Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Welcome to TDIM – Thank Design It’s Monday.
This is going to be a quick article this week as the title may suggest – it’s time for the new Affiliate Bible design to launch.
Designs can be important to websites for a variety of reasons – but one of the biggest for me is motivation. Over the years, I’ve always found that the more I like the design of a website, the more I want to work on the site – the more I want the site to be a success.
I’ve just always felt more driven when it comes to working on a website I can actually look at and enjoy every day. If I look at it and think “OMG this is the prettiest website in the world”(before listening to my Justin Bieber CD like the 12 year old girl I am), I’m always more focused on making that website better from a content standpoint, so it has quality all over the site.
If there’s ever a website where you KNOW it can be a money earner, or a better earner than it is – but you’re just not finding yourself driven to add to the quality of the site – consider a redesign. Even something as simple as a new logo and a few new icons to “pretty it up” can really help when it comes to motivation.
Affiliate Bible Design Notes:
Just a few notes about the design:
- It’s nothing groundbreaking. It’s the CasinoAnswers.com design with a few tweaks. The design works well, and with some split-testing I found it works really better when it comes to affiliate conversions.
- The design isn’t complete. I’d say it’s about 60% complete. It’s how I roll. I find that the longer a site remains on the dev server, the less motivation I have for it and the more frustrated I get. I like to roll it out only partially complete and THEN work on it more. Over the next couple of weeks, all the final tweaks should be completed.
- If you work with my coder Frank as I know many of you do – I apologize, but I’ve given him an ulcer over all this. We had a conversation similar to this:
Me: “Do you think we could have the design in by next Monday?”
Frank: “Haha, good one.”
Me: “I’m setting that as the deadline then. It’s a done deal.”Knowing full well how goal-orientated Frank is, and how he’ll literally kill himself to do it now. I apologize further because after the design is launched I’m flying to Edmonton and getting him hella drunk for a couple of days straight.
Friends Kickstarter:
Or actually – “Indiegogo”, to be exact. I’m going to write an article soon on these type of sites – but on a personal note, I think they are great ideas. I like supporting people who are clearly going to do something valuable. I also like browsing and laughing at people who are begging for $30,000 so they can write their first novel.
One of my friends has one that I told him I’d link here. Him and a couple of other people are going to take part in the Adventurists Mongol Rally, transferring from Arkansas to London, where they then have to travel over the space of six weeks to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
I love supporting these types of things because they are truly life-changing events, and it’s a lot more fun to support something like that. Plus they could get murdered, and it’s always fun to donate towards a good murder.
They have a $5000 goal but only $810 so far – check it out and if you like the idea help them out. At the very least you’ll get a unique t-shirt out of it!
I’m So Dumb
I really am.
I’m sure most of you have heard of Draw Something, the App taking the World by storm. Hell, I even wrote about it in my Forum Friday Fun article.
Well I’m a Blackberry user. And I’ve been googling for about 4-6 weeks now to see if Draw Something is ever going to come out on Blackberry.
It took about 6 “googles” before it suddenly dawned on me – I run a Blackberry Apps website, and yet I don’t have a freaking article about it!
Here’s this keyword phrase that’s HOT and CURRENT – so hot and current I’m even googling it myself – yet I didn’t even think to write a bloody article on it!
So of course I wrote the article yesterday. Guess what? Record hits! I usually get 150 uniques a day. I got 275 – all thanks to that freaking article which made up 48% of my hits for Sunday.
Not my proudest moment. I’ll be kicking myself for the next few days over that.
Link of the Week
I read a LOT of internet marketing blogs. One of my favourites is TylerCruz.com. Tyler is just so open and refreshingly honest. He really focuses a lot on the “blog” aspect of it and bringing the readers along for the ride, as opposed to many other blogs out there who are starting to resemble MLM schemes.
I was reminded of this while reading his latest blog post on hitting a new affiliate marketing record – highly recommended reading.
The Celebrity Apprentice / Entertainment.com
I’ve probably written about this before – but I hate 99% of reality TV shows. I really do. I’ve only ever watched one reality TV show which is The Apprentice – the regular US version, the UK version and the Celebrity version.
A few weeks ago, they did a task where they basically had to promote the website Entertainment.com. For those who don’t know – that website basically sells coupon books. You buy a $15 coupon book and you get a wide variety of crazy specials like 10%-25% a huge amount of stores, maybe some free meals, that sort of thing. Crazy amount of savings really.
Due to the big push on the Celebrity Apprentice, they received a lot of traffic – mostly curiosity traffic I’m sure – after the episode aired. Rather than display their normal website they displayed this(click for big):
This is genius. Now who knows – maybe the site really WAS under heavy traffic – but that’s not the type of “busy error page” you’re able to conjure up within 5 minutes.
However it is incredibly smart. It personalizes the site for all the people coming from The Apprentice. It also is the type of thing that people will share with others. I saw it mentioned on numerous Apprentice blogs and forums, which would encourage people to check it out that normally wouldn’t.
And oh….what else? Oh of course, it catches peoples e-mail addresses. Which is a HUGE part of their marketing. Yet it’s handled in a very friendly, “oops we’re sorry” manner.
Genius.
Video of the Week:
I keep seeing trailers for the new video game Prototype 2 everywhere. it featured Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt”, which is just an epic, epic song. I can’t get it out of my head and have listened to it literally 900 quadrillion times over the past week. Literally.
People get motivated from very different things. This is one of those songs that really motivate me. It’s an incredibly powerful song. It reminds me that life is short, and I need to seize the day.
And day-seizing is something we can never do enough of.
Have a great week guys.
This article was written on April 30, 2012 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
