5
Jul

New Time-Bonus Ads at SOTAM

Author: Jerry Iannucci

Happy Fifth of July!

I am a few days late with this but over the weekend State of the Art Mailer quietly unveiled a new feature on their site that has been long in the works.  I am talking about their new “Time-Bonus Ads” which I will show you below.

If you are not familiar with State of the Art Mailer they are a unique viral list building site which is one of the most responsive advertising sites that I use.

One of the features that makes State of the Art Mailer so unique is that they offer their members the ability to participate in a profit-sharing pool where they share some of the money the site earns with their members as a reward for being active on the site.  Being active really just means reading the emails that other members send which is something most of us are doing anyways but offer this extra incentive means that State of the Art Mailer will typically bring you more traffic than any other mailer.

The new time-bonus ads work in a similar way.  By being active and reading emails you can now earn “time” credit that can be used to display a banner ad on their site and on the sites of other members participating in the program over a period of time.

You can also earn more time by displaying their widgets on your own pages.

Here’s a sample widget:


By displaying these widgets on your splash pages or blog you not only earn time credits but you can also get ranked on their page showing the top participating sites. If you click the click the number of “networked sites” under the banner you will see what I mean. Having your site listed on this page is also a good way to create back links to your site which of course the search engines love.

The time-bonus ads feature was supposed to be released at the time State of the Art Mailer launched but due to some programming complexity it has taken until now for it to be released.

So far this looks like an excellent way to earn some extra hands-free traffic to your sites. The banner I added has been running for about 2.5 hours and has already received 622 views with 2 click-thurs so it is definitely working.

It’s good to see that the owners of State of the Are Mailer are not taking a relaxed stance to their mailer but are actively trying to make it even better. This is the kind of stuff I like to see and I admit that I don’t see it enough in the safelist industry.

If you are not already a member of State of the Are Mailer definitely give this one a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Click the banner below to join…

Click Five Links, Gain A Mailer!
Click Here to Join State of the Art Mailer

6
Jun

My Favorite WordPress Plugins

Author: Jerry Iannucci

Would you believe this blog is almost 2 years old?

I do find that hard to believe.  I thought for sure I would get bored and forget about it after the first 3 months.  But sure enough, I checked the archives over on the right side of the screen and it says my first post was July 2008.

I thought it was interesting that in all of my years of blogging (ok, next month I can officially say “years”) I haven’t really written anything for other bloggers to help them get started with their own blogs.  I guess it’s because I still don’t consider myself a real “blogger” but after 2 years and lots of positive feedback I guess I must be doing something right.

A few days ago someone emailed me looking for help setting up a new blog.  They bought a domain, installed WordPress, and picked out a theme.  Now the adventure begins as they try to figure out what to with their blog.

I thought I would share some of the suggestions I am making to him by posting them here on my blog so everyone can benefit from them.

So, first up… plugins!  I love plugins.  They are what makes WordPress so awesome.  Here are the list of plugin I have installed on my blog:

AkismetEssential spam blocker.  Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

All in One Adsense and YPNInserts Adsense or YPN code in to your blog posts.

All in One SEO PackOut-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

Google XML SitemapsThis plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

RSS Power Plus – This plugin will, when a new post is published, submit the rss feed for this post only (not the entire domains feed) to the configured RSS Aggregators websites, including where applicable the tags used in the post.

SEO Friendly ImagesAutomatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.

ShareThisLet your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Smart 404Rescue your viewers from site errors! When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically. Smart 404 also supplies template tags which provide a list of suggestions, for use on a 404.php template page if matching content can’t be immediately discovered.

SociableAutomatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites.

TweetMyBlog!Updates your twitter account with each new post to your blog.

Tweet ThisAdds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs. Can automatically tweet new and scheduled blog posts. Highly customizable.

Ultimate Google AnalyticsEnable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.

WordPress Plugin AlternativesTracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.

WP Auto TaggerAutomatically finds tags based on your post content.

Got any other suggestions?  Feel free to post them in the comments.

8
Mar

Happy Monday!

I guess I let the list building tutorial slip for a few days.  Sorry about that.  But now that I am back let’s get back into it.

By now you should have your squeeze page up and running.  Great!  Today I want to start talking about how to generate traffic to your squeeze page so that you can start getting some sign-ups in your autoresponder.

There are all sorts of ways to drive traffic to your new squeeze page.  There’s search engines, pay-per-click advertising, article marketing, forums, blogs, safelists, etc.

One source that I have successfully been using to drive traffic to my my sites for the last 7 years is free traffic exchange programs.

Traffic exchanges are sites that allow you to generate traffic to your sites by spending some of your time visiting other people’s websites.

I’ll be honest.  Traffic exchanges are terrible for trying to sell stuff because the people who visit your site through them are only there because they are trying to generate traffic for their own sites.

Traffic exchanges are only for two thing:

1. Building Your Brand
2. Building Your List

If you read the lessons in Affiliate Funnel you will know why it is important to always be building your personal brand online.

What you may not know about Affiliate Funnel is that it was created by the owners of some of the world’s largest traffic exchanges. As a result Affiliate Funnel has become one of the best resources available for traffic exchange users.

Affiliate Funnel is also home to one of the most important traffic exchange ranking systems which is updated every week. If you want to know what the top traffic exchanges are this is the first place to look:

http://www.affiliatefunnel.com/rank-report.php?rid=6698

Of course Affiliate Funnel will also provide you with all sorts of other traffic sources too but for now let’s just focus on TEs.

As I mentioned earlier, traffic exchanges are a great tool that you can use to build your list but only if you use them correctly.

I have a friend named John Guanzon who has really perfected the art of building his list using free traffic exchange programs.  John and another friend of mine (Winter Perkins) recently wrote an excellent book called “TE List Building” which I highly recommend reading.

John has given me permission to give away free copies of his book to my reader. If you want the secret to building a huge list with free traffic exchanges then you need to read this book:

http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/TEListBuilding.htm

TE List Building also makes a great gift to give away to your list.  To make money with the TE List Building ebook be sure to click the link on the download page for more info.