I need help from an expert on how to focus my blog?

I’m kinda stuck, Dave. I really want to learn how to really focus my blog efforts so I can gain more business advantage, but I haven’t been inspired yet. Worse, I am stuck out in the boonies and don’t have any Internet folk or bloggers in the area who can help me advance. So, help, what do I do?

I hear your frustration and know exactly what you mean about the difficulty of finding quality professionals who can help you form what I would naturally call a mastermind group. I’m blessed to be in an area where there are lots of startups and very sharp people, but even then, all too many professionals seem to be focused on “what can you do for me?” without remembering that the best way to get help is to give it…
I won’t slip into some political diatribe, however! Let’s focus on your specific question.
The good news is that the Internet makes quite a lot possible that was darn difficult in the past. I’m in a business brainstorming group, for example, with members spread throughout the United States and we communicate primarily through email, but all have each other’s phone numbers programmed in our speed dials and often have one-on-one discussions rather spontaneously. If you ping a few people you think could be helpful to you, perhaps one or more of them are already in a group of this nature and could invite you to join them?
There are also training courses available in the business and blogging space, including my own well-regarded Exploding Your Business with Blogging course, 10 hours of recorded audio content and one-on-one coaching calls.
In fact, with this question in mind, I recorded a recent coaching call I had with Durk Price, and he’s consented to having it available here. You can listen to the Mp3 recording or I have the transcript available later in this posting too:

Audio: Blog Coaching Call with Dave Taylor (MP3)
Finally, the best way to learn how to focus your blogging efforts is to just read a lot of other bloggers and keep asking the question what are they doing that’s working and what are they doing that isn’t working?
Good luck with your blogging efforts!!

Transcript of Coaching Call between Dave Taylor and Durk Price

First off, some context from Durk: “I have been doing Internet web design, programming and marketing for over 12 years. My current company, eAccountable Marketing Services has been around for 6 years and specializes in affiliate marketing. My affiliate targeted blogs are: AffGoo – Sticking Affiliates and Advertisers Together, and Affiliate News Review – Delivering News, Information and Press Releases Targeted to the Affiliate Industry.”

	Durk Price: My two blogs are AffGoo.com and AffiliateNewsReview.com. Those are really targeted – what I’m doing is there are a lot smaller merchants, retailers coming in into the market now who are competing in any category. And given a category, there may be 30 or 40 people that already have affiliate programs – Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, wherever – and the possibility of them getting found is not high.
0:40	Dave Taylor: Right. And I think – exacerbated by the fact that sites like Commission Junction, I think, have a – just a terrible interface. I think it’s extremely unnecessarily difficult to find affiliate programs. If you’re a publisher and you want to be able to say – “I’m going to write about this topic. Let me go see if there’s a way that I can make a few bucks since I’m going to mention this product anyway.” Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: That’s a real problem. And I think that that’s a problem that in my experience, the affiliate industry hasn’t addressed because I think that they are still overwhelmed by the statistics and logistics of it all.
1:12	Durk Price: Yeah. And they’ve got – and one of the things is, of course, I was at CJ University this fall. They talked about – “Oh you got to build relationships with affiliates.” And I’m going – “Well, give me a break guys. You don’t even share their email addresses with the affiliate managers.” And I said – “Now, what’s happening is that firstly, all the good affiliates, in particular, are now sharing their email address and their account, manage your deal by squeezing it in there.” I don’t even know how they do it but they do it. And so, what I’ve been doing for the last few months since I’ve got 10 or 12,000 affiliates between all of the programs I manage is I’ve been out squeezing out email addresses from the guys that obviously want me to contact them. And so now, I’m building an email list with that. But, CJs said – “We’re thinking about that.” What they’re afraid of and why they did it – they were afraid that affiliates get bombarded by affiliate managers. But they have these wonderful things called spam filters now that that isn’t really as likely to happen.
2:19	Dave Taylor: Right. I think that’s a little bit of red herring anyway because if I’m an affiliate, I want to know how I can be more successful. Durk Price: Yes. Dave Taylor: I want to know – what are the new products? I want to have, for example, it’s now early at the very beginning of November; I would love to be getting email from Toys “R” Us saying – “Here’s what we believe of what we’ve ordered as the hot 5 products. So, if you want to start getting on the bandwagon with T.M.X Elmo or something, here’s some information that we have. Here are some new product shots. Here are the ways that we collectively can be more successful together.”
2:51	Durk Price: Yeah. And so what I’m trying to do is obviously do that, and I’ve got 7 or 8 programs I either blog for or manage. And so I’m in the process of blogging them up basically to get some natural stuff going to them with everything I can do to help them get their visibility up. This helps me recruiting affiliates. Dave Taylor: Yeah.
3:21	Durk Price: And so I mean, it’s kind of a straightforward deal. So my sites really aren’t commercial in the way that I’m trying to make an affiliate feed, but what I’m trying to do is show expertise in that industry. And I just did a post – again, I’m not – I actually wrote a blog about how I’m not as good as you at being able to create a word and being able to see almost it immediately in a search. But I am able to a blog and get it shown in Google Finance Commission Junction within 5 minutes. Dave Taylor: That’s still pretty decent.
3:57	Durk Price: Yeah. It’s not bad. So, yeah. Very useful to me. It’s useful for my clients to want to know what I do for them. I just had a client who sold out their website to another company, and so we’re negotiating continuing on providing the affiliate management for them. And so we’re doing a new offer. The first time we’ve ever done an offer for this client to affiliates. And so I sent the email. I’m posting it in CJ. I blogged it, and my blog came up in Commission Junction and Goggle Finance Commission Junction in 8 minutes. And of course, the first thing I did is screen capture it and send it to my client.
4:39	Dave Taylor: Right. You know what? For the space you’re in, I think that a blog is a very logical communication tool between the merchant and the affiliate. Durk Price: Yeah. Very – Dave Taylor: If I want to learn more about an affiliate program, there really isn’t really any information on the current sites. They’re really all databases. But if want to know what is – just to pick something out of thin air – What is Payless shoe source? What’s their big promo going to be for Christmas? This is something I want to sign up for now. Well, that particular example, I think, Shawn Collins actually has a blog that he runs for them. Or actually, I don’t think it’s for them, but he runs this affiliate program blog for Payless.
5:23	It’s totally unclear to me why more affiliate companies aren’t doing that sort of thing either directly and sponsored or indirectly through having someone who’s an affiliate manager like you and outsource. Durk Price: And the closest I’ve come is I’ve got one call with CampSaver.com a client. And we created a blog for them called Campedia, and – but they haven’t even put any of their products on it yet. We just been kind of getting it out of the sand box. But I’m blogging on – it’s a gear camping and gear and hiking and skiing deals so I’m blogging on all the things about the outdoors, everything related to it. But yeah. We’re in the process of – that’ll be a good resource. I was talking to – who was I talking to – do you know Jim Lillig?
6:16	Dave Taylor: No. I’m afraid I don’t. Durk Price: He basically has Lobster Gram. And he’s launching 3 separate blogs for Lobster Gram; one is communicating with affiliates, one is – and which what they want to do is provide the affiliates the opportunity to find information about Lobster Gram that they can use them for their sites. And he’s doing recipes, and he’s doing one other thing. I forgot what they were doing, but basically he’s doing 3 blogs to get the Lobster Gram news out to not only the world but to the affiliate industry. But he’s one of the few guys I really run across who’s using the blog in anything else but anything commercially yet.
7:06	Dave Taylor: Right. I mean, it really is just very baffling; the whole fact that none of the companies that are doing affiliate programs are selling their program. Even Amazon – the 800-hundred pound gorilla in the space that pulls in $2 billion a year off their Associates Program. They still don’t sell the program. They still just assume that you want to join because you can make a dollar. Durk Price: Yeah. And what happens is the brands are pretty secure that the affiliates are going to show up and sell their stuff. And what I’m finding is the lightly branded smaller companies. They go in there expecting an Amazon type affiliate program, and it used to be that way. It used to a clipping coupon kind of deal, but it’s not any longer. You’ve got too many merchants chasing too few good affiliates. And so that’s – I started revising the strategy. There’s really a lot of it. I was in the process of trying to figure it out. You were here in Dallas and March, I believe, early March.
8:10	Dave Taylor: Correct. Durk Price: It’s when – you kind of put the icing on the deal where I was trying to figure how to get there, and part of it was the whole idea about – you have to demonstrate you’re an expert. What I’ve been pitching the merchants who have been trying to get to do blogs is – The product you sell, if you aren’t an expert in your own product, why are you selling it? So you’ve got to you just naturally have a reason to demonstrate that you’re an expert through a blog tool. Dave Taylor: Right. And the thing is that – one of the things that I find interesting about blogging is that it lets you become an expert over time. Durk Price: Yes. Dave Taylor: And I think that there are some very good blogs out there that are written by people that really aren’t yet experts but they’re working at it. Durk Price: Yes.
9:01	Dave Taylor: And they’re staying on top of, for example, the affiliate space. Whatever it is, they’re paying attention to everything going on. And they’re starting to do their own analysis. And then frankly, they’re going to start getting feedback. One of the things that I find invaluable is the people that come onto my blog and add comments. Sometimes I’ll say something and I’m wrong, but I don’t know that I’m wrong because I know more about it than my friends do and that my colleagues do. But there’s someone out there that – they wrote that program or they managed that affiliate system or something like that. The more you’re open, the more you’re actually engaging that dialog, then the more you can become an expert.
9:41	Durk Price: I think the whole issue of openness is what scares retailers or merchants more than anything. They just don’t understand that in the internet, it’s an open market place, and the more you close it, the less likely you are to get the results you want. Dave Taylor: Right. Having said that, I think that there is a balance. Durk Price: Well, yes. Dave Taylor: I think that if you’re – I think it’s important to say this – is that if you’re – if you, for example, have an affiliate program that isn’t very good or that you constantly at the end of each month look at your results and say – “You know what? This person’s got to be scamming us. We’ll just give him the boot without any good explanation.” And so, you have some ill will. Well, that’s the kind of stuff where it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that if you actually have a blog and you have comments, that people are going to start slamming you. Now, I think the smart way to deal with that is to say we need to solve the problem. Durk Price: Yeah.
10:36	Dave Taylor: But it’s certainly quite consistent with a lot of organizations to just sway – “You know what? We’re not just going to have comments or we’re going to have comments but we’re going to check them before they’re posted just to make sure that no one’s being really mean.” But the thing is, that doesn’t really resolve the problem. So you don’t really help anything. Durk Price: Yeah. Now, yours is – your blog AskDaveTaylor is – you allow open comments as long as a human being’s making them? There’s a – the security code is on there so they have to – at least be a human being there. Dave Taylor: Yeah. I believe some comments because my basic rule of thumb is don’t be mean. Durk Price: Yeah. Absolutely. Dave Taylor: Now I send like a parent but – Durk Price: Which you are.
11:18	Dave Taylor: But the comments that I believe are the ones where I have an extremely long and active thread talking about how to cancel your AOL account and how that can be really challenging. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And every so often someone will post and say – “Just call this number. You guys are just a bunch of losers. How stupid.” And you know, I believe that comment because it’s just there’s no reason to be mean. Durk Price: And it’s not purposeful either. It’s not – Dave Taylor: Yeah. But what I find interesting is that sometimes there are people that are spammers that are just seeking a link off my site, but they’ll actually add a good comment. And so as far as I’m concerned, if they’re adding something to the discussion, then they can stay.
11:55	Durk Price: And you know that’s a real person then it’s reasonable at that point. The only ones I’m getting because I don’t get enough traffic is I’m still getting the automated ones. Dave Taylor: Right. And so the key – this is the $64,000 tip here is – the way to get traffic on your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. Durk Price: Yes.
12:19	Dave Taylor: And that is so important that I encourage my clients to spend more time doing that than writing their own blog entries. And then the other half of that is that by the very nature and characteristic of the blog community, the other way to get comments is – the other way to get traffic I should say, is to actually offer people links off your site. So if you’re generous and you link to other people, then you will find that they will start to link to you. Durk Price: And I do that – do practice that and that – it has been very effective. But as far as doing comments, I – you’re right. That’s a great tip and because I’m a community guy, and if I’m doing a blog, it’s a community and I need to be part of the community. And the Shawn Collins of the world appreciate even – we’re only in quasi in competition and the market is so big. There’s plenty of work for everybody. Dave Taylor: Yeah.
13:24	Durk Price: I’ll just be known as a good guy to him and vice versa which I obviously think of him. Dave Taylor: Right. And a great example of that is that my friend Leon Notenboom runs ask-leo.com, and he does Q&A in the Windows and internet space. Well, on my askdavetaylor.com, I do Q&A on Windows and internet and Mac. I cover more topics than he does but we’re extensively competitors. But the fact is that we’re friends. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And we actually email back and forth talking about how we can help each other. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And I think that everyone who thinks – I have to keep everything secret and I have to make sure that none of my competitors are gaining any advantage or anything – really can’t see the forest through the trees. This is a space of such great abundance. There are millions of people everyday looking for whatever it is you’re selling. Durk Price: Yeah.
14:15	Dave Taylor: And there’s space for you and someone else and maybe 3 other someone elses to all be successful together. Durk Price: Yeah. I agree, and I think that’s a great tip. The other thing is, one thing I’ve been doing on my – AffiliateNewsReview is really press releases and newsletters from inside the community and reels kind of straight – more copy and paste. I really don’t spend a great deal of time commenting on those. I really just kind of – here’s the information. I spend some time on the title. I may write a sentence or two to reconfigure, but pretty much I just reuse the content that’s out there. And then at my AffGoo site, which is really where I shamelessly flog my customers, I really deliver really much more original content, original stuff I write, stuff I’m doing for my customers – that kind of thing. But I also have been plugging in some – I love like GapingVoid and AskaNinja and there’s a guy named Shmuly Tennenhaus. Dave Taylor: Yes.
15:35	Durk Price: He has done a couple of – he used to be in the affiliate area, and he’s done a couple of really hilarious videos recently. So I’ve been plugging some of that stuff in just to be different. Dave Taylor: I would caution you to be a little careful with the network news site that you have because, the fact is, that I think Google in particular is getting more and more sophisticated about finding duplicate content. Durk Price: Yeah. We’ve been seeing that. Yeah.
16:05	Dave Taylor: Right. And if all you have is duplicate content from somewhere else on the internet, then you could actually end up with that site just not existing for the search engine. I actually have a blog that I’ve been experimenting that last I checked actually had vanished from Google. And it was just an article that I got from other sites. Again, I wanted to see what would happen, and sure enough, that’s not necessarily a successful strategy. Now, I’m guessing if would have had a paragraph of their stuff, 3 sentences of my commentary, a paragraph of their stuff, 5 sentences of commentary, that kind of thing and then click here to read the rest of their article – now it’s a very different situation. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And that might be something where, in fact, there are lots of sites that demonstrate that that is successful. But, it’s so easy for me to take a piece of software and say – aggregate these 9 RSS feeds and make it my own site and put some ads on it. And there are many, many people doing that. That – I think that that actually over time will be a less and less successful strategy.
17:05	Durk Price: More like Squidoo Lens. Dave Taylor: Exactly right. Durk Price: I’m just putting my RSS feed in there. And right now, they’re looking at it as a form of social bookmarking. I appear to be getting, within Squidoo, a fairly good ranking. But I mean, I don’t have to do anything and touch it. But I do know some guys right now that are doing exactly the same strategy and are doing quite well on Google. But you’re right. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. Dave Taylor: Right. And there are definitely some people where that’s their strategy is. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: I’ll do well for a while and then I won’t, and that’s okay. Durk Price: Yeah.
17:43	Dave Taylor: But to me, it’s really much more about – I want to build a long-term business and I want to have something that I’m not going to have to reinvent in 18 months because something’s gone south. I want to know exactly what Google and MSN and Yahoo wants. And I want to always meet all of those criteria. And if they came back tomorrow and said – “You can’t use the word cat on your site.” I’m going to delete the word cat. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: Because for better or worse, they’re the gatekeepers of all the traffic that’s going to come to your site and so you need to meet their needs so that they can meet yours.
18:12	Durk Price: Anybody who thinks otherwise who thinks they can get around them, they’re – world domination is a real opportunity for Google, I think. The way they’re doing some – Dave Taylor: Well, I think they’re already there. Durk Price: Yeah. Well that’s true too. Whether you want to argue with that that they are not now. Yeah. Okay. Dave Taylor: So tell me a little bit about the specific customers. You have 2 different sites. What do you want someone to visit your site to do? What’s your goal?
18:43	Durk Price: Well really, I have 2 targets. One is obviously getting affiliates to come to these sites and view me and view those sites; as a kind of market leader information-wise. And so, the idea is that then I can post my merchant client’s offerings on both places and the affiliates will see them there. And for side A, that’s interesting and go use it. The second purpose, and really is much as main as anything, is the fact that I’m actively growing a business of managing affiliate programs for small-to-medium merchants. And so, I want them to see that as a place where I actively put out their offers. They get this good looking format and so they know it’s not just a bunch of junk, and so it helps to find who I am as affiliate manager.
19:55	Dave Taylor: Right. I mean, when I look at the AffGoo site, it still feels like you’re a little heavy on the sort of marketing hype. Lots of bold face. Lots of exclamation marks. It looks to me like the most recent piece on BeautyTrends, I’m unclear what these pictures are, there’s this 2 attractive women. I mean, obviously it’s typically never a bad thing to include pictures of attractive women in your blog entry. Let’s not go too far down that path. Durk Price: Right. Dave Taylor: But, what that has to do with this site is unclear to me. If these are iconographic models that this company uses, then label them as such. Below, you might have seen either of these 2 women in banner ads. They actually are the actresses that promote or the models that promote beauty trends.
20:46	Durk Price: BeautyTrends sells wigs and hair pieces. So it’s a better description of the article. Yeah. Dave Taylor: Okay. Well that – then that needs to be clear. I think, there’s much, much more benefit than a blogosphere for a very soft sell. And I really like that – of the most – your recent articles – one of them is right there with TechCrunch interviews the reddit founders about the acquisition. That’s really good because one of the first mistakes that I think a lot of people do in the blogging space is they get so excited about what they’re trying to sell that they forget that they need to be a useful information source for their market. And that’s a very different thing. So, you can’t have everything on article B – Here’s what I’m selling, here’s what I’m selling, here’s what I’m selling. Durk Price: Right.
21:35	Dave Taylor: Because obviously the people just get fatigued. I mean, even if you’re the best catalog with thousands and thousands of products, the fact is I really don’t want to read a product of the day everyday for the rest of my life. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: I don’t really care how fabulous your stuff is. But if you’re someone like SharperImage, say, and you start saying – “Here’s this cool stuff that’s coming out from China. And I hope that we can be able to sell it you guys. But we just want you to know about all these neat new gadgets.” Now, here’s something where they could, for example, really take over from someone like TechCrunch. And they could say or give motto or something and say – “Well, you already know SharperImage. Sometimes, we’ll write about cool things we have for sale, and they’ll have little buy buttons. But the rest of the time, we’re just going to write about other cool stuff. And we want you to think of us as the people that are paying attention in this space and we’re getting stuff for you. And if there’s something you want to get, tell us and we’ll get it for you.” Durk Price: Yeah.
22:30	Dave Taylor: And I think that could be hugely successful. Durk Price: I’m probably running about 60-70% are market related stuff – the reddits, the Digg being sold, and those kinds of things. I’m still – it’s pretty much – I still – even though I do flog my guys, I still try to keep it more balanced or the industry news. And not just affiliate stuff. Just kind of everything in the whole internet spectrum. I think social bookmarking is important. And it showed us a pebble – quite a bit – some of that in all my posts. All in AffGoo, not on AffiliateNewsReview. AffiliateNewsReview, I keep it pretty much directly to the affiliate industry.
23:18	Dave Taylor: Right. As I look at the AffGoo.com – make sure people listening can get to your site. There’s also a lot of jargon here. And if I did stumble across something, it’s like, okay – “Earning $174 EPC rates. We aren’t kidding.” What’s an EPC? Why should I care? And why is $174 high? And what’s typical? I mean, how high is high? Is it like 10x what everyone else gets or 100x or just $3 more? You know what I mean? Durk Price: Yeah. Well again, that is industry. Yeah. Specific. Dave Taylor: Right. And so then that leads to obviously to the question of – Who’s your reader? Durk Price: Yeah.
24:04	Dave Taylor: One of the things that I’ve found very beneficial for companies that are getting into the blog space is to think of your reader as broadly as possible. If it’s someone who’s already a super expert and knows Commission Junction inside out and scrapes the database every morning, then you’re not going to be helping them. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: Because they’re already going to know all these stuff. So, you could help them a different way because maybe you could help them think about how they can position that affiliate program. But for example, if BeautyTrends came here, it would be interesting for you to have something where maybe each time you write about an affiliate, you might write something where – Here’s my top 3 suggestions for how they could be promoting things differently. Or – A product that I wished they sold or a way that I wish they packaged things that would make it, I think, even a better sale. Durk Price: Yeah.
24:52	Dave Taylor: And now, not only are you offering ideas to people that are doing affiliate sales because they’re going to be like – “Ooh I could do that. That’s a great idea.” But you’re also offering benefit to the companies. And so, wouldn’t it be a nice thing if you’re down the road, you got a call from someone like BeautyTrends and they said – “Okay, well we’ve been reading what you’ve been writing about everybody and, can you come in and just spend a day with us talking about how we can make our affiliate program more successful?” Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: I assume that would be a very positive outcome for you. Durk Price: Yes. Yeah because I’m sure that you found it to be a good outcome for you as you’ve been there.
25:28	Dave Taylor: Yeah. Frankly, I’m at the point now where I’m like – “Don’t email me. Don’t say I have this really cool new startup. Do you want a test account?” It seems like – “I don’t have the bandwidth.” Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: But on the other hand, it’s so incredibly valuable for me to know – what’s out there, and who are the players, and who are the up and comers. So, same for you. What about an affiliate network that’s just launching and has 5 merchants and wants affiliates? What could you do that they would come to you as one of the half dozen leaders in the market? Obviously there are people like the Wayne and the group of ReveNews and there’s Shawn with his huge affiliate commission – hip affiliate summit and everything. How do you get on that radar screen? How do you be one of the top 10 in that space? Durk Price: Yeah.
26:18	Dave Taylor: I think that there’s plenty of space. Durk Price: That’s my goal. Yeah. Dave Taylor: I’m sorry? Durk Price: That’s frankly my goal. Dave Taylor: Right. And so to get there, #1, I think everything needs to tie back to the affiliate. So if you’re talking about reddit, I don’t want to read TechCrunch’s interview. I want to read what you think about reddit, and why you think it’s important that they’ve been acquired, and how you think affiliates can leverage something like reddit to be able to get more traffic, raise their visibility, perhaps make more sales. Huge concept here is that it’s not about the sales. It’s about the visibility. Durk Price: Right.
26:55	Dave Taylor: And I think that the affiliates that are very successful are the ones that are saying – “I’m going to really build my own store. And it’s just going to happen to be affiliate links to other stores for fulfillment. But I’m going to think of them as my customers, not theirs. And I’m going to give them my customer service and I’m going to make this better.” You look at people like what Brad Fallon’s doing or Andy Jenkins’ are doing with their – Andy has a tapestry site and Brad has a wedding favor site. And they’re both extremely successful. And a lot of what they do, at least when they started was they really just had affiliate type of relationships. Now, they actually do their own sourcing in China. Durk Price: Right.
27:33	Dave Taylor: But to get started, they were doing affiliate stuff but they always, from the beginning said – “I want this to be my store. It’s not a database. I’m not buying a template from somebody. I’m going to build the store.” And I’m going to have customers and I’m going to treat them to a newsletter. And I’m going to do some blogging that will let them have a sense of the sun and the adventure that we have and the cool new things out there. Maybe they’re not even stuff I sell. But I’m going to give 10 insider tips to having a great wedding. And 5 women that have stories about their wedding night. Things like that where you’re still very focused on your market but you’re really trying to address the issue of – “How do I gain visibility in the space?” as opposed to – “How do I sell stuff?”
28:20	And in the same way – some of the other articles you have on your blog – Google YouTube – okay, well that’s a fascinating one. What would it look like for you as an affiliate to start doing videos? You get a couple of products. Maybe you get the new iPod Shuffle, this tiny little thing not much bigger than your thumb. And what if you did a couple of little videos on how to use it and why it’s really cool and innovative ways you can clip this on women on bikinis or something. And so it’s perfect for the beach. Or you can put it in a Ziploc bag and now it’s water proof. And then you just start putting those up on YouTube and those are traffic generators to your site where you then have an affiliate link off for people to go and buy one. Durk Price: Yeah.
29:04	Dave Taylor: So that I think is very different from saying – “I’m just going to quote Mark Cuban’s blog about YouTube and Google.” It’s interesting but you’re not in the space of saying – “Here’s interesting news in the tech world.” You’re in the space just saying – “I’m going to connect affiliates and products so that everyone can be a little bit more successful.” Durk Price: Yeah. See, that’s one of the things. It’s that you have a really good writer’s hat on, and I’m not a writer per se. You really come at this in a “writerly” side – I don’t know if that’s right – if that’s a word. Dave Taylor: That’s the web, you can make up words. Durk Price: You can blog that and get in on Google. So, some of this is more – you got to be more – what you’re really saying is you got to be more creative in your post. You need to be on target but you also need to provide value in what you’re doing. Dave Taylor: Right. And that’s not – If I may say, that’s not a writing issue. That’s a thinking issue.
30:05	Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: By the very nature of what you’re doing. You clearly have the smarts. You clearly have the ability to do everything that we’re talking about. The issue is – are you going to go the easy way of just copying and pasting which won’t be a long-term successful strategy. Durk Price: Right. Dave Taylor: I noticed in the BeautyTrends, it says – where did it say that – “We aren’t kidding. We’ve got a special bonus.” You, AffGoo, doesn’t have a special bonus. We, BeautyTrends, have a special bonus. Durk Price: Yeah.
30:38	Dave Taylor: So even the voice of this makes it sound like it’s not your content. And that just – it’s just putting up a little speed bump, if you will, for someone actually joining or going through your program or subscribing to your blog. If you just asked yourself a question of – If I was just sitting down with some guy who new a lot more about affiliate marketing than I did, what would I want him to be telling me? Every morning, I want to just get his little newsletter, however it gets to me – as an RSS feed, I go their website, it’s even an email newsletter. What would I want him to be telling me? Oh yesterday, did you catch this big news? Well here’s why this is cool. You should go check it out. Durk Price: Yeah.
31:21	Dave Taylor: And one of the things that I encourage people to do a lot, and I know you obviously already have the wear-with-all for this – is if you can’t write, speak. And then send it to a transcription service. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: If you’re doing 5 minutes and then all you’re going to do – really, it’s almost like you could do voicemail. You just find someone, and there are actually people for example here in Colorado, there’s a guy who I work with who is blind. And this is an awesome little side job for him because you send him audio, he types it in, and then he sends it back. And if you were to just say – “I’d like to just leave you voicemail every morning and then if you could by lunch, just email me back that text.”
32:03	You know what? 5 minutes of voicemail – it sounds like a long voicemail message, it becomes 300 words of text. You go through the most rudimentary edit, you post it, and now you never have to type. You never have to look at a blank screen. You’re just leaving voicemail. And you could even just say – the first 30 seconds, just ignore it because that’s just me getting back into my head and saying – “So John, let me tell you. I was reading yesterday and okay, here we go. So the big news is that BeautyTrends is moving up in Commission Junction, and this is really cool because this is a little underserved market and there’s a lot of ways you can actually tap into this.” You see what I’m saying? Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And for executives also, it’s the kind of thing where they can just call a secretary somewhere in the bowels of their company or a third party outsourcing service, and they can just leave 20 minutes of rambling while they’re driving to a meeting. And then somehow that magically turns into a nice little 500-word entry.
32:58	Durk Price: I’ve got a friend of mine who actually drives an hour and 15 minutes to and from work each day, and he has his laptop open when he’s driving home. I don’t know how he gets any sound quality but he says he actually dictates into his computer on the drive. He’ll get a couple of thousand words out into some kind of content that he’ll add onto his sites, and his drive is normally nonproductive. Dave Taylor: I think that’s brilliant. And I think Adam Curry was doing some of that when he first started doing podcasting too where he talked about – “Well, I’m in my car stuck in traffic.” Personally, that wasn’t anything I was interested in, but a lot of people thought that was very cool. And by itself was a sort of an interesting gimmick and it helps him gain a lot of traffic and visibility.
33:47	Durk Price: I’ve done a – we did a – there’s – speaking of emerging guys, I started working with a company out of Utah (www.avantlink.com) that has an emerging RSS technology for affiliate program for an affiliate network. And I did an interview with them in Park City at the Wasatch Pub right on Main Street in Park City with the trolley going down the road going ding-ding like he was in San Francisco. I like podcasting that way. I think it’s kind of fun. Dave Taylor: Great.
34:18	Durk Price: And yesterday, I was doing Jim Lillig’s podcast. He was actually driving and he had an ambulance go by him, so cut – we cut that and – that was shortly after he told me he had been in the adult industry for a while. But they weren’t coming to take him away. But, yeah. That’s the kind of stuff that’s – you can do that’s really fun. This CampSaver guys, they used to test all of their gear by taking their ride in Utah and then we go straight out the back door literally at the end of the day, and they would do overnights testing gear. I said – “Take your cellphone or take your – take a – even the camera on the cellphone, take some pictures and we’ll blog it.” I haven’t got them to do it yet but they think that’s a pretty good idea and I know someone out there is going to – they aren’t doing it already. YouTube – if you typed in hiking or camping, that’s the point I’m trying to make – and there’s nothing on there.
35:25	Dave Taylor: Right. And that’s all going to be changing. Durk Price: Yup. Dave Taylor: There’s a lot coming out in that space. Durk Price: Yeah. And it’s just going to get easier to find and more fun to find. Time for people. Dave Taylor: Right. So, good. I think we’ve actually covered a fair amount of – for the strategic territory here. Durk Price: Yeah. I think that – what I’ve been just – I’m going to add FeedBlitz onto AffGoo and AffiliateNewsReview for people who want to sign up and get whatever post come out each day. I added the YouTube plugin to AffGoo so I can display YouTube videos over there. I’m trying to think. Do you know any other plugins that would be good to have in there? That you’ve been using that –
36:33	Dave Taylor: I have to say that generally I don’t really pay much attention to things like plugins because I think that at the end of the day, it’s really the content that’s going to make or break things. Durk Price: Okay. Dave Taylor: And I would encourage you, instead of scrounging on YouTube looking for videos and such, is just to really focus on what value can you add to this equation? Republishing content or repurposing material really isn’t adding much value. You have a start and that’s good, but what can you – how can you leave your own imprint on every single blog entry? And then again, to reiterate, there’s also a really big idea of going on to other people’s blogs and adding to their discussions. Durk Price: Yeah. I like that.
37:19	Dave Taylor: If you look at stuff like ReveNews, not a day goes by that there’s not some solid excellent article on something to do with affiliate marketing. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: And so, where are you in those discussions? Durk Price: No. And that’s – and I am in those discussions because I have a couple of buddies who are over there at the – they’re on my blog roll. But they don’t post very often. Dave Taylor: Right. Well, and there are people that do post a lot. Durk Price: Yeah.
37:46	Dave Taylor: There are definitely people that post very infrequently but every post they make is great, like Wayne Porter’s. He’s just head and shoulders above everyone else as far as I’m concerned. But even the people that might not be at his level but are posting frequently, surely there’s something you can add to at least 10% of those discussions. Really, not a day goes by that I don’t have comments on other people’s blogs. Durk Price: Yeah.
38:10	Dave Taylor: And I don’t do it from the perspective of – how can I get those people to my blog? I do it from the perspective of – I want to be pervasive. I want people to say – whenever I bump into something from Dave, it’s always a good comment. Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: The guy’s really smart. He’s really sharp and thinking things through. And then that’s the beginning. That’s the seed from which you grow. Durk Price: Okay. Well this has been great. I appreciate it very much. And let me get another month under my belt, and see if I can – I think really what you’re saying is I really need to have a personal voice in this. And it needs to ring true to and relevant to what I’m doing, but it also needs to be – I need to basically own these posts.
39:05	Dave Taylor: I like to think a lot in terms of a cocktail party. If you and I were at a party with a group of other people, and you walked in the room or when you would first walk in the room, you thought – “Ooh prospects.” What would you say? How would you be part of a party discussing the kinds of things that you would like to have them do that will help your business? You wouldn’t walk in and say – “Hey let me tell you about this great new way to make money.” Because they’re going to be like – “You know what buddy, there’s the door. Why you don’t go use it?” Durk Price: Yeah. Dave Taylor: But if everyone’s talking about movies and you say – “Oh man, you know I really action movies.” And then somehow 10 minutes later, you say – “You know what’s really cool is that I actually have a site where I sell action movies? Other people come and they buy these movies. And so I get all mine for free.” Wow that is cool. How do you do that? “Well, let me tell you about how this works. That is – do you have a card? I would call you on Monday. I’d love to setup something like that.” Durk Price: Yeah.
40:02	Dave Taylor: And so, that’s a very, very different approach. One of the things that you’ve heard on the audio course that I have at the Blogsmart.com – I’m sorry – at Blogsmart.com – to be a little clear there. I have at least one call where all we talk about is writing for the blogosphere, and then they’ll have the whole idea of writing for your potential market rather than for your customer. Durk Price: Right. Dave Taylor: So all this revolves in – ever fast, speeding up or ever what – ever faster concentric circles trying to get into the middle point there were you are one of the fun opinion leaders for your market place. And when you are someone like a Wayne Porter or a Shawn Collins – What door is that going to open up for you? Durk Price: Yeah.
40:52	Dave Taylor: And the way they got there isn’t by selling, selling, selling. But by contributing and thinking and offering new and interesting value, and really helping people be successful; as opposed to worrying about whether every single thing they did was to make them more successful. Durk Price: Okay. Dave Taylor: So great. Well thanks. I appreciate your time. Durk Price: Well thank you and how –

One comment on “I need help from an expert on how to focus my blog?”

Sara G says:

December 9, 2006 at 8:32 am

Dave,
Just a note to say I really appreciate your transcripts. I’m hard of hearing and can’t ever get much out of audio files, so you’re not only helping the blind guy (assuming he might have done the transcrition ;)) you’re helping the deaf girl too.

Transcript of Coaching Call between Dave Taylor and Durk Price

One comment on “I need help from an expert on how to focus my blog?”

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