I’ve known Adam Riemer for a number of years now. He likes to introduce me as the “smartest woman he knows” and that definitely wins him brownie points. Here is a guest post from him:

It isn’t enough to rely on one or two channels like SEO or PPC for your traffic. When an algorithm changes your rankings can drop and if more people enter into your niche, your PPC costs could rise. That is why it is important to think about partnerships.

Partnerships could be anything from related sites or other ecommerce sites with similar products to yours. You can use them in numerous ways to not only help to build your traffic, but also have a reliable source of revenue if your main channels end up no longer being able to work for you. Here are a few types of partnerships, why you may want to
use them and also one thing to watch for.

Guest Blogging – Building partnerships with guest bloggers is great because you not only gain exposure to their audience, but it also helps to build your brand and trust for your site with their readers. If you allow people to guest blog for you, you could also get them to tweet out and share their posts with their fans which helps to drive new people to your
site or blog. These are great partnerships to have because if you ever need traffic coming in, you could always reach out to them and ask for another guest post.

Cross promotional emails – Finding sites and stores that have newsletters and emails lists and are closely related to you and can be good for your audience or customers is great for your site. Not only can you work out deals to cross promote to each other’s customer base, but you can build trust in your store for them because they are getting the email
from a store they already shop with. This can not only give you a boost in sales, but it can help to get you extra exposure if they forward the email to friends or other family members.

When you find partners that you want to work with, before you risk your brand, you’ll want to check for the types of complaints that you can find online. If they provide poor customer service or their products don’t work, you probably don’t want to send your customers there. Not only could they have a bad experience, but if they do, they may no longer trust you or your store. This could also damage future partnerships and cross promotions since your customers no longer trust your recommendations.

Partnerships are an awesome way to boost sales and help to build a customer or reader base for free. They build your brand and trust and can also be a reliable source of traffic. As long as you are careful with who you partner with and make sure they provide the same levels of support as you do, you should be good to go with them as a partner.

About the author.

Adam is an online marketer with over 10 years of experience. He helps companies with everything from SEO to Affiliate Management and full site optimization.

Next week are two conferences that I am really sad that I am missing. Life however has other plans for me right now. It was very timely that I got this guest post from my friend Tricia Meyer talking about her decision not to attend and why.

Some people look to poets and philosophers for quotes. I find myself returning to Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” when she said “Life’s full of tough choices, isn’t it?” For me this year one of the toughest choices that I have had to make for my business is whether to attend certain conferences. I’ve always struggled in the past with Linkshare Symposium and Commission Junction University, but Affiliate Summit and ShareASale ThinkTank attendance were a given.

Not so this spring. Although I have no doubt that both Affiliate Summit Central and ThinkTank in Austin are going to be terrific events, I had to do a lot of thinking about whether it was the right time for me to attend. Having already attended Affiliate Summit in January and planning on attending the Google Summit in July and Affiliate Summit in August (plus my Affiliate Marketers Give Back walk in October), this was an incredibly hard decision for me.

On the one hand, I know that the conferences are a great networking opportunity. Because they are back to back, I would only need to pay for one flight to attend both. I could find a way to come up with the money if I really wanted to. I’d get to meet up with my friends, network and make new friends, learn what is new in the affiliate marketing industry, and look for new ways to grow my business.

At the same time, May is a huge month for my family. My husband and I are running a half marathon with friends. My daughter has her first middle school varsity cross country meet. My 30-something-th birthday. End of year staff appreciation at the kids’ school. Band try-outs. Preparing for our annual family Disney trip. Mother’s Day. A trip with the in-laws to watch the Indy 500. Opening the pool for our family and friends. It’s just so much!

In the end, I decided to stay home. I’m sure that I will be sad about it when I see all of the Tweets and Facebook posts and blog follow-ups about sessions. I’ll have to work extra hard to keep up with business opportunities at home to make up for those that I am missing. But this month my family needs me, and I need them. Touch choices, but ones that I am lucky to be making.

Tricia Meyer is a mom, blogger, and affiliate marketer who recently has been spending her time writing wine club reviews. You can follow her on Twitter @sunshinetricia.

At Affiliate Summit West 2012 I sat in on Vinny O’Hare’s session on 25 Ways to Improve Your Website. One of the tips he gave was using Google Alerts. He touched on it so very briefly though and I thought it was a great topic to expand on, so I asked him to write a guest post about it. Here it is:

Google Alerts is a cool tool that is free and can really help you find links to your site and other interesting things about the niche you are in. There are several items you can keep track of for your website and to track your competition. Lets talk about a few ways you can use them to help with your website. You can set alerts up for many things, I consider it another set of eyes when it comes to my sites.

When setting up an alert you have a choice of searching Everything, News, Blogs, Real Time, Video, Discussions and Books. I usually leave this set to everything unless I am expecting breaking news for a product in my niche. Second setting is how frequent you want to get these alerts. Your choices are As it happens, once a day, once a week. 99% of the time I have it set for as it happens. This way it is in my email box and I can always choose when to read it. You can also have it set up as an rss feed. I stick with emails as I was never a really big rss fan.

First Google alert you should have set up for is for your name. This is to see who is talking about you and can also act as a reputation management tool. In Google alerts set up a new alert with “Your Name” in quotes and have the alert set up for “as it happens”. You will get an alert for every site that is mentioning your name. Set up a separate alert using your middle initial also. If you want you can also set this up with your websites name, I find that a little too much but many people set this up also..

Second Google Alert I recommend is “link:Yourwebsite.com” replace the yourwebsite.com with your actual website url. You will get alerts whenever Google finds someone is linking to you. You can also use this on an individual post if you plan on getting a lot of links to it and you want to see who links to that certain post.

My favorite set up for Google alerts is for keyword research which also works well for finding possible link partners. What you do is put your keyword (example “blue widgets”) in quotes and have it emailed daily. You don’t want this set to as it happens because you will get flooded with emails. You will be amazed at the results for the keywords mentioned. You will see what your competition is trying to rank for and possible discover a new angle that you weren’t thinking about. You may be surprised at the results and it may even change the keywords you are trying to rank for.

I use Google alerts to check for people copying my content. From time to time I will set up a Google alert for two or three sentences in my first or second paragraph of my sites blog post. If you take the paragraph and put it in quotes you will see who has borrowed that content. You also want these set up to as it happens so you can do something about it. When this happens to me I waste no time in contacting the website that copied me and if they don’t take down the copy I contact their host. Odds are you will never get a Google Alert for this but if it does happen you will know about it way in advance.

Another cool alert is site:yourwebsite.com I use this to see how long it takes Google to include my new post into the search index. Usually when I make a post I get an email the next day letting me know it has been included. If you run a forum and you have it being indexed you can what post are being written by other people instead of checking “New post” constantly to make sure there is no spammy stuff going on. You can also set up a Google alert to make sure you haven’t been hacked. Since most spammers are selling things like viagra or porn you can see what is going on before it is too late. set up the “Site:yourwebsite.com +viagra,porn,russian mail order brides”.

If you run a local site you can set up an alert for your towns name and put that in quotes and you will see everyone that either lives in your town or mentions your town. This is a good way to find Twitter followers for your local business. You can also put your (“town +keyword”) and get everyone that mentions your niche in your town. I don’t use this much and it could be adjusted to your niche, state, etc.

You can set up an alert with your competitors name and comment wherever he puts a blog post or a press release. He will be baffled how you are keeping up with him. I won’t tell him, it can be our little secret. You can also set up the site:yourcompetitorsurl.com and see what pages they are getting indexed. You can then find out who is linking to that post and approach them for a backlink.

You can set up an alert for finding guest posting opportunities. You can set up a (“keyword + guest post”) or (“keyword + write for us”) and you will find some good places to get exposure to your site. After you set up a few Google alerts you will find different ways to tweak them and you may get some new ideas or see some other keywords you should be following.

Vinny O’Hare is the founder of Vincent O’Hare Consulting, an internet marketing service that provides information on running successful affiliate programs.

I am not much of a football fan, except for my Michigan State Spartans, so when the Super Bowl rolls around I usually don’t even know who the teams are that are playing. I do however enjoy watching the game mainly for the commercials.

Companies spend a fortune on advertising during the Big Game because so many people are tuned in. There is a bit of pressure on them to create really unique and memorable commercials, basically a best of the best that they can do.

Everyone always creates a list of the best commercials, but I thought I would do something a little different. I want to talk about 5 commercials that stood out for me and what you can learn from them.

Here they are:

Clint Eastwood Chrysler Commercial

I’m a Detroiter and last year’s commercial with Eminem really hit the heart of my city. So the pressure was on Chrysler to create an equally moving commercial. This year they centered their message on the whole country with their “it’s halftime America” message. Things have been rough, but we are seeing glimpses of positive change here in Detroit. The commercial focused on hope and was sprinkled with images of Chrysler cars. The cars were not the focus.

Takeaway: Your central message doesn’t always have to be about the product.

Budweiser Clydesdales Prohibition Commercial

I usually love the Clydesdales commercials. They are almost always awesome, whether they are funny or moving. This year was a really miss for me though. This year tried to be a serious one. They were trying to show how Budweiser is always there for the big moments in life, such as when Prohibition ended. Prohibition? Really? I get that people were probably very happy to have legal alcohol available to them again, but this commercial didn’t give me the warm fuzzies that Clydesdales commercials usually do.

Takeaway: You can’t coast on an image that is well loved by people, the message should really mean something.

The Dog Strikes Back Volkswagon Beetle Commercial

This very humorous commercial was about a dog that longs for the ability to chase after a VW Beetle, but needs to get into to shape to do so. I loved the part where he had to ignore all the food that the baby was dropping on the floor around him. It was also a commercial in a commercial though, ending in a Tatooine Cantina with the bar patrons discussing which commercial was better, the dog or the Star Wars kid from last year. One patron claims the dog was better and Vader shows up to Force choke him until he apologizes. Very funny.

Takeaway: Star Wars still sells! Plus it was relatable because most of us have been in that “get in shape, loose weight” place.

GoDaddy Body Paint Commercial

I can’t embed this commercial and I am kind of glad that I can’t. Sex always sells is a timeless advertising message. Really though, these risque go to our website to see more type of commercials are just getting old and worn. They are also one of the big reasons I am moving all of my domains away from them and to Namecheap.

Takeaway: Know your audience. I’m not sure of any statistics that show exactly how the viewship of the Super Bowl breaks down between men and women, and the break down between men and women domain owners. I do know they are not all men and there is probably a significant percentage of women for both.

Doritos Man’s Best Friend Commercial

While this commercial probably didn’t win any cat lovers, it was a pretty funny look at a dog bribing his owner to keep quiet with some Doritos. This commercial was created for a contest run by Doritos by a freelance graphic designer.

Takeaway: User created content can be the key to having your product, blog or website stand out.

I know there were a few other standout (both good and bad) Super Bowl commercials this year. Share one of yours in the comments below and what your takeaway was.

Any kind of job or business requires tools to help you complete your work. Working from home is no exception to that. Over the years I have discovered a number of tools that are a must have for my business. I would love to share them with you.

Here are my best 6 tools for working from home:

1. Wunderlist. I have struggled for some time trying to find just the right to do list that works across my computer and my smartphone. Plus find one that I will actually use. I have a couple installed on my phone right now and this is definitely my favorite. I also love very much that it is free. And you can share your task list with your spouse or an employee/contractor if needed. I use this every day.
2. WordPress. Back in the day I used to code websites from scratch and with the help of Frontpage. My how things have changed. Now every single site I build is on the WordPress platform. While it does have its quirks, I love the simplicity of use in the backend and the ability to customize it with various plugins and custom themes like Thesis. And so many people are using it, that if there is something I don’t know how to do with it, I just Google it and there is most likely a tutorial.
3. Internet Connection. It is hard to remember back but there was a time when there wasn’t the internet. I remember computer modems in which you had to place a phone handset into. And I’m not really that old. Anyway having the internet available all the time has really been a key in allowing people to work from home. Whether I am at home using the wireless internet or on the road and using mobile broadband, allows me to work when I want to.
4. Backup Buddy. I used to use a free plugin to send a backup of my WordPress database to my email once a week, but I always worried about it being unreliable. Then it stopped working on one of my key sites. I had heard so many good things about this plugin but I was hesitant to pay for it when there was something free. Free is not so good when it doesn’t work though. I love this plugin because I can set it up to do an automatic backup of either the whole site or just the database and have it sent to Amazon S3, Dropbox, my email, FTP, or Rackspace Cloudfiles.
5. Namecheap. I used to register all of my domains with GoDaddy, but they just slowly chipped away at me until I was fed up. Now this is my domain registrar of choice. They really do cost less plus they have a whole lot less upsells during the checkout process. That’s a win in my book.
6. Hostgator. All of my websites need someplace to call home and this is the webhost for me. I love that they have an online chat feature for support issues, as well as phone and email support. While they are not perfect, the pros have outweighed the cons so far.

I would love to know what your must have tools are. Let me know in the comments below!

Hey Ladies, step away from the computer for a bit. Grab a cup of hot coffee, a book and take a moment for yourself. This post is for the men in your lives.

Guys Valentine’s Day is just a few weeks away (Tuesday February 14) and even if we say we don’t want anything, trust me, we do. So I’ve put together a little Valentine’s Gift Guide for the work at home Mom in your life to make shopping simple.

• Flowers are great, but a Rose Flower Pen is a whole lot more useful. I can never have too many pens actually and this flower pen would be a daily reminder of your love. At only $1.99 a dozen wouldn’t break the bank.
• Heart Shaped Cookies. These smiley faced cookies are perfect for Valentine’s Day. Plus I won’t want to eat all of them so the whole family can enjoy.
• Chocolate Covered Strawberries. I love just about chocolate anything (except bacon and bug varieties, ewww) and these are no exception. Plus they are made with real chocolate.
• Jewelry! Hands down you can’t go wrong with jewelry. I love this Aquamarine Sterling Silver ring for a couple of reasons. One it is my birthstone. It is also customizable with your choice of gems and metals. Plus it is a stackable ring so you could get one with the birthstone for each of your children and it makes a Mother’s Ring. Awwww.
• Tea. I am a huge fan of loose leaf tea and find great enjoyment out of my daily cup (or two or more) of tea. This Bento Box of Green Tea is not only beautiful, it is practical too. Work at home moms appreciate practical. They also offer many other tea gifts to choose from too.
• Clean the House. I think most work at home moms would agree that we work two full time jobs. One is our work at home job and the other is taking care of our family and household. Having someone else clean the house (or cook the food, take care of the kids for the day, etc.) would be a very welcome present.
• Personalized Picture Frame. It is always nice to decorate my work space with some pictures of my family and this personalized frame is perfect and thoughtful.
• Desktop Water Fountain. This would be perfect to bring some tranquility to my hectic days. The soothing sound of water and the soft light would be a nice addition to my desk.

Last week I received a letter in my post office box and quickly realized it was junk. I almost tossed it away. Then I realized I that I could do one better and turn this into a teaching opportunity. It was for a company wanting to submit my website to the search engines. And I know from talking to some people they ask: Should I be paying for search engine submission?

The letter and envelope looked official enough with a logo. It referenced a domain that I had recently registered. It says under description of services:

ANNUAL WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS FROM JAN 12, 2012 THRU JAN 12, 2013 TOTAL $85.00

Hmm, okay. So what do you get for that $85?

SUBSCRIPTION INCLUDES DOMAIN NAME SUBMISSION TO 20 ESTABLISHED SEARCH ENGINES UP TO EIGHT KEYWORD/PHRASE LISTINGS MONTHLY SEARCH ENGINE POSITION AND RANKING REPORTS.

This “service” only takes checks and there is no where on the order form to list the eight keywords or phrases, so I guess the choice is up to them. You are supposed to enter an email so that you can receive a report from them.

I did visit their website in the name of research and found out that some of the search engines that they work with are Google, AOL, ExactSeek, Cipinet, Netscape Search, Scrub the Web and more.

I sure hope alarm bells are not going off in your mind.

Never ever pay to have your website submitted to the search engines. It is not necessary and a waste of money. Please if you get a letter like this (or email or tweet, etc) then just throw it away.

Instead do some simple things instead. Create an xml sitemap for your website with the help of the Google XML Sitemap plugin if you are running WordPress. Make sure your site is included in Google Webmaster Tools and that you submit your sitemap. Write some really great guest posts on other blogs. All of these ideas are free. The search engines will find your website and it will just cost you time.

I’ve had a few days to recover from Affiliate Summit West 2012 and have been thinking about what I learned this time around. I know for me, that my experience keeps getting better each time I go. I learn a little bit more each time about what I want to get out of the experience. Here are ten things that I learned at Affiliate Summit West 2012:

1. Strengthening Relationships – I don’t live close to many of my “internet friends” as I like to call them and traveling to conferences is usually my only chance of seeing them. While there are many ways to keep in touch (twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc) there is nothing quite like having a face to face conversation.
2. Meeting New People – While it is nice to see old friends, it is also good to make new ones. This time around I was happy to meet some people that I only knew through Twitter including a very funny and flattering one with someone (I don’t want to name names, but thank you for making my day).
3. Little Conversations Matter – While I think it is important to go to the Affiliate Summit Sessions, I also find great value in having even quick conversations with people. You never know what you might pick up.
4. Help Others Out – The first morning I was sitting down to breakfast with my roommate Kim Rowley when Eric Souza came by. We had a really nice conversation about his wife’s website and what he could do with it. We were able to share some ideas that I hope he was able to use and I got the chance to do some brainstorming. I also call these a “you know more than you think you do session” and I come away very inspired. Plus the website is in a related niche to one of my own and we may be able to work together in the future.
5. Vision vs. Sight – Everybody has sight but not everyone has a vision. I learned this from Eric Thomas in his keynote speech. Every day since then I have visualized where I want to be and what success means for me.
   

   Eric the Hip Hop Preacher Thomas

6. Keep a To-Done Book – I really enjoyed the Mastermind Groups Exposed session and one of the takeaways for me was the idea of keeping a list of all the things you accomplished in the day. I have many days where I don’t think I accomplished much but in reality many things were done. It will be nice to see that and have a record over time.
7. Schedule Some Things – Most of the time I attend a conference I don’t make too many plans in advance and try to go with the flow. Well this time around I didn’t get to have much time with one of my friends or our traditional martinis and I’m really disappointed it didn’t work out. Next time I will have more of a plan for this to happen.
8. The Blogger’s Lounge is Fun – Affiliate Summit East 2011 was the first time I covered the conference as a blogger, but my time was limited and I wasn’t able to spend as much time in the Blogger’s Lounge as I wanted to. This time I was there for the full conference and was able to visit multiple times each day. It was a great place to upload a blog post, do some writing, have a bit of downtime, play a game (Jenga anyone?) and connect with the others that were also covering the conference. Thank you to Heather Smith for taking care of all of us.
9. Have Some Fun – While it is a work conference it is also important to have fun. Whether it was hitting the über cool Shareasale party (can you say you have gotten to dance underneath the Eiffel Tower?) or taking in some sightseeing, make some time for fun. It helps to recharge your batteries and connect with people in a different way.
   

   Eiffel Tower

10. Follow Up – When someone tells you to email them, contact them on Skype or give them a phone call after the conference then do it. I know I really mean it when I tell someone to do that and other people probably do too.

Also of note: I need to remember to bring a real camera and take more pictures of myself and friends, I look good in a cowboy hat, and bringing a prepaid flat rate postage box would be a good idea to bring home extra stuff.

Thank you to Missy Ward and Shawn Collins for running a really great conference and being so accessible. I really value your friendship and the opportunity to attend.

I would love to know what you learned at Affiliate Summit in the comments below.

Day 3 of Affiliate Summit West began nice and early with the Early Morning Whiteboarding session with Eric Nagel. It was a bit subdued after a late night of karaoke and a bit of a delay in getting coffee, but it was very informative. It was well worth getting up early for.

Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel

After that it was time for a breakfast. I really enjoy the meals at Affiliate Summit (not so much for the quality of the food) but the chance to get to know some new people and reconnect with old friends. Plus you don’t have to miss out on the conference by trekking off to a restaurant somewhere else.

Then I headed over to the Pinnacle Awards and Keynote. Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were quite the dapper duo for presenting the awards to the winners. Shawn even had a top hat on for the event. There were many tears from the winners and I was very proud to say that I know many of the winners.

Eric ET the Hip Hop Preacher Thomas gave the keynote. He is an excellent motivational speaker and I really connected with his message of vision vs. sight and positioning vs. pouting. Plus he is from Detroit and went to Michigan State University, which just ratcheted up his cool factor.

After the keynote I spent some time in both the Exhibit Hall and the Bloggers Lounge. Affiliate Summit is a wonderfully productive conference to go to, but it creates its own special type of tired. So I made the decision to go to no more a sessions that day. The nice thing about getting a Platinum pass is knowing that I will be able to watch all the sessions I missed online in about a month.

After the conference ended, then I had one more night in Las Vegas. I spent it by going to dinner with Tricia Meyer, Ashleigh Ball, and Cindy Ballard. We headed over the Venetian and did a little sightseeing, especially when I found that Ashleigh had never been to Vegas before. I wanted her to see something really beautiful and I that is one of my favorite hotel/casinos there.

We then headed over to Toby Keith’s to wrap up the conference with some live music and dancing. It was so much fun and a great way to wrap everything up. I’m very glad that I didn’t have an early morning flight the next morning.

You can read about my Affiliate Summit West 2012 Day 1 Recap and Affiliate Summit West Day 2 Recap.

Now is the time to register for Affiliate Summit Central 2012 and Affiliate Summit East 2012.

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit West didn’t begin as early as I would have liked. I really wanted to attend the Early Morning Whiteboarding session with Eric Nagel, didn’t quite make it. It was a just a bit too early after the late night the evening before. I did begin the day with a decent breakfast provided by the conference and then headed over to the Opening Keynote.

It was given by Jon Spoelstra. I thought that he had some really great ideas of how to succeed in business, including his idea of “new as a way of life” but most of his examples were dated. Still I did enjoy hearing him speak.

Then it was off to the session I was most looking forward to: Mastermind Groups Exposed – Success in Affiliate Marketing. Full disclosure the speakers on this panel are people that I consider friends, but I really wanted to learn more about this topic. I think being in a Mastermind Group can be a wonderful and successful thing to be in when done right, so I was hoping to get some advice about this. I definitely came away with great ideas and I look forward to implementing them when I find the perfect group of 3 for myself.

After lunch it was time for Killer Email and Social List Building with Hunter Boyle from Aweber. I didn’t know what to expect from this session but I was really happy that I went. He had some very actionable steps backed up by data of what works. I’ve already started implementing some of them already and look forward to seeing what happens.

The final session of the day was Digital Curation – What it Means to Affiliates with Scott Jangro. I am familiar with his new project Shareist and Pinterest, both curation tools, but had no idea about any of others. So it was good to learn more about this topic, as I am sure it is going to be of great interest moving forward.

In between sessions I hit the massive Exhibit Hall with their many booths (and free pens!) and spoke to some people. Mostly I took it all in and filed away where I wanted to focus on the next day when hopefully it would be less crowded. After that I took in some quiet time in the before dinner. I also got the hang of the multiple floors, with their mezzanine levels by this time.

For dinner I went to Magaritaville (totally cheesy, but decent food and margaritas) with my roommate Kim Rowley, the great people of GTO Management: Karen Garcia, Joel Garcia, siblings and the really funny Daniel Feinberg (I wonder if there is a video from Karaoke…).

After dinner it was back to Caesar’s Palace for Affiliate Karaoke. That was an absolute blast, after some initial hiccups with the equipment. I know there are some videos floating around from that, but I will leave you to find them on your own. I was a spectator and not a participant for this one.

You can read my Affiliate Summit West 2012 Day 1 Recap here.