I’m on a wordpress plug-in search for our blog sites Charly Leetham . When I post a video on youtube I embed in a post. My readers leave comments but they also leave comments on youtube and facebook where both the blog post and then the youtube link are automatically posted. I’d like to make it so all comments made on facebook, twitter and youtube are automatically added to the blog post. Any suggestions?

I had been testing the Disqus Comment system on my other site – Ask Charly Leetham but on further prompting from Janet, I did some investigation.

From the Disqus About page:

Disqus Comments is a comment system and moderation tool for your site. This service lets you add next-gen community management and social web integrations to any site on any platform. Hundreds of thousands of sites, from small blogs to large publications, rely on Disqus Comments for their discussion communities.

Basically, Disqus is a third party service that connects different community sites (Facebook, Twitter etc) and collates all the comments and discussions into one place.  A truly nice concept.

However, as Janet asked – Is Disqus the best or most appropriate system around?

My investigation focused on collating comments from three main sites – Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.  Any other sites that were included were considered a bonus.

Oh yes, I wanted one unified commenting system – not three separate systems…. The Facebook connect Comments system is excellent, but it only does Facebook.  I want all responses, comments and reactions to my post across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to be shown in one place.

I spent some time looking at the options – and I doubt I got them all.  I found IntenseDebate, CoComment and LiveFyre (a private beta that I’m waiting for access to) – they all do something similar and have seem to have WordPress plugins or extensions – but they don’t seem to do all the three sites that I wanted.

After a bit of digging, I found the Echo commenting system.  From the Echo website:

Echo Comments is designed to replace the legacy commenting system on your site turning your conversations into a real-time cross-platform & highly interactive experience.

It also appears to connect the three sites I was looking for… so I decided to test it out on this blog.  You’ll notice that at the time of publishing this article, the commenting system is using Echo – not the standard WordPress comment system. That may not be the case in the future….

To test the effectiveness of both Echo and Disqus, I have created the video above and uploaded it to YouTube.  If Echo works as it’s supposed too, the comments that this video is getting on YouTube should appear in the comments below….

Have you commented on the video at YouTube?  Tweet about it, add it to Facebook – let’s give the system a run for its money and see just how well it works!

But how do you get that information? How do you know if the niche you’re considering is a low competition niche?

There are a lot of tools out there today to help do this, but today I found the Cherry Picker software – simple to use, easy to understand results.  It’s not the ‘be all and end all’ of niche research, but it sure takes a lot of the guess work out the game.

Ryan Deiss had Cherry Picker coded for one thing and one thing only…To show him the most effective keywords to rank for…

This software will tell you more about your market and your competitors in 2 minutes than a team of researchers could.

The best thing is that it’s in Beta and free….  All you have do is click here to download Cherry Picker for free

Ryan even added a 40 page report explaining how the software works and the system he uses behind it to get even more FREE traffic than you can buy at any price…

This is certainly something to look at and Ryan demonstrates it right here: Cherry Picker Niche Market Keyword Software

The truth is that a giveaway is not truly free. In order for you (or your referral) to receive your free gifts, you have to give your email address away to every marketer whose product you download. Not only can that clog your mailbox with emails promoting one thing or another several times a day, everyday, it can be most inconvenient.  It is, however, the price you pay for your new load of ebooks and software.

Since Giveaways seem to be a permanent and very popular online event, let’s check out how they work.

Let’s look at how Giveaways work for contributors …. A contributor is someone who provides a gift that is included in the Giveaway event.  As a contributor to the event, you will get a new subscriber to your list for every person who downloads your products. Seasoned contributors often offer multiple products to the Giveaway, which multiplies their opportunities for list building. For contributors, a targetted giveaway event is a great way to build your list.

Giveaways are also great for the giveaway owner.  In fact, the site owner benefits most from a giveaway event, as they get the benefit of your initial signup when you first visit the Giveaway plus all the referrals (people) you send to the site because you normally have to opt-in with your email address before you can even see the products being offered for free download.

Can I Really Make Money?

There are several ways for you to make money as a contributor to a Giveaway.  The main way you can make money is indirectly – by building your list, it is possible to bring in a steady income if your list likes the products you are offering them in your follow-up emails.

Another way to make money is by promoting the Giveaway to your lists, on forums and in your signature anywhere you use it. This is because when you become a contributor, you are given a link to send your referrals to – this is also known as an affiliate ID or affiliate link.  When someone uses your affiliate link to visit a Giveaway and buys the One Time Offer (OTO), you as the referrer gets the commission for the sale.

Other Benefits…

Another benefit of using your affiliate link, is that when you refer people to the Giveaway event, your offer is ‘ranked higher’ and is displayed on ‘higher’ or ‘earlier’ pages on the Giveaway event. By having your gift displayed on pages as close to the first page as possible, you increase the number of optins you will receive.

Promoting a Giveaway Event that you contribute too is an absolute must!  Not only is it ‘correct etiquette’, the more referrals you make the more you will benefit. Some events won’t allow you to add a product, or display your product, to the Giveaway until you have sent a certain amount of traffic through your affiliate link.

Dee and Khai have put together offerings that include:

Google Traffic Pump System, by Heri Rosyadi

Odinn Sorensen’s 2 Day Profit Plan

VIP Membership to Twitter Effects from Kathe Lucas and

Shelby Carrs’ How To Write Blog Posts That Suck Visitors In

Plus a bundle more products to help you grow your online business.

Visit the Home Business Breakthrough Giveaway to get your free products before February 15th.

There are benefits to having a list…

* You don’t have to start over and find new people to sell to. You already have a ready-made group of people who have decided that they want to hear what you have to say and have probably already bought from you.

* Typically, if you’ve built a targetted list and treated your subscribers well by sharing valuable information (as opposed to continually promoting to them), the bigger your list, the more money you can make.

* If you are an affiliate marketer, having a responsive list can help you to become a Super Affiliate, which not only equates to more income – it also means that you may have a chance to win cool prizes in affiliate contests. Being a Super Affiliate also means that you can becoming sought after for large launches.

List building however, requires bringing traffice to your website. Here are some ways to get traffic and build your list.

1. Give them something for free. This is the obvious way however, make your free item something other than the usual pdf ebook.

Consider creating a podcast (mp3) with an expert, or even yourself sharing some great tips about your niche. You can also have someone interview you and record the interview to give away. Another idea is to create a video demonstrating a ‘secret technique’ or discussing some of your strategies in a visual way? If your software developer, why not give away some software in exchange for their email address?

2. Post on your blog regularly – using your chosen keywords. Try this – write a blog post (with good content and keywords) every day for 2 weeks and check your traffic stats – you should have more traffic! Do You?

3. Giveaway events are another way to build your list – make sure you create an opt-in page so that you can get the email address.

It’s important to make sure your offer is something that stands out in the sea of all the other Giveaway offers.

4. Build a Squidoo lens or Hub Page and point people to your site. Squidoo lens and Hub Pages are fun to put together, and relatively quickly to make. Take advantage of it and generate some traffic to your site.

5. Write articles and submit them to directories like Ezine Articles. Be sure to use your chosen keywords to the article and create an author resource box that will encourage people to click through to your site. Create articles that have great content and are informative – the content doesn’t have to be your best writing, but it should still be good.

6. What forums exist in your niche? Join a forum (or 2 or 3) and set up your signature to graciously promote what you do. The way (and when) you set up your signature block completely depends on the forum – make sure you read the Terms of Service first. When creating your signature, remember to ‘sell a benefit’ and get readers curious enough to click through.

7. Ad Swaps are certainly an excellent way to grow your list fast and effectively. Find another business in your niche that has a similar size list (or similar response) and send each others offers of a free item to your own list. The key is, to plan your swaps with offers that will appeal to your niche and not to do it too often, as you will ‘desensitize’ your list.

8. Twitter is another great resource to help you generate traffic to your site. A well written, 140 character tweet can entice people to want to know more and click through. For more information on how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your site, pick up your free Twitter Blog Magic report.

9. Pay Per Click advertising can be an effective way of traffic generation. A well designed AdWords campaign will be seen on a number of others people sites – and increase your reach incredibly. Spend some time developing your AdWords campaign to make sure you pay the ‘right’ price for the advertising.

10. If you like to write and you have something valuable to say, guest blogging is a good way to go. Blogging on your own blog means you have your readers, blogging on other people’s blogs (preferably higher traffic blogs) means you have their readers too, and these people will see your name AND your link.

Building traffic to your site, and list building, requires work from you – it doesn’t happen overnight and whilst you can outsource a lot of the work, understanding the basics will definitely help you. Building your list will most certainly help you create a sustainable, and profitable business.

Your sales letter is incredibly important and should exhibit a level of friendliness, whilst still being direct and to the point.

Many Internet Marketers struggle with writing an effective sales letter and realize that if the sales copy doesn’t speak to their target audience, in a way that the target audience will appreciate and understand – they are wasting their time.

Not only should a sales letter speak to your site visitor in a way that they can relate to, it must also address the reader’s main interest – generally a problem they are experiencing that requires a direct solution, or specific training or another need that requires filling.

Here are six tips for keeping your potential customers, your readers, very interested and convert readers into buyers:

#1…It is imperative that you know why your visitors will buy your products or services. Your visitors really aren’t interest in your EBook or service – you would be wrong – your visitors are are only interested in what your product will do for them.

When writing your sales letter, you need to stress the benefits your potential clients will get if they buy your product.

There is an emotional component to all sales and it is that emotional component that prompts buying. The emotional component is the bit that contains the “WIIFM” or “What’s In It For Me?” Provide the answer to that question with the benefits of your product or sevice and you will make sales.

#2…The first thing your visitors see when they land on your page is the headline – possibly even before they see your graphic header.

Whilst it’s important that your graphic header needs to be professional, the headline must grab the reader and makes them want to read more.

Your headline is the most important part of your entire sales letter. If you can add your readers name to the headline, you will have a magnetic response.

Check your autoresponder or webmaster for the script that will automatically add your readers name to the headline – you will be amazed at the response.

#3…Your sales copy shouldn’t ramble. Your sales copy should be direct and specifically focused on the benefits of owning your product.

There is no Golden Rule about the length of sales letters, it should be as long as it needs to be. Some sales page will be one page and some will be several pages long. As long as you stress your benefits and make your copy as long as it needs to be to make your points (WIIFM).

#4…Readers tend to skim through endless paragraphs of text and the look of your page is important to your conversion and as such, you should keep your sentences and paragraphs short.

Large blocks of text get skipped by scanning eyes. Use bullet points and subheads to direct and focus your reader’s attention and put a space or two between paragraphs to make your page easy to read.

Formatted text boxes will attract attention for special information or calls to action.

#5…Many successful Internet marketers believe that including a PS or two at the end of your sales letter, after your signature at the end, will increase your conversion rates dramatically.

This may, or may not be true – it would depend on your target audience. Split-test your copy with a PS and without – see what results are achieved.

#6…Often, when new Internet marketers write their first sales page, they forget to add several calls to action. A Call To Action literally tells your reader what to do – gratiously and politely. The Call To Action is generally a request to actually buy the product or service.

If you check out any good sales page, you will usually find two or three opportunities to purchase the product on the sales page, complete with a statement of urgency and the PayPal button.

Once you have led the reader through your benefits and listed the bonuses available after they buy the product, you have to tell them what to do next.

These six tips are a great but your best training tools can be found on the sales pages of any of the very successful businesses. Review lots of sales pages, note things like colors, placement of the “Buy Now” button and the general layout of the page. Find pages that appeal to your target audience and duplicate what already works.

Until now, one of the things that has been lacking, is the ability to create a ‘nice looking’ form, without having a reasonable understanding of HTML.  This can be very challenging to some business owners, as they don’t really want to know HTML at all.

Which is why I was really impressed last night, when I logged in to my AWeber account and created a new webform – the new Form Generator is live and it is great!

AWeber have been teasing us with the ‘new way to do forms’ for a few weeks now – giving us tantalizing glimpses of what’s possible – but now that I’ve experienced it, I love it.

You can find out more about the new form generator over at the AWeber blog: Easy Web Forms

The one thing I like most about the new generator, is the standard templates they provide you with to use. I’m going to create some of my own templates (eventually) and upload them to the custom template area, but for now – the standard templates are wonderful and eye catching.

Here’s what I like:

• The drag and drop resize option – make the form wider or narrower with a point and click, just wonderful to make the form fit your page layout
• Easily adding an image to your form and placing it
• Quickly add a link to the AWeber Email privacy policy on your form
• Configure the Thank You page to be a the Aweber ‘basic’, ‘audio’, ‘smart video’, or you can specify your own page or ‘do nothing’.

I’m still playing with the generator – but it makes life a whole lot easier. Oh yes – if you have an existing form, you can update it to the new generator simply by editing it….

Have you trialled the new webform generator yet? What do you think – leave your thoughts below.

Wishlist Member

I’m sure you’ve heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, THE “social media” expert behind the now famous WineLibrary.tv. Gary has a new book out called “Crush It” – and you can get a free copy when you purchase Wishlist Member.

But – you can only get the book free when you purchase in October 2009.

Wishlist Member will also be conducting an interview with Gary which is also included with this offer.

There have been a number of improvements with Wishlist Member – which is the sign of a great product with excellent support. The new improvements include:

Full InfusionSoft Integration: You can now run shopping cart fully integrated with WishList Member.

Run Your Own Affiliate Program: Wishlist is now integrated with iDev Affiliate Tracking Software, which means anyone running a membership site can now incorporate a full affiliate program into their site.

Chris Garrett (a high profile blogger) was interviewed on how he has developed several
membership sites using WordPress. You can listen to Part 1 of the interview below:

[audio:http://wlmember.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Stu-ChrisGarrett-pt1-final.mp3]

Wishlist Member now integrates with:

• Clickbank
• Paypal
• Aweber
• 1 Shopping Cart
• InfusionSoft
• iDevAffiliate

and takes less than 10 minutes to install and configure your first membership level.

If you are considering creating a membership site – consider using WordPress and Wishlist Member – and consider it for October 2009, you will pick up some wonderful bonuses.

When I started building an online business, I heard people saying ‘control your traffic’, use redirects or cloak your links – and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Over time, the reason for this became a lot clearer but it wasn’t until recently that I really understood the absolute importance of using redirects to control my traffic.

Recently, one of the the affiliate programs I participate in closed down.  When they closed down, all of my affiliate links were disabled and anyone who clicks through is sent to a dead page.  This looks really bad and, if I had heeded the advice above, would have been really easy to fix.

As it is, I have linked my raw affiliate link ‘all over the place’ and I can’t remember where!  I now keep getting notices from the affiliate program saying that  I’m sending traffic to a ‘dead link’, but the reporting isn’t detailed enough for me to find out where they are originating, so I can change them.

If I had used redirects through my own website, fixing this issue would be as simple as going to the redirect, changing the target location and saving it.  Problem fixed….  So here’s some advice for you.

Keep Control Of Your Traffic

You need to maintain control of your traffic.  The question is how do you do it? The best way is to setup one link that you use to direct traffic to your third party or affiliate link.  These are called Redirect Links and will allow you to manage your affiliate links and send them whereever you want.

There are third party services that will allow you to redirect your affiliate links, like BUDURL, Viral URL, Tiny URL  however, if you have your website I strongly recommend you redirect your links through website.

By redirecting links through your website, you maintain full control of those links and cement your branding.

Link Redirects Through Your Website

Redirecting links from (or through) your website is a great way of maintaining control of your traffic and maintaining your branding.

When you use redirects through your website, these links will look like:

http://mysite.com/recommends/myfaveproduct or

http://mysite.com/myfaveproduct

and when you click on these links you are taken to another site entirely, generally an affliate link.

You can achieve a link redirect using a html file or through the .htaccess file (if you are running an Apache server).  These methods are effective, but can be cumbersome to manage, put in place and require a degree of knowledge in editing html files.

WordPress Blog Users

If you have a self hosted WordPress Blog, there is a neater solution.  The Redirection Plugin.  This is a great plugin that will allow you to easily add redirects to your site and track the number of hits, using the wordpress graphical interface.

Domain Redirects

Using a domain name to redirect to an affiliate link is a popular practice.  This is one of the strategies outlined in the One Week Marketing Plan and can be very effective.

When you register a domain name, many registrars provide the ability to ‘point’ the domain to another url, like your affiliate link.

Given that you can purchase .info domain for $1.99 per year, this is an excellent strategy.

The only thing that I do have some reservations with this strategy is that you can have one link per domain – which might mean you end up with a number of domain names.

You Be The Director

Once you start using redirect links, you will be able to control where your traffic goes – and if your affiliate programs change, you can make that change quickly and easy.

I also recommend that you use redirect links to control your Social Network links too – that way, if you decide to exit that social network you can still connect with your followers.