Internet Marketing Resource #4 - Analytics

Every site should have an analytics package. Once you find a good resource, it's addictive. When I was with Thompson & Co., the Ecommerce department used Hitbox and CoreMetrics. Seeing the overlay of live traffic on a retail website like ThompsonCigar.com was pretty cool, especially when we just started a new promotion.

For all of my blogs, I use Sitemeter. It offers a site summary with total visitors overall since posting the code, average per day, average visit length, how many in the last hour, how many today and how many this week.

You can also see weekly and monthly stats and most importantly, referrals. I check the referrals often to see what keywords in Google and Yahoo my visitors are using to find me. The number one keyword phrase is obviously Gorilla Marketing. That's why I have the Amazon links to the Guerrilla Marketing books.

Knowing what sites link to you is important, but seeing what sites actually drive traffic to your site is more important. I know that when Shawn Collins has mentioned me or my blog in the past, I've seen instant spikes of several hundred readers. When Slashdot linked to one of my business blogs a few years ago, I wouldn't have known we had 65,000 hits in one day if it wasn't for Sitemeter.

Use the analytics to make your sites better and learn while you go. Sitemeter is free and easy to use. They do have an upgrade version which gives you an option for an invisible counter, larger amounts of records on file, advanced ranking reports and ad-free access. I've upgraded for one business blog, but I haven't seen the need to upgrade for this blog.

Internet Marketing Resource #3 - Social Networking

How much social networking is necessary and where should you start? I would say if you want to learn from the big dawgs you have to play where they play. We'll skip MySpace, Ryze, Friendster and Orkut and go straight to Facebook. In my opinion, its by far the best way to keep track of your real friends, your business colleagues and your online friends. You'll even meet and get to know Facebook friends from all over the world.

One word of advice, don't get sucked into the endless applications that new friends invite you to try. It gets old real quick. Just click IGNORE. Sure it was fun owning some of my friends online photos for a dollar and daring others to outbid me so I could mass a fake fortune. But it did nothing for me personally or professionally. And I don't need to be bitten by a zombie ever again as a sign of friendship.

Facebook allows users to create their own groups. I feel there's no reason to recreate groups just so I can be the admin, so I only created one relevant to me - my high school class reunion group. We have our 20th this year and I am trying to gather as many people in the group as possible to hopefully increase our turnout. 12 out of 142 so far.

But also on Facebook, you get to read interesting industry news, scan witty one-liners or see videos of the experts in the industry you serve in. It works really well in the Affiliate and Paid Search industries because everyone who is anyone is active on Facebook. The interaction is much better than any other networks.

On a side note, I have to say Twitter is also fun. You can connect with the same professional audience as Facebook, but the updates include useful links or again, witty one-liners up to 140 characters long.

Social networking is evolving everyday so keep experimenting with the new tools and maybe we'll be following you one day.

Internet Marketing Resource #2 - Password Management

I posted a video about two months ago regarding password management and I'd like to add it to number two on my list for this resource series.

To recap, passwords are important to me because one of my gigs was to work for a computer security expert and help promote his company online and offline. He had worked with some of the most infamous hackers in the world. His son, in turn, is probably one of the elite hackers in today's world and they taught me how to protect my information.

Simple explanation - build strong passwords that are easy enough to remember, then store them hidden in files that no one would look for or bother to open. Even if you are a home business owner, don't leave your password written on post-it note on your monitor. Come up with a system.

Example of a strong password - Take the words Affiliate Summit. Create a password that looks similar to this with any word or phrase: Aff99sum!

Read this post and watch the video for more information - Password Management for Affiliates

Internet Marketing Resource #1 - Personal Home Page

Let's start simple, shall we?

When you open your browser, which hopefully is Firefox, what is your home page? If you are still using AOL, go ahead and stop reading. None of this will help you until you get rid of AOL and join the 21st Century (Dad).

Now, seriously, is your home page Google, Yahoo News, MSN or a local news site, like TBO.com? If so, that's ok, but there's a way to combine that and become much more efficient while you work online. I do like the customized Google Home page and I have friends (Angie) who swear by it. What I found a few years ago is Protopage.com. The home page allows me to categorize links just like a Bookmark funtion would do but without the drop down box. I like to see all of my link options and be able to click onto a site immediately.

As an affiliate, I cluster all of my network dashboards in one box and all my resource links in another box. I can add a news RSS feed or hundreds of other widgets to dress up the page and use it as a one stop perfect "Home Page". Even better, this page belongs to you and you can open it on any computer. It can be password protected and no one will ever know what your favorite links are.



I'll let them do the sales pitch:

Protopage is your own personal page that you can use for quick access to everything on the web that you go to most. You can use it to:

• Read news from your favorite news sites and blogs
• Keep bookmarks to your most frequently accessed web sites
• Organize your day with to-do lists and sticky notes
• Create web pages, group pages, and intranets
• And much more!

Creating your page is easy and fun - simply drag and drop from our directory of hundreds of widgets containing everything from news headlines to sports scores to puzzle games.

You can keep your page private, make it public, or even set a group password so that you can share parts of it with specific friends or colleagues.

Set your Protopage as your personal start page, and it will appear every time you open your web browser! Join now: www.protopage.com