KRIS: How did you become an affiliate marketer?

RON: I started affiliate marketing because I wanted to supplement my retirement income, engage my mind in something new and master a different area.

I had developed an international reputation for my contribution to the global development of “action learning”. The fundamental principles of action learning involve collaborative learning and a plan-act-review approach. I thought I could apply these principles to affiliate marketing.

Like most people I bought heaps of e-books and tried many programs, including MLMs and wandered all over the place acquiring new knowledge and learning from each experience…but I was totally unfocused.

It was through Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom that I learned how affiliate marketing really worked. Through the Affiliate Classroom I learned the importance of developing an internet profile and focus, how to create and grow a mailing list, how to write viral reports and write and submit articles. I also learned to blog and created my Affiliate Marketing Coach Blog in 2005. Because of this blogging experience I ended up being paid monthly to create and update a team blog on online learning for a network of 200 teachers throughout the State of Queensland. So I have Anik to thank for helping me to find my way in affiliate marketing and blogging.

Question #3

KRIS: You are a Squidoo evangelist. In fact, I understand you will be marketing yourself as “SquidooRoo” in your soon-to-be-released Squidoo training program. I assume that SquidooRoo refers to the fact that you are both an Aussie and a Squidoo expert. You have been recognized as a “Giant Squid” by Squidoo itself (“one of the best of the best on Squidoo”). First share with us exactly what Squidoo is?

RON: Squidoo is a free, social networking platform that enables you to create web pages (lenses) on any topic of your choice. Each Squidoo lens (webpage) has a discrete URL such as:

http://www.squidoo.com/sellyourdigitalphotos

A Squidoo lens is designed to be a highly focused window to other directly related resources – blog posts, websites, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, web-based articles, e-books, etc. Hence a lens is not an end in itself but a means to an end, i.e. to information about a topic, issue, problem, product or service of interest to the reader. There is no limit to the number of free Squidoo lenses you can create. I have in excess of 50 lenses which are catalogued in my lensography:

http://www.squidoo.com/lensographyronpassfield

Each lens has AdSense ads and other ads that generate revenue for Squidoo, charities supported by Squidoo and the lensmaster (lens creator). The lensmaster can choose to give all or some of their share of this direct revenue to charity.

Squidoo lenses can be used for endless applications, e.g. promote a cause, support a charity, educate, showcase an artist or photographer or generate affiliate income.

Each Squidoo lens is made up of modules and widgets (like WordPress blogs) that can be accessed by a unique point-and-click technology. The design of each lens is limited only by your imagination.

In a very real sense a Squidoo lens can integrate many elements of Web 2.0 technology – blogging, Flickr, FaceBook, YouTube, RSS feeds and Twitter. Fundamental to Squidoo is the connections it creates – between people, between lenses, between resources and between social networks.

Question #4

KRIS: How can affiliate marketers use Squidoo to promote affiliate offers? Can you share a few examples?

RON: Affiliates can create niche-focused, multi-media webpages as Squidoo lenses. These in turn can point, via hyperlinks, to their website, blog, articles, FaceBook page, etc. They can incorporate RSS feeds into Squidoo lenses as well.

Squidoo lenses can accommodate banners and text links that incorporate affiliate IDs. Affiliates can just cut and paste the code for the relevant affiliate product from ClickBank, Pepperjam Network or any other affiliate network.

Here’s an example of a Squidoo lens that enabled me to promote an article directory as an affiliate. Anik Singal recently launched an affiliate-friendly, article directory, AffSphere, that pays its authors and referrers. I joined and immediately created two Squidoo lenses, one of which is a review of my own experience with AffSphere. I quickly became the top recruiter for AffSphere and one of their top authors (as acknowledged by Anik in an email to all members). I was able to develop my lenses before the public launch of AffSphere on 12 August this year. The net result is that I not only get affiliate income as a referrer but also income from the sales of Anik’s new e-book and a back-end product. I will gain affiliate commissions from any future product/service he sells under the AffSphere banner. The affiliate commissions are starting to roll in as I write.

In the following lens I promote a ClickBank product called “Camera Dollars System” which is an e-Book showing you how to sell your digital photos online:

http://www.squidoo.com/sellyourdigitalphotos

On my main authority lens, I have a range of reviews of related ClickBank products and offer some free resources that have associated back-end sales such as the Content Desk’s “Authority Black Book”:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

This lens, like most of my lenses, has a lead-capture module that sends people to my squeeze page where I offer a free, squidoo marketing e-course. The lens also promotes my e-Book on Squidoo Marketing Strategies:

http://www.squidoomarketingstrategies.com

I find that product/service, review-orientated modules and lenses are the most effective. Also the stats from my lens promoting the Pepperjam Network show that text links account for about 75% of my referrals while the banner ads account for 25%.

Question #5

KRIS: Name the top 5 benefits of using Squidoo over say launching a blog for free on WordPress and building content there…

RON: What I have discovered is that it is not a case of “either-or” – either Squidoo or blogging. It is very much of case of “Squidoo-and…”

The essence of my marketing strategy is to use Squidoo as the hub and other approaches (blogging, FaceBook, Twitter, article marketing, etc) as the spokes. I really believe in creating a marketing ring that (like a circle) generates its own unique energy and synergy.

Squidoo, through the uncanny genius of Seth Godin, is uniquely placed to deliver the marketing hub. Just by way of example, whenever I write an article and submit it to Ezinearticles.com, the RSS feed updates a number of my Squidoo lenses. When I do a Twitter post it appears simultaneously on some of my Squidoo lenses, my Facebook page and my blog. When I post to my blog, the RSS feed updates two of my lenses and my FaceBook page. I can also embed my YouTube videos and Flickr photos into my relevant Squidoo lenses.

I firmly believe that in this era of social marketing, your affiliate marketing strategy must build on, and contribute to, the connectivity and interactivity that are the hallmarks of Web 2.0 technology.

The five main benefits of Squidoo that have attracted me to this social networking site and made me such a passionate advocate are:

1. the capacity to very quickly create a focused, multi-media, niche lens (website) to earn an income from any affiliate product or service

Examples are the lens I created to promote Mari Smith’s “FaceBook for Professionals” and a lens I developed to promote the Pepperjam Network – both have brought me income.

2. the speed with which Squidoo lenses are indexed and attain top 10 positions in Google results.

I have lenses that have taken over a top ten position in a niche market within two days of publishing.

3. the fact that Google automatically deep indexes Squidoo lenses.

I have noticed through the stats for my Squidoo lenses that Google not only accesses the 40 tags (keywords) permitted per lens but indexes deep into the contents of a lens. I have written about this deep indexing and provided 10 tips on how to encourage this indexing activity by Google.

4. the ability to rapidly build an internet profile and progressively build your subscriber base.

You can quickly build an authority site and use various lenses as different lead capture pages to build your mailing list. You can add a lead capture module (with suitable inducement) to each of your Squidoo lenses. The different lenses provide multiple windows into who you are and what you have to offer.

5. the ability to contribute to charity, the community or local businesses.

Squidoo enables you to contribute to Squidoo charities as a by-product of lens creation. You can also promote a charity of your choice, a location and community such as Stradbroke Island, a local artist such as Denis Brockie or a local business such as The Cupcake Company Brisbane.

What also appeals to me personally is the opportunity to be creative and extend my “learning edge” or “push the envelope”. The numerous Squidoo lens templates, modules and widgets provide endless opportunities to be creative and to develop different lenses for different purposes. For example, you can create a photographic exhibition, a simulated tropical rainforest walk or an e-portfolio.

Question #6

KRIS: Can you share with us (or provide a video) of what a “day-in-the-life” of Ron Passfield is like?

RON: As I live near the Brisbane River, I try to go for a walk each morning as illustrated in this YouTube video I created from my photos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1deA6Pm5KQ

I developed this video with the wonderful program, Animoto, which is the cheapest and easiest way to develop video marketing as part of an overall affiliate marketing strategy.

A “day-in-my-working-life” can take one of two forms.

(1) My main income is earned as a management consultant so I conduct management development programs with a colleague two or three days a week all over the State of Queensland (from the Gold Coast to Cairns). We have also been to Marburg which is south west of Brisbane but next year we go further west to Roma and Longreach (which I am really looking forward to). This management training activity provides a substantial income and I am booked out until June next year. The workshops are very enjoyable and bring together my expertise and experience in action learning, management, manager development and management education.

(2) When I am not running workshops or travelling, I am on my computer and on the Internet engaged in some form of internet marketing, predominantly affiliate marketing. I create Squidoo lenses, post to my Affiliate Marketing Coach blog, prepare my fortnightly newsletter on Squidoo marketing strategies, write and submit articles, answer the daily enquiries I receive, produce videos, integrate Pepperjam Network advertisers into my marketing and engage in social networking and product development.

Outside of these working days, I am engaged on many enjoyable activities – shopping with one of my grown daughters, walking in a tropical rainforest with my eldest son, spending a weekend on Stradbroke Island with my wife or helping one of my younger sons achieve some important goal (buy a car, start a job or get to a party/concert/formal on time!). I can also indulge in visits to the local coffee shops to read and write and sketch out a lens design (as I work from home and have done so since 1999),

In my spare time, I’m a freelance academic examining Doctoral theses and Master’s research reports for five Australian universities and acting as Professor of Management and academic advisor to the Gibaran Learning Group in Adelaide..

Question #7

KRIS: If given the opportunity, would you prefer to be a movie celebrity or a professional athlete? Tell us who you’d be and why…

RON: I wouldn’t want to change places at the moment. If I had to choose I would be a professional athlete. I was the sprint champion at my school at one stage. However, my real passion is tennis.

I played competitive tennis at “A” Grade and Pennant Level for about 20 years. I even played one fixture final on Centre Court at Milton Tennis Centre (location for many Davis Cup battles). I have written a number of articles and created a Squidoo lens about the Inner Game of Tennis (which also promotes affiliate products). My idol as I grew up was Ken Rosewall.

Question #8

KRIS: Seth Godin in his new e-book, “The Joy of Squidoo”, refers to your “compelling” autobiography on Squidoo. What was he alluding to here?

RON: Well “The Joy of Squidoo” written by Seth Godin and Megan Casey is designed as a free recipe book to open people’s eyes to the unlimited applications for Squidoo lenses. They discuss each application in turn and provide examples. They have used one of my lenses as an example of how to create an autobiography on Squidoo.

As they point out, I have used the SquidWho lens template and added photos, commentary and insights to share my life experiences and my preoccupations, propensities and passions. Seth commented on the lens itself that he enjoyed the humour and noted that when visiting the lens for 5 minutes, “you feel like you know Ron”.

So Squidoo enables you to show who you are and to build your profile and your credibility (which in turn builds your effectiveness and your affiliate income). This is very much in line with Seth Godin’s philosophy of “Permission Marketing” and emergent relationship marketing through Web 2.0 technologies.

Question #9

KRIS: Name your top five musical artists?

RON: The singers I love and listen to daily on my iPod, computer or stereo are Eva Cassidy, Damien Leith (winner of Australian Idol), Sarah Brightman, Placido Domingo and Australian singer/songwriter, Chris James.

I love singing and have participated in a number of singing workshops including a two week, intensive residential workshop conducted by Chris James. The focus was on the healing power of sound, music and meditation.

Question #10

KRIS: Share the best advice you ever received about how to become a successful internet marketer?

RON: Don’t slavishly follow the leader – dare to be different, be true to yourself, follow your passions and create your own unique Internet identity and remarkable products. This is the basic message behind Seth Godin’s book, “Purple Cow” and Squidoo enables you to pursue this advice.

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Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: Marcus Tandler, CEO, Mediadonis.net

Marcus is one of the most successful affiliates in the world.  The title “internet marketing rockstar” fits Marcus as well as just about anyone I know.  Marcus is celebrated for his outstanding contibutions to affiliate marketing (CJU Europe Award, 2007) and is one of the most well known bloggers outside of the United States.  Learn some tips from Marcus and find out how he became a professional poker player.

This exclusive interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, August 22, 2008.

Make sure you don’t miss it!  Click Here to subscribe to the PJN Blog and have each interview delivered to your e-mail box.

___________________________________

Read Previous “Meet the Affiliates” Interviews:

KRIS: Tell us about your Blog GarryConn.com?

GARRY: My blog sheds light and unlocks a lot of the mystery in the business of making money online. While I am not the strongest and most powerful teacher in this business, the information you get from my blog comes from the heart. On my blog, I speak my mind regardless of consequence. Needless to say, that has gotten myself into a little bit of trouble a few times here and there. But, it’s a blog and it is a place that is personal to me and I write on it because I enjoy it. It thrills me knowing that what I write actually helps people learn.

If you asked me back in 1998 if I would ever have an online journal, I would have thought you were crazy. I never really knew that I had a gift in writing until I started blogging. Blogging itself plays a huge role in what I do with Internet marketing and making money online. For many people who read my blog, its serves as a tool and a resource that aids them in their ventures of finding success with making money online.

I invest quite a bit of time interacting with my readers. I believe what people enjoy most about reading my blog is that I harbor an environment where people can let their guard down and open up a little bit. Building trust with my readership is huge. When people come and visit my blog day to day, I want them to feel secure and comfortable. In the business of Internet marketing and making money online, unfortunately a huge percentage of that lies in the scam side of business. Many people fall for gimmicks and tricks, my readers have a carefree time visiting my blog knowing that they can indeed trust the information that I publish and trust me as their teacher. That in itself is what makes my blog a huge success in my eyes. I treat my readers exactly how I would expect to be treated if I were reading a blog from someone else.

Question #5 

KRIS: Can you share a few “how to” tips for becoming a successful affiliate marketer?

GARRY: Well, for me I have my unique style and blend in this business. My roots have always tied into search engine marketing. Back in 1999, with my first online business, I had no money to invest into advertising. At the time I had quickly recognized that Yahoo! as well as Deja.com were two of the most popular places where aircraft owners, brokers and dealers invested their time online. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about Yahoo! and the power of their Yahoo! Directory.

Over time, my web site landed many spots in their directory which funneled tons of traffic to my site. Deja.com, which is now Google Groups was a huge part in driving traffic to my site as well. I would send out mass broadcasts of airplanes that we had listed for sale into the rec.aviation.marketplace as well as many other related channels. Clients who listed their aircraft for sale on our web site loved it because we were getting their aircraft exposed and we sold them very quickly for them.

My site soon become one of the most powerful aircraft sales sites online and still remains so today. So search engine marketing has always been my strong suit. My roots are in search engine marketing and that will never change. My tip for anyone interested in this business would be to invest time into researching how search engines work, specifically Google, and to never burn a bridge with them. Search engines are here to help people find things as well as to help people such as myself get my information indexed in them so that it can be found.

Question #6

KRIS: Can you share a few tips on building blog readership and becoming a successful blogger?

GARRY: Be yourself. Never pretend to be someone you are not. If you want to make money online, fine, that is great, but don’t start up a blog where you claim to be an expert in the business of making money online like many others do. In the long run, people will soon realize that you are fake and in return you would have made a lot more money online covering a different topic. Indeed, make money online but do so in a respectable method. Choose a niche or a topic that personally interests you. If you enjoy hot air balloons, start a blog about that. Never create a blog or a web site on a topic that you are not familiar with. Especially a blog that requires fresh content.

The process of publishing content on a topic site that you have no clue about will kill you. For bloggers, you should choose a topic that you have “SO MUCH” information stored in your head that you can’t possibly type fast enough to extract it onto digital paper. Some people in this industry will tell you differently, but I still hold true to my roots and will tell you that quality content counts for everything. Be yourself, be unique and build and maintain a blog or web site exactly how you’d expect someone else to do it and have fun. If you sell products or services on your site, sell only the products and services that you personally believe in and never trick people into buying things just so that you can make money. Trust is huge.

Question #7

KRIS: Share with us any current projects you are working on…

GARRY: I have been trolling around a lot in SitePoint and see that there are so many sites that sell sites in the SitePoint marketplace. I see a lot of wonderful things that take place and also too I see a lot of people taking advantage of the ignorance of others who want to make money online. With that said, I am in the process of building my first, “Ready Made” web site that will cater to the inexperienced yet inspired Internet marketer. My “Ready Made” niche site will come with close to 200 uniquely written and high quality articles related to the niche topic of Vacation Packages (http://www.vacationdealpackages.com).

When the site is done and ready for resell, I will be have created a site that has everything someone needs in order to make money online with a niche site. The process of reselling sites is pretty experimental for me, but I feel that this is something many people would appreciate me doing. The safety net I have in this project is the fact that if it doesn’t go well, then I’ll continue to do what I do and build these sites and simply keep them for myself. At this moment I own and operate well over 100 different sites.

Question #8

KRIS: Recently, you competed in a high profile blog contest with John Cow.  Tell us about the experience and share with us the results…

GARRY: Oh well you’re going to love this story. So yeah, indeed this was high profile. However, at the time, I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into. You see, the history with JohnCow.com goes back with the original owner and his two failed attempts to sell his blog for an extreme amount of money on SitePoint. So, when I caught the news that the original owner was yet again making a third attempt to sell his blog, I ran a post on my blog that provided my readers with a little history lesson showing trends is his previous attempts to scam out a buyer into purchasing his blog for an ungodly amount of money.

In the process of doing that, the owner of John Cow called me out and basically said that if I was all who I said to be then I would accept a friendly challenge against him in a contest to see who could build a niche blog and resell it for the most money in SitePoint. At the time, I didn’t know that this challenge was coming from the NEW owner of John Cow dot Com and I openly accepted the challenge. The first week of the challenge was great. I felt very good about myself and was very confident that I was going to win. Again, I was still under that assumption that the blog was still owned by the existing owner.

I had purchased my domain name, organized a team of volunteer writers, editors and publishers and started work. To do all this, created a contest to build up buzz about what I was doing and was able to land some really awesome sponsors who provided me with products to use for donations. Joel Comm (www.joelcomm.com) donated a copy of The Secret Classroom, which is worth well over $500 dollars, and Zach Hamisha, rep from WhiteSmoke.com, whom I met here in the Pepperjam Network, donated a $250 dollar software package as well. These donations were used to create a huge writing contest. Participants were to write a 250 word article that would be used and published on my niche blog for a chance to win these two wonderful prizes.

I had assigned a volunteer judge, Christine Senter (www.christinesenter.com), who is a professional writer with over 20 years experience, to review each of the article submissions. From there she helped me crown the winners. This contest allowed me the content needed for my niche blog. The second half to my mastermind strategy is the fact that I knew I would need a product so that I could generate email opt in subscriptions. People in SitePoint are big on mailing lists. So I knew that in order for me to really be successful in selling this site, I would need to have a product that could be used as incentive to get people to sign up for my mailing list.

Already knowing this, the second half of my contest was to offer the “Ultimate Grand Prize” which was having the exclusive opportunity for the winning author to expand on the article and create it into an eBook. From there, I had assigned yet another volunteer team to help with the author, Annie Binns (www.anniebinns.com) in producing this high quality eBook. I had a theme designer, Mark Mason (www.masonworld.com), a graphic designer, Forest Parks (www.therandomforest.com) and two editors, Mark Sierra (www.meandmydrum.com) and Christine Senter (www.thepromptwriter.com). In less than 30 days and with the help of all volunteer staff, we were able to successfully build a beautiful niche site that had over 25 high quality articles as well as a professionally published eBook to use towards incentive to get subscribers to join the mailing list.

In order to gain a better understanding of who I am and my background, you have to realize that I am not rich. I have a job just like everyone else does. Some people are plumbers while others are home builders. I happen to have a self made career with online business. With that being said, this business doesn’t and never has afforded me the option to invest money into any of my projects. In order to achieve what I want, I have to manufacture my own currency to use towards the project.

If you have played the popular board game, Monopoly, you would know that the game involves having “play money”. However, even though in the real world this “play money” holds no value, in game play it means everything. With that said, a huge part of what I do online is in printing massive amounts of this “play money” that represent value to interested prospects. In the case with the competition against John Cow, I could not by any means invest $750 dollars towards paying writers to produce content for me. My wife would have packed up the kids and left me.

So instead I manufactured my own currency to use towards compensation. Joel Comm donated The Secret Classroom because there was a value in him doing so. Not only are we online friends, but he too knew that this donation would be worth $500 dollars in free advertising and potential sales and the same with Zack from WhiteSmoke.com. I created value in something and exchanged it for something else. People have to understand that money isn’t the only form of currency in this world.

A large part of being successful in online business as well as offline business is in extracting alternative currency and exploiting the value in it to use towards getting the results that you want without having to spend your own money doing it. If you can successfully do that, then you can do anything.

With that said, I must mention too that during this whole process, I quickly realized that the owner of John Cow dot Com was no longer the original one, as the competition against him was pretty neck and neck. I was indeed, sweating it. In fact, about a week into the contest, I got a phone call from the new owner and he told me who he was. For those of you that don’t know, the new owner of John Cow dot Com is Jason Katzenback, a very successful and high profile Internet marketer. In the end, I did lose the competition.

My blog sold for $850 and his blog sold for close to $1500. However, I feel awesome knowing that just a very casual skilled individual, a stay at home dad, could indeed provide such a high level of competition against such a high profile icon in this industry. In fact, my highest bid was $800 dollars and Jason came in within 2 hours left on the auction and put the winning bid on my own site for $850 dollars. So today, Jason, owner of John Cow dot Com is indeed the proud owner of my niche blog, Debt Consolidation Book (www.debtconsolidationbook.com).

This is an experience that I will never forget and enjoyed very much. In fact, future business is being written because of the publicity from this competition. Annie, Christine and myself are providing our services towards duplicating our proven system and we are currently providing a customer with a new niche blog. We will be handing him the keys to the site in the next week or two.

Question #9

KRIS: Name your top five online money making resources…

GARRY: By far, Google AdSense is my #1 money maker. Runner up would have to be Yahoo Publisher. Third place is Clickbank. And then many programs such as Pepperjam Network, Commission Junction and Link Share.

Question #10

KRIS: If you were not a successful affiliate marketer and blogger what do you think you’d be doing with your life?

GARRY: That is very difficult for me to answer because I can’t see my life any other way. The only thing I can think of is that I would be selling airplanes just as most of my other family members do. However, I do that too anyway, so I guess that doesn’t count. During my whole time as an online business owner I have also worked in the eyecare industry as a certified and licensed optician. I know all too well that if I do indeed fail in the online world that I can easily get plugged back into the eyecare world.

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Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: Ron Passfield

Ron is the most enthusiastic and knowledgable person about how to successfully use Squidoo as an affiliate marketer. Ron has been recognized by Seth Godin (Squidoo’s founder) as a go to guy for making money with Squidoo and I’m about to recognize him as the go to guy for using Squidoo to make money with Pepperjam Network. You don’t want to miss this one since you’ll probably learn more about Squidoo from Ron than anyone else.

This exclusive interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, August 15, 2008.

Make sure you don’t miss it!  Click Here to subscribe to the PJN Blog and have each interview delivered to your e-mail box.

___________________________________

Read Previous “Meet the Affiliates” Interviews: