Affiliate Marketing, Why Aren’t You Doing It?

January 3, 2010 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

bens eyes The idea of affiliate marketing isn’t a new concept but if you are unfamiliar with it the idea is simple. I have a product and if you tell your friend about it and the buy it then I will give you 20% of the sales price. Sounds great right? But how is this accomplished in the virtual world? This is done via affiliate URL’s that are tracked using your internet cookies. When you click on a promotional affiliate link it stays in your cookies and if you make a purchase on that website it then tracks who the affiliate member is. You can click the link today, but then go back months later to the site to make the purchase and the affiliate can still be tracked and make their commission.

There are plenty of other Entrepreneurs out there that have affiliate marketing programs that work really well because they have proven products that work and the Entrepreneur is well liked and trusted. When looking for an affiliate program to join ( and joining is free ) you will want to join one that gives you the tools to easily promote that Entrepreneurs product. These types of tools are things like product graphics, pre-written email messages and Tweets. If they don’t provide those types of items then you are going to need to create them on your own and that can take some time to do on your end. How do you know if someone has an affiliate program? If they have a program this will be listed right on their website and you can check it out before joining. Here is a link to Ali Brown’s affiliate program, and I highly recommend joining her first because she has a great program.

An example of some really great programs ( that I am a member of ) are Ali Brown, David Neagle and Katrina Sawa and Erin Blaskie. These are higher end Entrepreneurs who have teams of people who create their affiliate promotion products for them, have proven products that work and often have new items to promote. They also have specific websites called Affiliate Resource Centers where you can see how many clicks and sales you have generated.

Most affiliate programs will pay you one to two months after the sale is made once your sales amount reaches $50. The money can be transferred right into your PayPal account or you can opt to be paid via check.

I have made money with these affiliate programs and you can to, here’s how.

Utilize the pre-written email messages, why? Because a professional Affiliate Manager or the Entrepreneur has written them and they are the ones who know ‘how’ to sell their products. These message can be sent out to your email marketing list or made into a blog post on your blog.
Utilize the pre-written Tweets provided and create automated Tweets to be sent at specific times to promote a specific product, service or upcoming event. I currently use HootSuite to automate my Tweets and Status updates. You can also use Social Oomph (previously known as Tweetlater) to automate your tweets as well.
Add a graphic to your web site or blog site promoting the Entreprenur, one of their products or an upcoming event.

Affiliate marketing can be fun, espeically when making money!! What are your favorite affiliate marketing programs?

Resources mentioned in this blog posting were:

Ali Brown’s Affiliate Program – Join this affiliate program 1st!
Katrina Sawa - Affiliate Program
David Neagle - Affiliate Program
Erin Blaskie - Affiliate Program
HootSuite – Automate your status updates & promotional Tweets
Social Oomph – Automate your promotional Tweets

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Affiliate Marketing, Ali Brown, David Neagle, Dawn, Katrina Sawa, Virtual Assisting

Maternity Leave and Making Money as an Entrepreneur

January 3, 2010 By Dawn Cullo 1 Comment

My “maternity leave” (and I use that term very loosely) is coming up. As I write this post I am about 11 days away from baby Abigail’s due date but if you are a mommy already you know how that date is really not as accurate as one would like and this unknowing about the due date can be stressful. As an entrepreneur I don’t get the traditional paid Maternity Leave, if I don’t work I don’t get any money. Which is a scary thought for me.

Since I have been working from home I have pretty much been in charge the money flow for my business depending upon how many clients I assist. I’ve made sure that I work enough hours to pay for food, a few basic necessities (like Diet Coke hee hee) and Lily’s preschool which these days can wipe out that paycheck pretty quickly. So what will I do now that I will be out of commission for a few days while in the hospital giving birth? Well, I plan on automating my business of course!

The Social Media world that I currently work in has opened my eyes to many passive income opportunities and team delegating. Now, I am not talking about any type of ‘get rich quick’ kind of deals but more along the idea of affiliate marketing, scheduled promotions, automated blog posts, article marketing and ebooks which can result in passive income. These activities take a little bit of time to set up but once they are done you can relax and enjoy the passive income. You can read more about how to set up passive income techniques on my company website at Sunrise Virtual Services and specifically this post about Affiliate Marketing

Another thing that I will be doing is delegating some tasks to another virtual assistant to help out with some of my clients activities. How will I make money this way if I give the work away? Simple, we will divide up the money. For example, if I charge the client $35.00 for Article Marketing I will pay my ‘helper’ $20.00 to post the articles and I will pocket the $15.00. While I am not making the full $35.00 I am still pulling in some money.

I will also be enlisting the help of my husband, he is a super savvy guy and really does understand my business. He will be doing some of the tasks that I do on a daily basis for my clients and thus we are still pulling in money for the company. Since my work can really be done 24/7 I plan on jumping on the computer and doing about an hour of work a day. I also receive my email on my Blackberry so I really don’t need to be in front of my computer to get some of my work done or to delegate it out to someone else.

So, while I have been busy getting ready for Baby Abigial I have also been getting my business ready to make some money while I take care of our newest Cullo.

Filed Under: Blog, Dawn's Blog Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Virtual Assisting, Working

Mini Office

December 20, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

In anticipation of baby Abigail’s arrival we have decided to move some of my office upstairs into our bedroom. I know what you are thinking, mistake! But as an Entrepreneur the one thing that I will not be getting with this new baby is any paid maternity leave. Of course, I could have set some money aside for this time and taken some time off, but I just couldn’t squeeze anything else out of my checks so here I am needing to work with a new baby. However, I am not discouraged at all, I know that I can make this work. At least this time with a new baby my expectations about having a baby are more realistic this time. My plan is to work a few hours a week, and I can certainly do that with my office upstairs as that is where I am going to spend the majority of my time.

When we brought Lily home from the hospital I was in shock at how hard taking care of a new baby would be. Before Lily’s arrival I read just about every baby book out there, was on Baby Center everyday reading about new babies. However, I had no idea how much my life would change with a new baby, I basically felt like my life was over, at least the life I used to know was over. I recall within the first few days of bringing Lily home Louis and I crawled into bed for the night at 7:30pm, we were so tired and overwhelmed at how hard raising a new baby was. At this point I just wanted to pull the covers over my head and start over and I wanted to burn every baby book I had read because I felt that they really didn’t prepare me for much.

Now, fast forward 4 years and we are more prepared and realistic about raising a new baby. We know that it is going to be hard at first, she is going to cry a lot at first until we can get her all figured out and get settled into a routine. For now, I can work at least an hour a day and slowing increase my client load as Abigail gets older. I know it is going to be tough, but I know I can do it!

The other reason for moving part of my office upstairs is so that Lily keeps her flippin mess upstairs in the playroom. Often, when I working downstairs she drags a ton of her toys and stuffed animals downstairs so she can play and be near me while I work. I love her dearly, but she can really make a mess and that drives me bonkers. In the past I have used our older laptop upstairs and logged into LogMeIn to control my work computer downstairs but Holy Cow sitting at Lily’s playdough table and trying to work was just not cutting it for me! So, in my defense I did try to make it work without another desk upstairs. So, we headed out to Ikea to find a desk that would work in a small area but not look funky in a bedroom and we found this great combo of a desk with drawers and it looks like a dresser when it is closed up.

Here is a picture of the desk when it is open

Office

Here is a picture of the desk when it is closed

OfficeDesk

Filed Under: Blog, Dawn's Blog Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assisting, Working

Twitter Tips I’ve Picked Up

December 16, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

I have a few Twitter Tips up my sleeve and I’d like to share these with you.

Use a colorful background or wear a bright color in your profile photo.

This tip I picked up from Erin Blaskie. She explains that by having a bright profile image your Tweets will ‘pop’ out more within someone’s Tweet Stream, makes sense to me. Check out her Twitter profile image when you follow her you will see how much her Tweets actually seem to jump out at you.

Join Twitter Directories

There are several Twitter directories you can join and once you do so people can find and follow you based upon common interests. Some directories to join are:

We Follow – http://wefollow.com/ – This one is my favorite because it ranks people in differnt categories (they place themselves in the categories) but it is still fun to see who the top Celebrity Tweeters are or the top Social Media people are.
Twellow - http://www.twellow.com/ – Known as the Twitter Yellow Pages
Just Tweet It - http://justtweetit.com/ – Find other people who Tweet what you Tweet

Completely fill out your Bio, Upload a picture, Create a Background Image

People are more likely to follow you if you have a completed Bio. Also, be sure to use your real name in your profile so that if someone searches for you, they can find you! Isn’t that the point of being on the Internet anyway so that people can find you? Also, you can create your own background instead of the stock Twitter backgrounds. There are a lot of web designers who will do this for you for a small fee. My favorite designer is BKB Designs , her name is Katherine Boroksi and she Designed my company logo and she can whip up something for you in a flash.

Tweet and Retweet

To stay relevant, you need to Tweet what you think! You will find that you create the most converstation with people if you actually interact with them on Twitter and ReTweet their thoughts as well. Don’t just ReTweet a celebrity Tweet, actually Tweet things that are of interest to you as that is how you will create a community of like minded followers.

You can also follow me on Twitter at – http://www.twitter.com/dawncullo

For more social marketing tips check out my business site – http://www.SunriseVirtualServices.com

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Twitter, Virtual Assisting, Working

Facebook Photo Privacy

October 17, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

You can adjust the settings for your the photo albums you post on Facebook, and even for the photos that your friends tag you in. To adjust the settings you will need to do the following.

Create separate lists of your contacts. These lists can be as simple as “friends”, “family” or “co-workers” etc.
Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile Information > Photo Albums
Next locate Photo Albums from the list and click on the Edit Settings Button

All of your photo albums will now appear and from the drop down lists you can select who can see your photos, but you can take that a step further by actually selecting specific lists from not seeing your photo albums.

As you can see in my Mobile Uploads I have blocked my Networking & Co-workers list from seeing these photos. When they go to my photos, that particular album will not appear in my Photo tab.

To block a list of people from seeing a photo album select “customize” from the drop down list type in the name of the list.

To block specific lists of people from seeing photos and videos that you have been tagged in you will pretty much do the same thing.

Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile Information > Photos and Videos of Me

Select the edit button and adjust your settings as necessary. If you want to block a specific list of people you can just type in the name of the list in the “Hide this from” section.

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Dawn, Facebook, Sunrise Virtual Services, Virtual Assisting, Working

Shorten, Share and Track Your Links

July 30, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

I have been using TinyURL for quite some time to shorten my long links while using Twitter, however my colleague Erin Blaskie showed me an even better way to shorten long URL’s. The service is called bit.ly and you can not only shorten your URL but you can also view the analytic for the link.

Once you have shorten your link and use it you can immediately start to see the analytic information. Below is a recent one I used for a promotion on my Mommy Blogging site.

There are other features about this service that make it fantastic.

History

Bit.ly will keep a history of your links, this is a great feature if you do affiliate marketing and you want to shorten your links and track them.

Sidebar Bookmarks

Shorten URLs from anywhere with either one of bit.ly’s bookmarklets. They have made available either a sidebar widget or a standard tool bar bookmark then share your bit.ly link in your Email, on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere!

Blog

To keep up on all things bit.ly check out their bit.ly blog.

Tell me what you think about bit.ly or what service do you use to shorten your URL’s?

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: bit.ly, Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Virtual Assisting, Working

Twitter Verified

June 12, 2009 By Dawn Cullo 2 Comments

Have you ever thought of following a celebrity on Twitter but just not sure if it is really them sending those Tweets? Well, you are not the only one who has had that thought that cross through their mind.

The good folks over at at Twitter in San Francisco are working on saving us from fake celebrity accounts. The are currently in the process of verifying celebrity accounts to be sure that they are authentic. They are creating a new Verified Account program in which they will do their homework and find an official person connected to the celebrity who can verify the account. According to the Twitter Blog they are planning on rolling out the program this summer.

Until then, the best way to be sure you are following a 100% genuine grade A celebrity is to go to their website and see if they have a link to their Twitter account. Even better some celebrities have publicized their Twitter ID’s on their talk shows or while doing interviews.

Oprah is one such celebrity who announced her Twitter ID on air. She devoted an entire show to Twitter in April 2009. She tweeted live for the first time on TV with Gayle King by her side and even had Evan Williams co-founders of Twitter on the show with her. You can be sure that this Twitter account is the real Oprah http://twitter.com/oprah

These accounts have already been verified by the celebrity either through their website or themselves via their own talk show or while on another show.

Gail King – http://twitter.com/kinggayle
Jimmy Fallon – http://twitter.com/jimmyfallon
Ashton Kutcher – http://twitter.com/aplusk
Demi Moore – http://twitter.com/mrskutcher
Ellen Degeneres- http://twitter.com/TheEllenShow
Shaq – http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ
MC Hammer – http://twitter.com/MCHammer
Anderson Cooper – http://twitter.com/andersoncooper
Sean Diddy Combs – http://www.twitter.com/IamDiddy

Who are the celebrities that you follow?

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Twitter, Virtual Assisting, Working

Publicize Your Twitter

May 22, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

It is important to add your Twitter URL (or ID) to your Facebook, your Website and your Blog. This will help your current connections to find your Twitter URL (or ID) and start to follow you on Twitter.

By adding your Twitter URL to your Facebook, Website or Blog page people will then be able to quickly follow you on Twitter by clicking the link and going to your Twitter profile. Your Twitter URL is http://www.twitter.com/username or ID for instance mine is http://www.twitter.com/dawncullo

To Add The URL To Your Facebook

The link can be added to your Contact information under the Info Tab in the Websites section.

1. Click on the INFO tab in your Facebook Profile.

2. Scroll down to the Contact Information section

3. Hover your mouse over the Edit button / pencil area until it appears and then click EDIT.

4. Scroll down to the WEBSITE section

5. Type in your Twitter URL (remember it is http://www.twitter.com/username)

6. Click the blue SAVE CHANGES button.

7. View the link on your profile Home Page under the INFORMATION section.

To Add The URL To Your Website and Blog

Do a quick Google search for “Twitter Buttons” and you will come up with a laundry list of designs. My favorite site is Twitter Buttons but there are a lot of new sites popping up all the time so check those out too for a design that fits into your Website or Blog theme.

1. Once you have found the design you like input your Twitter ID in the box at the top of the page and click “GO”

2. The site will automatically generate an HTML code below the design.

3. Select copy code and then paste to it your Website or Blog.

4. You can also past the code in a notepad document and save it for use later.

5. This is an example of a design from Twitter Buttons

Go ahead, click on the badge, see what happens.

I found this one on Twit Buttons

If you are unsure how to do then add this to your Website or Blog page this could be a great task to delegate to a Virtual Assistant or a Web Site Editor.

If you have a WordPress Blog site I can help you with this task. I offer this as part of my Blog Update service. Send me an email if you are interested in adding your Twitter ID to your blog. My email is dawn@sunrisevirtualservices or you can Tweet me.

[tags] Twitter, Dawn Cullo, Sunrise Virutal Services [/tags]

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Twitter, Virtual Assisting

TweetStats, it’s all about the numbers.

April 20, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

TweetStats, it’s all about the numbers.

I just started to use this Twitter Tool called TweetStats.

TweetStats will Graph your Twitter Stats including

Tweets per hour
Tweets per month
Tweet timeline
Reply statistics

Here is a view of my Tweet Cloud, the bigger the word the more I have Tweeted about it.

This is one of the many graphs that are available. This one illustrates who I have sent an @reply to and how often.

There are a ton of Twitter Tools out there these days, what are the ones you find most useful?

If you like this tip and want more like it then hop over to my virtual assisting site SunriseVirtual Services and sign up for my email list.

Filed Under: Blog, Sunrise Virtual Services Tagged With: Dawn, Sunrise Virtual Services, Twitter, Virtual Assisting, Working

Privacy Settings on Facebook

March 20, 2009 By Dawn Cullo Leave a Comment

Do you want to adjust how your Facebook activity appears on your friends News Feed?

Under the Settings section (top right) go to Settings>Privacy Settings> News Feed and Wall

Now check or un-check items you don’t want to have appear on other people’s news feeds.

Bonus tip !

Click the Social Ads tab so you can adjust your Social Ads privacy settings. You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Social Ads by seleting No One from the drop down list.