Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I like to keep things diversified so i’m willing to try anything that can run on autopilot once it’s setup.  I started thinking about playing with datafeed sites when Nick Mattern put out Review Plugin For WordPress.  I consider him a friend of mine so I bought his software and started playing around.  (Please keep in mind that even though this is the software I used for this case study, Nick no longer owns the product and I’m not sure about the quality of the newest versions).  Here are the steps I used to build a datafeed site:

Step 1 – Pick A Niche

The first thing I chose was the niche I was going to use to build out this site.  I considered different affiliate programs at CJ, Linkshare & Shareasale. Part of my consideration was how many items they had in their datafeed as well as how much information the datafeed contained.    I eventually settled on 1 affiliate program that had about 3,000 products in their datafeed and the niche was based around fashion with a decent commission rate (20%).

Step 2 – Buy Domain

I bought a domain with the main keywords related to the niche located within the domain name.

Step 3 – Setup WordPress & Datafeed Plugin

Setting up wordpress is pretty self explanatory.  I used the “Review Plugin For WordPress” as my datafeed importer.  Quite honestly I only wanted the software for this feature.

After I cleaned up the database file that I downloaded from the affiliate network I started the import process.  The process of importing a datafeed to wordpress is pretty simple.  You need to setup a template which grabs all of the information out of the database and places it in the correct place on the page.  Here in the post template I used:

Title of Post: [PRODUCT NAME]

Body of Post:

[PRODUCT NAME] – [$PRICE]

[PRODUCT IMAGE LINKED WITH AFF LINK]

Product Description: [PRODUCT DESCRIPTION]

[PRODUCT NAME] is currently in stock at [MERCHANT NAME]

For more information about this item please click here. <—AFF LINK

If you have already purchased [PRODUCT NAME] please leave a review below.

This post template would allow all 3,000 products in the database to have the same look when they get published to WordPress.  Rather then publishing everything at once I opted for a drip feed.  I let the posts feed into the wordpress site over a period of 6 months rather then all at once so that it would look more natural to search engines.

Tip:  Since i’m hosting this particular site on a crappy shared hosting plan, I found that the import process would continually freeze up.  I guess the process takes a lot of resources on the server.  The fix I found was to break the datafeed file into smaller files and import that way.  I just wanted to mention that in case you hit a glitch like I did.

After this step my datafeed site had posts and new ones appeared throughout each day.

Step 4 – Find a Decent WordPress Theme

I used SkinPress – Simple & Free

Step 5 – WordPress Plugins

Here you will find a linst of the plugins I used & why:

Review Plugin For WordPress – Used for importing the datafeeds

Akismet – To keep the Spam under control

All in One SEO Pack – To auto-create appropriate SEO tags.

Link Cloaking Plugin – This allowed the tons of affiliate links all over the site to look like internal links ie domain.com/goto/1 – I thought it would be better for SEO then rogue affiliate links all over the place.

Scheduled M.I.A.s – I was having an issue with the scheduled posts actually going live when they were supposed to.  I kept getting the error “Missed Schedule” so this plugin fixed that issue.

WordPress Suicide – To get my post template correct I needed to try it a few times.  To retry I needed to remove everything that got imported into the database.  This plugin can clear your posts database.

WP Super Cache – Speeds up WordPress when you have tons of posts.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Allowed each product listing to show several links to similar products.  Kind of like an Amazon cross sell.

———————–

That’s everything I did to get the site online.  Next was promotion which will be Part 2 of this case study.

Any Questions?

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This is a Guest Post By Ad Hustler Contributor: Kim Ann Curtin, Life Coach

Are You Indispensable?

“The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.” ~Seth Godin

Did you know that to take us former hunters and farmers and transform us into rule following, non-thinking factory workers; gin carts were pushed up and down the aisles of factories to keep us, the workers “happy?” Well it’s true. It took a while but after twenty years man’s spirit was inebriated enough so that the carts were no longer necessary. But since they had to make sure that the products these factories produced in bulk kept selling they also needed to ensure that a different kind of production line also ran, the one called “consumers,” and so another sort of gin cart was created, one that made sure that mediocrity and standardization reigned as king, thwarting individuality and uniqueness. The name of that cart pushed up and down the aisles of every American town was and is the public school system.

These are just two of the many shocking things I’ve learned from Seth Godin. I heard him speak at this year’s Small Business Conference. He was discussing his new book Linchpin and his talk brought the entire room to their feet with loud applause. One of the only standing ovations I’ve ever experienced at a business conference! The crowd responded to what he said as though we were at an old style revival meeting. There was hope in every business person in the room unlike I’ve ever seen. And I actually had tears in my eyes when he finished.

The truths that are revealed in this book, the subtitle of which is the name of this column, are a total game changer. And I’ll warn you if it’s an easy answer you seek or the black and white clarity about what you are supposed to do next, it won’t satisfy you. What you will find is that he advocates you turning for direction to the one place that our culture, society and education system has kept you from; yourself.

Like peroxide that must be poured on an infected wound or a mother bird that pushes her children out of the nest when it’s time for them to learn how to fly, Mr. Godin spares us no mercy. He startles us with the news that yes indeed that light barreling down the track towards us is a train and it’s headed straight for us and the “factories” we are working in. (Including the white collars ones.) He stresses that if we don’t want to be hit by this train then we have to stop waiting for our boss or another authority figure to tell us what to do and how to do it. Get off the damn track, he advocates, and begin the inquiry of what we can do to make a difference perhaps for the company we now work in or decide if it’s time to begin our own.

To survive in this new world we have only one hope and that’s to become indispensable. And why must we become this? Because, “There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.” He explains; we aren’t two teams any longer (management and labor) but three; the third team are the linchpins. “The death of the factory means that the system we have built our lives around is now upside down.”

Either way we need to wake up and realize the bill of goods some of us were sold; work hard, follow directions and stay in line; has now turned into a pink slip. Now we must think for ourselves and stop waiting for someone else to choose what’s next for us. If we don’t we’re toast.  The days of authority rule are finished. Each man must become his own authority.

Initially it’s scary but then you begin to realize that what he is talking about is the one thing you gave up hope on finding years ago. A world in which you and your “art” get to make a difference, a world where you get to contribute all of who you are and design the map instead of following someone else’s. And here’s the important part this can be done within organizations too. You just have to be brave enough to begin without getting permission.

You will walk away from this book realizing you are more critical to this world then you could have ever imagined. And that we are all in desperate need of you and your gifts. And in the most important chapter of the book (in fact he tells you to read this chapter even if you read nothing else) titled The Resistance, he explains how hard-wired we all are to resist the feelings we experience when we are about to make our own path, create something unique or embark on a break though.

Read Linchpin and learn from a very wise man, who believes in you and is begging you to help transform the world.

Kim Ann Curtin – Website | Blog | Twitter | Youtube

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It’s no secret that the best traffic sources have begun a war against affiliates.  Rather then fighting back, a lot of affiliates are getting frustrated and moving to new traffic sources to avoid the issues and hopefully make some easy money.  At the end of the day, the easy money at these “new” traffic sources will dry up due to affiliate over-saturation.  Although I’m not one to run around and say the sky is falling, I do believe in heavy diversification.  You can’t build an empire on a house of cards so you need to have multiple streams of revenue.

This brings me to the concept of building an audience.  I think that a lot of affiliates forget that there are other ways to get traffic then simply buying it.  There are several ways to do this.  You can collect email addresses, build an rss subscriber list, or build a search engine optimized content website.  I love making money without expending much time or money to do it.  A few months ago I was brainstorming what has made me money over the past few years.  I was looking over my books and realized I was still making money off some old PHPbay sites that I have.  Over the years i’ve made a lot of money on those sites, although the eBay Partner Network now completely SUCKS.  I went and checked the traffic stats on these sites and they were each still pulling in significant traffic.  I hadn’t done much off page SEO to these sites at all yet they were still sucking people in.  This gave me the idea to create a few new SEO sites to see if I could generate some money off of them using a different affiliate program.

This brings us to datafeed sites.  I know some people who bank pretty hard on datafeed sites so I decided to give them a try.  I will also be sharing what I did and the results  as a multi-part case study.   Stay tuned.

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Freelance projects are a convenient way to partner up with talented designers, writers, and tech geniuses for online marketers on a time or budget crunch. As a professional that has been on both sides of the negotiating process, I have come across some situations that have provided insights that need to be shared. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, there are some very clear-cut tips that should be, but often aren’t followed. Here are some spring cleaning tips for your project work.

-Know what you want.
One of the biggest time wasters in any negotiating process is running before you can walk. If you aren’t ready to launch a project until 2015, don’t start shopping for a contractor today. Be ready to rock and roll the first time you start your search. Discussing hypotheticals is useless for you and the freelancer who you just spent an hour devising a plan to open virtual hotel on Mars in the year 3000. It makes great content for Conan O’Brien’s new show, but it’s not going to help you make money, or friends in the industry.

-Know what you can afford.
Big problem with a lot of you online marketers- you’re big BSers. Yup, I said it. STOP LYING! If you have $2/ hr to pay a programmer, Fine but don’t look stateside. There are plenty of sites out there who will find you a freelancer from a third world country for a penny a day. If that’s what you want, great. Quality is probably not important to you, and that’s ok (more on this below).

Sometimes you just need a project done and skill sets are irrelevant. If you want Einstein to solve your math problems, though, expect to pay accordingly. I can’t tell you how nuts I go when unnamed potential clients try to ‘do you a huge favor’ by giving you a 500 page novel to write for $5 or less. It’s great that there are service providers that can meet any budget, but you get what you pay for. Freelancers have to pay their bills just like you do.

-Quality Score Your Project.
This tip will help in almost any facet of your business. Know what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you absolutely can’t live without. Think of your project on a scale of 1-10. Rating relevant aspects of your product, service, or project by budget, quality, deadline, and experience needed will help you find the right person for the job. It will also save you time- you won’t be calling anyone and everyone trying to convince them that your $5/ 500 pager is reasonably budgeted. What does saving time do? Save money! Why? Time is money. Come on, biz big shots, you already knew that.

-Know When to Say No.
Just like every freelancer out there won’t be perfect for your project, your project won’t be perfect for every freelancer. If the initial consult doesn’t go well, or you’re questioning the knowledge or abilities of the vendor day 1, trust your instincts. The issue with the availability of hundreds of thousands of freelancers is some will be more qualified then others, while some won’t be qualified at all. You know how everyone thinks they’re a ‘social media expert’? It’s ok to tell them politely, of course (at first anyway) that they’re not.

-Help Me Help You.
I try to make this a key theme in almost every post I write, because it is so absolutely essential to any project. If you’re difficult to get ahold of, set deadlines that get missed because there’s documents missing, or are never happy but don’t communicate that without flipping out well after you spent $10k but made 10 cents, you are your own worst enemy. Communication is key. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rocket scientist, a marketer, or a CEO. If you can’t express what you want calmly and efficiently, you’re not going to get it. Remember, you hired a developer, not a psychic.

While not everyone has the philosophy of ‘I turn down work because I can’- most freelance workers operate their businesses the same way you run yours. Have the same attitude. While there won’t always be a perfect match, you can pick and choose who you trust your business with. As with any deal, read the fine lines and in between them. A little prep work goes a long way for you and your bottom line.

Dina Riccobono is the VP of Business Development for 1938 Business- a video advertising/production agency. She is returning to the online TV space with a new show, 1938 Cares, launching this month on the 1938 Media platform.