Working like crazy behind the scenes

July 13, 2009 by JD · 8 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Dilbeck Marketing, Internet Marketing, Murphy NC 28906, Murphy North Carolina, Products at Amazon, Site Build It 

If you look at the home page of this blog or read the RSS feed, it looks like I’ve been a lazy boy for the last month or so.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

I’ve been working behind the scenes to fix a major problem, update a large site, and bring a new site online.

My goal of bringing the new site online by July 1 was delayed about a week, but I’m making progress with it, again.

Dumped by Amazon

In the last week of June 2009, I received a notice from Amazon.com that they were terminating my affiliation with their associates program.

To say that I was surprised would be a huge understatement.

To top it off, it had nothing to do with me. I was dumped because I live in North Carolina and Amazon.com dumped all their associates in the entire state in one fell swoop.

This was done in anticipation of changes in the NC tax laws that had not been passed nor gone into effect!

I’ve been a proud associate of Amazon.com for about 13 years, but, after this, I’ll never recommend them to anyone and I won’t buy from them. I’m done with Amazon.com.

Rebuilding a large site

As a result of being dumped by Amazon.com, I have started to remove all links to their site. This is going to take me months to accomplish. I have links to their products on just about every page of most of my sites, and some of them have over 1,000 pages.

It’s a second-level priority, right behind building a new site, because I don’t want to send them any customers with no possibility of receiving a commission for my work.

I’ve removed links from most of my blogs, but modifying my static sites will take much longer.

Over the last couple of weeks, I completely rebuilt JohnDilbeck.com. This is one of my oldest and largest sites. In the process, I deleted several hundred pages that were out of date or no longer relevant.

Rebuilding the site was something that I’ve planned to do for a while, but being dumped by Amazon.com was the catalyst that motivated me to take action as quickly as I could.

My affiliate marketing business has taken a hit

After the world economic downturn last September, my marketing business has been hit hard by a big reduction in income.

This was not entirely unexpected, but the suddenness came as a surprise.

Since December, I’ve been making new plans to shift a part of my marketing efforts from affiliate marketing to helping locally-owned small businesses in Murphy, NC attract new customers and enticing existing customers to come back, again.

Murphy Gold is live

To do this, I worked for six months to plan how to accomplish these goals and started planning a new site.

Although there is still construction debris all around and parts of it still need a fresh coat of paint, Murphy Gold is now live.

I still have a lot to do on that site, but I’ve been working at it diligently. I’ve researched over 2,000 keyword phrase combinations and have been doing the initial traffic building work.

I’m not ready for a grand opening announcement, but I’m hoping that one will be forthcoming in a couple of weeks.

Back to my cave…

In the meantime, I’m going back to my cave in the mountains of western North Carolina and I’ll be working all hours of the day and night to get everything on my to-do list done as soon as possible.

One of these days, I’ll be able to write on this blog more frequently than I’ve been doing over the last several months.

Act on your dream!

JD

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What are your favorite motivational books?

June 20, 2007 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Books, Products at Amazon, Squidoo 

Now that I have a modern web browser, having just received the new Macintosh I bought, I’ve been looking at some things I wasn’t able to do previously.

One of those things is viewing something called Plexo, which is available as one of the modules for building lenses at Squidoo.com.

Plexo lets you create lists of pretty much anything and then let others vote for what they like the most (by clicking the up arrow next to the item) or for what they like the least (by clicking the appropriate down arrow).

Not all Plexo lists use the down voting option.

So, I’d looked at Plexo and wasn’t impressed. When I read something about some Plexo lenses in a group on MySpace a couple of hours ago, I decided to take a look.

Now, I understand why Plexo is starting to make some waves.

So, to test the waters, I created a new lens that is devoted simply to a Plexo list of Favorite Motivational Books.

I started the list with a few of my favorites and I encourage you to go there and vote for your favorite.

Don’t see your favorite motivational or inspirational book? Feel free to add it to the list.

Pass the word along. I’m really interested in learning what the top ten motivational books will be.

It will take only a couple of minutes to go to Favorite Motivational Books and vote for your favorite. Won’t you do it now, while you’re thinking about it?

I welcome your comments on this topic.

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Chris Anderson – Long Tail Marketing for Small Business

September 9, 2006 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Marketing, Products at Amazon, Small Business 

Ken Evoy, President of Sitesell, Inc., recently interviewed Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business.

Chris Anderson is the executive editor of WIRED magazine and has a good overview of technology and marketing, as evidenced by the buzz that is building surrounding his book.

In the industrial selling model, corporations decided what was going to be sold and there was a limited number of items offered for a limited time. All companies that are involved in mass production and mass distribution are working within this model.

In the developing digital selling model, products don’t go out of production and you don’t have to sell thousands or millions of items to generate a profit. You can sell fewer items over a longer time interval. This is a simplistic explanation, and Ken goes into more depth at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business.

Additionally, there is an audio interview that you should listen to if you have any interest in small businesses and marketing to niche audiences, and I think that pertains to almost all small businesses.

Listen to the interview. If what you hear excites you about the possibilities of selling into infinite niches, buy the book and read it.

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