Blogging ABCs hosts Tricia Meyer and Deborah Carney talk about how bloggers can use gift guides to build traffic and possibly test out affiliate marketing and see if it is right for them. Regardless of whether you choose to monetize your blog or not, gift guides throughout the year can give you a topic to write about that people search for and need help with.

Find Us On Twitter:
Blogging ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

Rick Calvert and Karen Garcia join Blogging ABCs hosts Tricia Meyer and Deborah Carney to discuss the dilemmas faced by bloggers about whether or not they should monetize their blogs and if yes, how. It’s a candid discussion covering both sides of the issue.

Find Us On Twitter:
Blogging ABCs
Affiliate ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia
GTOMan

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

Blogging ABCs and AffiliateABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Liz Fogg and Tricia Meyer discuss what bloggers and affiliates can learn from Tricia’s experience being unexpectedly dropped from two networks (described in her post The Ugly Side of Affiliate Marketing). The issues discussed apply when you have problems with the Affiliate Nexus Tax, Google AdSense, merchants closing, and many other aspects of affiliate marketing.

Our Four Main Tips:

1) Diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Have different types of sites in different niches. Work with different merchants across different networks.

2) Separate Accounts. Use separate network accounts when you have multiple sites or especially different types of sites (incentives, coupons, gambling, etc). It will come in handy if one of your sites gets flagged or if you decide to sell a site.

3) Use link redirecting. Redirecting will help you change out links quickly if you need to. In addition, you can use shorteners so that your domain shows up instead of someone else’s when you post your links in other places.

4) Network. Meet in person with as many people as possible. Further, after you connect with them, follow up, reinforcing your connection. When you need help, those connections may be the difference between keeping and losing your business.  .

Some Resources we mention:

Pretty Link Lite

YourLS Open Source shortener that you can install on your own website

Find Us On Twitter:

Blogging ABCs
Affiliate ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia
TeamLoxlyLiz

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

Blogging ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Liz Fogg and Trica Meyer are joined by Arlene Martell of Epilepsy Moms.

Arlene started her site over 3 years ago in order to pay forward the information that she has gained over the years.  Her son was diagnosed at 4 years old with both Epilepsy and Autism and has been drug and seizure free for over 10 years.

Arlene’s Free Ebook
Information on the Ketogenic Diet
Information on Neurotherapy

Find Us On Twitter:
Blogging ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia
TeamLoxlyLiz
Epilepsy Moms

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

This is an ABCs Plus Special edition podcast that is being posted to Affiliate ABCs, Blogging ABCs and Merchant ABCs because of the importance of the issue. Your hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney are joined by Karen Garcia, Outsourced Affiliate Program Manager to try and explain the Affiliate Nexus sales tax laws that states are enacting to attempt to get more companies to collect their state sales tax even though the companies do not have a physical presence in their state. States are trying to establish that affiliates and affiliate marketing gives companies a physical presence in their state, making the merchants liable to collect sales taxes in states they shouldn’t have to.

Some Resources we mention:
Coffee Talk with James Martell, Karen Garcia and Jeannine Crooks

PMA List of States and their status and links to their bills.

NexusAware – a listing of what companies already have to collect sales taxes is what states

There is a lot of information out there and much confusion by affiliates, merchants, bloggers and even the legislators themselves. If you are in a state that hasn’t passed this tax yet, check and see if they have a law drafted or on the table. Basically states are treating this as an amendment to their state sales tax laws and not as new laws, so they pass easier and sometimes with no press about it at all.

Please feel free to contribute additional information in the comments. We are not lawyers, so you need to check with a local lawyer familiar with internet law if you are in an affected state.

What we also discuss in this podcast is how affiliates can find merchants that already collect sales tax in their state, what types of merchants that sell items that are exempt and how to talk to your merchants to find out how they are going to handle it if their state passes such a law.

Blogging ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Liz Fogg and Trica Meyer discuss what affiliate marketing is.

Vinny attended Blog World and had many bloggers ask what affiliate marketing is. Simply put affiliate marketing is affiliates (bloggers) putting special tracking links (affiliate links from a network or merchant) on their websites (blogs). When a visitor to a blog clicks an affiliate link and makes a purchase, the blogger makes a commission on that sale. That is the simple explanation Listen for lots more great information and how affiliate marketing can be one way to possibly monetize your blog.

Links to some affiliate networks.
ShareASale
Commission Junction
Linkshare
buy.at

We would like to challenge you to find one network or merchant that you would want to work with and see how it would fit into your blog.

Find Us On Twitter:
Blogging ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia
TeamLoxlyLiz
Vinny O’Hare

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

Blogging ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Liz Fogg and Trica Meyer discuss why bloggers should attend Affiliate Summit.

Attending Affiliate Summit is the dividing line between dabbling and going full time for many people.  Networking happens more in the follow up after the conference. Meet Market is most important day if you can only afford to be there one day, that is Sunday afternoon from Noon to 6pm.

If this is your first time attending, be sure to sign up for the Newcomers Program where you will be paired up with a mentor who can answer general questions and introduce you to people.  Be sure to visit the Affiliate Summit Forum to start meeting people before the conference.

The deadline for the Affiliate Summit Scholarship Program has passed for the August 2011 event, however you can still find giveaways of passes on twitter when you search for #ASE11, plus be on the lookout this fall for passes for Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in January.

Here is an Affiliate Summit pass giveaway that ends June 30, 2011

And just as we were ready to post Shawn Collins posted this giveaway for Gold Passes to Affiliate Summit East!

Find Us On Twitter:

Blogging ABCs
Loxly
SunshineTricia
TeamLoxlyLiz

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky.

As we have announced before, Team Loxly is focusing on educating affiliates, bloggers and merchants. We would like to invite you to come and be our guest at the following sites, you can submit more than one topic, or more than one site. We have guests that have discussed topics that cover all three audiences.

We have three ABCs series of podcasts where we give advice and pointers on how to achieve success as an affiliate, monetize your blog or run the perfect merchant program. Part of the success of our podcasts are listening to the people that listen to the podcasts and hear what they want to learn about or when they propose a topic that they want to share their expertise on. We encourage people to introduce us to guests we should have on our shows, and also offer to be guests and speak on a topic or ask us questions about a topic. Our podcasts are all discussion style and not necessarily interview style. We often will have a panel of up to 4 people that will discuss a topic.

We also like to keep the podcasts short and one specific topic so that our listeners have one main takeaway from our shows and are not bombarded with information that they can’t absorb. We also like our guests because we feel that the affiliate industry is in constant growth and there is no one “voice” that can keep up with all the changes. We may create some ebooks from our podcast topics and create some formal training (we are developing that on Merchant ABCs first) but we are not interested at this time in producing print books that are almost out of date by the time they are published.

Here are the links:
Be our guest on Merchant ABCs podcast: Tell merchants what you want them to know to make their programs stellar
Be our guest on Affiliate ABCs podcast: Ask us questions, tell affiliates about your timesaving tips, what things work for you
Be our guest on Blogging ABCs podcast: Ask us how to monetize your blogs, offer your style and writing tips, software and plugins you use

And on Merchant ABCs we have a very special page where you can share the things that Merchants, Affiliates, and Networks do that annoys you or makes you happy. Come share your pet peeves and your props about all aspects of the affiliate industry. Here are some of the responses we have gotten so far. There are some very similar peeves/props that have us already thinking about future podcasts and looking for guests to cover those topics.

Finally, other places to find many affiliate voices discussing industry issues Affiliate Summit Affiliate Forum and FeedFront Affiliate Industry Magazine.

James Martell joins Blogging ABCs hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney discuss guest posting and how it differs from submitting articles to article directories. Article directories have too many similar articles, they are focused on quantity over quality.

Guest posts are higher quality and are related to the topic of the blog they are guest posting for. Be picky about who you guest post for, and who guest posts for you. Guest posts give a blog different voices which can give your blog a new vitality.

Listen to the audio for more great advice from our panel of experts.

Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp

Twitter:
James Martell
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah aka Loxly
Blogging ABCs

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts. Please go visit them to hear more podcasts about internet marketing.

Blogging ABCs hosts Tricia Meyer and Deborah Carney discuss why bloggers should attend conferences. Attending different kinds of conferences can help you build your blog in ways you wouldn’t think of on your own.

Some Conference Links:
Shareasale Network Think Tank
BlogWorld
Affiliate Summit
SheCon
CJU
AdTech
BlogHer

Follow us on Twitter:

Tricia Meyer
Deborah aka Loxly
Blogging ABCs

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts. Please go visit them to hear more great podcasts about internet marketing.