This is a question we get all of the time and the answer isn’t always everyone’s favorite. That is because the answer is, that depends. It depends on your list and what and when they want to hear from you. For some businesses Monday is the best day to send, for some it’s Tuesday. I have even met one person whose best time and day to send is Sunday at 6pm because he knows that it will be in-boxed and people will be getting their emails early Monday morning.  Your list manager and data should have different days to mail on the data depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

I would recommend that you test it out for yourself. Do a split test for every day of the week and see which one performs the best for you. This will help you determine the best time and day of the week to email. Check out our Top Subject lines page.

I usually don’t post funny videos but I thought this one was hilarious and very entertaining.  It so applies to all us affiliates, list owners, list managers, ad networks, performance marketers, and everyone else out there trying to make money online!  Hope you like this great idea that our big brother Google gives us.  If anyone can think of a good idea to make this work they will be millionaires.

Yesterday Facebook announced via the developer forum that Facebook Pages now need to be authenticated in order to have landing tabs. WTF, what the hell is this? This basically means any new visitor to your Facebook Page will not be able to land on a custom tab unless you have greater than 10,000 fans or the Page administrator has worked with an ads account representative.  I don’t know how many of you have tried to get a hold of anyone at Facebook but it’s impossible. Why would they do this to us?  This is going to kill small businesses. Hasn’t Facebook been telling small businesses to come to Facebook to promote their business?  Welp, looks like they are screwed now.

This is a massive blow to Page owners who were looking to build their fan base organically on their own. I have found that landing tabs is critical in converting new visitors into fans and prospective customers. Here’s what was posted on the developer forum earlier today:

Hello all,

We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.

Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab. Unfortunately, this currently will not work with “Fan” ads.

Thanks,
Matt Trainer

WTF? Is all Facebook is concerned about is getting more money.  This move is going to kill them and kill Facebook Fan Pages.  I hate this and am starting to HATE Facebook.  I think someone should start a company that says something and sticks with it.  Facebook, we are sick of your shit.  I don’t know if I told anyone but we started a Facebook fan page 4 years ago called facebook.com/ilovemyfamily  We had over 3 million fans.  Facebook stole it from us and killed the page.  It took us months to finally get an answer from them.  Their answer was “it was to general” that’s all they said. WTF…  We spend thousands of dollars on pages and had them taken away.  Facebook needs to get their act together or people will rebel and shut them down.  It’s US who helps Facebook grow, it’s US that keeps you in business.  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

So I have been reading a book recently called “Make Money Online: Roadmap of a dot com mogul” for the past week or two.  I have read several sections of the book twice because I have been fascinated by them while other sections of the book I have struggled to get through.  Honest opinion would be to buy the book, it’s available on Amazon.

Although the writer seems like a very arrogant person, I do agree with a lot he has to say in the book. My favorite chapter would be the one on content.  I have always thought that ‘content is key’ and it rules all other things. This book dives into content and how to get the best.  He recommends that you come up with really great ideas and write about them.  That you can even write about things that readers put up on your blog and blog posts.  The more unique content you have is better.  I have typically written post on my blog to get good SEO.  I have found that the best blog post that I have written have been unique to my websites, with a ton of unique content always help me and usually have all the SEO content in the article anyways.

I have never even thought about trading list management articles with other sites like ours.  This is another great idea in the book.  Later in the book he talks about SEO strategies and performance marketing tips for your blog.  His “Six favorite linking strategies” are another great resource for anyone with a website.  I don’t want to give you to much info because I want you to learn for yourself.  Go buy the book yourself and check it out! Like I said earlier in the book, he may seem very arrogant but he’s good at what he does… so listen to it!

Check out JohnChow.com

Buy Book

(1) Promote Your Business on Services On foursquare: Potential customers could be walking by your business and checking in on foursquare. They will see your business and if you’ve promoted a discount or special offer for foursquare users. Then they would be notified that there’s a discount close by and want to stop in.

(2) Follow & Comment on Local Blogs: Find out who is blogging about the local scene where your business is located. By commenting on local blogger’s posts you will start to build a relationship with them. They could even mention you if you have related news or let you suggest a guest post. This would be a great way to get additional local exposure.

Bloglines and Placeblogger are tools that can help you easily find local blogs.

(3) Attend Local Social Media Events On & Offline: Social media events like Tweetups are happening everywhere. Tweetups are a type of event or meetup of Twitter users who are interested in a similar topic. They are a great way to meet and network with people who have similar interests.

Twtvite makes it easy to fine local Tweetups or host your own. Meetup is a very popular tool for finding any type of local event. I have been to several of these Meetups and they are a lot of fun to go to.  You will meet a lot of people that are very passionate about the same thing as you.

(4) Filter Your Social Media Advertising: When you advertise on social media sites you are given the option to filter who you are showing your advertisement to. Typically you can filter on country, state, city and sometimes zip code.

When you set these filters on Facebook you are provided with how many people you can reach with your advertising. The number of people you can reach decrease with each new filter you add.

(5) Join or Start Local Groups Online: Several social media platforms have group capabilities that let you create groups on any topic. If you are a running shoe store in Miami you could start a Miami running group and ask members to add their favorite runs or running tips. This will help build your local credibility.

The key to starting a local group is to find something that is related to your business but isn’t actually your business in order to get the maximum response.

If your business isn’t local, but targets a specific group or age range, many of these ideas can be re-purposed for that as well. Let us know if you try one of these ideas and how it works out for your business.

Without a doubt, creating a site is not an easy task, especially with all the affiliate links. But to find the top web hosting services is even more difficult. Due to the introduction of various web hosting companies in the market, it is simply daunting for the customers to find out the good web hosting provider. To choose the best hosting company or top host, us performance based marketers should keep a few alternatives and should have a clear idea about what all to expect from the web host. Affiliate hosting is not easy to do.

Starting the search for top web hosts

First and foremost, the users should take help of the popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo to find the keywords like “top web host” or “top cloud hosting companies”. With this, the users will be able to get a rough idea of the types of services and facilities available with the different web hosts. There are some people who even think that the top ranked web hosting companies will surely provide the best of services, but that is not the case always. Proper time and analyses of the found search results is a must on the part of the users in order to carry out a detailed comparison of the various top web hosting providers.

Next, the customer needs to have some sort of budget in mind. Knowing the budget can not just prove to be helpful to make fast and wise decisions but even saves a huge amount of user’s time. Also, when the users are aware of the rough budget, the top web host in that particular rate range can be selected and finalized.  I recommend cloud hosting companies for an affiliate to start with.  It will keep your costs low and get you the best performance.  Top affiliates host with several companies and know their hosting company like the back of their hand.

Check out your site’s requirements

Further, one should have the information about the site’s working nature. It is truly an unavoidable point that the customers need to have complete set of knowledge about the goals of their website. In case the customer needs a website that is capable enough to load the larger files, then the search for a hosting company will end on the one that provides huge amount of disk space and bandwidth. Yet another question that poses a problem in front of the user is whether his or her website is a personal or commercial one. In case the user wishes to have revenue from the site, then a bit more sound investment for huge amount of bandwidth and space is surely an advisable option.

Moreover, if the customer is creating the site for very first time, then a host providing advice on proceedings of the new site will prove to be helpful. There are several top cloud hosting companies as well that offer different kinds of help to inexperienced users. In short, the users should start the journey to find the top web host with a sound, informed and clear mind. This will not just ensure finding the top web hosts available but even take their online business to the zenith.

Thoughts on Affiliate Hosting

How important is my affiliate sites to me?  Well, if my Google or Grant offer goes down I will still have people driving traffic to the site.  If that site goes down, the publisher will not make any money and it will make the advertiser look stupid.  There will start to be distrust and plainly put, if I were the publisher I wouldn’t work with the advertiser unless he compensates me for this loss.  So, in other words “Having the best affiliate hosting” is crucial to by performance based business.  It’s another key to my success!  What do you consider to be the best affiliate hosting company out there?

So last week I made a post about me going to try out a few services out there that will boost my followers on both Twitter and Facebook.  I commented that I was going to try out SocialKik and BuyTwitterFriends. Not even a week later and I  am writing to tell you about SocialKik and how well they have taken care of me.  My account managers name was Anthony Stuart and he did a great job and deserves a raise.  SocialKik, if you read this… you should give him a big raise!  He took very good care of me and was very professional.

I was a little skeptical about at the beginning.  I got over that.  I went into this with an open mind.  Saturday I looked at my Facebook Fan Page (facebook.com/adogy) and found that they had already got me around 450 followers.  Holy crap!  Welp, over the weekend they managed to get me 1128 followers for $130.  But wait, there’s more!  On top of that the drove 323 people to our website Adogy.com that stayed an average of 2.63 minutes a piece. There was an increase in bounce rate to 71% but overall that’s huge.  If I was to pay for those through Google Adwords would have cost me over $500.  I would totally recommend Socialkik.com to everyone!

I am a big twitter buff…. @adogy @jsrampton and  don’t used a twitter auto responder or adder or anything like that.  I have tried almost all of them and paid $1000’s of dollars trying to find the perfect one.  I HAVEN’T FOUND IT.  I have however used a few services to drop unwanted followers.  I have also found that there is no single tool that does whatever I want.  However I wanted to write this article to tell you all about some of the great twitter services out there that I have used in the past and have liked.  No, I’m not paid by any of these services… I’m just here to give you the best tools out there to help you succeed!

Goals out of twitter:  engage customers, help, support

tweetie and tweetlater

cotweet.com

ow.ly

pikchur.comTweetsuite

Twitter tools

Twitbin and power twitter

startrp.com (shameless plug)

Mass  Follow and Mass Unfollow on Twitter

socialtoo.com

tweetbots.com

twittermass.com (find new people)

managetwitter.com (mass unfollow people on twitter)

easytweets

api.twitter.com

focused on twitter.com api

geo-awesomeness

ubertwitter

klout – list analysis and list building

twittercounter.com

I don’t think anyone should pretend that they don’t care about how many followers you have on Twitter. If you have found this article, it’s because you DO care and you’re most likely trying to increase your amount of followers.   It’s totally normal and there are many people that want the same thing as you.

Adding these  Twitter users who will auto-follow or follow you back will not do you much good because they are not genuinely interested in your tweets. Like you, they mostly want to collect massive amounts of followers.  Which for the most part is alright, but don’t expect them to click on every link you put infront of them.

You’re obviously free to do whatever you want with this list but you will hopefully not use it to twamm (Twitter spam) people. I guess Twitter users are smart enough to recognize twammers and block them anyways…  Check out Twitter Apps and Cool Tricks post for more on Auto Following on twitter.

How to get more a lot more Twitter followers that Auto-follow you? Start following these people!

Want to Be Added to This List?

Put a comment on this blog with your twitter address @whatever and I will add you to this list.  The bigger the list is, the more followers that you will get.  Make sure that you auto follow people.  If you don’t you will be take off this list and I’ll report you just to spite you!