Archives for February 2012

I had the privilege of attending TEDxAustin 2012: Beyond Measure on February 11, 2012 at the Austin Music Hall, and it was way more than I expected.

I had heard lots of raves about TEDx events, but I wasn’t sure what to expect. I really enjoyed the format of 18 minutes per speaker, mixed with trumpeter Jeff Lofton and the Austin Ballet.

The TEDxAUSTIN speakers were an interesting mix that wasn’t revealed until less than a day before the event.

I saw a Tweet that revealed the speakers after midnight the night before and jumped in for the details on my iPad before going to bed.

I had an idea about which would be most interesting to me and I was totally off.

While they all made me think and challenged me in different ways, my head is still spinning from the talks by David R. Dow on fixing the death penalty system, Penny de los Santos on when to live life, and Jason Roberts on quickly changing urban blight to beauty.

xLunch was pure pleasure. They partnered with Whole Foods Market and brought in six chefs to design a menu in their distinct styles from a list of the same ingredients.

I got to enjoy the work of Philip Speer of Uchiko. Yum.

The vegetables came from Johnson’s Backyard Garden, and I grabbed a card for them to check into their CSA program.

Also, there were chances to meet folks and get know them.

A great day all around.

Keep an eye on http://tedxaustin.com/ for videos from the day.

Thank you to Nancy Giordano, Shawna Butler, Romy Suskin, and the TEDxAustin Team.

Photos: TEDxAUSTIN 2012

My Job Chart is a great example of a useful site powered by affiliate marketing.

The site is a tool to manage chores for kids and provide them rewards, some of which are available through Amazon affiliate links for parents to purchase for their kids.

I’ve found My Job Chart to be a fantastic resource, as it makes my life easier in keeping tabs on chores with my four kids.

And they enjoy it, too, as they are able to monitor their progress and work towards goals. While it used to be a grind to get them to do little jobs, they now ask for extra things to do, so they can log them into their My Job Chart account.

My Job Chart solves a problem, which is one of the ideal purposes for an affiliate site, and my appreciation makes me happy to go through their links.

I was curious to find out more about My Job Chart, so I asked Founder and CEO Gregg Murset how he got started and the monetization of the project:

www.myjobchart.com was created out of necessity. We have 6 kids and trying to keep them all organized and understanding the value of work and a dollar is a challenge. I am also a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and know that the younger generation is growing up with some weird ideas about work and money. So My Job Chart was born.

In a little more than a year we now have almost 130,000 kids registered and hundreds more joining each day. This is my first project using affiliate marketing and we have utilized Amazon from January of 2011. We have also done some work with ING Direct opening Kids Savings Accounts in our SAVE area. We had some really incredible results opening accounts.

Our message board system is new and we are refining it. A kid can click on the sticky note that is on their job chart and send a message to their parent. The parent can in turn send a message back and a closed loop communication sequence takes place with the kids. This is a great way to encourage and reinforce good behaviors and make something like chores more of a positive experience.

I’d imagine other affiliate programs will be lobbying Mr. Murset for inclusion on the site.

FeedFront Magazine is now available on iPad.

Now you can read the current issue of FeedFront and any of the past issues on an iPad, as well as online.

Check out issue 17 (January 2012) of FeedFront on your computer or iPad.

You can access all of the past issues of FeedFront at http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs.

The magazine issues can also be downloaded as PDFs and printed.

If you’d like to receive print editions of FeedFront in the future, sign up for your free subscription (U.S. addresses only).

Feel free to embed FeedFront to your site, and please click the Facebook Like button on issues you enjoy.

Affiliates should be split testing their landing pages, but many I’ve asked have never bothered.

For the uninitiated, split or A/B testing is a process where you serve up different versions of your page to different visitors to determine which is more effective.

I’ve tried various ways in WordPress and found they were largely a hassle, until I came across the Simple Page Tester plugin.

The plugin lives up to the name, as it was simple to set up and start a split test.

You just choose an existing page and then choose to duplicate the page, create a fresh page to test against, or choose another existing page.

Then you determine how many people see each version of the page by adjusting the percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you to track conversions from each version. After you run a test, you can declare one page the winner.

At that point, the winning page becomes the new master page and the old variation is deleted for you.

Simple as that.