I know I can relate anything to marketing and our favorite show right now is Duck Dynasty so lets see how well I can do with the show teaching us about marketing.

What Duck Dynasty Can Teach Me About Marketing

Willie is all about organization – Willie is very serious about the Duck Commander business and in this we can see the guy we have to be in front of the computer or at the whiteboard. Willie is all business almost all the time and looks with a CEO edge at every decision in the family business.

Jase Sticks to his life rules – Jase is Willie’s brother and works at Duck Commander even though his brother runs the business. Jase is always keeping his brother in check and whenever Willie gets too serious or comes up with a crazy idea it is Jase that sets him straight. Really Jase is running his life in the way that he wants and will not let the man slow him down or get him to yield to their ways. Jase resembles the entrepreneur that has the idea and in all seriousness runs with it.

Si is crazy – The funniest guy on Duck Dynasty is Uncle Si. He is the character, the funnyman, the guy that has his own way of doing things. Si has a history and a story and is captivating. After you watch Duck dynasty the lines you remember are the ones that came out of Si’s mouth. Si represents the crazy ideas of the entrepreneur and the active social media guy that loves to talk and have a great conversation.

So Where does Duck Dynasty Leave us as Marketers?

The really funny thing about Duck Dynasty is the relationship between all the people. The show is all about the people. There are storylines, there is conflict, there are guns, rednecks, ducks, and most of all great fellowship. But what we always remember is the great people and conversations, everything else is fun and funny.

What do you think? Who is your favorite Duck Dynasty character? Do you even watch the show? We all love it and all the characters and I believe that the show really proves that people are interested in people and stories more than anything.

My tagline for this blog states I was expecting to make $100,000 in 2008. I have totally failed.

I suspect that this year I am going to finish off with around $30,000. I am devestated and totally disappointed. Well maybe disappointed but not devestated. My goal was a crazy goal that I made in December of last year and last year I made probably about $7,000 so my gains this year have been great.

As you probably have seen in my last post I have some points that I want to focus on this year. I think as long as I have a plan and stick with it 2009 is going to be the year that I hit 6 figures which is exciting to say the least.

Last year at this time I made a kickass goal and it was at a time that I was still excited about an online business but I knew that I was spending 2 or 3 hours to make a dollar, at least that is what it felt like. This year the money has been flowing a bit easier as I have been leveraging the work that I did in the previous couple of years and that is always your best strategy.

So my tagline changes but $100,000 will be the goal for 2009.

Sorry to any of you that are disappointed in the failure of this years quest, good luck to all next year for the dreams that did not quite come this year

I have a big office in the basement with a couple of computers and another connection for a laptop. I also have a big whiteboard and a giant roll of white paper. Why do I mention this? Because I am here right now in the basement trying to figure out where to really focus my business over the next year.

I tend to be kind of crappy at barinstorming in my own head. I can come up with ideas and content in my head but as far as strategy goes I really get bogged down in what I should focus on and doing those business building kinds of things.

So my whiteboard right now has a bunch of process type stuff for articles creation and deployment. Everything from article content creation and keyword foxus to bio box creation.

I also have a piece of 2 foot by 2 foot paper with sites and pages to focus on, Sales funnell focus, and traffic strategies. This piece of paper lets me see what I should always be focused on.

Now I have a new piece of paper where I want to do two thing, I want to see that processes that I do not have in place yet (another post altogether) and the things that I want to focus on over the next year including the amount of time I want to focus on each. Here are the things that I should focus on for next year, a bit of a straw dog really as I am just getting started. I also start each with the percent of time I want to focus on the subject. This is real work not just reading posts and playing around online. [Read more...]

I am going though my mass of PDFs this afternoon and just remembered about The Social Marketing Blueprint Formula (Free PDF Download). Sure I Twitter, use Onlywire to post to social networks, have a barely used and not utilized Facebook account but look eventually you have to stake your claim in web 2.0 and figure out how you will add value and leverage social networks instead of just trying to get a bit of ranking and backlinks from social media.

Charles Heflin and the guys at SEO 20/20 have done a great job at building verticals and siloing sites and even though I can not afford at this point ot join the SEO 20/20 program, these guys have come out with a great teaser of info with about everything that you need to know to build up a real strategy with social media and everything else that we call web 2.0.

Download The Free Social Marketing Blueprint Formula

There are many webmasters that find writing articles for their site to be a very tedious task. Many people who need to write articles also procrastinate as much as they can to delay the amount of writing they need to do. Many people dread writing articles because they find researching for the topic and writing down original materials will be too taxing on them.

You need to have your creative juices flowing and simply downloading an article would be plagiarism or tantamount to stealing, not exactly. Have you ever heard about public domain? These are articles written down by many authors that have declared their works to be public domain, which means anybody can use it for whatever purpose they want.

While most authors would prefer to copyright their work for their rights, there are also a number who doesn’t mind sharing their work. Public domain articles are not owned by anybody and can be used and abused by anyone. The writers have waived their rights to their works and it is out there for the public to make use of.

You can use public domain articles in helping you write your articles. With the public domain articles you can simply edit them to your own style and rewrite them as you please to make it suitable for your needs. All the ideas are there already and its just a matter of finding the write article with the topic or subject you need.

This is probably the easiest way to write articles. You don’t need to scour around the library or the internet for hours for information and start an article from scratch. For webmasters who are looking for articles to fill their site and to generate a high ranking for their website in search engine results, they can just modify the article by infusing keywords and keyword phrases related to their site.

A webmaster or website operator do not risk any chance of getting sued for copyright infringement because they are public domain, once again meaning that anybody can use it. Writing articles by using public domain wont require as much work as writing one from scratch would. You save a lot of time also.

One good factor in using public domain articles for your site or for any project is that you save a lot of money. You dismiss the need to hire experienced and seasoned writers that some website operators use to write their articles. While a single five hundred worded article would only set you down 10 to 15 dollars, this cost will drastically increase when you need hundreds of articles to fill the needs of your site.

For those who needs articles to generate newsletters or an e-zine, public domain articles will be very beneficial. You do not need to count on your contributors or pay writers to write down articles for your newsletter or e-zine. You can fill all the pages without any cost or the worry of being sued and sought after by the writers. You can simply copy the articles and place them on your newsletter and e-zine.

Public domain articles are a virtual untapped resource that many people fail to realize the true value. The power of articles, keywords and keyword phrases have been deemed invaluable these past few years for many internet based businesses and sites that want to rank high in search engine results.

The number of article and content writers have grown significantly due to the rise in the demand for articles. As newer and newer topics and subjects have arisen, there are many demands for new articles to be written. An industry has been formed and this is a worldwide demand.

Public domain articles have given a great alternative for those who are cash strapped as well as do not have the time nor the skills to do their articles for themselves.

Searching for public domain articles is as easy as 1 – 2 – 3. You can search for them in search engines and do searches in many directories for the topic or subject that you need. Read them and simpy copy paste them to a word processing program and simply edit them to suit your needs.

Affiliate mistakes are really common, I see them all the time and just shake my head. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning some money online. This program gives everybody a chance to make a profit through the Internet. Since these affiliate marketing programs are easy to join, implement and pays a commission on a regular basis, more an more people are now willing in this business.

However, like all businesses, there are lots of pitfalls in the affiliate marketing business. Committing some of the most common affiliate mistakes will cost the marketers a large portion taken from the profit they are making everyday. That is why it is better to avoid them than be regretful in the end.

Affiliate Mistakes – Choosing the wrong affiliate

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible. In their rush to be part of one, they tend to choose a bandwagon product. This is the kind of products that the program thinks is “hot”. They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them. This is not a very wise move obviously and a discouraging affiliate mistake when you are getting started.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, try top choose a product in which you are truly interested in. For any endeavor to succeed, you should take some time to plan and figure out your actions.

Pick a product that appeals to you. Then do some research about that product to see if they are in demand. Promoting a product you are more passionate about is easier than promoting one for the sake of the earnings only.

Affiliate Mistakes –  Joining too many affiliate programs

Affiliate Mistakes

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join multiples of affiliate programs to try and maximize the earnings you will be getting. Besides you may think that there is nothing wrong and nothing to lose by being part of many affiliate programs.

True, that is a great way to have multiple sources of income. However, joining multiple programs and attempting to promote them all at the same time will prevent you from concentrating on each one of them.

The result? The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as huge as you were thinking initially it would. The best way to get excellent result is by joining just one program that pays a 40% commission at least. Then give it your best effort by promoting your products enthusiastically. As soon as you see that it is already making a reasonable profit, then maybe you can now join another affiliate program.

The technique is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush into things, especially with affiliate marketing. With the way things are going, the future is looking real bright and it seems affiliate marketing will be staying for a long time too.

Affiliate Mistakes –  Not buying the product or using the service

As an affiliate, you main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service and to find customers. For you to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that certain product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried these things out. The affiliate mistakes here is that  you will fail to promote and recommend them convincingly. You will also fail to create a desire in your customers to avail any of what you are offering.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering what it promises. If you have done so, then you are one of the credible and living testaments aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Your customers will then feel the sincerity and truthfulness in you and this will trigger them to try them out for themselves.

Many affiliate marketers makes these mistakes and are paying dearly for their actions. To not fall into the same situation they have been in, try to do everything to avoid making the same mistakes.

Time is the key. Take the time to analyze your marketing strategy and check if youa re in the right track. If done properly, you will be able to maximize your affiliate marketing program and earn higher profits and avoid affiliate mistakes.

Have you heard of a tell a friend script? More and more webmasters have the recurring dilemma on how to increase the flow of traffic in the websites. During the past few years many methods that been developed to solve this predicament. While most of them would work there are those that would not make even a small impact.

Tell A friend script example

One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something to find informative, entertaining or amazing.

Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s fancy.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialize this marketing scheme. Any website would greatly benefit that viral marketing.

Tell A Friend Script

One of the easiest methods in viral marketing is using a tell a friend script. This is a simple programming script that you can attach to the programming of your website. Generally, tell a friends script are installed in pages where a media is placed so that a person can easily send the media to any of his friends or his family members.

The basic concept of a tell a friend script is a script wherein a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

With the e-mail sent and opened the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. The along with it is another tell a friend script.

Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see would go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting to great number of potential customers.

Tell A Friend Script Availability

A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box “tell a friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

With a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

Tell A friend scripts for Cheap or Free

Javascript Tell a Friend Script

CGI Tell a friend script

PHP Tell a friend script

Feature Rich $49 Tell a friend script

It is imperative that you have patience in using a tell a friend script. If your chosen media doesn’t get the mileage that is expected of it, it may take some time before it gets spread or shared. But surely many people will see your ads and there is great probability that they will visit your site increasing your traffic flow.