Adam Howitt's Blog - Blogging

Affiliate Link Shortening for Profit

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:15:00 -0400

Coupon Cabin just launched their latest offering yesterday in the world of affiliate marketing called Dealfer.com so you make commissions on the sales you generate at participating merchants. It's a clever idea and leverages their relationships with affiliate merchants to help you make money.

Why would I need a short URL?

If you're not hip to the URL shortening jive yet it has a couple of benefits. The first is that shorter URLs are easier for people to type in and they fit on business cards, in books or promotional materials nicely. Dealfer.com links become http://dlfr.me/xxx where xxx represents a string of characters used to find your link and expand it when someone clicks. Being so short they also use less characters on a webpage or the most common use in twitter where you're limited to just 140 characters. The second big reason for URL shortening is that marketers can track how many clicks a link in a certain place received. For example if you tweet a link using dealfer you'll be able to see how many clicks it got on twitter. Some URL shortening services, like bit.ly, even offer stats so that even if your link get's copied and repurposed anywhere like on someone's blog you'll know about it. Online marketing is easier to monitor than offline marketing traditionally because when someone types in your home page URL into their browser you have no idea where they saw it or heard it, be it on the side of a bus or on the radio but by using a link shortening service you bring traditional marketing back into the ring. The downside is that you're marketing a link that doesn't look like your home page - dlfr.me - but at least it's memorable "deal for me", with the exception of the string part that follows!

Why not use bit.ly?

True, the links are one character shorter and the stats breakout the referral sources but Dealfer wins out in my mind because if I'm linking to a merchant they support I'll get a commission for a sale vs bit.ly links where I won't. Commissions range up to 15% which could help turn a hobby blog into a paying venture.

How does it work?

Just like every other URL shortening service but you get paid! The first way to use it is that any time you want to shorten a URL just go to Dealfer.com and paste in the URL. If you're not logged in it will ask you to login, create an account or if you just need a short URL you can skip registration and get the short URL. When you register you give them a PayPal account to receive funds for any commissions you make. Not every link is going to result in commissions but their list of merchants broken out by commission level could inspire you to promote products in the 15% tier! If you link to a merchant not on the list or a site that doesn't monetize you'll get your short URL and can track the number of clicks but the real magic happens when you link to a supported merchant. Chances are if you get 100 clicks to a merchant you'll end up with a sale, especially if it's something your peers would be interested. You can either link to the top level domain name or deep link to a specific product.

Any top tips?

They have a bookmarklet you can drag onto your bookmarks to make it easier to generate links while you shop. Basically if you're on a product page for something you think your friends would like you can hit the bookmarklet and it pops up a window to give you a dealfer link to use when you're done shopping. You don't have to worry about whether it's on the participating merchant list or not - you'll still get a link you can share. If it is, it's a bonus. I would recommend looking at the merchant list shown by commission percentage to see what to expect from each merchant. Some only offer 1% of a sale and others offer 15%. Familiarize yourself with the sites so you know that if you have a choice between linking to something at site A vs site B (a participating merchant) you don't miss any opportunities. Lastly, think about where you are sharing your links. If your blog is about Adobe products then linking to Adobe makes perfect sense. Try to put your readers one click away from the purchase instead of just linking to the merchant home page. For example a long blog post about Adobe ColdFusion would deserve a link write down to the ColdFusion product info/purchasing/trial page. Until the stats are broken out at Dealfer by referrer you can at least create different links for the different places where you wish to use a link to a site. For example in an ad in the newspaper you might use one link and for a twitter promotion another. Even though they both point at the same place you get to see how many people "clicked" each. (The quotes because if they type it in after seeing it offline they are still tracked as a click). Think about opportunities to promote specific products as you wander around the web. If you're in a forum about the latest nike running shoe and you know one of the featured merchants has a sale on that product or is the cheapest, "dealfer a link" instead of just linking to the store directly and you'll still get commissions on whatever sells. Even on facebook or linked in where people are asking for product recommendations. If it's truly a great product you believe in and a reputable store it will sell and you'll get the credit.

Future developments

I'd like to see this service incorporated into some of the big twitter applications like cotweet.com and Twitterific or Tweet Deck. The advantage for developers is that until the account holder enters their own login for Dealfer into the application, the developers would be credited with commissions generated by links. I shudder to think how many links per day the average twitter app sends! Another feature I'd like to see is a list of the merchants listed by the highest conversion rates and/or revenue generated per click. This type of breakout could help potential linkers find the stores that, while they may offer excellent commissions, rarely convert visitors into sales. Dodging the dogs could lead to a really profitable linking hobby!

Conclusion

Go create an account at Dealfer.com, grab the bookmarklet or their toolbar and stop before you think about recommending a product next time and "deafer a link" instead.

BlogCFC 5.9.2.002 Live and Kicking

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:15:00 -0400

I've finally upgraded WebDevRef to use BlogCFC 5.9.2.002 so hopefully any commenters or readers who have suffered from the spammers attacking my blog lately will have an extra line of defense. This was quite painful as a move because I've skipped about 3 major versions and 6 point releases and the database changed drastically. Not to mention the fact that I have a custom design from Jeff that took the best part of today to reintegrate. I hope this is as much use to everyone else as it will be to me. I've also decided to remove the $5 archive fee - it was a useful experiment and drew some very passionate responses. In 3 months I sold 3 blog entries but it wasn't really about that. As I've been working for myself this past year I've been struggling to make the time to blog about my CF adventures and justify the time. I felt like I needed a sign that someone thought it was worth the effort I put in. I thought $5 per article would give me that validation but it seems I was a little misguided :-) I've spent a lot of time soul searching and realized that I get a lot of satisfaction just from taking the time to write. So I'm back and ready to blog with some brand spanking new blog features. Thanks to Ray Camden as ever for continuing to lead the development of BlogCFC.

Paid vs free archives

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:54:22 -0400

Around a month ago I made the controversial move to make articles over 90 days old available for a $5 fee and boy has it whipped up a storm in several tea cups. I'm curious to start a discussion about the concept to get a read from the people who read this blog.

Justification

My rationale for the $5 archive fee is that most of the content you find on my site is solving a specific problem that isn't found easily elsewhere online. Typically I start writing a blog entry when I've spent a few hours troubleshooting, googling, pulling out my hair and then finally having a breakthrough. Let's say it takes 5 hours to piece everything together, then another 2 hours to write it up. I publish it and for 90 days it's free to the world.

Fast forward to the troubled developer or marketer who finds one of my archived blog entries in Google and clicks through to the site. They might have spent 15 minutes searching for an answer which, at $20 per hour equates to $5. They can spend another 15 minutes searching or pay just over the price of a venti latte at Starbucks or a pint of beer and get the answer to their problem. If they pay and my blog entry isn't what they needed, then by all means, let me know and I'll refund you the $5, heck, I may even offer some suggestions on how to fix it that weren't covered in the blog post.

Why blog at all?

This is an obvious answer but it connects me with solutions to complex problems and it gives back to the community that has allowed me to be successful, but ultimately it translates into reputation and consulting dollars.

Entitlement

The idea for this post came from one anonymous comment and one where the author was outraged enough to leave a note, both suggesting some level of entitlement to access to my archives. If I write something online and take it down are you entitled to the content? If I don't write about it, you may struggle to find an answer to your question and not know that I solved this problem. There are thousands of problems solved every day where the author never shares their findings publicly. The named commenter even went as far to suggest it affects ColdFusion's reputation if I charge for my archives!

What do YOU think?

I really do want to know what people think. Should information be free? Are you entitled to everything I've ever published for free? Is $5 too much? Is it too little?

Now for the Freebie

This article will be available for 90 days, after which if you want to find it again it will be $5. Unless you're aware of the backdoors. Some of my former coworkers thought they had found a chink in my armour using the wayback machine or Google's cached version of the page but in all honesty, it was deliberate. I like smart people and if you know anything about user agents you too can roam freely through my archives. If you're desperate though, just shoot me an email and I'll grant you access to an article. I just want you to stop and think "is this worth the price of a cup of coffee to solve my problem?"

TinyMCE ColdFusion Image Browser

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:58:05 -0400

I love tinyMCE but because I use ColdFusion I've not been able to use the built image browser. The API provides the hooks required to roll your own so I figured someone else might have done the heavy lifting and sure enough, I found a CF based image browser plugin.

I installed Doug Jones' CF_iBrowser v1.0.4 to work with TinyMCE 3.2.1 in BlogCFC. His instructions were excellent and you shouldn't have too many issues. Things to look out for:

At the time of writing the JavaScript function OpenFile in index.cfm doesn't trigger the onChange property for the imageURL field (at least in my browser) so I had to manually add the line
srcWin.ImageDialog.showPreviewImage(fileUrl);
before the
window.close()
line. This manually calls the showPreviewImage function that sets the image dimensions, otherwise your image will be added with a height and width of 0px!
If you are using BlogCFC v5.9.1.001, you'll need to manually comment out the image browser library since the setting for turning off the file browser didn't seem to work for me.
Check to see that you don't already have a an option specified in the tinyMCE.init() code block - mine was set to the PHP based plugin that comes bundled for advimage. Simply replace that value with the line in step 3 of Doug's instructions.

Overall, great experience with the plugin once I realized I was looking at the wrong tinyMCE.init block and kudos for Doug for a job well done!

Adam's Rough Guide to Chicago for MAX attendees

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:43:01 -0400

Getting downtown from the Airport
Save your pennies for beer and take the blue line CTA train from O'Hare or the Orange line from Midway towards towards the loop. At $2 it's far cheaper than your $40 cab ride. Heck, depending on the time of the day it may be faster too.

McCormick Place - the venue
It's located in the south loop area which isn't exactly central or near the fun. If you run at all, it is located right on the lake front path so you can head out North along the 17 mile running path over lunch without hitting traffic.

Getting around
The city has hundreds, maybe thousands of cabs but if you want to save some money, the "El" and the bus network can get you all over the city for $2 per trip. To find your way to a resource below you can use the CTA's tripsweb site.

Touristy Fun Things to do
Rent a Segway for $70 for 2 hours
Chicago River architecture tour 1 hour leaving from Michigan and Wacker
Sears Tower (tallest US building)
Sunset booze cruise
Wrigley Field is at Addison red line el stop. The Cubs are done until maybe the post season but to visit the neighborhood wait until night and skip to the bars section.
Open top / double decker bus tour of Chicago downtown

Touristy things I'm less fond of
Navy pier. Long walk. Lots of tourists, lots of cheezy restaurants and a ferris wheel. Your choice.
Michigan Avenue. Lots more tourists, lots of shops and a few over-priced restaurants. See the section on eating if you are hungry.

Restaurants
Brauhaus - 4732 N Lincoln Ave - Located in the old German neighborhood you can swing steins to the sounds of Polka while you enjoy an authentic bratwurst
Signature Room - Michigan Avenue - On the 95th floor of the John Hancock tower you can watch the sun go down and sip martinis to wash down expensive food with an amazing view
Adobo - 1610 N Wells - Best upscale mexican I've ever had. They prepare Guacamole at the table and I heartily recommend their marguerita with a mescale floater (a smoky taste). Located in a trendy neighbohood with bars nearby.
Parthenon - 314 S Halsted - Greek restaurant with fantastic authentic food (I was in Greece last year so I feel comfortable making that statement)

Bars
South Loop Club - 1 E Balbo - closest to the south loop hotels and host to a good array of locals, TVs and Old Style.
Mullens - 3527 N Clark St - Foosball and good beer specials. Close to the Addison red line el stop.
Fado - 100 W Grand - Irish pub in the styling of many others but showing English Premier League games.
Hopleaf - 5148 N Clark St - Further north but a VAST selection of beers of every style. Located in a neighborhood called Andersonville which is also home to some great restaurants. Probably a taxi ride but worth it for the beer.
Blue Frog - 676 N La Salle Drive - Karaoke on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, board games and a tiny bar. Excellent fun.
Bad Dog Tavern - 4535 N Lincoln Ave - Located in Lincoln Square, an old German neighborhood (See brauhaus). Take the brown line from downtown to Western for $2 or a cab for more like $20

Overall neighborhood notes:
Lincoln Park is home to Chicago's yuppies and plenty of great bars, restaurants and late night dancing if that's your interest.
Wrigleyville is just north of Lincoln Park and home to some of the crazier bars, sports fans and people falling over drunk.
Lincoln Square is a more mature offering (think thirty somethings)
The loop is pretty deserted except for tourists and people attending the theatre after 5pm on weekdays
River North has an upscale feel to all the bars
West Loop has great restaurants and leads into Greek Town - definitely worth a trip
Wicker Park is home to some great music venues and a more "grungey" atmosphere, but slowly become more of a scene
Andersonville is an old Swedish neighborhood and although a little further north it's worth the effort
Rush Street is known as the Vi*gra triangle and is packed with rich men with Harleys trying to pick-up women half their age.

The target blank debate

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:53:34 -0400

Jeff just sent a link to a the can of worms at Kevin O'Keefe's blog on the debate whether to open links to other sites from your website in a new window (target="_blank") or let them leave your site when they follow the link. I've been back and forth on the idea myself for some time. I don't think there is a one size fits all answer to this question but I think it depends on context.

If I am offering a link to background information which might help you understand the rest of the article as a reference, I am more likely to use a new window to allow the user to skim the article in the other window before popping back with the extra information. The purpose of this link is more like a sidebar in that regard. The rest of the time I provide links to deliberately say "hey, you should check this site out" and if they love me they'll be back :-)

Some really great points I enjoyed:

"The best blogs send you away ". I agree, the value of the blog is to pursuade you that something is worth your time and you return to my blog because you value my opinion (or like to argue with me).
"Any true "expert" of the internet would know that there is no room for experts". Quality. Black and white statements are for photographers.

Some people missed the boat completely that the author was talking specifically about blogs and not websites. At our company the discussion rages on with some of our marketing folk insisting that new windows keep people on our site and focussed. I think a website can be different than a blog since, indeed, your goal is to provide content to stimulate a call to action - register, purchase, contact, learn more.

WalkBlogRun launched

Thu, 11 May 2006 12:15:06 -0400

I've finally found the time to create the accompanying blog to WalkJogRun. WalkBlogRun will track my progress in the remaining 12 weeks of marathon preparation for the San Francisco marathon and beyond. In the interests of getting it off the ground I've launched with the default skin of BlogCFC5 but will update the layout handler to match the theme used on WalkJogRun. I decided on San Francisco since the Chicago marathon falls shortly after my wedding and a two week honeymoon in Greece so I'm sure my training would be shot if I tried it. Now I just need some tips for training to run hills when you live in a flat city like Chicago!

New Listing Format

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:39:36 -0400

I've made a change to the site in attempt to make it easier to find content on the site. This involved trimming the first 400 characters of content to give you a flavor of things to come without loading the whole article. The net result is a faster loading page and hopefully it makes it easier to find articles.

Please let me know what you think. Do you need more, less or is this just right?

Glick your Authors

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 13:10:08 -0400

I just read a comment on The Blog Herald suggesting that Ray Camden's blog had too many ads. I've included my two cents there and have reproduced it here for the click challenged readers.

Savage Vines: "This site (Ray's site) seem quite interesting but filled to brimming with ADs hehe"

Me: Unlike this page (The Blog Herald)? Ray's blog is positively empty compared to the number of ads on this page. I think his Ads are minimal and a small price to pay for his wisdom. The net makes it all to easy for people to swallow up vast quantities of knowledge without donating a penny in return.

I mounted a campaign (albeit an under subscribed one) to encourage blog readers to acknowledge the sites they read regularly by clicking one add on the site each time they read something of value. This way the ad owner pays the author for their good content and the reader still pays nothing but at least is rewarding the author indirectly. Maybe it would have been more successful if I could coin a phrase like "Glick your author" (Googlead CLICK) but that's just silly :-)

FeedBurner Experiment

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:11:06 -0400

After a post earlier this month about improving RSS stats, I am experimenting with a new feed provided by FeedBurner, based here in Chicago. Please let me know any feedback if you experience problems with the feed at all. Does anyone else use this service and if so what have your experiences been? Is it worth the monthly fee for expanded detail?

My American City

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 21:56:25 -0400

My fiance suggested I take the "Which American city suits you best?" quiz from Sua Sponte. I always knew Chicago was right for me but it turns out she is bound for Portland,OR, Austin, TX or Honolulu. Here are my results:

American Cities That Best Fit You:

65% Chicago

65% Portland

60% Philadelphia

55% Denver

55% San Diego

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

Three new site banners

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 15:38:16 -0400

In response the feedback about the changes to the site banner, Jeff was tinkering around with 3 images of my photo site, Myphotopia and all 3 crack me up. If you are viewing this in RSS, click thru to the site and hit refresh 3 times to watch the banner change. Let me know in the comments if you have a favorite, however, I love all 3 so I may just keep it as a permanent feature!

Thunderbirds are Go!

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:19:57 -0400

Ok, this isn't a post about the great tv show from childhood but in fact a response to Spike's comments about RSS readers that display the whole web page for a post when you view each item.

In response to that the following snippet of code has resolved the issue, for thunderbird at least.

<cfif findnocase('thunderbird',cgi.user_agent) eq 0>
<h1><a id="masthead" href="#cgi.script_name#">#application.blog.getProperty("blogTitle")#</a></h1>
</cfif>

I thought about going the other way: if user_agent is not IE, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, etc. then don't show the header or adding an rss flag to the URL displayed in the feed so that when it is present the header isn't shown. It's a work in progress but Spike, it is fixed for you as it stands and if anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears.

New Site Design

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:52:04 -0400

In the next couple of days you will see a post from a co-writer called Jeff (formerly known as the MacHead). He refused to participate without some graphical intervention and he has redesigned the site with real design principles.

He is going to explain some aspects of the rework in depth so look for some top CSS tips! The old version is still visible. Questions? Comments?

Supporting Good Blogs

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 13:31:41 -0400

Since I added Google Ads on the detail pages of my blog I have begun to notice them on the pages of some of my favorite bloggers. I propose that if you read a blog regularly and get value out of the content you find there, you can help the blogger out by clicking on one of the Google Ad results every now and then. The extra click costs you nothing but 10 seconds of distraction but shows your support. Use it like a voting mechanism!

Instead of showing them on every page of my site, I discretely introduce the ads when you view the detail of a post (by clicking on the link beneath the post). The result is that the ads you see on many of my posts are more specifically targetted to the content of that entry and this increases the likelihood that you will find it of use once you get there. Today's vote from me go to Doug Hughes, for his UML tutorial series.