This week, despite promising to focus, I diversified back onto a different site 🙁
The extenuating circumstance is that it's a site that can feed into my Hair Analysis site, and one I'd spent quite a lot of time on already last year. The problem was that the affiliate program it promotes closed down, having made me a few pounds, so it seemed a shame to waste the work from last year when all it needed was a new affiliate program.
It would have been less work if I'd set the affiliate link up using the Pretty Link WP plugin (which lets you “cloak” an affiliate link with a nicer looking internal link – and means you only need to change it in one place to affect all the posts).
But I'd not done that, so I had to dredge through all my posts and change the link. To be honest it was a good thing to do, because I was able to change the “call to action” to something more relevant.
Outsourcing articles
Having done that I really needed a few new articles to add because the new affiliate program was so different from the first one that I felt it needed some introduction. So here's where I have been brave – I've tried outsourcing the article writing, so that I can still concentrate on my Minerals site
Previous readers of my blog may remember that most of my out-sourcing has been a disaster (with the exception of one lady who was so good she escalated out of my price range!!)
So it's with trepidation that I wait for the results of the 3 articles I've requested. From the screen-shot below you'll see the price I'm paying (total for 3 articles), and the options you can choose from. I'll let you know how I get on next time.
The price is good – let's hope the quality is too.
Localizing Amazon
Another problem that's been bugging me is that I draw quite heavily on information from a couple of “mineral” text books. One of them actually does a great job of selling my service. Although I acknowledge their input, it seems sensible also to add a link where readers can look at the Amazon reviews and even buy the books if they want to.
Great idea, except that I have different affiliate IDs for Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk – because (as far as I know) you can't use the same one for both.
As I get UK, USA and Europe (etc) traffic to my site, I wanted to be sure to send people to the correct Amazon affiliate link (.com, .co.uk or .wherever!!) so that I'd get any Amazon commission.
On some sites I'd added two widgets, one labelled .com and the other labelled .co.uk, but I felt it looked a bit tacky! It turns out there's a WP plugin called “Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer” which does exactly what I want.
To check it out, I set up my two Amazon affiliate IDs in the plugin settings, requested a product link from Amazon.com with my USA affiliate ID, and tested it here in the UK. It switches seamlessly to my UK affiliate ID. That is exactly what I needed and was very straightforward to implement.
The plugin author says that if anyone buys from another Amazon site for which I haven't assigned the ID (e.g. Amazon.de) he'll get the commission, but I'm more than happy with that.
The plugin was suggested by The Internet Marketing Review support group (affiliate link) to which I belong. As well as the group being full of helpful training and videos, you can ask as many questions as you want and there are always plenty of suggestions and help from people with a broad range of business backgrounds and at all levels of expertise.
If you have a serious business you're trying to take online, and need marketing ideas and/or technical support, I really recommend that you take the 2 month trial offered in the right hand side-bar.
FanPage Challenge
Finally, this week's “report” wouldn't be complete without a progress update on the increase in “Likes” to my Minerals For The Body Facebook page through the week.
When I first registered in the pre-challenge week, I had 87; by the time the challenge started a week ago I had 125; and now, one week later, 167. What's best of all, though, is that we're interacting/engaging on each others' pages to increase the Reach. Even my “other” page has increased, from 90 to whatever you see in the right-hand side bar – and that's not the one I'm focusing on.
It's a great group atmosphere, we're learning a lot and everyone is helping everyone else.
