Andrew Breitbart It Was Nice To Meet You

by Vinny O'Hare on March 1, 2012

Last year at BlogWorld I met Andrew Breitbart and it was under very strange circumstances. He was one of the speakers at the closing keynote session they had with Chris Brogan, Chris Pirillo, Shuana Glenn and Sara Benincasa. I got to the keynote early and found a nice seat up front. Before the session started I sat at a huge roundtable and others quickly filled it up.

We start making small talk and we are discussing everything that we do and one guy says my client is speaking here at BlogWorld. I was thinking at the time that it was during the show and that was it.

The keynote session starts and I had never heard of Andrew Breitbart before and he was one of the first speakers. I think he was actually second now that I think about it. This was the famous session where everyone had videos of themselves that was talked about for weeks on the blogosphere. The session went on and Andrew talked I kept saying to myself who is guy, and who does he think he is. In a way he was like me and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and I found that kind of cool.

Then he started getting into politics and my opinion of him kind of turned sour. I totally didn’t agree with what he was saying, I found it interesting but I didn’t agree with it. This is what he was good at doing, making you think about things in a way that you probably weren’t thinking about. I didn’t realize it but to me he was coming off as conceited and his way was the right way no questions about it.

After the session was over the guy sitting next to me said “How did you like the session?” My answer was it was pretty good except that Andrew guy turned me off. Within a minute Andrew came to the table and said Hello to everyone. The guy next to me says “This is Andrew, my client.” It was one of the funniest moments I have ever had at a show. We all had a good laugh as the guy told Andrew what I had told him. Andrew got what I meant and we laughed about it as he didn’t have time to debate me on anything. I am sure we could have talked for hours if we had time.

They were in a hurry to get out of there because Andrew had to be on Fox news or CNN or something. I gave them a quick tip on how to get out of the Javits quickly and where get a cab. I left about 45 minutes later and saw them both standing outside at another place near the Javits and they couldn’t get a cab. I remember laughing to myself as I walked away how this this guy should have listened to me because he couldn’t hail a cab.  I figured I would never hear this guys name mentioned again.

A few weeks later he broke the whole Anthony Weiner scandal

RIP Andrew! Thanks for the good laugh at Blogworld. It was a pleasure meeting you even if it was brief.

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Help Fight Breast Cancer

by Vinny O'Hare on February 11, 2012

The affiliate marketing industry is known for its fundraising efforts on behalf of the Avon Walk for the Cure, which benefits breast cancer research and support. What better time of year than Valentine’s Day to show your love? This week affiliate marketers are using their book revenue to help raise money for Affiliate Marketers Give Back. Purchase any of the books listed below between February 12 and 18 and the authors will donate their profits to AMGB. Although many of the books focus on business, affiliate marketing, and blogging, you will also find children’s books, photography books, and more.

Join us in helping spread the word about Affiliate Marketers Give Back and this Book Hop for the Boobies. Support us by buying just one book. Don’t have a Kindle? You can still purchase Kindle books and read them on your PC, MAC, iPad, Android Tablets or other devices with free apps from Amazon. The link is on every Kindle book page.

Books About Business:

Internet Marketing From the Real Experts (Shawn Collins, Missy Ward, and The Gang of 88) Collection of affiliate, email, blogging, podcasting, video, search engine, and social network rock stars that break down the how and why of Internet marketing in a clear, easy to understand way.

The only print book in this book fundraiser is: It’s All About the Cookies (Mary Poiley, Missy Ward, and Jen Goode) A mouth-watering collection of recipes and thought-provoking insights affiliate marketers learned on their road to success – an interesting read and a wonderful addition to your own kitchen.

Internet Marketing for Business Answers (Jim Kukral) The absolute best way to learn how to grow a successful business is to pay attention to how the experts have done it before you. Internet Marketing for Business Answers, the Small Business Expert Interviews edition puts you into a private one-on-one session with over 16 of the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs on the Web.

No Publisher Needed – Crowdfunding Your Book – How I Raised Over $30k in 30-Days To Pre-Fund My New Book (Jim Kukral) You don’t need an agent or a publisher to make your new book a success. You can use the power of the crowd to pre-fund your book and create your own virtual signing bonus. That’s what I did. I raised over $30k in 30-days for my new book series. Want to know how to do it? That’s what this book is all about.

The Basics of Affiliate Success: Running a Business (Top Secrets of Successful Affiliate Marketing) (Billy Kay) Affiliates always joke that they make money in their bathrobes, and that affiliate marketing is “easy money”! But in reality, it IS… a business. If run it like a business, it can succeed. Billy offers these business tricks and tips to help establish, grow and sustain your affiliate marketing career.

Follow Me: Making Money with Blogging, Facebook Marketing & Twitter for Business (Dave Cupples) Former NSW Young Entrepreneur of the Year, SMX Idol Winner and International Speaker Dave Cupples shares leading Social Media case studies from around the world and the most effective tools and actionable cutting edge tips for businesses to skyrocket new leads and supercharge revenue using Facebook, Twitter and Blogging. Includes Tips & Tools to incentivize Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers & Blog Subscribers, How to spy on competitors and copy their most effective tactics, Tips & Tools to get your content shared by influencers and much more!

Affiliate Marketing: The Complete Guide for Beginners (Affiliate Marketing – Mastering Internet Marketing) (Todd Farmer) This guide is designed to teach you the basics of Affiliate Marketing. I want you to understand how it works, who the players are, and how you fit in.

MyContentPro’s Cheap-Ass Guide to Online Content (Online Content for Marketers) (Todd Farmer) Content for your website or online marketing project is a critical component for success. The goal of this eBook is to help you get the content you need, at the lowest price. Many of the sources and strategies uncovered in this eBook provide content for your websites, 100% Free.

Best Practices for Coupon Sites (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks)

Best Practices for Creating Your Affiliate Agreement (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Eric Nagel)

Choosing the Scope and Structure of Your Blog (Deborah Carney, Tricia Meyer, Liz Fogg)

Facebook + Email = Success (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Dave Cupples and David Iwanow)

SEO for Blogs (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Eric Nagel, Tricia Meyer)

Children’s & Young Adult Books

W is for Woofer (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) A rhyming picture book with words that all begin with the letter W.

Woofer Works Out (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) Get kids excited to move and exercise with this illustrated rhyming book that showcases activities and sports for every season.

Winnie McGoo’s Museum Adventure (Leslie Nazarian, Sharon Nazarian) A museum can be an exciting place. Just ask Winnie McGoo. Whose adventure in a museum one night isn’t something many people do. From eating pizza with Mona Lisa to swimming on the Isle of Grande Jatte, Winnie’s museum adventure creates an interesting plot.

Block Boy (Alec Ababon) Short story about a boy that is different from the others and is bullied in school.

Animal Kingdom: Jaguar is Reborn (Eric Carney, Deborah Carney) Workaholic Jason Peters is an average sales rep with a suburban house and wife, Jennifer. One day Jason spills coffee in his car and finds a gold coin that changes their lives forever.

Inspiratonal and Photographs:
Blue Honeycreepers (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare)

Flowers With Wings (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare)

Inspirational Quotes for Writers – Coffee Table Book (Deborah Carney)

Poetry and Peonies: Japanese Tree Peonies (Deborah Carney)

Buddha Beach: Sedona, Arizona (The Southwest Gallery Series) (Deborah Carney, Liz Fogg, Alec Ababon)

What is Inspiration? (Thoughts on Life) (Alan Loren) – a mini-anthology of poetry drawn from the pages of a writer’s workshop called MWW (My Word Wizard).

Valentine Quotes and Love Poems (Elise Beckett) Valentine’s Day Love quotes and sayings combined with images of romance, sweets and flowers for your sweetheart on valentine’s day. This book of love quotes and poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare and others is like whispering sweet nothings into your lovers ear.

An assortment of other books:
Sweet Indulgences (Heather Romiti) Sweet Indulgences offers Classic Dessert and Girl Scout Cookie flavored Smoothies, along with Holiday Favorites. These smoothies are especially helpful if you still want to enjoy your favorite desserts but are trying to cut back on fat and carbohydrates.

Bike – A Short Story (Eric Carney)

Slay the Demons (Daniel Fogg, Deborah Carney) When a random act of violence forces him to hide a corpse, Brent Fischer finds himself confronted with horrors long forgotten and horrors he longs to forget. In the end he must either face down his demons once and for all or let them chase him off a cliff. Sex, Drugs & Murder

Weirder Than Marshmallows (Daniel Fogg, Deborah Carney)

To donate directly to the Missy Ward Avon Walk Team, click on this link and donate to your favorite walker or to the team in general. Thank you in advance for your support!

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Affiliate Summit West Session Slide Deck

by Vinny O'Hare on January 29, 2012

I am still getting questions about my session “25 Ways to Improve Your Website” that I presented at Affiliate Summit West 2012 so I decided to share my slide deck from that. Below is the slides content in text form, it is a little tough to read so If you want to see the slide deck it is also below. You get bonus points if you spot the mistake.

1. 25 Ways To Improve Your Website Take Action Guide To Improve Your Website. Vinny O’Hare Vincent O’Hare Consulting

2. Who Am I  – Spent 23 years in outdoor advertising industry. Started on the Internet in 1999 – EBay Powerseller. 2001 Started making content filled websites focusing on affiliate programs. 2009 Started affiliate managing and teaching. Co-host on AffiliateABC’s podcast.

3. What We Will Discuss – This presentation is set up to show 25 topics and break it down by three items for each topic. I call it first glance – second glance – third glance. Be prepared to write on your worksheet. All links in this presentation can be found at Vinnyohare.com/help

4. Your Website Now – Current Rankings! – Where are you now? Why so bad? – Are you doing something wrong? Competition – What are they ranking for? Before you start you have to take a good look at where you are now so you can judge your results. Google webmaster tools can show your average rankings for free. Don’t get caught up in stats.

5. Keywords – Do you have a keyword list? Are you sure you are using the right keywords? Keyword ideas – check your competitions. Free Tools – Google Keyword tool, Compete.com, Google Alerts, Soovle, YouTube Keyword Tool, Wordtracker.com has free sample. Chrome extensions SEO site tools, SEOquake. Paid Tools – Raventools.

6. Colors – Is your site welcoming? Can color blind people read your website? Do you have good font and font size? Dark gray fonts on gray backgrounds should be illegal! Just because you think your site “Looks Pretty” doesn’t mean others will like it or buy something.

7. Title Tag – Is your keyword mentioned? Under 70 characters long? Is your keyword near the front? Do a Google search on your keyword and see other titles and see what others are using and take notice what they are missing and what you can do better.

8. Meta Description Tag – Do you have one? Less than 150 characters. Keyword in beginning and a Call To Action or Curiosity near the end. Same as the title tag do a Google search and see what can be done better than the results that are showing.

9. Meta Keyword Tag – Do you have one? Less than three? Page should only have one focus on one keyword Most search engines ignore this tag – I still use one – It is optional. Most SEO’s will tell you to ignore this tag. Bing claims they use it to catch spammers.

10. Search Box – Do you have one? Is it above the fold? Does it work? There is a reason why 90% of ecommerce sites have them above the fold. You can’t read customers minds or intentions. If you are using Google analytics you can see what people are searching for and develop new pages based on those terms or freshen up old pages.

11. Logo – Do you have one? Is it any good? Does it link back to the homepage? Make sure your logo is optimized for faster loading and includes “alt tags” for Google image search results. Don’t be afraid to get constructive advice on your logo. Lesruba.com is who I use to design mine.

12. About Us Page – Do you have one? Is it personal? – Explain your POD (point of difference) Easily found on your site? The about us page is your chance to build trust with your readers. The page shouldn’t be all about you, it should be about how you are going to solve the customers problem. Great example Derek Halpern SocialTriggers.com about page.

13. Blog – Does your website have one? Structure – is it WordPress – Paid Theme? Are the permalinks set correctly? Blogs are good for interaction with customers. It also provides a fresh place for the search engines to spider. Make sure your blog has all the social media sharing buttons. Have others spread the word about your site.

14. Contact Us Page – Do you have one? Is the information correct? Methods of contact – phone- email etc. Let user know how long a response usually takes. Readers that choose to contact you want answers a.s.a.p. be available in many different ways. Use a contact form to avoid spam. Readers questions can become content on a FAQ page.

15. Privacy Policy – Do you have one? Does it have the correct info? Easily found in footer – Make it a no follow page. Yes you need one. You can find templates online to get you started serprank.com has a good one to get you started.

16. Trust – Does your site have it? Would you buy something from your website? Be honest with yourself. Always a job to improve it. Building trust is an ongoing thing. Would you trust your website with your credit card? Have a neighbor or a relative sit at your computer and go over your site and see their reaction.

17. Email Newsletter – Do you have one? Have an offer to encourage sign ups. Have an auto-responder series. Gets users back to your website. I use Aweber which sends out my blog post as a newsletter automatically. No need to write content just for a newsletter. You can use current content on your site in an auto-responder series. Use Twitter and Facebook to get people on to your list.

18. Navigation – Is it easy to find items? Is it helpful to visitors? Driving visitors to a trusted landing page. Have to make sure your navigation is spider-able. It is worthless if your navigation is not able to be crawled by the search engines.

19. Backlinks – Do you have any? Always have a plan to get more. Find competitors backlinks – get some from them. Blekko.com – Type in link:competitorswebsite.com Contact the websites that show up and try to get backlinks from them. Firefox extension – Quirk Search Status quirk.biz/searchstatus

20. Images – Does your site have any? Customers like them. Are they optimized for fast loading. Alt Text – Do you have them optimized? Free tool picnik.com for easy optimizing. They also have a chrome extension and a Firefox add on.

21. Videos – Do you have any? Make “How To” videos explaining solutions. Self hosted or YouTube or both. Videos build trust, users love them! Never have them auto play. You can make short videos featuring a solution to a problem. Have your videos transcribed. Speechpad.com

22. Landing Pages – Call to action. No other distractions. Quick checkout or wherever you want customers to go. Getting the user to your shopping cart or to the merchants site in the least amount of steps possible leads to the best results. No sidebars – No navigation – no leaks to other pages.

23. Internal Linking Site Structure – Link at least one page to every new page. Natural Flowing – Only link where it is needed or contribute to the existing page. Link to Right Pages To Help Consumer. If you are on WordPress there are plugins for this. Internal linking helps many things happen on your website. Time on site, bounce rate, spiders.

24. On Page Content Keyword Density – Keep in mind as you are writing. Keyword bolded on the page once. Usually in my headline. Keywords in the anchor text to product or landing page. I keep my keyword density under 3%, not a rule just always done it this way. I use it as a guide. Content is always quality! If it isn’t then it shouldn’t be on your website. If you suck at writing outsource it or take classes to become a better writer. Iwriter.com or Elance.com

25. Site Speed – What is your site speed? How can we improve it? What is holding us down? Google webmaster tools has page speed tools. Cheap hosting is not worth it. Gtmetrix.com great resource to see what is slowing down your site.

26. Blogs in Niche – Find similar niches. Leave a good comment. Nothing spammy! Look for backlinks for your site in other users comments. There are a lot of quality sites that can be found on quality comments. Contact them for a backlink or possibly a guest post on their blog. Use Google alerts with your keyword phrases. Instant results delivered to your inbox.

27. Forums – Find a similar niche – Competition there? Participate – Be helpful. Good signature with your social media urls. When you find a good forum become the expert there. I usually dedicate some time once a week to check forums for new post. As long as you are not spammy the forum admin will be happy to have you answering questions.

28. YouTube – Do you have an account? Build subscribers and friends = recurring visitors. Make helpful videos – “How To” videos are huge. Place a link in description to your website product page. Including the link with an http:// makes the link clickable for users. Leave comments on high ranking videos in your niche to gain subscribers.

29. Twitter – Do you have an account? Is a keyword in the bio? Are you interacting? Build followers in your niche or problem solving. Find someone influential in the niche and follow who they follow. If you have a local website follow the local news or radio station accounts. Get their followers to follow you! Be funny and informative. Use tools when you can to help get out your message. Examples: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck.

30. Facebook – Have an account? – 70 million+ people do. Set up a fan page? Put your url in the about section. Have Facebook contest. Builds fans and returning customers. Use a Facebook approved app. Use Facebook to get readers on to your email list so you can market them forever.

31. Google+ – Do you have an account? Set up a business page? Find the most popular person in your niche and see who they are following and follow them. Share good information and you will build a loyal following. Follow Chris Brogan and Trey Ratcliff. Findpeopleonplus.com – Great way to find others to follow.

32. Resources  – Follow http://vinnyohare.com/help – All links in this presentation can be found here and more. Twitter.com/vinnyohare –

25 Ways To Improve Your Website

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