KristineWirth.com

Archive for July, 2008

I’ve just finished reading Sylvie Fortin’s report that was just released yesterday called “Internet Marketing Sins”.  If you just want to get right to it, download it here – otherwise, you can listen to my brief commentary on the 120 page report by clicking here.

- Kristine

I’ve recently started using Twitter a lot ( you can follow me at http://twitter.com/KristineWirth) and would sometimes see people who post a tweet using a hash symbol (#) before a few words…I never gave it much thought until another person on Twitter wondered what the hash symbol (#) meant.

Since I had seen it as well, I too got curious and so decided to do a little investigation…here’s what I found…

The hash mark (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post for that word. However, in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow http://twitter.com/hashtags.  Once you’re following Hashtags, every time you make a post in Twitter and tag it with a hash mark like so:  #iPhone, it will then show up as a real-time post on http://www.Hashtags.org.

If you then visit Hashtags.org, you can click on any tag and it will show you all of the posts that have been tagged with that keyword.

I use the term “keyword” with a grain of salt since some of the tags aren’t keywords in the sense that you know them related to search engine optimization, because some of the tags are completely non-sensical in nature. And although you can get a complete list of words that have been tagged on the site, there is no way (at least currently) to search for a specific tag.

However, it is possible to view all tweets (posts made to Twitter) that contain a specific tag by modifying your URL a bit like so:  http://hashtags.org/tag/iPhone.

You can also subscribe to any updates that contain a tag by visiting http://hashtags.org, entering in the tag you want to follow and then clicking “subscribe” on the right hand side of the page.

Since Twitter only allows you to post 140 characters at a time you can see how you’d have to be pretty selective when using the hash mark – although one character doesn’t seem like much, you’d be surprised how much you actually need that one additional character when trying to get a point across in your Twitter post.

***** UPDATE *****

Here is yet another site that you can use that makes use of hash marks.  This site allows you to see who has been using the hash mark you enter within their posts and how many times they’ve done so.  Note that when you visit this site you don’t have to enter the hash symbol (#) in the search box.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…have you had experience with the hash mark via Twitter?

See Also:  Twitter Karma – How to find out who is following you back on Twitter.

Becoming an affiliate marketer is one of the best ways to bring in a little (or a lot) of extra income for yourself depending upon how much work you put into it. An affiliate is someone, like you, who signs up with an affiliate program to sell products and services that are provided by other companies. When you make a sale, depending upon the affiliate program, you can make a percentage of the commission from the sale or you can earn a flat dollar amount per sale.

When you’re first researching companies to become an affiliate of, you’ll want to keep in mind a few things:

• Be familiar with the product or service you’re promoting. This will give you an edge over other affiliate marketers who aren’t as well-versed in the product or service you’re offering.
• Understand the terms of the program. Each company has different terms when it comes to what they’ll pay you and how often you’ll receive a check from them.
• You’ll be able to better suggest the product or service if you yourself have used it. If you can afford to purchase the product first this will also give you an upper hand over other affiliates since you’ll have information that they themselves didn’t bother to find out.

Being an affiliate has many advantages as well. You don’t need to keep an inventory yourself and you don’t have to deal with any support issues that arise from the sale of the product. Your only job is to promote the product.

But, being an affiliate does not mean that you simply rush out and start plastering advertisements everywhere online. People appreciate real content. This ties into you knowing the industry the product is in that you’ll be promoting. You’ll be able to write quality content about the industry and then offer suggestions to your site visitors as to what products you recommend.

The more content you have, and the more you update your website with information about the industry, the more you’ll create a following of people who trust you. And the more people trust you, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Your first stop should be to locate those products and services you’ve used and have liked in the past. Once you have located these, visit each of the product sites to see if they have an affiliate program that you can join and if so, sign up.

Once you have your affiliate link, start writing information on your website about this product. Since you’ve used it in the past, you can offer great information and detail that most other affiliate marketers won’t bother to share and this could mean a huge boost in revenue for you.