack that will help them achieve the very goals they came with. The leadership will guide them through the EXACT steps it will take them to get from their POINT A to their POINT B. They certainly won’t get fluff or sales pitches, just the hard facts they need to succeed in their business.

Joe: How did you make the sprint forum so popular?

Lee: The site really grew in popularity as I continually added free tools and resources for the users. We have a free upload tool, one of only 3 or so on the web for Sprint phones, we have a huge wallpaper gallery with free wallpapers to download, we provide custom graphic and ringtone creation for free, we have user blogs, and so much more. As I built the new fun content, growth continued at a steady pace. Things like SEO and branding really took care of itself at that point.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a forum popular?

Lee: I will continue to share that my main secret (and there are others which will be discussed at the Elite Retreat ) is creating useful and unique content. This doesn’t have to be written content necessarily, but rather tools, games, video, audio, or some other type of valuable content to your userbase. Having this in place will bring the traffic required to see your community grow.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Lee: I have worked with a variety of clients and their forums. The first one that comes to mind is a woman that runs a large community that is health related. I was able in one session to give her a plan of attack that took her earnings from approximately $1,700 a month to more than $4,500 a month. It didn’t require much work either as it was something she had implemented in a matter of hours.

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Lee: Depending on the niche you are in, you will want to focus your monetization efforts in a specific area. For instance, if you are in the technology sector you would want to begin with monetizing your traffic through CPA offers and CPC (Adsense or YPN) networks. As traffic grows, you would want to build up your private advertisers as well. To maximize ROI, the key is to maximize eyeballs. Ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to bring in the most traffic to your site, and then once they arrive are you doing the best you can to convert them in to revenue.

Joe: Who is the best web hosting company in the world?

Lee: Lunar Pages of course! ;-)

Thanks for entertianing that question Lee. I have been very impressed with what you have done with sprint forums and spending 20 minutes speaking with you about social networking and marketing could truly increase someones online efforts and maximize their ROI. Have a great trip to San Fransisco.

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Elite Retreat Interview with Kris Jones of Pepperjamsearch.com

Amy Armitage — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:21:18 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Elite Retreat is geared more towards the industry professional looking to learn the secret skill set from the professional super affiliate, SEO, SMO and venture capitalist. The speakers at elite retreat are highly qualified industry professionals who will be able to answer in depth questions which are posed by the attendee’s on a more in depth level then normal conventions. Elite retreat is going to have a one on one feel giving specialized attention to the individual’s who attend making this the first ever one on one convention in its field. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and small to large business owners attempting to gain momentum in the search field.

I will be doing a series of interviews with the leading speakers at Elite Retreat attempting to get some information on what they will be speaking about and how it can be beneficial for the attendees in a real world situation.

First up is a leading powerhouse in the search field and his name is Kris Jones of Pepperjamsearch.com.

Joe:What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Kris: I will share my insights on how to make money online using a combination of search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, and various alternative online media channels. Since my experiences cross both the affiliate (publisher) and advertiser (merchant) perspective, I’m likely to be responsive to the needs of the attendees and address their specific concerns. This is not a conference where we speak to the attendees – instead, we speak with them to address and optimize their businesses.

Joe: What can attendees expect from this conference?

Kris: Attendees can expect to come to the Elite Retreat with problems or ideas and have those problems or ideas addressed by very experienced, proven internet marketers. In addition, each attendee will have valuable one-on-one interaction with each speaker, including myself.

Joe: Why do you hire such attractive women? Is that your form of chickbait?

Kris: It just so happens that our approach has always been to hire the best and brightest employees we can find. In general, women are smarter than men. Being one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States attracts smart people. Oh, ya, and there is a strong correlation between smart people, being female, and being attractive.

Joe: What is more important to you as a marketer, SEO or SMO?

Kris: I’m a strong believer in both SEO and SMO, but I have to admit that I’m fascinated by SMO. I’m a student (and in some cases a teacher) of different forms of buzz and viral marketing – not necessarily from the standpoint of just putting out (social media) content, but doing so in a way that entertains, while capturing imagination and gets people talking. Both SEO and SMO can help businesses capture market share, but only SMO can truly get people talking about your product or service in a way that makes them want to tell their best friend who tells their co-worker to take action. By the way, my company offers businesses management and consultation in both SEO and SMO.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Kris: We have been the outsourced online marketing division of igourmet.com since 2000 – we perform all online marketing duties for igourmet, including SEM & SEO, affiliate marketing management (Linkshare), online media planning & management, partnership acquisition (i.e., Target.com, Overstock.com, Epicurious.com), etc. With our help igourmet has received numerous national awards, including designation by Consumer Reports (2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online, Internet Retailer as a Top 500 online retailer (2005 – 2006), and Forbes Magazine (2003 – 2006) as the #1 place to shop for gourmet food online. We’ve increased igourmet’s sales in each of the areas mentioned above by an average of 150% per year, every year.

Joe: Can you give some advice to our visitors and customers on how to effectively market their site.

Kris: (1) Start with paid (PPC) search-engine marketing. Hire a PPC expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands PPC and is committed to staying on top of the daily changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. Your PPC manager should not be responsible for multiple channels of online marketing – they should be dedicated to PPC. If done correctly, PPC should account for 20% or more of your online sales.

(2) Second, hire an SEO expert (internal or outsource) outside of executive management who understands SEO (especially on Google) and is committed to staying on top of the periodic changes and opportunities that are emerging across all of the various seach-engines. The goal here is to create some short, medium, and long-term goals for how you can represent your website as an authority to Google and the other engines – therefore, have patience, it will take time, but the committment will pay dividends many times over once your reputation is established and your website takes into consideration the basic and advanced tenants of SEO ( i.e., links and what those links say, tags, content, navigation, etc.).

(3) Third, evaluate the power of affiliate marketing. Does affiliate marketing provide an additional market share acquisition channel for your business? Regardless of your business model, chances are affiliate marketing can add an additional 15% or more to your bottom line. Hire an affiliate marketing expert (internal or outsource) with leverage into the affiliate marketing community. Since approximately 95% of your sales are likely to come from less than 5% of the affiliate community (the Super Affiliates) you’re going to need an affiliate manager with access to those 5% (leverage) – I call it leverage because affiliate marketing is really about building partnerships – your affiliate manager must be able to spend most of their time building relationships with the 5% of affiliates who drive the industry.

(4) Finally, evaluate alternative forms of online marketing, including social media, display advertising, contextual advertising, behavioral targeting / re-targeting, strategic partnership acquisition, buzz marketing, etc. Hire an online media expert (internal or outsource) with experience and insight into the aforementioned channels.

By the way, your online marketing efforts should not be structured for autopilot. Moreover, your executive team should not be responsible for online marketing efforts – if this is the case, you need to hire an expert and allow the executive to get back to what they should be doing. If you are not involved in all of the above channels you are missing out on market share that your competitors are likely enjoying.

Joe: How did you propel PepperJam to the forefront of the internet marketing field?

Kris: Hired smart people with integrity and got out of their way. Also, I’ve been involved in online marketing since the late 90’s (the GoTo.com days) which apparently makes me one of the early adopters of paid search and affiliate marketing.

Thanks Kris and I wish you all the best at elite retreat and I know anyone attending your session is going to take away a life long value that cannot have a price put on it.

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Affiliate Marketing – Part III – Driving Traffic and Testing your PPC campaign

Amy Armitage — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:24:31 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

After you have built your affiliate site and done your OPO (on page optimization) how do you start generating traffic to this site? Utilizing SEO can take a long time and yes SEO should be in mind when doing an affiliate site but if thats all you rely on then you are not going to see an ROI for a very long time. So how do you get around this and what are the best ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site.

Over the last couple weeks some really great post’s have come out outlining many of the topics I will be covering so you will be getting a cornucopia of info wealth with this single post.

The first question is how to draw traffic to your affiliate site without doing SEO. Again make sure you do SEO your site but to reap benefits rather quickly then utilize some of the ideas listed by scoreboard-media.com , toprankblog and SEOmoz. here is a brief breakdown of traffic sources you can call upon.

1. Blogging
2. Podcasting
3. Link buying
4. TV Buys
5. Web Directories
6. Ad Networks
7. Online Forums
8. Social Media
9. Email List Rentals
10. Webinars/Video
11. Online Press Releases
12. PR Firm
13. Event Media Sponsorships
14. Sponsored Reviews
15. Syndicate Your Content

This is a pretty good list and some ideas are going to be much more worth your time then others. For instance submitting to web directories are not going to get you the type of traffic you want. Out of this list I will suggest which ones I personally would target when setting up an affiliate site for traffic.
Ad Networks (Pay Per Click)
Social Media
Online Forums

These are going to be the best way to get high volumns of traffic without spending an arm and a leg. One of the most effective ways of generating a ton of traffic is going to be through your social media. Now SMO is a completly different ball game then SEO and an emerging highly qualified authority on Social Media is Pronet Advertising. They discuss social media and how to optimize it.

Something that was not really mentioned was a tactic called Link Baiting. Link baiting is basically setting up quality content or a quality tool where people will naturally link to it like a fish to bait. A great list of link baiting tactics has been created by andy hagans and in essence this article is quality link bait!

Now that you have some tools and information on building traffic using other methods rather than SEO its time to talk about PPC. Literally the fastest way to draw targeted traffic to your site right away. I use Google Adwords and Stumbleupon Ads and the new Yahoo Search Marketing for this. The reason I choose these three is because with google and yahoo I am covering about 78% of the search market and I am using stumbleupon as a filler to drive a set amount of predefined targeted traffic.

The experts say you can see if a campaign will yeild profitable results within a 24 hour period. So what is the trick of testing your PPC? The very first thing I would suggest is reading Aaron walls PPC Secrets book. It goes through everything from writing creative ad copies to how to improve CTR and conversions. Its a must read for anyone attempting to do PPC.

At affiliate Summit West Shoemoney said that when he sets up a PPC campaign for his affiliate sites he pays NO MORE then .05 cents for each keyword. The trick to the campaigns is choosing long tail keyword phrases and target specific product names or brands. For example if you are selling sirius statelite radios then for your ppc campaign you might target “sirius channel guide” or “howard stern sirius satelite” or “starmate boombox” or “discount sirius satelite radios” or “sirius satelite radio coupons” or more product specific like “stiletto sl100″ or “starmate” or “sporters” or “sportster 1200″. These are just some test phrases and words I would target if I was doing an affiliate campaign for sirius satelite radio.

Since the Overture bid tool is no more I have been using the google keyword selector tool a lot more now but I also rely on keyword discovery and word tracker to help me. Remember to make creative ads and interesting landing pages for all of your keywords as they will convert a lot better. For landing page optimization check out these resources: Bruce Clays Landing page optimization, Marketing Sherpa’s Landing Page Optimization book and Marketing Experiments/Landing pages. Another great tool to use is a PPC spy program called Keyword Compete which is a powerful tool for affiliate marketers. If you want to see what your competition is doing you can see what words/ phrases they are targeting by using keyword compete. Check it out and I am sure you will be an avid user.
A basic formula to determine if a campaign is succesfful is to remember this calculation.

Daily Sales Income – Daily Advertising Expenses / number of sales = Average customers value

If this number is in the negative you may need to rework you advertising expenses or your entire campaign.

When considering if a PPC campaign has been succesful I usually look the bottom line. Some people think that a high CTR above 5% is success but for me if I have 5% CTR and no sales then it is a huge failure and I am loosing money. I recommend keeping an eye on the bottom line that being cost of ads vs conversions. If you are seeing high impressions and low CTR you might consider beefing up your ad copy and if you are seeing high CTR and no conversions you might consider re-evaluating your landing pages. The worst thing you can do is get yourself into a bidding war so keep it simple and expand from there.

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Yahoo Search Marketing Changes Ad Rank in Search Results

Amy Armitage — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:17:37 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

Today Yahoo! announced that come February 5th the way each ad is ranked in a Yahoo! search will also include a “quality” factor. Yahoo in their own words said:

“On February 5, 2007, we are introducing a new ranking model in the U.S. that considers an ad’s quality and bid amount. The new model is designed to help you spend less time in bidding wars and more time creating the most relevant, effective ads, which can help drive better results for your business. “

Yahoo! is now attempting to give ad positioning to more relevant and higher performing ads to help serve their customers better which is something that Google has been suspected of doing for quite some time now. This should help keep the pay per spam down and the quality relevant ads much higher “in theory”. Here is a quick graphical example provided by yahoo!.

Yahoo talks about ad quality and what is it?

What is “Ad Quality”?
Ad quality is determined by:

The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to competitors and normalized for position.
The ad’s expected performance – determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time.

Overall ad quality is displayed in graphical form by the quality index.

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Do It Yourself Marketing Online

Mitch — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:20:20 +0000

Author: Mitch Keeler

Marketing is one of the things Online that just fascinates me to no end. I love watching it. I love studying it. I love putting it to practice for myself when I can. The truth of the matter is though is that a lot of people out there are either scared of it or intimidated by it. There should be nothing to fear about marketing. It is just the practice of getting yourself out there to the public.

Since there has been a lot of marketing talk here lately, I figured I would chime in. So to help those out there that might fear the practice of marketing, or who might need marketing practice I figured I would put together a do it yourself guide.

Do Something Different

The best way you can market yourself is to do something different. Different things get attention. As you can see from the surge of Web 2.0 applications and ideas that are coming out every single day – there are many ways to introduce a new idea to the public. Everything under the sun has not been done yet and your calling may still be out there.

Now that we have the metaphors out there you really need to study what you are interested in and what you are doing and think of how you can do it differently. I have talked about being the giant chicken dressed in a clown suit in a forest filled with trees before. Different works, different does your marketing for you.

Don’t Be Afraid to Introduce Yourself

The next tip that I would give you would be to introduce yourself to somebody new. Find out who the most popular people are in your area of interest and get to know them if you can. Sure, not everybody is going to want to talk to you – forget about those folks. Focus on the people who do call you back. Thank the people that do E-mail you back. If you are not sure where to start, go with your friends. Ask them who they might know and then put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure out how that person could help you.

My position is easy, I’m a technology and hosting industry writer. I am in an industry where everybody loves to talk about themselves and even more people like to listen. These things are always changing so people want to be on top of thing. Your area of expertise might be different. I can promise you though that there are people on top of every topic out there. Get to know them.

You Online Tools and Web Sites

If all else fails, you might turn to the Web to get some help. Web sites like LinkedIn and Even MySpace give you a good database of folks to talk to – and a way for them to contact you as well. Get yourself signed up on every place that will have your profile. Then you can do your searching, find people that share your interests and share with them your projects and Web site links. They might become a fan, they might give you a suggestion. When it comes to marketing anything is welcome. If you are lucky they might even tell a friend about you as well.

So what are your suggestions for marketing yourself in the big world we live in?

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Affiliate Marketing – Part II – Your path to becoming a Super Affiliate

Amy Armitage — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:31:20 +0000

Author: Joe Whyte

I had a chance to speak with Jeremy Shoemaker from ShoeMoney Media Group about affiliate marketing yesterday. Since Jeremy is a “super affiliate” making MORE then a living online he was a perfect candidate and resource for this post! Also since Lunarpages.com’s marketing team will be meeting up with him at Affiliate Summit I thought it would be a good idea to introduce us before hand ;-).

Ok, so you have purchased your new hosting account with 250GB of storage and 2500GB of data transfer with the ability to host 11 sites on one hosting account all for only $6.95. You have purchased your domain names that are keyword rich and you have gotten your Quality templates from Flash-Template-Design.com. You are almost all ready to start but you need to join your affiliate sites.

Deciding to pick the “right” affiliate:
How does one pick the right affiliate? To start you could always start with a company/product that you are familiar with and that you use. This will help you build out content and your affiliate site much faster (at least for your first site). One of the main things to look for would be how notable a product/service is based on brand awareness. For example, if you where to choose a service that no-one has ever heard of the chances of getting a good CTR and ROI is going to be much smaller then if you are promoting a product with mass appeal and brand awareness. One of the last things to look at when considering an affiliate is the commission rate. The commission rate is very important when considering an affiliate because it is truely the “bottom line” but to be successful you need to look at all aspects to determine your over-all potential ROI. In a recent interview with Jeremy Shoemaker “Super Affiliate” this is what he said when I asked him:

Joe: What are the top things you look for when considering an affiliate?
Jeremy: Reputation is #1 you can learn a lot from others experiences. Payout #2

How to setup the right Affiliate Marketing Strategy:
Some general rules you might want to consider when setting up an affiliate site is to first prepare yourself that its going to be a lot of work to be successful. Examine your competition and see what your competition is doing. A way to find your competition is to do a “Google” search for a product or service you are marketing. Are they utilizing PPC? Are they ranking in the SERP’s? How long has this site been around? How many inbound links does the site have? How many pages do they have and is the content original or duplicate? After examining these points you can successfuly create your strategy. If gaining position in the serps is going to take to long to monetize your site then definitely try PPC through mulitiple PPC venues. Remember traffic is the key!

Joe: What is your strategy when putting up an affiliate site?
Jeremy: To start I focus on volume and then dial it in after time with a lot of testing. If I can break even the first week of a new campaign I consider that a success. If I am not at 800%++ ROI within a month I consider it a failure.

How do you start generating affiliate sales?
So we know that first you need traffic in order to get sales. The more traffic comes into your site the better chance you have for getting affiliate sales on your site. I asked Jeremy “super affiliate” this question and he responded with a short but powerful answer!

Joe: how do you start generating affiliate sales?
Jeremy: PPC!!!

One of the best ways to increase sales, drive traffic and create brand awareness is going to be PPC. You gain top position is the SERP’s and your name and your product are going to be visible to a large percentage of searches ultimately creating a good platform for some viral marketing. Jeremy says that “Almost all of my sites are either ppc or get traffic directly from word of mouth“. A great way to boost your viral marketing is to start offering something free on your site. Lets say you have a “web hosting” affiliate. You could offer a free ebook about web hosting troubleshooting and load balancing or give away an informative newsletter that keeps people up to date with what your affiliate is offering and tips and tricks to help them manage their hosting account. By offering your viewers something useful and FREE they will tell others about it and you can start seeing your affiliate site grow by leaps and bounds!

Some other ways to generate traffic:

Digg.com
Reddit.com
Netscape.com
StumbleUpon.com
Myspace.com
Shoutwire.com
Craigslist.com

Monetizing your site even MORE!
Affiliate sales is a great way to make money but what about the people who visit your site but DO NOT purchase anything. How can you make money off of them? I will talk about 2 way’s to do this.

1) Contextual Advertising: Once you have a good amount of inbound links and your site has some PageRank you will be able to sell some text links on your site. The higher your PageRank the more money you will make. This is a great way to keep steady income coming in from your site each month because literally your site will just sit there without you touching it and you will be getting paid from letting people advertise on your site. Use sites like Text-Link-Ads.com, TextLinkBrokers.com and Performancing.com (there are others but these are some of the best) to setup this money making opportunity.

2)Adsense: this is the best way to capitalize of your visitors who DO NOT purchase a product via your site. If they do not find what they are looking for then most likely a link on your site via “adsense” will! Depending on the product and marketplace for these terms the price per click will vary. Jeremy mentions where he likes to place his adsense:

Jeremy: ‘I run it on some of them but pretty low on the page or use adlinks where navigation would be”.

Joe: How long do you usually spend creating and optimizing your affiliate site?

Jeremy: tons of time. They can always be improved

Joe: What is the biggest piece of advice you can give our affiliates?

Jeremy: TEST TEST TEST TEST look at what other people in your space are doing and learn from it.
Thanks Jeremy and I look forward to seeing you at affiliate summit!!!

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Lunartics Friday Favs

Tiara — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:18:42 +0000

By Joe & Tiara

Joe and I haven’t had much time this week to search for Friday Favs, but we were still able to compile a list of the big stories this week. I just realized, the LP Friday Favs is like a News Digest every week! A very smaaaaall news digest but a digest nevertheless.

Anyway, our first story is the reason we haven’t had much time to link surf: Lunarpages Web Hosting upgraded its storage and bandwidth!!! For those of you living under a rock, LP recently upgraded from 35 gigs of storage space to 250 and from 800 gigs of data transfer to 2,500!!!! Holy effing cow, is all I’ve got to say. But there’s more on our upgrades here, plus a nifty quote from our CEO. ;)

Speaking of big news, this shocked me when I found it last night. Tiara was minding her own business, trying to get on Wordpress to blog, when she (why did I switch to 3^rd person??) came upon the news of the CENTURY: YouTube Overtakes Myspace on Alexa Rankings. Read up on this phenomenon. While Alexa may not mean what it used to, it’s still a huge indication of what’s happening on the web, and the fact that Myspace was overwhelmed by YouTubers doesn’t surprise me. ;) Tiara no longer likes Myspace, btw.

And for more on YouTube, read the news blip about their near-leap into the television realm:

This next link is a pretty interesting take on the web porn industry. Yes, I said PORN. Haha, I bolded that to get your attention. Now read on: Personally, I think it’s kind of dumb if they’re not going to go all out and force .xxx on people registering porn sites, but honestly, that’s not my main arena. :D

And duh, we couldn’t have wrapped up this week’s Friday Favs without mentioning the coveted Apple iphone: For nearly $500, I’m curious. My roommate on the other hand about drooled all over herself and said, “This would be the one time in my life I’d get the tech-savvy gadget of the year!!” ;)

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Affiliate Summit 2007 West

Amy Armitage — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 01:16:44 +0000

Author: Mike Vitale

Hi Everyone,

Affiliate Summit 2007 West is taking place January 21-23, 2007 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Lunarpages Business Development Department as well as our Director of Operations want to meet you there! That’s right, this means you finally get to put a face to a name: Amy Armitage, Chad Riddle, Tiara Rea, Joe Whyte, and myself will all be in attendance.

Aside from the obvious networking advantages from attending, Affiliate Summit has a number of speakers that are absolute essentials; after all, we’ve got to make sure that we are all on top of our game. Here is a brief rundown of speakers attending this year’s event:

· Bennet Kelley, Assistant General Counsel, ValueClick, Inc.
· Jake Bailey, Affiliate Program Manager, Overstock.com
· Steve Denton, President, LinkShare.com
· Choots Humphries, Co-President, LinkConnector Corporation
· Jim Kukral, Network Director, BlogKits
· Chelsey Langan, Senior Business Development Manager, HomeGain
· Michael McCurdy, Director, CRM Product Marketing, Match.com
· Kerri Pollard, VP, Client Performance, Commission Junction
· Michael Sanchez, CEO and Co-founder, ClubMom
· Jeremy Schoemaker, President, ShoeMoney Media Group
· Mark Widawer, Author, Landing Page Cash Machine

In addition to this, there are a number of classes being held covering affiliate, SEO/SEM, PPC, as well as email marketing topics.

The Affiliate Summit conference starts on Sunday, January 21 at 2 PM EST with the Affiliate Meet Market & Vendor Showcase and runs through the evening of Tuesday, January 23.

Follow this link here if you haven’t already signed up:

http://www.affiliatesummit.com/registration.php

Current price per attendee will be $699.00 for the full conference pass which includes all events and exhibit hall. You need to use the following coupon code to save $750:

ABWRULES

We speak to so many of you on a daily basis, whether by email or over the telephone, and it’s on rare occasions such as this that we have the opportunity to fraternize with many of the people that are so important to the success of our business. We would absolutely love to meet and chat with everyone that is planning on attending. So, shoot me an email; let me know that you are coming: michael.vitale [at] lunarpages.com

I hope to hear from you soon!