Product Launches, Blogging & Facebook Ads with Ian Fernando

I first met Ian Fernando a few years back on my way to Affiliate Summit West, we were actually on the same plane, but didn’t meet til we both landed in Las Vegas. We recognized each other from our blogs, and being fellow New Jersey boys, we shared a limo to the hotel. That was a few years back, and since then we are both doing pretty well in the affiliate marketing space, and Ian has also made quite a name for himself… and also on the dance floor! (Party with Ian at  Affiliate Summit parties and you’ll know what I mean)

Through IanFernando.com, Ian has blogged about his early adventures in the affiliate world, how he’s tested different cpa methods and is now focusing a lot of his time on launching his own products, such as his latest product InfinateFB, which focuses on making money using Facebook Ads. You can view a set of free intro videos for setting up effective ad campaigns for the next few days through InfiniteFB updated pre-launch.

The following is my interview with Ian Fernando, which is also from my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging ebook. You can download the full ebook for free at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com, which includes over 130 pages of content and interviews with 25 highly successful affiliates and bloggers.

Interview with Ian Fernando

1.) Please tell us a little about yourself.
I am an affiliate marketer and blogger. I also consider myself an online entrepreneur because I tend not to stick to one aspect of making money online. I like to diversify my online portfolio as much as I can.

I started off as a blogger and info marketer and merged into an affiliate marketer. My blog at IanFernando.com discusses my success and failures in the online space. Whether it be about blogging, affiliate marketing, entrepreneurship, or online marketing in general.

I also speak at different engagements including meetups and conferences such as Affiliate Summit. I have been published in several magazines in the entreprenerial and affiliate industry. I enjoy talking to other people about the online space and the potential it can bring to users.

Even though I have had many success, I worked day and night to reach my goals.

2.) When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?

I started blogging in 2007. I got into the blogging space when I first started to try to make money online. I searched on the internet how to make money online and realized blogging was in its prime. I also came across John Chow’s blog and his testimonial about making money online. I was amazed at the monthly numbers he was showing.

My blog started out as a journal with entries written about how I was trying to make it into the online space. I talked about how I utilized sites to gain traction, my attempts at trying to network online, and my first dollar. Even though my first couple of posts were at a beginners level, you can see the growth of my blog as to who I am today.

3.) When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today

No, I was thinking it would get traction but not to where everyone is visiting and leaving comments and emailing me on a daily basis. I would expect to get some visibility but not gain popularity.

4.) You’ve released a lot of products and networking events off your blog. How much of an impact has the success of these products had because of your blog?

My blog has hugely impacted the success of these products because my audience sees the important information I am trying to share with them. They already trust me to an extent where they know who I am as a person and know whatever I push via my blog are my own words, thoughts, and products that are legit—not just made or said to make money or scam.

As well, my products also get traction right away with certain keywords. It easily gets ranked because of the popularity and ranking I get with Google via my blog.

Readers of any blog would love to meet the writer and the person behind the blog. Anytime they get an opportunity to meet the person behind the blog via local meetups or at conference it builds that relationship even stronger.

5.) How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?

When I talk about tools I use, I mention and attach affiliate links to the post. If it is a resource I use and utilize, I share my experience and I append a link. It only makes sense to get a commission out of it if I an referencing a tool I use everyday.

I have also done product reviews on my blog. By doing reviews of a product I incorporate the affiliate links within the post. Similar to the tools I use, I share my own aspect of the product from my point of view helping the user decide if they should get the product I reviewed or not.

Other ways I utilize the blog for affiliate marketing is I turn keywords into affiliate links and utilize the unused banner space into affiliate banner links.

6.) In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?

I honestly think it is affiliate marketing. The reason is because you get to leverage your audience. Building the trust and then working them into buyers. I have other small blogs and I have affiliate links all over the place to utilize the audience that come and go from the site.

One other big aspect is selling banner space. It is one of the other money makers my personal blog makes. It is easy to sell space, but you need to prove you have the traffic and audience.

7.) What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?

Provide valuable immediate usable content. What I mean by this is give the user something to use right away from your blog. My blog, IanFernando.com only grew because of the tutorials I posted everyday on how I am making money online.

Most of my tutorials are video base, but the content was there. Imagine buying a $97 or even $197 ebook of video tutorials. I posted my own tutorials on my blog for free, and from there my blog automatically grew.

Giving out content that a user can take a way and start using gets you noticed and helps to develop and grow that trust factor right away.

8.) Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?

There are a lot of tools to grow your blog. It depends on the goal that you want to reach. The blog to read on how to write and gain traction is my friend Brian at Copyblogger.com. His blog is really geared towards how to grow and write to your audience.

Another one is John Chow. I learned from his blog when I first started and I personally know his knowledge is important to any blogger who wants to start in the blogging space.

9.) Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?

I work on projects all the time, I do have several tools that are coming up to help the online space gain traction. My current project is my InfiniteFB.com ecourse which helps users advertise properly on Facebook.

I am always moving and coming up with projects and tools to help the online space, so I suggest subscribing to my blog to keep up with what I do on a daily basis.

* If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to download my free 130 page guide to “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“.

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Staying Motivated When You Aren’t Seeing Results

Do you feel like you’ve been working your backside off getting your blog or website in front of the public and just not seeing the results you thought you would? Is it time to give up and throw in the towel?

I wouldn’t go that far but it may be time to pull some new tricks out of an old hat. Take a look at what you’ve been doing. Is there anything you can improve? Do you post quality content? Is your blog or website one big ad campaign? Do you have a newsletter that’s updated on a regular basis? Are people signing up or ignoring it?

How much information have you read about building your blog and growing your readership? Have you just been reading small reports here and there hoping for the answers? Some of the small reports are very good, but most of them don’t give you all the information you need for a successful blog.

One great product I suggest is Online Profits. It contains massive amounts of information and the lessons are broken down into categories. It contains 24 learning models, each full of valuable information to help grow readership and learn to make money online.

Another great product is Zac Johnson’s Six Figure Affiliate Blogging. This report is completely free but Zac gives you tons of information and takes you through his entire process of creating a profitable blog or website.

Another suggestion is to get a business coach. You can find all kinds of coaches online in almost any price range. Business coaches are there to help support you and give you tips on growing your business. Most even offer one on one coaching. Some of my favorites are Sharon Michaels, Dani Johnson, Sheri McConnell, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and Dale Carnegie.

If you haven’t considered using a business coach or even a personal development coach, you could be missing out on a lot. I know I’ve gained a lot more confidence since I plugged in to some of these guys.

Sometimes you just need a break. If you’re motivation is waning and you find that doing the daily work for your business is just draining you, maybe it’s time to step back and take a break—just a short one. Take some time off and think about why you started this venture. What was the purpose? What did you wish to accomplish? Maybe you haven’t lost motivation; maybe you’ve just lost focus of the big picture and the things that meant so much to you in the beginning.

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Why Link Exchanges Are Like Mosquitoes

A Guest post by Akila from The Road Forks

Last week, I had a revelation when, after spending ten minutes fiddling around with a VPN in Podunkville, China, I opened my email and found four link exchange requests, including one asking to exchange links with “The Toad Forks” rather than our website, The Road Forks. As I slammed my laptop lid down, I realized that link exchanges are the mosquitoes of the blogging world.

Imagine that all of us bloggers — interesting and interested people engaged in making our blogs the Next Best Thing — sit down at a summer table with platters of thick-grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob next to an open cooler of dripping beers. The mosquitoes hover, pinching our legs and arms. We slap them away but their brothers come to replace them. They bloat with our blood, gorging and feeding on our health, and we develop unsightly rashes. That, my friends, are link exchange requests and we bloggers are helping these mosquitoes breed.

What is a link exchange request? A link exchange request is one where a site offers to link to your site in exchange for a reciprocal link. The key to this request is the requirement for a reciprocal link; in other words, if you don’t link to me, I don’t link to you.

Link exchange requests come in various forms. Some are from corporate entities seeking to promote blogs or sites by selling text links, though Google slashed PageRanks in 2007 in response to this tactic. Others are from bloggers — often, well meaning, newbie bloggers —- who send mass generic e-mails that cause me to inwardly groan, along the lines of, “Hey! Cool blog! Want to exchange links?”

Let me be clear, though: link exchanges are not e-mails from bloggers to others in the same genre inviting them to consider reading or linking to their blog because they have shared interests. If you are producing valuable content, you need to spread the word and e-mailing and networking with other bloggers is the best way to increase traffic to your site. Darren’s 11 tips to increase your chances of being linked to by another blogger boil down to two central tenets: get to know the person whose link you are asking for and produce content worthy of that link. A polite request that a person consider reading your blog is not the same thing as a request for a link in return for a link of their own.

Why do websites/bloggers want link exchanges? Link exchanges are an easy, get-rich-quick scheme to drive traffic and increase search engine results. In the short term, readers will jump to your blog, leading to more pageviews, ad revenue, and perhaps RSS subscribers.

Over the long term, links build your site’s “importance,” in the eyes of Google (and most other search engines, for that matter). A link exchange means more links for your site as well as theirs, more links leads to a higher Google PageRank, and a higher PageRank will cause a site to show up closer to the front page of Google search results, generating greater traffic for a site. Greater traffic means more ad revenue, fame, and the resulting glamour of being a hot-shot blogger.

The bad news: By participating in link exchanges, you risk injuring your reputation, the reputation of others, and angering Google. What do all successful bloggers have in common? Trust. A link might send new readers to your site but they are only going to keep reading your site if they trust that you will produce great content every week. The links on your blog are part of the content on your site; by linking to another site, you represent to your reader that the link is of good quality and will provide something valuable to the reader. If a reader clicks on a link that takes them to a site filled with ads for pills and dating programs, or to a blog that produces worse content than your own, the reader is going to question your judgment and wonder why you chose to link to that site. Nobody likes the guy who has to buy his friends. Unfortunately, by linking to one lousy site, you also devalue the other good sites on your blog. Bad for you, bad for your friends.

And, you certainly don’t want to irritate the most powerful player on the web. Google carries 71% of the search engine market and they hate link schemes. Google is in the business of providing the most accurate website hierarchy for a particular search term and falsely inflated links to a particular site lead to poor search results. In no less than three places in their Webmaster Guidelines, Google explains that participating in link schemes, including excessive link exchanges, could “negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”

Welcome to the new Internet where content is king.

Link exchanges are part of the old Internet, a system in which PageRank ruled and social media was a fancy word for e-mail. Today, Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon drive more traffic to my blog (and, I suspect, most blogs) than links from other bloggers. In the last week of July 2010, Facebook not only dominated the social media sites but was the most visited website in the world – even more than Google – accounting for over 9% of all web traffic in that week. Facebook’s Like button and Twitter’s instantaneous communications reward interesting or useful posts without using artificial means to game a blogger’s popularity.

Google is taking advantage of this revolution with Caffeine, its web indexing system launched in June 2010 that crawls blogs, social media sites, commercial sites, and user generated content at a 50% faster rate. Previously, Google used to crawl pages once every few days or even less, resulting in stale web search results. Now, when you hit publish on your blog post, it will appear in Google search results in less than 30 minutes. This means that fresh content – whether in the form of blog posts, tweets, or Facebook posts – may be the key to landing at the top of Google searches. In fact, Google has recommended for years that webmasters stop obsessing about PageRank because it is only one of 200 factors used to determine search results.

The bottom line is that if you want to increase your readership in today’s Internet, focus on networking with other bloggers, effectively using social media tools to produce fresh content, and, most importantly, producing link-worthy content, rather than populating the Internet with infestations of spam-filled links. Maybe soon, we will all be able to sit back and bask in the sunny glow of a better, more usable Internet.

Read more from Akila at The Road Forks

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A Few Facts About SEO

The other day someone I know approached me about taking a look at a business website because they’d spent a fair amount of money with a search engine optimization company toward getting the kind of traffic they thought they deserved. The mission failed miserably.

I’ve been working with SEO as a content writer for several years now but I’m no expert.  If I was though, one of the first things I would do when writing a top ten list about the things you need to know about it is let everyone know there are no experts.

Of course there are people who know more about search engine optimization than others, but if they start telling you things like you can get a number one page ranking in Google in a very short amount of time, you should take your money and run for the hills.

Still, there are a few things I have learned about how SEO works and because I haven’t made any of them up but learned them from other people, I can leave you with some of them and feel fairly confident they work fine regardless of all the shifting parameters  Google continually throws our way.

1. You need good content. Don’t even bother trying to stuff keywords in the landing page content either.  Like a friend of mine said once, you might even get away with keyword stuffing for a little while and drive traffic to your site, but you look pretty silly when visitors arrive to the kind of broken English that too many keywords creates. You’ll just wind up with traffic arriving and then clicking away in record numbers.
2. You need a good landing page.  I’ve seen people with floating content on their landing page and all kinds of graphics and buttons and tabs and in the end it all looks really psychedelic ( for those of your old enough to remember that phrase) but it doesn’t give the Google bots anything to grab onto. There’s still nothing that can replace good optimized content . Someone I work with is even experimenting with video as the main source of information on the landing page, but they still get me to write a blog at the bottom so Google has something to hang its hat on.
3. You don’t need to use every keyword you can find.  That’s why it’s called keyword research. Too many keywords doesn’t have focus. Others may disagree but I think you need to focus on a few keywords best suited to your market. Even if there’s competition, just dig in and fight it out.

Remember you need to beware of anybody who tells you they can get you a page one ranking in just a few short months. And there’s just one more thing too. If you don’t get the kind of traffic you’re expecting after three or four months, adjust the methods and keywords you’re using but don’t stop advertising with search engine optimization techniques.  The minute you abandon ship, it sinks and you lose whatever ranking you’ve gained.

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Cup of Joe: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is or Shut Up!

On Monday, we posted a piece about Philadelphia’s new Business Privilege Tax. In short the city now wants to tax bloggers whether they are making an income with their blog or not. It appears to be another case of a misguided municipality looking to bring in new revenue streams.

As expected, most bloggers are angered by this new tax. I don’t live in Philadelphia and I try my hardest to not complain about taxes. Therefore, I want to ask a much more important question:

Should blogging be free?

Nowadays, anyone with an Internet connection can sign up and get a free blog. That’s right anyone can have a free platform to share their thoughts and ideas with the world! It sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it? But what I want to know is, should it be free? Should users have to pay to blog? In short my answer is:

Blogs, and blogging shouldn’t be free. Period.

Before I begin telling you why I don’t think blogging should be free, let me add a little disclaimer. I make a living off of folks that choose to pay for blogging. The company that I own can and does create many different types of web applications. But, the vast majority of our work is focused on developing custom WordPress installations. So for me and many other professional blog developers it’s a slap in the face to see folks go around claiming that anyone can build a business with free tools. When businesses and entrepreneurs tout the “free model” they are effectively saying, “Don’t hire Joe Hall, because let’s face it, you can get it all for free.” In short free blogging can and does have real negative business implications for professional developers.

But, this issue isn’t about me, it’s about you! It’s about how much you value your ideas and what you are willing to do, to make sure they are heard. You see, before the Internet, individuals had to make huge sacrifices to get the same type of coverage that anyone with a free blog can get today.

For example during the civil rights movement, folks were willing to put their life on the line to get the media’s attention. Even to this day, there are billions of people that do not have access to the Internet or free blogging. I wonder what they would be willing to sacrifice for a free platform.

Those of us that can blog for free have become lazy and irresponsible. Mostly because we haven’t had to sacrifice anything to have our platform. The barrier for entry into blogging is nearly non existent for most of us in the first world. When you are forced to make an investment in an activity you are less likely to take it for granted.

If you aren’t willing to invest in your own ideas, then you have no right to share them. It’s your responsibility to pay for the cost and repercussions of your own ideas, it’s part of existing in a civil society. When you use free blogging services, someone else is paying to support your ideas. Someone else is letting you have a free platform at their expense. Datacenters and system administrators don’t work for free.

I have a friend who recently started a personal blog. She is paying for hosting, and a professional custom theme. She values her own ideas enough to pay to make sure that their delivery is flawless. Is she the best blogger in the world? Will her blog be popular? Who knows. But, the point is that she cares enough about what she has to say that shes putting her money where her mouth is.

So, how much should blogging cost? That’s a tough question. Honestly, I am not sure. How much do you think your ideas are worth? How much would you be willing to pay if free blogging didn’t exist? Should you pay for blogging with money? Or how about time? I wouldn’t mind seeing a blogging service that provides professional blogs for users that commit to 4 or 5 hours of volunteer work a month. Sure, it might not pay the hosting fees, but at least it would encourage a selfless sacrifice.

In the end how can you truly place value on your ideas if you don’t have to work or invest to spread them? Anyone can stand on their soapbox and yell, few can climb a mountain and sing.

PS: Feel free to leave comments below! However, I won’t be around to answer them til Monday.
[photo credit]

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When Failure is Not an Option

What makes a successful blogger successful? Is it the time they put into it? Or who they know and associate with? Or maybe they just have a lucky charm and the world falls into their lap? All of these may contribute to their success, but for this post let’s say they’ve taken failure out of the equation; it’s not an option for them.

Does that sound strange or even hokey? It’s not as weird as you might think. Go back to childhood for a minute. Did you learn to ride or bike or play an instrument or anything else that took practice and determination? Of course you did. How did you succeed at it? Well you had the determination to get it right. You didn’t want to be the only kid on the block with training wheels, so you kept at it until you got it right. But, what really happened in the back of your mind was that you removed failure as an option. You didn’t even let that thought cross your mind. Kids are great like that aren’t they? They don’t see obstacles—all they see is the prize at the end of the rainbow. It’s pretty simple, but often the adult brain sees all the obstacles and not the rainbow.

Think of an athlete who runs track and jumps hurdles. Do they let the hurdles stop or slow them down? Are they focused on the hurdles or the finish line? They visually see the hurdle and know they must get over it, but their focus is on the finish line; the trophy at the end of the race. By doing this (and practicing) they merely glide over the hurdle like it isn’t even there.

Everything you do in life should be the same way, even blogging. Are you letting the hurdles stand in your way of success? Are you focusing on the end result or all the little nit-picky stuff in the middle?

Until you change your focus to the big picture, it’s likely you will keep self-sabotaging yourself and not see the success you desire. Change your focus to what you want to accomplish at the end, not the journey to get there. Think BIG—think as big as you can. Just by shifting your thinking and focus to the goal, you will start to glide over the hurdles like they don’t exist. Not only that, it will lower your stress level of worrying if you’ve done everything right.

Remove failure from the equation, it’s not an option for success.

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How to Get More Done

The most common question I’m asked lately seems to be:

“How do you get so many things done?”

To be perfectly honest – it’s a question I would never have anticipated anyone would ever ask of me – as I’ve mentioned here before, before I got into blogging I used to be quite…. well…. lazy.

But since getting into blogging and starting my own business I have turned that around – at least on a work front (Mrs ProBlogger would still like me to do the dishes a little more). Over the last 6 years there may have only been 1-2 days when I didn’t post at least two blog posts – deadlines were never my forte but I’m somewhat obsessed about them now.

Today while out for a walk (something I try to fit in most days) I was pondering this change in me and trying to work out what was behind it. I came up with two things that at the least play a part in this for me and decided to whip out my iPhone and record them as a mini podcast (or walkcast).

PS: my 2nd point reminds me a little of a line in a poem by Rudyard Kipling that I’ve been pondering lately titled IF.

“
If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it”

I’m sure there are many interpretations on it – but for me the idea of an unforgiving minute is that time is something that you can’t get back. The next minute of your life is something that will be gone for ever in 60 seconds – in that way it’s unforgiving.

So Kipling suggests filling it with sixty seconds of distance running. Sixty seconds of effort that will make a lasting difference. You might not do a complete marathon in sixty seconds of effort but you’ll certainly be a step closer to it.

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