July is the month for national day celebrations in Canada and the U.S., i.e. Canada Day on July 1st and Independence Day in the U.S. on July 4th.

Happy Canada Day!
Happy Independence Day!

Let the parties begin!

Any affiliate in almost any niche can help their readers celebrate by sharing ideas for:

• Party invitations
• Party decorations (think flags)
• Barbeque recipes
• Drink recipes and ideas – my favorites, beer in a Canadian flag wetsuit (see pic below) or a Caesar in a glass with a Canadian flag drink umbrella
• Themed dessert recipes
• Party Games

Having hosted more than a few Canada Day block parties, I think of all those things that you need to support a crowd:

• BIG fancy ice buckets to hold beer and other drinks on the patio
• Shade umbrellas
• Flags (LOTS and lots of flags)
• Balloons
• Holiday Tableware (suggest plastic items for pool parties)
• Themed yard ornaments and pool toys
• Canvas chairs with Canadian flags (or hockey team logos)
• Beach towels with flags (no need for a pool, a sprinkler for the kids will do)

BTW, if you do a Google search for “Canada Day Party” with or without quotes, you should see 2 listings with some of my Canada Day party pictures come up from years past.

Good SEO, eh?

Check out how I Got a First Page Google Listing in Only 9 Seconds.

Because it was a Canada Day, part of our requirement to attend the party was to wear something red and white… so patriotic clothing is another suggestion you can share with your visitors.

And after you’ve finished getting your site together to help your visitors celebrate the holidays, take time to read these 2 motivational articles about gaining independence through having your own business:

• Celebrating Independence
• Declare Your Own Independence Day

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

P.S. Independence and national holiday celebrations occur throughout the year in other countries. For an extensive list of national days around the globe, please visit Wikipedia – National Days.

Although the lazy days of the summer ‘sales slump’ are just about upon us come June, don’t give up your marketing efforts too soon.

June is the time to pick up revenue from Father’s Day and graduation season sales.

From years past, here is a list of topic ideas and titles to consider:

• Top gifts for Grads
• Top gifts for Dads
• (Merchant name) Offers Smart Gifts for Dads and Grads
• Dads and Grads June Special
• Celebrate Dads and Grads
• Top Tech Gifts for Dads and Grads (or just Dad, or just Grads)
• Top 10 (product) for College Students (think laptops, cellphones, etc.)
• Top 10 Tools for Dad in 2011
• 10 Excellent (product type) Gifts for Your Dad or Grad
• Dad’s and Grad’s Gift Guide
• Greener Gifts for Dads and Grads
• Personalized Gifts for Dads and Grads
• Unusual Gifts for Dads and Grads in (year)

My personal preference is always to promote the unusual as well as stuff folks really want, and here’s my list of gifts suggestions for Dads and Grads this year.

1. Microbrewed Beer Delivered Every Month
2. Salsa of the Month Club
3. Pizza of the Month Club
4. Beer of the Month Club
5. The Roll Up Drum Kit.
6. BBQ Sauce of the Month Club
7. Multiple-Gadget Charging Stations
8. The Stainless Steel Wallet.
9. Gaming Chairs
10. Emergency Roadside Kits
11. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die (for Dad)
12. Fogless Shaving Mirrors
13. MP3 Speakers & Docks
14. Leatherman Multi-Tools
15. Charlie Sheen Winning Tees
16. BBQ Tools
17. MBA Degree in a Box
18. Life.doc: Your Life Buttoned Up
19. Graduation Charms
20. MOVA Globe

OK, maybe that’s MY list of wants. Actually, I have the MOVA Clouds Satellite globe in my office and it’s too cool. It rotates without batteries or wires. Of course, it sits beside my Sony Digital Photo Frame that flashes pictures of all the places in the world that I’ve visited over the past half century.

Tips for Promoting Grads and Dads

Promote the 2 separately if your niche allows it. With different needs and interests, it’s best to target the markets separately.

In the USA, UK and Canada – Fathers’ Day is celebrated on the 3rd Sunday in June since being made a national holiday in 1966. In Australia and New Zealand, fathers are honored the first Sunday in September. Other countries celebrate fathers throughout the year.

Graduation ceremonies typically are held throughout the month of June in North America.

Make your blog and email subject lines enticing, i.e. “No shipping fees for Graduation gift purchases.” NOTE: Avoid the word “Free” in your subject line to make sure your message doesn’t get caught in a spam filter.

Speak to your potential buyers – not recipients. If you are addressing parents of graduates, avoid ‘hip’ terminology.

Present an array of options. If your niche is fishing, promote everything from cheaper lures to boats. Don’t underestimate the willingness of people to spend big money online.

In 2010, Internet Retailer reported that among the consumers celebrating Father’s Day:

• 36% will spend less than $25 on a Father’s Day gift.
• 27% will spend between $25 and $49.
• 15% will spend between $50 and $74.
• 22% will spend $75 or more.

The top three Father’s Day gifts are hobby-related items for golf, running and baseball (43%), entertainment gifts such as music, video games and movies (30%), and outdoor items such as barbecue tools (26%).

Last but not least, give your readers the option of purchasing a gift certificate, in case the buyer isn’t sure what the dad or grad will like.

Check out the Holiday Calendar for next month’s events.

Recession or not, Mother’s Day is still one of the most commercially successful occasions in North America.

Over the past 5 years, statistical reports from various associations indicate that:

• Mother’s Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.
• In 2006, Americans spent approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards
• In 2008, Mother’s Day generated about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry’s annual revenue, with custom gifts like mother’s rings.

Better yet… According to a report released by the National Retail Federation this week, 21.5% of consumers will turn to online retail sites, up slightly from 19.7% last year — with each spending an average of $219.40 on gifts for mother.

You can promote flowers, spa treatments (gift certificates), chocolates and all the usual assortment of typical mother’s day gifts, OR you can try to be a little more unique by meshing your niche with your favorite mom’s interests. Here are a few ideas:

Sell the romantic, intriguing, and mysterious Message In A Bottle
Promote health and love with a gift that helps her quit smoking
Offer Dinner of the Month Club certificates through Restaurant.com
Encourage your readers to buy their mom’s her own domain name and web hosting for a year.
Go eco-friendly and promote trees through Nature Hills Nursery
And my personal favorite, Amazing Clubs which has wine, beer, dinner, cigar, cheese, movie and many more monthly clubs.

Checking our holiday calendar for May, other popular events, holidays and special days coming up this month are:

1. Cinco de Mayo (5th – who would have guessed?)
2. Victoria Day (Canada) (23rd)
3. Memorial Day (U.S.) (30th)

There’s still plenty of time to plan for and promote the latter 2 holidays, which traditionally represent the first weekend of outdoor activities throughout most of the U.S. and Canada. Think barbeques, camping and baseball!!

Have fun.

Looking for a niche or a product to sell?

Well, some merchants share clues about the type of niche markets that work best for affiliates.

Here, for example is a partial email that I just received from CSN Stores:

CSN Stores is merchant on the ShareaSale Network and comprises over 250 specialized online stores that offer a wide variety of home goods including tools, office furniture, bedding, lighting, outdoor furniture, luggage, baby furniture & more.

… I (Eileen the Affiliate Manager) recently compiled a list of CSN’s most popular brands in 2010. I’d like to share just our top 5 with you. Since these brands were such best sellers last year they might have high conversion rates again this year so feel free to feature them if you wish! ‘Top 5′ is defined by net number of orders for the entire year of 2010.

CSN’s Top 5 Brands of 2010:

1. Wildon Home
2. KidKraft
3. Winsome (pantryware and lifestyle furniture)
4. Home Styles (furniture)
5. Midwest Pets

CSN’s Top 5 Brands of 2010 through Affiliate Sales Only:

1. Kidkraft
2. Wildon Home
3. DaVinci
4. JoJo Designs
5. Melissa and Doug

That should tell you that not only is furniture a good market, but specifically that relating to kids and pets.

Check your merchants’ emails frequently for good clues such as these.

And if they don’t share their data with you – ask!!

Check out my 2011 holiday calendar and you’ll notice that there are a number of holidays, observances and opportunities from which you can earn affiliate commissions in March.

The most popular dates and events are:

1. St. Patrick’s Day – March 17th
2. Spring equinox – March 20th
3. NCAA March Madness

The defining color for the month is decidely green.

But your blog doesn’t need to be dedicated to basketball, holidays, all things Irish, green living or gardening to profit from those topics.

Here are examples of how to integrate these topics into a number of different niche topics.

1. Community blog – Write about planned festivities in your town.
2. Personal blog – Post about how you plan to celebrate the events.
3. Sports – Not a basketball fan? Blog about teams that go green for St. Patty’s.
4. Fashion blog – pretty green handbags for spring.
5. Cooking blog – your favorite green recipes… and don’t forget to talk about the green beer!
6. Health blog – Best greens for healthy nutrition.
7. Travel – spring break destinations. Greener travel.
8. Mommy blog – kids’ St. Patrick’s Day party.

Use your imagination. Almost any two niches can be married successfully with a little thought.

What should you sell?

Well, you can sell just about anything related to the niche and the theme – i.e. t-shirts, cookbooks, team jerseys (any type of clothing), event tickets, gift cards – you name it.

Be unique in both your content product offerings.

Search your favorite affiliate networks for St. Patrick’s and spring specials. Shareasale in particular always has “Prepare for the Upcoming Holidays” near the top of its interface with holiday names linked to promotions from your affiliated merchants.

Here’s a unique product / service that I came across recently that would work for so many different types of blogs, and not just in March.

It’s called Going Green Today and it’s on the Performance Based ECO affiliate network. What they do is create action plans for 90 day Green Makeovers through free lifestyle assessments. Visitors take the assessments to see if they can save $2000 from their costs of living.

Look for it in the near future on http://RosalindGardner.com which sports a Greener Living section.

See… no matter what the month, you can blog about almost anything.

What are you blogging about in March?

Is your site ready for Christmas shoppers?

An Accenture survey forecasts that folks will be shopping for Christmas earlier this year, with 69 percent planning to complete the bulk of their holiday shopping by Dec. 7th. Too, consumers are more deal-oriented than ever before, with 25% of them expecting at least 50 percent discounts before they buy.

According to a Gallup survey, the Christmas spending forecast is down slightly this year, with consumers planning to spend $740 on gifts compared to $801 as per surveys taken at the same time last year.

With more merchants competing for fewer dollars, the deals are going to be phenomenal. In fact, merchants have already started to lower their prices to get a leg up on the competition.

Sears launched a campaign on October 31st, called “Black Friday Now” with deep discounts happening every Saturday from now until Christmas.

Saturdays???

‘Black Friday’, which falls on the day after American Thanksgiving (November 27th) is the first day of the Christmas season and is usually the busiest shopping day of the year… offline.

‘Cyber Monday’ is the Monday after Thanksgiving. The term was first used by Shop.org, whose research showed that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on that day.

So what does that tell us?

That we’d better plan to get our affiliate sites and PPC campaigns ready for the Christmas shopping rush earlier than ever. I’ve noticed that folks are talking about Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals on consumer sites already. In fact,

So, although the big Christmas shopping days are still almost a month away, you need to get your site and PPC campaigns ramped up now.

1. Start checking the networks now for Black Friday deals. Here are 2 examples … Black Friday at Overstock.com and Big Savings, No Blarney: Book a Black Friday Round-Trip Flight to Ireland from $278 on Aer Lingus! (Expires 12/31/09)
2. Make sure that you are receiving merchant emails. Many merchants have their 2009 holiday shopping catalogs online and are already pumping out Black Friday and Cyber Monday ‘deal’ notices to their affiliates. Unless you are in the habit of checking each network’s interface daily, turn on email notifications or you may miss some really great deals that you could be passing on to your customers.
3. Contact your affiliate manager directly. If you have a working relationship with your affiliate manager, phone him or her and get the low-down on the best seasonal deals and best-converting offers.
4. Decorate for Christmas. Pretty up your site with holiday graphics and pictures of happy shoppers. Just acknowledging the season with a ‘Happy Holidays’ header or a “Your One-Stop Christmas Shop” graphic will show your spirit and get your customers in the mood to shop.
5. Put up a ‘Black Friday Deals’ page… or pages. Draw visitors deeper into your site with the promise of special savings opportunities.
6. Do the legwork. Compare and contrast the deals that your merchants are offering. Sifting through a myriad of sites and offers is time-consuming. Save your potential customers time and effort by explaining the difference between offers on the same product. For example, show how that company that charges slightly more for a product but offers ‘free shipping’ will save them money in the long run.
7. Create urgency. Let your visitors know that these deals will not last by including offer expiry dates in your copy. Put up an “x number of Days ‘Til Christmas’ countdown ticker on your site, eg.
   You can find the “Till Christmas” code at Javascript Made Easy
8. Set up your PPC campaigns well in advance. Drive targeted traffic to your Black Friday deals pages with pay per click advertising.
9. Touch base regularly. Now’s the time to put your autoresponder to best use by increasing the frequency of contact with your subscribers. Let them know that you’re doing the legwork to find them the very best deals of the season. Let them know what’s new and hot in your niche and tell them to stay on the lookout for more notices from you with sizzling deals.
10. Seal the deal with great copy. Go beyond price points and convince your visitors that the products you’re promoting make great gifts with tantalizing copy. For example, when describing spa or jewelery gifts for women, use words and phrases such as, ie. pamper her, soothing, relaxing, unique, innovative, hand-picked, romantic, heart-touching, romantic and indulgent. Be sure to stress the benefits to the gift-giver as well, eg. “she’ll thank you again and again for…“.

Keep these suggestions in mind as you prepare your site for the 2009 holiday season – and you’ll thank me for your increased conversions this year!

If you browse around the internet, you’ll notice that people all over the world are blogging and making money doing it!

These are people just like you; people with little experience, without a background in computer science, or a big bank account to dig into. They used programs like Google Blogger (blogger.com) or WordPress (WordPress.org) to quickly and easily set up their blogs, often at no cost. Now all you have to ask yourself is what hobby or niche should you blog about?

A recipe blog can be the perfect choice for people who have tried recipes and thought they could do something different, more exciting, or just plain better.

It’s a great way to tell others about new recipes, ideas, and products available in the world of cooking, as well as sharing regional specialties. But, don’t worry if you can’t cook. You can write a cooking blog for others who are learning to cook. How much fun would it be to share your successes as well as your “hope you don’t chip a tooth” muffins? Starting a recipe blog can be a wonderful way to share your interest and make money in the process. If cooking is your passion (or even if it isn’t) — a recipe blog may be a profitable way to get a taste of online business.

The skills needed to start blogging about cooking are simple.

You need a talent or love of cooking. You don’t need to know all the fancy gourmet cooking terms; you just need to know how to put a dish together that tastes good.

You also need to be able to write your recipes in an organized, concise, and easy-to-follow format. You may want to be able to use a digital camera, or find someone who can, in order to take pictures of your food, or you could use publicly licensed photos of food that you find on the internet. Of course, you’ll need patience. Every blog has a unproductive period at first, so don’t get discouraged. It will take time for your blog to build and for people to find you.

There are several ways you can turn your recipes and cooking blog into a money-making business. You can choose just one of these options or do a mix of them.

Here are some ideas…

Make Money by Selling Products: A person who loves to cook, often loves all the kitchen paraphernalia that comes along with it. If you have gadgets and cookbooks available to purchase on your blog, you can reap the rewards that the retail markets are enjoying. You can share your recipes, cooking tips, opinions, and sell products all at the same time. Nice little income producing idea.

Make Money by Selling Advertising: Once your blog gets noticed, and traffic starts coming your way, you’ll find advertising on your blog to be a nice, profitable way to generate income. This is something to keep in mind, but you won’t really hit your stride making money with this method until you start getting readers. Just file this idea away so you can start making your plans.

Make Money by Selling Your Blog: If you’ve been noticed by the search engines and media, you have arrived! Now may be the time to consider selling your blog for the big bucks. (Some blogs have sold for millions.) You can also create blogs for sale when you get this good.

With some focused time and creativity, you should be able to develop a recipe blog that is uniquely yours, a place to post your favorite family recipes, restaurant secrets, cooking disasters, or other information you want to share in the world of cooking. But, thinking isn’t doing — you’ve got to act in order to succeed.

Yes, you Can make money with a Recipe Blog. Need recipes for your new blog? Check out Yummy PLR Recipes.

If you’re subscribed to a bunch of IM newsletters, your inbox is regularly stuffed FULL of promos for BIG DOG mega launches.

They JV with their BIG DOG buddies who all have humungous lists to which they sell, sell and sell some more… making millions. They don’t care about burning out their lists because they’re continually getting fresh leads from their buddies.

That works for the BIG DOGS, but how do regular people with a tiny subscriber lists (and no big dog friends) launch a new product and make big coin — WITHOUT burning out their already small lists?

Well, I just watched a case study video about John Gallagher, a guy that went from being on Food Stamps to making a six-figure income in a non- internet marketing niche.

His niche?

Herbs!

What’s especially heartening about John’s story is that his product launch model BUILDS relationships with his subscribers (i.e. no burnout) and his paydays keep getting bigger and bigger.

And John’s is just one of some great non-guru case studies in the video. How about a list to 312 people that generates way more than five figures?

If you want to build your business using a non-hype, relationship-building formula – take some time this weekend to watch the “Food stamps to six figures” video… there’s nothing to buy.

Go watch the video now.

How do you know what people want buy online?

Fortunately, a number of sites make answering that question very simple by publishing weekly, monthly, and annual trends; interest comparisons, top lists and market research reports. Various online services publish the number of times keywords and phrases are searched over a given period of time.

Here are 10 of my favorite market research sites and services.

1. Google Trends lets you compare the world’s interest in your chosen niche markets.

   For example, I entered ‘coffee’ and ‘tea’ and discovered some significant spikes in the interest in coffee (shown in the graphic below).

   

   You may enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time. It also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.

2. Google’s Insights for Search lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. Check out the examples of how you can use Google Insights for Search accessible from the homepage – you can go DEEP with this one!

3. Magazines.com lists their 10 Top Titles on their homepage.

   At the time of writing, these included Sports Illustrated For Kids, Time, People, InStyle, Woman’s Day, Money, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Women’s Health and Disney Adventures.

   So what topics do we see there? Sports, general news, women’s issues, fashion, kids and finances.

4. eBay Pulse is a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay, listing popular searches, largest stores and most watched items.

   Alhtough eBay Pulse page shows an overview of the entire eBay marketplace, you can use the drop-down menu to refine and filter the lists to show content for specific categories on eBay.

5. Yahoo’s Buzz Index focuses on the entertainment industry, providing their most popular searches on a daily basis for actors, movies, music, sports, TV and video games.

6. comScore Networks provides insight into consumer behavior and attitudes by compiling reports based on a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.

7. JupiterResearch provides research, analysis and advice to help guide technology vendors and service providers on market opportunity. Guest access is available, however, to quickly gain access to salient sections of recent Jupiter Research reports, try Googling “jupiter research ____” (_____) being the name of the topic you wish to study.

8. Amazon best sites for doing market research. Search any of their departments, i.e. books or baby or and you’ll see either a link for Bestsellers or Top Sellers as well as:

• Hot New Releases
• Most Gifted
• Most Wished For
• Movers & Shakers

9. Google Adwords Keyword Tool is also a free tool that reports on search performance and seasonal trends on keywords and keyword phrases that you enter into the search box. Statistics show the relative amount of users searching for that keyword on Google.

10. WordTracker shows you exactly what people are looking for online by showing you exactly which keywords and phrases they’re searching for. Wordtracker’s suggestions are based on over 330 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days.

    Although Wordtracker offers a free trial, I recommend that the week-long pass for $27.59 is really worthwhile if you want to do justice to your market research!

Whether it’s golf, gardening or grandfather clocks you want to sell, use the sites recommended above to find out how much of a potential market exists BEFORE you make the leap to a full-scale site on the subject.

December’s Secrets to Their Success online magazine features the following successful netpreneurs:

• Online guitar instructor Mike H., who believes it really is better to give than to receive… because the more of his free how-to videos he gives, the more orders he receives — $150,000 worth this year!
• Mark B. — a jolly old soul who earns $500,000 in just two months sending out customized greetings from Santa… and spends the rest of the year making a list and checking it twice;-)

Tony W., who sells interactive Microsoft training programs was this month’s winner of the site and marketing review.

To access these profiles, join Secrets to Their Success.

Each month, Secrets to Their Success members receive an e-mail, letting them know about two 100% brand new success stories that have been posted to the site.

When you join, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the secrets that have made each web site successful and how you can apply these same strategies and tools to build your own fortune.

As a member, you are also given the opportunity to enter a draw for a review of your web site or business plan by Derek and the IMC team (valued at $5,000), who dissect the site and offer tips and tricks that you can use to really accelerate your growth and sales.

Even if your site isn’t chosen for a site review, however, you can still benefit from all of the profitable suggestions that Derek and the IMC team make because all reviews are also posted and archived within the SecretsToTheirSuccess.com Private Web Site.