Guys, the New Victorian Suites in Lincoln, Nebraska is the official hotel for the Top Affiliate Challenge.
Big Jason, my personal friend and contestant on the show says it is clean, has a pool, friendly customer service, and they have accomodated all his requests.
If you are visiting Lincoln, Nebraska, the New VIctorian Suites is the hotel I would highly recommend based on Big Jason’s review.
Wow what a week and it isn’t even over yet. Went down to the Top Affiliate Challenge last Sunday to meet the contestants and represent WebJamAds as an affiliate manager. WebJamAds is sponsoring the Leader Board. Watch for it and watch for my debut in the 1st show.
I wish I could be a fly on the wall in everyone of the rooms. I heard there are some really heated scenes coming in the next show. Can’t wait for it to debut at 1 pm central time.
I had a great time on the party bus and got a kick out of Chow and “The Fuzzy Hat Guy’s” karaoke.
My favorite quote from the night was Shoemoney’s “Just Do It Monkey.”
Can’t wait to get back there on Tuesday to serve up a little Nebraska BBQ.
Guest Post from my friend Clark Covington who does amazing sales letters and promotional kits
Why Testimonials Work
Testimonials are one of the most important tools an internet marketer can use to increase sales. When I first arrived online and studied internet marketing there seemed to be an unending amount of corny superficial testimonials on virtually every successful website online. I’d get sick of them after a few minutes, even try to scroll away, but after awhile I realized that there must be a reason testimonials are so popular online.
After requesting a few of my clients to give me feedback and subsequently posting that feedback on my own sites I instantly noticed an increase in sales. Something about the words of others convinced new potential clients to take action. I instantly became a fan of testimonials, and a student as well.
I started to keep an eye out for them all over the internet and offline as well. What I noticed was that more and more people were using testimonials as a way to authenticate their offer, and they seemed to work very well.
Testimonials I have helped my clients obtain and use have also helped them sell more product. How do I know? I can measure their success by the staggering rates of reordering that occurs after the initial testimonials are posted. I’ve had authors order more than 100 of them, and vitamin merchants purchase nearly as many as well. The bottom line is testimonials are a powerful thing that can seriously grow your business by adding much needed credibility to an offer that mingles with so many shoddy ones online.
The Superstar Theory
If you haven’t yet agreed that testimonials are powerful, think about one of your favorite movie, music, or sports figures. Now think about a product they have endorsed, and think about whether or not you purchased the product based on their endorsement?
Before you say no, really give it some thought. Those shoes that star wore on the big screen, that t-shirt the guy wears on TV each week, the designer coffee brand you see all the celebrities drinking, none of those have stoked your fire to try the product yourself? I’m sure they have, and thus this is a perfect example of how testimonials work.
What We Do
At www.CustomTestimonial.com we create testimonials for clients by having our reviewers check out their product or service and then write a review based on the reviewer’s experience, complete with name, location, and picture.
For those that already have an existing base of happy clients we offer a service that mines them for testimonials by offering them an easy and seamless way to upload their testimonials, and a reward for doing so. Our testimonial harvest program is the only one of its kind in our industry.
Testimonials work, that’s already a proven marketing fact, the thing that is left up in the air is whether or not you will use them to your advantage to make more sales.
ZoomInfo is a semantic search engine that focuses on business and people searches. It is truly interesting to type in your own name and see what pops up. For the most part the information gathered comes from your own sites and profiles on other membership based sites.
It is much more effective that Googling personal information or specific business information. This is a great research tool.
With that said there are some bugs to work out. I noticed that the information it gathered for me was not all about me. It doesn’t discriminate between me and another person with the same name. That would be extremely difficult if you have a common name. If you are using ZoomInfo I assume you are fairly bright and can determine the valid info from the invalid.
I have seen reviews from individuals who are ticked that their personal information is posted in ZoomInfo. They are issuing complaints that their information was illegally gathered or that it is not legal to even post such info. For the most part I bet what you find on ZoomInfo could be eventually found in Google however ZoomInfo just cuts out the other info not at all related to personal or company info.
If you are interested in finding specific info about a company or a person ZoomInfo is a great place to start. It doesn’t just find pages with your info in it but grabs those pages and collects in a more meaningful manner.
Web 2.0 Social networking is one of my personal favorites. It allows immediate and personal contact instantly. It is the new friendlier telephone. It does what the web was intended to do by bringing people miles apart together as if they were talking over the fence.
Now we are already starting to see the emergence of Web 3.0 It is the combining the information people are sharing in a more search friendly way. Instead of getting general search results that contain the information you are seeking you will also start seeing the pages that contain the information you meant to find.
Web 3.0 is the development of the semantic web. It is a lot to wrap your brain around. Just by reading a few very targeted articles on the subject I am excited about the possibilities.
The semantic web will completely change the way we find things on the net. the semantic search process will be able to decipher our search queries and return the information we meant to find instead of the word found in a few web sites. Search will become even more targeted.
In future posts I will be reviewing a few Semantic Engines including
1. ZoomInfo
2. Powerset
3. Semanticator
4. Twine
Twitter is a mini blogger instant socializer that has quickly caught on fire. I found a great beginners guide to Twitter.
Be careful once you start to twitter you may find it hard to stop. Click here if you want to follow me on Twitter.
Start learning Twitter of the ground up with the Twitter Beginners Handbook Article.
Tiwtpic is an awesome little app for sending pictures view your tweets. Just allows your twitter relationships to grow in a more visual and personal way. Pictures are bringing real life to the twitter platform.
Visit TwitPic and log in with your Twitter Username and Password to start sharing pictures.
Missy Ward who is co founder of Affiliate Summit has put together an incredible team of Affiliate Marketers to Participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day. The 3-Day is a 60 mile walk celebrating the amazing lives of people who have suffered the effects of Breast Cancer organized by the Susan Komen Foundation. Both of my grandmothers were diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Both women faced the disease with amazing grace an courage.
The Affiliate Marketers Give Back team has set a goal to raise $30,000 for this years event which is nearly double what they raised last year. If you would like to join the team or donate please visit Affiliates Give Back.
Kudos to Missy Ward and the Affiliates Give Back team for taking on such an enormous challenge and raising funds for an incredible cause.
After Outlook Office took a dive on me I started to take off my microsoft office blinders and look into other alternatives to run my email and my calendar. I found that Google Calendar truly fit my life and my needs as a busy mom and as work from home professional.
1. I can check my calendar from my mobile phone without syncing or anything else just find it and use it. That is my biggest thrill is one unified calendar.
2. I love how easy it is to add more than one calendar and use the public calendars as well. For instance I use my calendar for all of my appointments etc. Then I created a calendar for each kids schedule. Now I can easily overlap the calendars and see when we have scheduling conflict or isolate the calendar for printing it in a single sheet to display on the family communication which is the refrigerator.
3. I adore the ability to add recurring events relatively easily such as birthdays, anniversaries etc.
4. Public Calendars. If you want Faith Hills touring schedule or my personal favorite the Nebraska Husker Football schedule you can easily search the public calendars and have them incorporated into your on schedule with just a few clicks.
5. I took this calendar one step further. I enjoy providing my family with decent meals and also try to diet on occasion so I created an entirely separate calendar with a weeks worth of meal planning, created a standard shopping list for that week. The benefit to creating the menu calendar is the ability to rotate the week worth of meals using the recurring feature. My kids eat the same things tacos, pizza, sub sandwiches etc. Occasionally I toss in a new menu item but for the most part your standard meals rotate. A standardized shopping this and a recurring menu saves me time and a ton of engry deciding what to put on the table at night.
I realize this topic is off base for marketing but it does allow me more time for marketing and more time to spend with my kids which is the point of working from home.
