Affiliate Buzz | Affiliate Marketing / Affiliate Programs / Internet / Online / Social Media Marketing - James Martell

Learn how to take your income to the next level in 2015 with a proven 8-step system, made for affiliate marketers, coaches, authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs, The system was created by Iman Aghay, the founder of Success Road Academy and the Marketing Mastery Summit. James and Iman take us through all 8 steps that will help you learn how to create proper offers, attract bigger clients and create larger mailing lists and much more.

Rock your business in 2015.

James Martell welcomes Kellie Hudson, Affiliate Marketing Associate for CafePress, Inc. an online retailer of stock and user-customized "on-demand" products. They headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and today we are going to talk about MAKING MONEY with CafePress and their affiliate program.

Their products cover every possible topic you can imagine – humor, politics, baby, pets, knitting, military, global warming, education, holidays, music, you name it! No matter what your sites topic or personality, CafePress has something for every affiliate.

Growth, and ramping up for the online shopping season to maximize sales as James and Arlene discuss the oncoming rush for affiliate marketers to plan and make the most of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday shopping season.

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by the ‎President at Making Shifts Happen, Stephanie Stanfield. They will talk about how you can stop procrastination to have a successful lifestyle business that can generate a passive income.

James begins the episode by informing the audience that there will be a free podcast webinar available soon. This is a must attend webinar and although it mainly for affiliate marketers, anyone running a business will find it useful.

James also mentions that Affiliate Summit is coming up in January and James will be speaking at the event on how you can earn $100 a day on a passive income. If you have a chance, James strongly suggests, as he has mentioned before, that you attend the event as well as Passive Income mastery.

Taking Control Of Your Fear

James has known Stephanie only for a few weeks, but since they started conversing twice weekly as he helps with getting her digital products of the ground, he has had many interesting conversations. Stephanie is the President of Making Shifts Happen and has a Doctorate in Theology in Energy Medicine and a PhD in Energy Medicine.

Stephanie has written two books and also teaches at the Colorado Mountain College.

Most of their discussions, when not getting her digital products of the ground, is about how fear of failure and procrastination can be limiting to production. Procrastination is one of the major struggles for entrepreneurs.

Stephanie states that there are two types of procrastination. There is healthy and unhealthy (sabotage) procrastination. The latter of these is the serious problem as it can stop us from achieving what we want to.

The Ability To Change

We are all neuroplastic according to Stephanie. We have the ability to change our nervous system, yet we often don’t realise this. This is because complex systems are often set up into habitual behaviours, for instance, how to drive a car or to walk. Our nervous system creates automatic responses to most tasks to be energy efficient.

This can become bad when we have a habit of putting things off until the last minute. Often this is invisible to us and we don’t recognise that it is happening. However, when it becomes a habit we can become overwhelmed by fear when we realize we need to get something done.

This is where Stephanie is often an aid to her clients. She helps them to remember four important steps that will help them to keep calm. During the podcast, Stephanie explains these four important tips:

* Belly breathe – so enough oxygen can get to the brain.

* Drink water – water is important for brain function.

* Realize - what you are doing, why you are doing it and how you are doing it.

* The present moment skill – realizing your fear is projecting a possible future story that is not about the present.

When you place yourself in a position where you are overwhelmed, you need to recognise that these are just stories you are telling yourself. You need to focus you energetic currency on more efficient spending and realising the situation at present. Not on possible scenarios.

The Five Stages Of Change

Next Stephanie talks about the stages of change as devised by James Prochaska. These stages are:

* Pre-contemplation – when an idea has suddenly come to you.

* Contemplation – when you start to think of a plan or steps to take. You often ask yourself: can you do this, what do you need to do this? This is often the best time to create a to-do-list.

* Preparation – when you gather resources to prepare to complete the task. This is not about planning.

* Action – when you are completing the change.

* Maintenance – when the task is becoming automatic.

* Termination – when you consider ending the change or behaviour.

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by Arlene to talk about the ShareASale Think Tank and their recent trip to Memphis and Graceland, the home of Elvis.

James and Arlene have been very excited about this trip and have talked about it loads in previous Affiliate Buzz episodes. Their trip started early on Saturday morning when they got up at 4am to head over to the airport. Their first flight was to Chicago, but James wasn’t aware of much of the flight as he was asleep very quickly. When they landed in the windy city, they had a short layover. Then they were back on the plane to go to Charlotte and to a nice overnight hotel and they rented a car to tour the city. They found the area to be like a sleepy little town which surprised them as they thought it would more like downtown Vancouver.

At ShareASale Think Tank 2014

On the Sunday afternoon they swapped bases and headed to The Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge. It is a beautiful location and the premises are in an L shape. This makes it very easy to get around and know where you are within the building. James and Arlene were in a room that overlooked the 18th hole of a golf course. On the Sunday night there was a wine and scotch tasting event before the main even kicked off on the Monday morning. The ShareASale team are always looking after their guests and as James puts it: their care is first class. On the Monday morning there were some sessions to help attendees learn some tricks of the trade and then in the afternoon there was the chance to have some meetings with merchants. There were 48 merchants in attendance and many had brought free samples of their products and services to give away. James and Arlene scooped up some pyjamas for the grandchildren with thanks to Roger Snow and his team at Snow Consulting. Then they went to a lodge on the premises where there was a little games night. Arlene’s team won the trivia quiz and the prize was a month’s membership to the California Wine Club. There were lots of games for attendee’s to enjoy including pool tables, racing cars, skiing games and darts. There was also a candy bar and free bar. Then on the Tuesday morning there was a keynote speech with Missy Ward, co-founder of Affiliate Summit. She is a very well respected individual in the industry and it is always a pleasure to speak to her. Then there was a session with Brian Littleton where he stands in the middle of a big circle and asks for feedback on how ShareASale can improve.

The Merchant Catalogue

James and Arlene also discuss about the merchant catalogue and magazine that is released every year. In it are details about products and commission offers that are available for affiliates. James has a hardcopy, but there is a digital PDF version available. In this year’s catalogue there are various products on offer including Christmas trees, presents and ties as well as other products such as ties and digital photo displays.

Memphis And The Home Of Elvis

Then the couple went on a mini-breakation, as they advise listeners to do on other Affiliate Buzz episodes to do when attending conferences. This time they went to Memphis. They weren’t so impressed with the town, but really enjoyed visiting Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley. Arlene considered the experience as “mind blowing” and she was excited to be there. During the show the couple discuss in great detail about the tour including:

* A walk through of the tour and what you are able to see.

* Information about Elvis’ two planes: Hound Dog One and Hound Dog Two.

* How the place has changed since his death.

* The rooms and offices in the house that James didn't realize were there.

* The impressive trophy building where all his gold and platinum albums are located.

While James and Arlene were not able to take any video footage of their trip,

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by Linda Woods, the Managing Director of Integrated Marketing Services for Madrivo and her re-entry into the affiliate marketing community.

Linda begins this Affiliate Buzz edition by giving us some information on her background. She lives in Ashland in Oregon. It is a small town that she calls very cute and is famous for the Shakespeare Festival that attracts 250,000 visitors a year for the 12 plays it hosts. She moved to this town in 2009 from Santa Barbara, where she has plenty of fond memories.

Linda then goes on to talk about her history. Her internet career started in 1996 when she was introduced to the World Wide Web. She instantly recognised its importance and with her then partner, a computer science graduate, set up a web design company.

In these early days, she would only have to ask businesses whether they wanted a website and most would say yes. She would charge about $500 a website and her partner would design the websites.

Changing The Focus

However, soon her clients, who were pleased with their websites, started to ask how they could attract visitors to their sites. This was a time that was before Google and the effort to be found without Google is always tough. James and Arlene have talked about Google on several times including Affiliate Buzz 341 and Affiliate Buzz 352.

During this period in internet history, you had to have a Yahoo listing and Amazon was only just starting their own affiliate program. Although some credit Amazon with starting the first affiliate program, Brad Waller also has a claim to this honour.

It was about this time that she split with her partner and moved back to Santa Barbara. She knew she needed to find a new job and found a position being advertised with a start-up company called Commission Junction. Not very many people understood affiliate marketing at the time and so she was able to secure a job as a marketing manager and employee number 30.

Commission Junction had a lot of competition at the time with companies like LinkShare and BeFree; the major players at the time. Commission Junction however was able to edge themselves into the market and establish themselves.

While at Commission Junction, she was responsible for the idea of training people in affiliate marketing. This would become Commission Junction University. However, her time with Commission Junction was not going to last as she was sacked by the company.

Going At It Alone

After this she decided to go solo under the name of Affiliate Goddess and became a consultant. She was still passionate about teaching affiliate marketing. She knew that if merchants didn’t know how to find or train affiliates and affiliates didn’t know what to do; then no-one would make any money.

Then the dotcom crash happened and this affected her badly. However, she was lucky to know a lot of good people such as the owner of MyApp, a standalone program for advertisers to use to run their own programs. He gave her a job in business development.

However, that wasn’t to last long. She came up with an idea one evening in the bath about managing a client’s affiliate program for them. Her bosses at MyApp didn’t want to do this so she decided to go it alone again.

Affiliate Goddess

She started her business, again naming it Affiliate Goddess, with two other people and the company became a success. She knew her original name couldn’t stay; she needed to hire more people and male employees might object to being known as Affiliate Goddess. That is when she changed the name to Partner Centric.

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by his wife Arlene Martell to speak about collapsing time frames and getting things done when on a breakation.

James and Arlene begin this podcast by stating that their schedule is becoming rather busy at the moment. The Canadian Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner and James and Arlene will be hosting several guests this year for the special day. Arlene loves this day even though she has to spend most of the time cooking because of the opportunity to see her family.

After that, the James and Arlene have Black Friday, which is the start of a very busy time for online sales and affiliate marketers. This period of increased activity continues right through the holiday season and into the New Year.

James has also been very busy putting together a couple of courses. The first of these is the Passive Income Mastery class that he has spoken about recently on a previous Affiliate Buzz episode. The second course he is working is the Podcast Mastery Class, which he has mentioned on his School Of Internet Marketing website over two years ago, but has not had the time to finish until now.

In addition to this, they have the ShareASale Think Tank to attend soon. During this time, James and Arlene will taking a little breakation and go to Memphis to visit Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley.

Getting The Most Done

Arlene has also been very busy recently with the development of a set of procedures for a new Virtual Assistant that they are looking to hire. They had outsourced some of the duties before, but that relationship has ended recently.

This coincides with the realisation from Arlene that many of the important, but monotonous tasks, she completes can be done by a virtual assistant.

For the VA to be successful, when they find one through elance, there will be a need to be a procedure document. This document will detail what needs to be done and how to do it for the new VA. The advantage of the documentation will be that all the tasks will be done to the same standard and that James or Arlene will have a template they can use to check the work is completed accurately.

James’ Breakation

James also talks about his recent trip he had with his friend Todd up to Whistler, the number one ski resort in North America. James cannot recommend the location enough and speaks of its gorgeous looks and old European feel.

When James first mentioned to Arlene that his friend had invited him up to Whistler, she was not impressed. They were both very busy and Arlene questioned how he was going to keep up with his work. However, James promised that he would get it done while he was on the breakation.

This breakation proved to be a benefit to both James and Arlene as both were able to get more done than they would have been able to do normally. James for instance was able to do a significant amount of work on one of the courses he’s been working on.

It wasn’t all work for James however, he did get some relaxation time on the golf course, watching TV and in the hot tub. He was also able to fit in 8 hours sleep a night, which is not normal.

Arlene was able to finish a lot of tasks she had on her task list.

And Other News

James has had a growing irritation with YouTube recently with number of times adverts are shown at the beginning of videos. So he posted a question on whether anyone knew if there was an app that would be able to get rid of them.

This may have upset some affiliates who earn their money through these adverts; however, one comment stated that there was a free browser extension to significantly reduce the number of adverts shown. James has tried it out and can confirm it does reduce the number of adverts displayed.

Also during the show, James gives a shout out to Linda Woods,

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by his wife Arlene as they talk about the Affiliate Summit West 2015 being held at the Paris Hotel in January.

Next week, James and Arlene will be attending the ShareASale Think Tank. The ShareASale Think Tank is a spectacular event for anyone who is interested in making their affiliate marketing business a success.

If you have not got tickets for this year’s event; be on the lookout for chances to secure tickets for next year so you can learn how to be a success in affiliate marketing.

After the event, the couple will take a short breakation where James plans to take Arlene to the NASCAR museum and Graceland.

Moving to Affiliate Summit

James and Arlene have been attending events for years and James estimates they have visited Vegas over thirty times. Many of these visits have been because of the Affiliate Summit event.

James states, many of his most successful students have attended the popular event. They have always come away with a brand new attitude, outlook and belief in their affiliate marketing abilities.

However, for those who are attending the event for the first time, it can be a little overwhelming, especially as there are over 5,000 attendees. That is why there is a great newcomers program. This is held on the Sunday morning before the main event.

The newcomers program is designed to allow veterans of previous Affiliate Summits to provide advice and tips on how those new to Affiliate Summit can make the most of their time there. The veterans provide their tips via a 15 minute recorded telephone conversation.

The Rest Of the Event

The rest of the event starts at 11am on the Sunday. There is normally two speaking sessions at any one time and the crazy Meet Market where merchants show off their products, talk about their programs and meet potential affiliates. This is also a great chance for face to face meetings with your affiliate managers.

There will be a variety of sessions throughout the day. James is usually presenting on Sunday and 2015 will be no different. For the 2015 event, he is introducing the step by step guide on how you can earn $100 per day.

The speaker sessions end at 5pm on the Sunday. After this Brian Littleton, the CEO of ShareASale, hosts a party to relax attendees. He is well known for throwing a good party.

Monday morning is an early start, despite the usual late night previously. Speaking sessions are again the order of the day and are great for affiliates, merchants or anyone looking for topics looking to improve their business.

On the Sunday night, James and Arlene tend to go to the Dueling Piano Bar with some friends to relax.

On Tuesday, there are more sessions and networking events. After this Affiliate Summit is over.

The Key Steps For Success

There are several key steps James and Arlene say you must do if you want to make a success of your time at an Affiliate Summit event. They are:

* Join the Newsletter and Facebook Group.

* Have a plan of what you want to accomplish before you attend. This should include arranging meetings with the people you would like to build a relationship with.

* Go to as many networking events as possible.

* Figure out what sessions you want to attend before you arrive. James recommends you attend about four sessions.

* Book your hotel room early to avoid disappointment.

* Buy the book by Shawn Collins,

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by Ashley Coombe, the Marketing Director of Prosperent and Content Marketing Evangelist at Shareist. During the episode they talk about how you can grow your affiliate marketing business with Facebook adverts.

Ashley Coombe is a social media expert who frequently provides her advice and knowledge during talks at Affiliate Summit and through contributions at Forbes and the Shark Tank Blog.

She never intended to have a marketing career. She started in the education sector, teaching English abroad before returning to teach at elementary schools.

The Move to Ecommerce

When she was 16 weeks pregnant with her eldest daughter, she was put on bed rest. This meant she was lying on the sofa for most of the time, but fortunately had a laptop with her. She found a damper bag website business for sale and decided to buy it with her mum as a fun project.

Ashley explains some of the challenges she had when she first started. In one instance, she wanted to know how to connect her website’s design to her domain name but didn’t know about hosting. It was a friend who had to explain this to her.

During these early months Ashley spent a lot of time reading how she could make her website rank highly on the search engines. She also went to conferences and learnt about blog comments, forum linking as methods to increase her Page Rank.

Ashley considers her first success was when her site out-ranked competitors on Google. Getting there took three to six months and gave her confidence in her SEO abilities. It wasn’t too long before she started her SEO consulting business to help small businesses rank highly for their key terms.

Blackhat Failures

When asked about her biggest failures, Ashley talks about some of the shortcuts she had taken and how she wishes she never had taken them. This taught her a lot and she explains how others are making the same mistakes now. For instance, during the podcast she answers:

* What shortcuts had she taken during her early days?

* What are the equivalent shortcuts in today’s market?

* Are fake Facebook accounts worth the effort?

* What lessons can be learned from an online entrepreneur who builds 20-60 sites per month to gain a little money each time only for his sites to be blocked.

James has spoken in a previous podcast about how one of his students had overcome a Google penalty that resulted from similar tactics.

Best Practices using Facebook Ads

James has limited experience using Facebook ads, but has had some good responses with local clients while working on a project promoting digital products. He also states that he wants to use Facebook for building an audience but at the same time doesn’t want to find himself in trouble with the social network.

Ashley loves using Facebook ads. They are great for those who have small budgets for building audiences.

Ashley always uses her personal account but there are risks. For instance, one of her good friends, known as Coffee Nate (Nathan Smith) was banned from using his Facebook advertiser account when he created some work for a site that contained some gambling content.

Despite spending $20,000 a month through their advertising platform, he was considered to unimportant to grab their attention when he tried to contact Facebook.

After this, Ashley talks about how you can create a good Facebook advert. Part of the optimization tips she includes are:

* Don’t use the default text Facebook provides but create something that will be personal to the reader.

In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by Arlene as they talk about the upcoming ShareASale Think Tank 2014.

The 2014 Think Tank will be hosted at the Ballantyne Hotel and Lodge in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is the 9th year this event has been held. James always looks forward to the Think Tank and has attended every one since it started; Arlene has only missed a couple.

As with any event, James and Arlene will be taking advantage and take a breakation at the same time. They will be heading over to the Charlotte, North Carolina a day beforehand to see the sites. After the event, they will head over to Memphis for four days where they hope to see Graceland, which is on James’ bucket list. James also hope he can persuade Arlene to go to the NASCAR museum.

As part of their trip; Arlene will search for a Christmas decoration, so every time they put up their tree they are reminded of the places they've visited.

James recommends that anyone who attends events like the ShareASale Think Tank, Commission Junction University or the Affiliate Summit takes a breakation for a day or two before and after the event. This is something he has talked about in great detail about on previous podcasts.

James also mentions briefly that listeners should be on the lookout for the “21 Easy Steps to Organizing Your Own Podcast” checklist he is putting the final touches to. This will accompany the free webinar they are running called “How to Start Your Own Podcast”. There will be an email sent out soon to those on James’ list in the next few weeks.

Flashback - ShareaSale Think Tank 2010 - Ritz Carlton

The ShareASale Network

The ShareASale network is one of Arlene’s areas of expertise. She has spent a great deal of time teaching students how they can use the network and the interface.

James first came across ShareASale when it was still a small company on the Affiliate Summit cruise from New York to Halifax. On the cruise he personally met Brian Littleton, the current CEO, and learnt about the small organisation.

Brian and ShareASale was one of the pioneers of the industry and currently have about 3900 merchants continuously looking for affiliates to promote their products. ShareASale is always looking to improve and make it easier for affiliates.

Arlene explains the process for new affiliates to register with ShareASale. The application process is conducted in five steps; it is essential you take your time with each step and fill in as much detail as you can. You must also have a domain and website you wish to connect to the account before you apply.

For those new to the affiliate marketing industry, James introduces the top players in affiliate marketing. For example James explains:

* Who are affiliates / publishers and what is their main job?

* What is a network and what role do they play?

* Who is the merchant and how can they help the process?

* How do agencies feature in the mix?

* What tracks all the traffic in the system?

Flashback - ShareaSale Think Tank 2009 - Pelican Hill Resort

Agencies Fulfilling A Vital Role

Agencies are a vital element in the affiliate process. They represent the merchants and can provide useful information on the best selling products and how you can improve your marketing techniques to sell for their merchant’s. Agencies often attend events with sample products so...