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Vinny O'Hare

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Vinny O'Hare

Can Your Customers Contact You

contact us signThis is kind of an unplanned post that came to me while I was walking down the street on my way to take sunset pictures. I came across this sign in front of a house for sale and it stopped me in my tracks.  I took my smart phone out of my pocket and took a quick picture knowing that this would become a blog post someday.

If you look at this sign it has like a million ways for you to be able to see more information about the house for sale.

I started to think about when Shawn Collins was selling his house and he wasn't thrilled with the way the real estate agent was doing nothing so he took it in his own hands and sold the house on his own. I was thinking if Shawn had these guys working for him he wouldn't of had to do that as these guys seem to have their stuff in order.

Taking a quick look at the sign I can see a phone number, a QR code, a website, their links to 6 social networks. On the bottom of the sign is a text number with details. 10 ways I can get more info on the property. Make it 11 because they also had a flyer in a box with all the information. I think you could say this was blanket coverage.

Then I got to thinking about all the websites I see as an affiliate manager that have no contact details on them at all. Usually these turn out to be declined from our programs. 99% of the time they are just spam blogs done quickly or the webmaster is new and doesn't see the need to be contacted and/or doesn't know the benefits of building a trust factor.

Potential customers will have questions that they may need answered before they hand over their credit card information. While I agree with Derrick Halpern of Social Triggers when he says you shouldn't have your website filled with social media buttons in your sidebar you have to make it easy for customers and media to contact you.

I hear you saying “But Vinny I don't want to answer peoples questions?” Trust me every time you get contacted with a question you can either use that question on your FAQ page or maybe even a full out blog post. Odds are if one of your customers has this question others will also. Done right your new page could become the authority in the niche and become the #1 spot in the search engines.

The Media May Be Looking To Contact You For a Story

With this San Francisco plane crash all over the news it makes me realize how lucky I was last year to have CNN contact me. If you saw the video Fred Hayes shot of the plane crash you saw his name on the upper right hand corner.

Last year I got lucky and was in the right place at the right time when the Space shuttle crashed into a bridge while being transported to the USS Intrepid. We did a podcast on this on ABC's Plus where I explain the details. At the time I didn't have a contact us form on this site. Somewhere along the line I missed this step making the site. It happens!

Without a contact us or some sort of social media contacts on your site you have no way for the media to contact you. Why make people jump through hoops to get to you. People buy from people they trust. Take a moment now and see how many of your websites need a contact us form or another way for media to contact you.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a major TV production company looking for information on my niche to use on a very popular tv show. When I got the email I was surprised but with the CNN experience under my belt I knew exactly how to handle that. While that is still in the talking stages who knows maybe the site will be mentioned on the show? Maybe on their webpage with a back link of course. We will see what happens but I do know that wouldn't happen if I didn't have a way for the media to contact me.

 

New Photography Website For Me

Sedona RiverAfter years of having my pictures placed on this site I finally decided they need a site of their own. While the site is no where close to being done I feel comfortable sharing it with others now that I have a few photos up on it.

After processing this picture on the left it made me realize that I needed a website for my photography. I get asked over and over by friends and family where they can buy the pictures that I take so I have them in a SmugMug gallery where they can purchase whatever they want. Since our printers were washed away by Hurricane Sandy we are no longer able to print photos at home for now.

Coming up with a domain name was tough since I didn't want anything like “Vinny O'Hare Photos.com” I had a brainstorming session with Karen Garcia who came up with the name CameraWe.com. I like it because it has an abbreviated “Awesome” in it which if you didn't know I use in a few of my sites. I also like it because it is a word that probably pisses of my friend Lisa Picarillie who doesn't like it when words are thrown together and hard to say 🙂 I can hear her now saying is it “Camera We” or “Camera awe”.  Yes Lisa I can hear you say Dam you Vinny O'Hare lol.

Choosing a theme for the site was a no-brainier for me since we promote the Expand2Web affiliate program. Since most of my viewers will be local to me it was the choice to make. I love the responsive theme and the sliders which I didn't exactly get right when it comes to sizing but I did it quickly. I don't have to worry about what device people are viewing my pictures on. Less coding on my behalf is always a good thing, or I should say outsourcing the coding.

I am not sure if I am removing the pictures section from this site yet, but I am guessing I will when this site gets a makeover.

Remembering Rexanne

Can't tell you how much it means to me that the last tweet that Rexanne did was a retweet of something I posted. This Tweet is exactly a year old today.

Affiliate Summit and Shareasale ThinkTank – vinnyohare.com/affiliate-summ…

— Rexanne Mancini (@Rexanne) May 21, 2012

 

She was such a lovely woman that made everyone around them a better person. I would like to think that she is in a better place laughing that she was mentioned in this post. Although it has been almost a year since we lost Rexanne it is amazing how many times she pops up online. I get a reminder of her almost every two to three weeks or so. One of her email accounts was hacked and it sends email every once in a while. I smile every time I get a spam email from Rexanne. I think it is her way telling me to get off the computer and go out and have fun.

She also makes appearances on Facebook when I go to invite people to like a page or something since she is still in my friends list. She will also pop up on sponsored stories if she had liked a page in the past. Once again it makes me smile. I am sure I am not the only one of her friends that this happens to.

Thanks Rexanne for making me smile more often, Miss you!

Henny Penny SEO

Nothing like a Tweet from Matt Cutts on a Friday afternoon on a Holiday weekend to ruin some peoples weekend.

@dannysullivan your call, of course, but the internal team here has taking to referring to the upcoming release as Penguin 2.0.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 10, 2013

Actually Matt and Danny Sullivan are having a fun conversation about what the updates name is going to be. I see it as a non issue. If you are relying for traffic from the search engines you are doing it wrong. I am looking forward to seeing my search rankings go up as the clear out some more crap.

I actually love it when they do updates as it gives you an idea of what they want usually. I also enjoy seeing all the blog post that pop up blaming Google for a loss of business. Your business should be able to with stand a Google update. It is out of your control where they rank you (If that even matters anymore).

This weekend the webmaster forums and blogs will all be doing their best posting about Henny Penny SEO the other “The sky is falling” things and what they think Google is doing. They should be focusing on making their sites better.

Hurricane Sandy

It has been about a month since Hurricane Sandy decided to flood our town of Broad Channel and all our neighbors houses.

As you can imagine the emotions we have had are all over the place. With these emotions in play you have to make decisions about rebuilding, if you want to rebuild and other stuff.

While I have been tearing apart the house for the last month or so it only feels like 3 or 4 days since the Hurricane came. Luckily for us we had a plan in place to go to the next door neighbors house if the flooding got bad. Our neighbor has a second story house and while his first floor was destroyed with water his second story provided us shelter in some crazy weather.

I am sure the details of what happened during the storm will come out better when we do a podcast on this as I have probably times and dates mixed up.

I have to say that the little town we live in really got a lot closer and I never thought that would be possible as everyone knows everyone. There is only about 1000 homes on our island and I have been in my house for 44 years. I have neighbors that are here much longer than me.

Everyone was in the same boat when it came to this storm. We all had no power, nothing to eat and an uncertain feeling about the morning tide that could bring a second flooding.

We decided to wait until we had to leave before we actually made the move. The space between the neighbors house and our house is connected by a back deck that is a few feet higher than the sidewalk. We watched the water come up over the sidewalk and with almost 2 hours until high tide we knew we were in trouble.

While our house isn't up high on a foundation it never gets water from the tide. Well I shouldn't say never, it got an inch of water during the no name nor'easter in 1992 I think. Since we evacuated to my brothers house in Syracuse for hurricane Irene last year and didn't get any water we figured we would wait this storm out. My mistake!

There were signs that we should have left. The weather channels Jim Cantores face when the mayor decided not to evacuate should have been a sign. When I saw mr Wilsen who has been in my town for his whole life say he was leaving while being interviewed before the storm on the tv by Channel 11 news I should have said let's leave.

By this time it was too late, where could we go? The hotels were already filled and they would be in the same boat as us with no power. This storm was so big that unless you got a full day head start you would still be in the path.

Trying to find a place that could take us and our cats seemed to be an impossible thing. Our only resort was to take shelter in the neighbors house on the second floor.

As the tide was coming up I felt sad that there was water in the house, then I felt glad we were safe. The emotions were all over the place but knowing we were safe was the main thing. As the tide came up we could yell across to the neighbors houses and exchange a “We are alright” with each other.

The next few hours I was on my iPad which was connected to Debbie's iPad and able to get online. I was posting pictures of the water coming in and since there was nothing else to do we took some videos.

Then it got real in a hurry! The water was coming from the east side. I have never seen this before. The ice machine from the deli on the corner went by as if it was a toy. The machine had to weigh over 500 pounds. Soon after that an empty boat came by so fast it could have pulled a water skier.

The winds were picking up and we were waiting to lose power. From our second floor we could see that something was burning over in the Rockaways but we couldn't tell what it was. Later on we would find out it was the town of Breezy Point. Whatever we had going on here I knew it was much worse where those fires were.

I snapped a few pictures but I let Debbie do most of the picture taking. For some reason I just didn't feel like taking pictures. I was too busy thinking about what was happening in our house next door and worried if the house we were in was strong enough to handle the winds that must have been over 100 mph. It was by far the strongest winds I have ever seen.

The light show that the telephone poles were giving off were scary. They would light up for a minute or so and then burn out. I was sure there were downed wires in the water in front of our house.

Our neighbor Joe was busy trying to get our attention letting us know that he thought the house we were in was catching fire. After scrambling through the house we realized it was the wires leading to the house next door to use were arching and smoking. Nothing like throwing throwing fire into the mix of all that was going on.

The rest of the night was filled with watching the wind and updating Facebook which for some reason was still working until the water started to go down. We were amazed that they didn't cut the power. With the stuff burning all over the city everyone in town was thinking the same thing the next few days.

I was wondering about how many people they would find dead in their houses. Our town is filled with older people that have been through every type of storm and most have always stayed. Most live in single story houses like us and wouldn't have a place to escape to until it was too late. Luckily this didn't come to pass as no one perished in the flood from our town.

I started to think about where my family was. I knew my mom was on the 3rd floor of a neighbors house and she was ok because we spoke on the cell phone a few times. I knew my brother joe and his family were at the firehouse which has a second level so I knew they were ok. Brother Eddie was going to a hotel out of town so I knew his family was ok. My brother Danny was the only one I didn't know about but being he is the fire chief and was probably out working his ass off during the storm and he would be ok.

With the water receding my focus came to getting some much needed sleep. We knew that there was going to be a high morning tide and we needed to be awake for that. Since the wind was still strong I didn't have the feeling to go outside or into our house to see the damage. In the back of my mind I guess I didn't want to see it.

I am not sure if I will be adding to this or not. I can see me doing a day by day post covering the first few days.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

To raise awareness I usually change my site colors to pink for the month of October. Although it makes some of my sites look crazy as pink isn't part of the over all color scheme it is the least I can do to raise awareness.

This year I am also walking in the Avon walk for a cure for breast cancer in my hometown of New York City. I will be walking 39 miles over 2 days through the streets of NYC. You can make a donation to the Avon Walk for Breast cancer here.

Here is a short video which gives you all the reasons why I am walking with the affiliate marketers give back team.

30 Day Posting Experiment Cut Short

Well I gave it a gallant effort of 30 blog post in 30 days but Life got in the way on day 20. I picked up some sort of flu and was sick so I couldn't go on posting. Actually doing a blog post was the last thing on my mind as you can imagine. Guess it was God's way of saying “I don't think so Vinny!”

While I am better now after not being able to eat for 2 days, I have compiled enough stats from 20 straight days of posting to get a good handle on what I would have seen if I had posted for 30 days. That blog post will be the next one. I can tell you that I learned a lot about what people like to read and what people like to share. Your blog isn't about you it is about your subject at hand.

Vinny with Swans

Reasons To Attend Afiliate Summit

Once again I will be attending Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in January 2013. If you are on the fence about going take a look at this video filled with industry veterans.

I hope to see you out in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit in January.

Do It Right The First Time And Don’t Look Back

Today we had all new Internet lines run into our office. For the last 3 weeks or so we have been having intermittent connection to the Internet. We had the cable company come after checking our lines and change the modem. All was starting to work right and then we had some issues again.

Today's repairman made no exceptions when it came to making sure we were done correctly when he left. From the time he arrived he let me explain the problem and he came to the conclusion that we run 100% new wires all the way up to the pole outside the house. I took the time to help him and he appreciated it. He went on to tell me what the previous repairman did and the shortcuts he took.

He went on to explain to me that his bosses will be driving by in a few days to make sure that he did the job correctly and he wanted to be sure they could just look from their car and know he did a good job. He was proud of the job he did and he knew it. He also knew that I appreciated the work he was doing. He didn't want to bother cleaning up the guys mess that was before him. He changed everything so that he knew it would work and he also didn't want to come back and fix it again. He is also sleeping well tonight knowing that my Internet is working. It is the same way with building websites!

Build Your Website Right

I am constantly asked about changing websites once they are built. For some crazy reason I get asked by affiliates if they should go back and change their websites every time there is a Google algorithm change. If there is something I hate it is going back and making changes to existing pages. I frankly see no reason to change pages to try to keep up with Google or any search engine for that matter.

I have one person (Yes you Sharon) that always ask me if she should go back and change page whenever I tell her something that is wrong with one of the new pages she shows me. It is usually something so minor that it isn't really that smart to waste enough time going back to change all the pages on your site. It is actually not a good idea to have all the pages optimized on your site the same way anyway. One change of the algorithm and all of your site becomes dead. No one wants that!

I would rather spend time developing new pages and moving on then looking back. I suggest that you do the same.

Passion Always Wins In The End

A few months back I was lucky enough to take part in a Kickstarter project. My friends The Dollyrots started a Kickstarter project to get funding for their new album. I am sure they were sitting around saying that $7500 would do the job and wondering if they would ever reach that level. Something happened that they didn't expect, they raised $33,124. They did this by offering fans the album early along with some up close personal items from the band. Watch this video and you can see the passion they have. I think the fans have more passion for their music then they knew.

The reason they raised this much money is because they are passionate about what they do and the fans know it and feel it too. I have been following the band since 2007 and have seen them live more times than I can count. They always take the time to greet any fan before and/or after they perform and say thanks for coming. It reminds me a lot of Richard Petty who is famous for signing every autograph for a fan that asks for one.

We have had their album for a few weeks now and I can't wait to see the band when they play here is a few weeks. I have all the songs memorized since I have been playing it for a while now. I feel like I know something the rest of the world doesn't yet. Kind of cool being an insider. The new CD came out today and I encourage you to buy it on Itunes – or Amazon.

The band is also using social media very well. Follow The Dollyrots on Twitter and you will see exactly what obstacles the band face while on the road. I love the late night visit tweets after they have had a few beers myself to fast food places. I can say that I feel proud that I showed them what Twitter was and now they have over 5000 loyal followers waiting on their every tweet. Their passion comes out in the tweets as well as the music when they are on stage playing what they love to do. Here is the first single off the new album.

Help the band out by using the social media buttons below and help spread the word about their new album.

Thinking Outside The Box

When you start making websites over and over you always seem to make the new website with lessons taken from the other websites you have built before. It makes total sense but sometimes you have to consider the niche of the new website before applying all the things you think need to be on your new site.

For example you may make sites that have a pop up to capture email addresses. That is fine I have used them and although I hate them as a user in some niches they work great. My latest site it wasn't working as planned so I sat back and wondered why. I emptied my cookies and loaded my site as if I was a first time visitor. When the pop up came up after 30 seconds I found it really annoying since I was in  the middle of reading an article when it popped. I then went on my phone and did the same thing and when the pop up loaded it blocked out my whole screen and I couldn't even exit out of it. Total fail on my end.

Also on my latest site I had an Adsense ad after the post. I have this practically on all my sits as it seems to work great because after the user reads the page they need to do something and having four blue links to click on seems to be a good thing. On this site the Adsense wasn't getting many clicks at all per 10,000 views. I think it got 2 clicks and made me 10 cents, not exactly going as planned. I knew I needed something in that spot and I knew I needed it quickly as I am sure Google looks at your overall conversion. They say they don't but I would bet they do.

I decided that since the site was new I needed to build out the newsletter list. I logged into Aweber and created a 300 x 250 looking newsletter sign up box and placed it after my post. First day I got 15 subscribers within the first hour. Since then I have been getting a new subscriber almost every hour. For a new site this is pretty good. I will probably change a few of my other non performing sites to this method. If I didn't think outside the box this never would of happened. Of course I still have to figure out out to monetize the site better.

Right now the site is using Amazon for its only affiliate program links and since there is no Adsense on the site the users are visiting Amazon more. My conversion rate went up by 1% since the switch. I wasn't really thinking that Amazon sales would be benefited from removing the Adsense but it has.

When you are making new sites try not to rely on what is working on your other sites. It may not be what is best for your site, or your users in the long run.

Will Buying Fiverr Traffic Get Me In Trouble With Google

I was just looking through my stats and this question came up in my server logs. My first thought was if you spent the time to think about it and type that long-assed question in my search box then you probably already know the answer.

YES it will. Buying traffic on Fiverr may be a good short term strategy but Google will eventually see what you are doing and your site will be penalized and found at the bottom of the search results. While Fiverr is a good place for some things I wouldn't be caught dead buying traffic or buying backlinks or link wheels or anything like that.

I use Fiverr to get logos, and maybe get some videos made. You would have to be crazy to use a site like Fiverr to have anything done off page for a website that you care about. Think about it for a second. Say you buy 50 backlinks, all of them are on garbage sites and 50 other sites have the same backlinks as you. Sometimes they are the only backlinks a site has. How easy is it for Google to go in and see these backlinks and realize that they were bought links. It is simple!

Odds are I would be able to see that you bought links or even worse link wheels from Fiverr and I don't have the expansive knowledge that Google has in its arsenal. Unless you don't care about the site you are building and only want a 3 week boost for your site then you can buy traffic from places like Fiverr. I have nothing against them but using it to get traffic to your site is not sensible.

Feeling Emotions While Taking a Picture

On September 11th I went into Manhattan with the goal of getting some pictures of the Freedom Tower and the World Trade Center Tribute Lights. A few years back we took some shots from Brooklyn but I wanted to get closer this time. While I got closer I also got emotional. It is very easy to get emotional when visiting anywhere near the Freedom Tower. I just wasn't expecting it while I was actually taking the picture.

The Sphere use to be located in between the Twin Towers in the courtyard. It was moved to Battery Park in lower Manhattan after Sept 11th. In front of the sphere they have an Eternal flame that is lit 24/7 in honor of those that lost their lives on that tragic day. I have taken pictures of this over the years but this was the first time they had American flags up around it and a picture of the firefighters with their American flag.

It is also the first time I was able to get the Freedom Tower in the background as it is finally high enough to see it among the other buildings. As I was taking the picture I felt myself getting mad.

Back when I worked in the subway system I use to make sure I had lunch every Thursday near the sphere. There use to be a little fence around it where one could sit down. On Thursdays the NYC oldies station WCBS-FM use to have a famous bands from the 1950's -1970's play there. I use to get a delicious Pita bread like sandwich from the same hot dog wagon and take it into the courtyard and listen to some bands play while on my lunch hour. I saw some great Do-wop bands and some great singers from the 50's and 60's and even saw the Monkeys who were great.

So while I was taking the picture I had all these memories flashing back at me. Thinking about some people that I knew that perished that day. Wondering if the hot dog guy that I use to buy my lunch from almost every day made it out of there on time. I started to wonder about all the people that were sitting next to me at the concerts who I sat and talked to. Whatever happened to these people that I met almost every week. I then thought about how I went up in the towers when I was about 5 or 10. I use to love it up there, the elevator ride itself was worth the price alone.

I started to get mad when I realized that my nephews and nieces never got to see New York City from up on top of the World Trade Center like I did. For the first time in a long time I was mad at the terrorist that took that away from them. All these emotions went through me in a matter of seconds although it seemed like an eternity while I was taking the shot.

Voted For The Other Guy

For the last few weeks I have received nothing but mail from my local politicians running for some office. Simple in party run off to see who would get to run in November.

One guy sent me a piece of mail once a week, the other was 1 to 2 pieces every day.

One guy sent me mail with what he was going to do when elected. The other sent me mail with pictures of his family.

One guy sent me mail letting me know what he has done since he is the incumbent. The other sent me mail that looked like it was sent from his relatives in Ireland I guess trying to appeal to my Irish background.

This has been a non stop thing for over a month. One guy sent me about 5 pieces of mail. The other sent me at least 30. I voted for the guy that sent me 5 pieces of mail. The other candidate wasted so much money in mail I would never elect him to any political office.

Add in that fact and the fact that he was annoying to me every time I went to the mailbox to get my mail. The guy that sent the least amount of mail won the election. I wonder how many others felt like me.

The incumbent guy has been doing a great job and he only sent out mail saying what he has done and what he was going to to. That is all I needed to know.

Lets Translate This Online

Do you send emails like crazy? Are you the annoying guy? Do you send relevant information or do you send irrelevant information just to send an email?

Don't be that guy, although I am sending out 30 newsletters for 30 days.

 

Building a Website or Building a Brand

Today's post idea comes from John Mihelakis of Apps HQ

“Hey Vinny, post suggestion: Its about personal websites. It seems that ultimately everyone is branding themselves in the end. Most affiliates have their income sites & also their personal blog sites. Just curious on how you see things.”

Thanks for the suggestion on the post John. It is something that I have been seeing more and more of lately myself. The answer is really simple. Most affiliates want a site they will be able to sell someday. If you make your site a personal one odds are it won't be worth money to someone in the long run.

Most affiliates that I know use their personal blogs to blog about issues they are seeing or for more personal stuff that doesn't really belong on a money making site. The money making branded site should only be about the topic at hand. I am sure you won't be posting political stuff on the Apps-HQ site anytime soon. A personally blog would be a much better spot for it.

A lot of affiliates I know are building brand sites. This is for two reasons:

  • Brands are getting better rankings in Google. There is no in and or buts about it. Most big affiliates are seeing this also happening and adjusting their business for it.
  • It is easier to sell a brand site. They will also get more money for it.

I could never sell vinnyohare.com for anything close to what I would want for it. I could build a brand-able site with similar focus and sell it 5 years from now for a lot of money if I wanted to.

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