Niche Store Marketer

Using Twitter Tools Plugin For Wordpress Blogs

I love this plug in. That is Twitter Tools. Ive been using it on some other sites for a while, but suddenly realized I wasn’t using it here for my The Twitter Experiment category. Twitter tools is very easy to set up and you can configure it lots of ways. I like to send a twit when I post and have the updates in the sidebar of the blog. Some will say hey what about duplicate content. Well Twitter Tools has that covered by using tinyurl.com.

Twitter Tools is like a auto alert for your followers to get a update when you post on your blog. I use to make a post and then run over to tinyurl and post the link in my twits. Done with that. Saves lots of time and is still personable. The plug in allows your blog readers to post a twit from your site as well.

Download Twitter Tools Here. Simply download the plugin, activate it and configure it. On some blogs I don’t configure it to show in the sidebar, I only send out twits when I post. Seems to help gather followers. I like followers! NicheMarketer has 99 as of today. Not bad

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ePN Promotes Using Squidoo on The ePN Blog

ePN is flexing the muscle of its blog promoting the use of Squidoo. As Internet Marketers most all of us have know the power of Squidoo for years. Creating lens on the site is a primary form of marketing for 1000’s of marketers, Sellers on not only eBay, but Amazon and other affiliate programs.

When I first heard of Squidoo the rumor was it wasn’t being crawled by Google and then it was. Some Marketers swear by the site and promote everything from pimple medication to cars.

The best thing in my mind about Squidoo is that everything on the site is unique content. Each lens needs to be built with authority and have valuable content for the users of the site looking for information. Information is what Internet Users want. If a conversion of a sale happens then you’ve done your job of writing Unique, Relevant Useful Content For Users. The very same criteria Google uses to rank your sites. So having links to your site from Squidoo will help your sites rank better in the index.

It’s about time ePN caught up with the rest of us! ePN doesn’t seem to understand what we go through to rank our sites and drive traffic to eBay. At least in there responses on there forum. Its almost like they want instant result from it’s affiliates. It shows when the start with quality scores and tell affiliate to archive non performing sites. How can you build a site naturally and have instant results. You can’t. Sites may have a honeymoon period, but after 30 days most site drop in the search engines and slowly climb back up. Those of us who use ePN should be happy that the ePN Blog has began to get on the same track as us. Hopefully they will learn more about how the cycle of site building works and loosen up on the quality issue and the user engagement they mentioned during the recent expiration’s of users.

Sept 11 2008 eBay block servers that 1000’s of ebay Partner sites where hosted on. At first eBay said nothing was wrong, but quickly learned of the major outage. The ePN community came together to fix this problem. EBay even asked a fellow BANS member for help. If it wasn’t for the affiliate marketers that ePN has been alienating for months the problem might have never been fixed. I sure hope Sept 11, 08 show eBay that where not all bad people like they have been treating some and come to realize if people work together much more good can be done. eBay needs to learn you get more with sugar than vinegar. IMO

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Twitter Experiment Continues

So I have 33 followers now on Twitter. I try to get to Twitter a couple times a week but the marketing value of it has eluded me. I’m more or less posting nonsense and some marketing content. But who know if the 33 people following me see any of this.

Twitter should be part of Niche Marketing. If you can get lots of users to follow you over time the value of what you post should become authoritative. User will grow to trust you, but getting those users to follow you is another story.

Since I’m in this marketing thing for the long haul the Twitter Experiment will continue. Please sign up and follow Niche Store Marketer. I promise over time we will see how relevant twitter realy is to our marketing goals.

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Latest BANS Updates Include A Big Hammer

For anyone who already uses Build A Niche Store full time you have probably already read the Email the Bans Developer sent today. And if you are researching BANS thinking of getting it this is good news. The Bans forum is the backbone of the Build A Niche Store Concept. Over time the community of BANS users  has grown from about 4000 when I started to around 10′000 members registered on the forum now. The growth is directly related to success stories like mine and some very smart Web Masters that volunteer there time on the forum.

But over the last several month’s with the growth the forum has lost authority. Why do I say this ? because the forum has gone from 99% usful information to advertisements cloaked as discussions and some really rude responses like RTFM directed at newer novice users. What some users don’t seem to understand is thats what the forum is for. Novice Web Masters. Read the rest of this entry »

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Best Affiliate Merchant I Have Found

Over the years I have tried everything you can think of to promote and make money through Affiliate programs. So many programs when I first find them seem at first like they will produce only to find out after a couple weeks that users just won’t click on them. No conversions after two weeks is my limit. The trick is to give users of your site what they want. After all that’s what Niche Marketing is all about. Find something Internet Users are searching for and build a site for them. Very targeted marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Affiliate Networks, Niche Store Marketing | No Comments »

EBay’s Is Making Category Changes In August 08,

Be prepared for listings to disappear from your Niche Store if you use EPN and fall into the new and changing EBay categories. If you have been promoting EBay through ePN or PepperJam you already know how much of a hassle these changes can be. If you use main categories and not sub categories these hassles can be avoided in most instances. Ebay generally only consolidates and adds new categories, but never under estimate EBay though. EBay is changing every day so you need to stay on top of all the changes by checking the Ebay Category Changes Page at least once a month.

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EBay Partner Network ePN Changes To Value Based Payout Tiers

So it looks like ePN Ebays Affiliate Partner Network is changing again.  In a Email from ePN August 1, 2008 ePN announced that payouts for ARCU’s will be $50.00 for new users and that the new payouts will only be for users that signed up on or after 8/1/08. They went on to say that existing users will be brought into the higher payout tier in a couple months.

eBay / ePN is trying to bring high quality traffic to eBay. If you read the ePN message board you will find many threads from users who have been banned for low quality traffic. Most of these affiliates even broke terms of service contract or had links coming from low quality sites such as porn sites. Since nor the banned users or eBay tell us exactly what the issue’s where with the site some ePN message board users claimed to have found the sites and researched them. There findings according to them is the sites had inbound links coming from porn sites or very low quality web sites.

Here’s the highlights of the ePN Email. Read the rest of this entry »

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Directory Submitter Is Cleaned, Washed and Updated

One of the best directory submitter applications has been updated.

Opened up Free Directory Submitter and there it was. The system has been purged of old out of date directories that where just taking up space. The new version is so much better. Ive been using the tool for almost a year now and was just about at the point of getting a pay service. No need now. Its all nice and clean almost new.

If you don’t know what Free Directory Submitter is here a what it dose. As the search engines are evolving each and every day, it’s getting harder
  and harder to get top search engine rankings.

The search engines now, highly favor, websites that have a large number of
  quality, one way links pointing to them. Because of this, it’s absolutely critical
  that we consistently try to get other websites to link to us, WITHOUT us linking
  back to them.

Yes, reciprocal linking is becoming less and less valuable. Submitting your
  website to website directories is an excellent way to get, quality, 1 way links
  pointing to your websites. You see, many of the website directories online have
  a high amount of page rank and have been online for several years.

These are 2 of the most important criteria for determining what a good link
  is, vs what a bad link is. These two criteria are: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Niche Store Marketing, SEM & SEO Tools | No Comments »

BANS and WordPress Templates Come Together As One

Do you follow The Niche Store Builder aka Mark Hanson ? If not you should. Mark Hanson is one of the premier Internet Marketers now.

For a very long time Build A niche Store users have been looking for ways to integrate Word Press into BANS seamlessly. The owners of Bans have consistently said they will not spend the time to build a plug in. How can you blame them. Plug ins are lots of work and with all the changes in Internet Marketing they simply don’t have the time.

Well The Niche Store Builder has been helping the BANS Community with many issues, but now Mark has taken helping people one step further. Mark has done the work for BANS user who want to build sites that include Word Press. Simply amazing Mark will even install it for you. I went both ways. I had him install it on one site and I try the install myself. My install was a mess. I’m not very good at files and folders, so Mark made a video just for me that shows how to upload files in cpanel. I couldn’t believe it. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Build A Niche Store Mods | No Comments »

Pepper Jam Network Is Working For Me

The last few months for affiliate marketing has been touch and go with so many changes. Change is part of business but this is crazy. Now Google is moving to doubleclick. What next ? Well for me my domain registra is raising the cost of my domains from $9.99 to $34.99 a year. Yahoo thanks lots for the 350% increase. I guess Yahoo is trying to fill the holes in the sinking ship with money. So now I need to move 50+ domains. Outch.

One good change in june was the introduction of Pepper Jam. Pepper jam is now working for eBay/ePN. If you’ve been rejected by ePN you can apply to PJ.

Pepper Jam has impressed me big time. I set up 2 sites around the same time with the same items and keywords. One on PJ and one with ePN. From 6/21 to 6/30/08 my PJ account had 500+ clicks and made $100.00. The ePN site show 200 clicks and about the same in commisions, but it looks like ePN didn’t record impressions and clicks proper. I know nothing about tracking, but Pepper Jam show clicks almost in real time. So if anyone has any doubts about trying PJ you should try it. I’m impressed so far.

Made For Affiliates, By Affiliates. Pepperjam Network.

Posted in Affiliate Networks | 1 Comment »