Today the Lifestyles Channel is inviting readers into their homes by sharing a glimpse of where they blog from.

The blogging locations are just as unique and varied as our bloggers - but one things for sure, in every single post, you find a sense of comfort that whispers softly - Welcome Friends.

Sandy Mitchell - All Holidays Cafe 

Gayla McCord - MomGadget also blogging at Dating Dames - Supernanny Rules and CelebAmour

Marye Audet - Baking Delights - also blogging at Kettle and Cup

Christina Zola - Solomother

Chloe Findlay-Harder - Tangled Thread

Tracy Thompson - Foodie Obsessed

Peggy Rowland - Tree Hugging Family - also blogging at Junk Creation

Noreen Crone-Findlay - Hankering for Yarn

Linette Gerlach - Mother Earth’s Garden

Kadi Prescott - Guerrilla Parenting

Mary Emma Allen - Quilting and Patchwork

Karen Weideman - Thrifty Mommy

Susan Gunelius - Play Library and One Book Two Book

Marcie Pickelsimer - A Child Chosen

Deborah Ng - Simply Thrifty

Eliza Ferree - Babylune

Heather Goldsmith - A Creative Journal

Julie Fletcher - Robust Cooking

Kelly Saunders - Thrifty Mommy

Farley Walker - Behind the Vines

Maricar - Keeping the Castle

Jennifer Chait - Offbeat Homes also at Tree Hugging Family and Declutter It

I hope our little tour has inspired other readers to share their blogging spaces too.  It’s great to get a peek inside the daily lives of those who touch our hearts with their passion and words.

Please be sure to subscribe to our channel feed so you can stay abreast of all the fun things coming up on the b5media Lifestyles Channel.

Image source: stock.xchng

With the month of April about to end, our focus on healthy living is just getting into full swing.  The Lifestyles Channel welcomes new blogger Julie Fletcher to Robust Cooking.  Julie will be focusing on healthy cooking, eating, menu planning with a particular focus on diabetes and other health conditions that require special dieting.  Please stop over and say hello to Julie.  If you have a particular health condition you’d like introduced, be sure to mention that to her.  I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.

I am thrilled to be making this announcement!  I, Gayla McCord, have been MomGadget for nearly two years and with b5media for slightly longer.  Recently I received the green light on bringing MomGadget over to b5media where I’ll be serving a much wider audience with introductions to gadgets that make mom’s life a little simpler, conducting more giveaways and dishing up more entertaining and informative reviews.  Thanks to Tyson, I was able to kick off the move with an awesome giveaway and that’s only the beginning!

This seemed a logical transition and one I hope our readers will enjoy.

When I last spoke with Anik Singal he was absolutely shocked with the success of the free Blog Classroom pre-launch course.

They’ve had over a 1000 comments! People are following all the free blog classroom videos, putting up their own blogs, and getting TRAFFIC right away.

I decided to check out what all the commotion was about.

Let’s get one thing straight , I’m skeptical about any product that claims to show you how to blog. When I first started SuperAffilatemindset.com I didn’t know squat about blogging.

Anik encouraged me to check out the free course and the outline of the full course that he and Rosalind Gardner had put together.

All I can say is that I’m completely blown away by the depth of material this course covers. I’m embarrassed to say that the Blog Classroom course covers a lot of material that I don’t know, but stuff that I SHOULD KNOW!

I can’t wait to go through Blog Classroom myself, I know I will learn a ton!

I actually learned about social media and blogging from Tom, one of my top advisers and partners. He actually setup SuperAffiliateMindset.com, helped me setup the all the social networking widgets, etc, etc. I learned a ton from him, and without his help this blog would not be where it is now.

Most people don’t have a blogging and social media expert at their finger tips to hold their hand and show them what to do to get a successful blog off the ground. That’s where Blog Classroom comes in.

Here’s just some of what Blog Classroom includes :

1. Easy to Follow Step by Step Instructions on Exactly how to Setup, Customize, & Launch Your Blog
2. How to Get a Avalanche of Highly Targeted Traffic to Your Blog
3. How to Make Start Making Money from Your Blog, Even a Full Time Income Stream! As I showed you in a previous post, you can make a killing as a blogger.
4. Detailed, Easy to Follow Answers to Every Possible Technical Question You Ever Had About Blogging. No Joke, this is a REALLY Comprehensive Course!

A lot of you have been asking about how to setup landing pages and Google Quality Score friendly affiliate sites. We’ll if you start a WordPress blog (which is what Blog Classroom shows you how to do) and add ppc landing pages to it, BOOM, you’ve got a high quality affiliate site up and running.

So if you want to discover how to quickly build an affiliate site that won’t get slapped by Google, Blog Classroom will show you EXACTLY how to do that. (Now make sure you have a customized Wordpress template and lots of unique relevant content on your blog or you’ll still get slapped - again Blog Classroom shows you how to customize your WordPress template as well).

Before you sign up for Blog Classroom I need to tell you about a exclusive bonus package I’m putting together with Andrew Wee.

SPECIAL BONUS FOR GETTING BLOG CLASSROOM THROUGH MY LINK

Top Blogger Andrew Wee, and I are putting together a HIGHLY exclusive bonus for the top 30 people who sign up for Blog Classroom through our link.

The first 30 people who sign up will get access to a live 4 part Advanced Blogging Strategies Webinar Series. For the first time (and most likely the last), Andrew and I are going to reveal our most closely guarded secrets :

1. Little Know & Unorthodox Techniques to Quickly & Easily Explode Your Blog Traffic
2. How to Create a Fanatical Reader Base that will come Back to your Blog Again and Again, and Tell Other People about Your Blog.
3. Why Most Blogger Fail and How to Avoid Falling in This Trap
4. How to Leverage Your Blog for Massive Profits & Not Just People Clicking on Adsense Ads

Andrew and I do not currently have plans to release this as a product to the public, this may be your only chance to get your hand on this information. We are opening this up for 30 people ONLY, so act quickly!

Sign up for Blog Classroom now and get access to Amit & Andrew’s Advanced Blogging Strategies Webinar Series.

Email your sales receipt to amit [at] superaffiliatemindset [dot] com to receive a sign up link for Advanced Blogging Strategies.

PS Based on the overwhelming number of people who signed up for the free blogging course after my post about Blog Classroom last week, the 30 seats for our Advanced Blogging Webinar Series will sell out FAST. So hurry!

The month is about to end, but the action just keeps piling up in the Video Games Channel. After launching a casual games blog earlier this month, we now introduce Sega Nerds, the only place you need to visit to get all your Sega news, reviews, previews, and more!

Sega Nerds is an already-thriving blog when it joined the VGC. The blog’s entry into b5media’s fold marks the beginning of a great relationship. Sega Nerds brings in original content fresh off the gaming press that’s guaranteed to sate the nerdiest of Sega fans.

Leading this pack of rabid Sega fans-cum-game-journos is editor-in-chief Chris Powell, with editors Graham Cookson and Nathan Tsui. Mind you, Sega Nerds isn’t limited to that blazing blue hedgehog running at speeds faster than Mach 1. The blog covers a wide spectrum of games published by the iconic software company.

Do visit Sega Nerds and give the blog a warm b5media welcome! While you’re at it, feel free to bookmark the blog and include it in your daily routine. Becoming a Sega Nerd is so easy.

Okay, last time we talked a lot about keywords, that is, how to clean up your list and segment it.

This time I’m going to walk you through how to write your ads, and setup conversion tracking. In the last post I’ll show you how to put it all together and build a killer Adwords campaign with EfficientPPC.

WRITING YOUR ADS

First I want to give you some basic quick and dirty guidelines for writing an effective ad :

1. Put the keywords in the ad at least once, I almost always put it in the headline. This is the biggest psychological trigger you can put in your ad, when people see exactly what they typed in Google in your ad, they immediately see it as highly relevant.
2. Include the BIGGEST benefit of your offer in the ad. Example : Discover 5 Simple Steps to Stop Dog Biting!
3. Have a strong call to action. Examples : Start Now! Begin Here! Start Your Search Here! Etc…

For a full list of tips and tricks check out Googlelady’s 31 Killer Adwords Ads Tips.

Let’s get down to business…

Now remember how I talked about breaking your keywords into different categories based on theme?

Once you’ve done that it’s time to write 2 ads for each keyword.

It’s not as bad as it sounds! LOL

Here’s how to do it:

1. Write 2 unique body copies (description line 1 & 2) for each keyword category
2. Using EfficientPPC we will dynamically insert the keyword in the headline, making 2 ads for each keywords

Ultimately, here’s how your affiliate campaign structure will look like : a different Adwords campaign for each keyword category, one keywords per adgroups with 2 ads per keyword.
CONVERSION TRACKING

Do NOT launch a campaign unless you’re tracking which keywords are producing sales for you. Here’s the bottom line, if you’re biding on 1000 keywords, you’re going to find only a tiny fraction of those keywords will produce consistent sales for you.

You probably find around 20 keywords out of the 1000 produce consistent sales over the course of a month. If you don’t have conversion tracking in place, you’re dead in the water. How will you know which 20 keywords are producing consistent sales?

A hard reality of affiliate marketing is that most successful campaigns will not be profitable right off the bat, you’ll likely lose money for a while (weeks!) before you’re in the black. Tracking which keywords convert is what’s going to allow you to cut out the non performing keywords and achieve profitability.

So DON’T be stupid, make sure to have tracking in place, whether it’s Google Conversion Tracking, Xtreme Conversions, or another tracking tool that will tell you which keywords are converting to sales.

Getting your code on the thank you page…

I highly recommend Google Conversion Tracking over anything else.

Why?

Simple, first off the conversion data is seamlessly integrated into your Google Account. Plus you can download all the data into Adwords Editor which makes optimizing your campaigns REALLY easy.

There’s only one problem : you’ve got to convince your affiliate manager to place the conversion code on the thank you page for you.

Most savvy affiliate managers either have a backend system in place where you can input your conversion id or add it to the end of your affiliate link (i.e. ?glid=XXXXXXXX) .

In most other cases you can just email your affiliate manager and they’ll put the code on the thank you page for you. For these cases, here’s a scripted email I recommend :

“Hi Joe,

First off, I’d like to say that I’m really impressed with (name of offer). In fact I’ve put a great deal of time and effort into setting up a large Adwords campaign for your offer.

My campaign is ready to upload in Adwords. However, before I do that I would greatly appreciate if you may add my Google Conversion tracking code (that I’ve pasted below) on your thank you page. This code will allow me to track my conversion to the keyword level so I can optimize my campaign and increase my sales and profits.

Here’s my Google Conversion Code :

(paste your code here)

I look forward to working with you.”

Here’s the trick : Don’t actually setup your campaign UNTIL you get a confirmation that your code is on the thank you page.

If they don’t reply, email them again in a couple days, if you still get no response, move on.

You want to start off by picking 5-10 offers that you want to promote and send the affiliate manager of each offer the above email.

Once you get a confirmation from the affiliate manager that your code is on the thank you page, start setting up your campaign for that offer.

Do NOT start setting up a campaign for an affiliate offer or launch an offer until you get confirmation that your Google Conversion code is in place.

Hard part’s done! The last step is setting up your campaign with EfficientPPC. Trust me, that’s easy. I’ll talk about it next time.

I let the cat out of the bag last week (okay truthfully Rachel did first), however today is Rachel’s official first day with b5media as our new Marketing Manager.

If you have read Rachel’s blog Debanter (that’s how I met her) you would then know that she comes to us from MusicIP.  Rachel has returned home to Toronto after a self-imposed exile in Los Angeles.  We’re thrilled to have her aboard and believe me, we’re going to be keeping her pretty busy for a while.

As a blogger and wine lover, Rachel is going to certainly bring fresh ideas and perspectives to b5media.  From chatting with her, I think she is just kooky enough to fit in just fine with the folks in the Toronto office.

For the rest of us, we’ll have to wait a while before we get to meet her in person.

Welcome Rachel!  Don’t get too distracted by the accordion playing, it’s just par for the course with us.

Photo by Adam Bullied.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this lately and I wanted to clear up a lot of confusion that people have about setting up their Adwords campaigns.

Your first job is to build an effective keyword list, I’m not going to go into the details about that in this post. For starters, I highly recommend Google Keywords Tool, they just recently improved it, it will give you an amazing keyword list and best of all it’s free!

Also check out this post I did about keyword research.

FILTERING OUT LONG TAIL KEYWORD

If you do keyword research like I do, you’ll probably end up with anywhere from several thousand to ten of thousands of keywords for your niche.

Now I know a lot of you will go out and immediately try to upload ALL those keywords into your Adwords account.

That’s a BAD idea.

Here’s why it’s a bad idea :

1. If you’re a newbie ppc marketer you’re going to hit your account (50k keywords) and/or campaign (10k keywords) limits REALLY fast. And you’d better have some substantial history and adspend on Google before you try to get those limits removed.
2. The first 2 weeks of launching a new campaign is when Google pretty much determines your campaign quality score. If you have a TON of low search volume long tail keywords in your new campaign right off the bat then Google will penalize you with a lower campaign quality score (these low volume search terms put a load on their system, that’s why they penalize you).

When you first launch a campaign on Google you only want to bid on mid to high volume keywords FIRST. Once you’ve build your campaign history and quality score up over a period of 2 weeks then you can add in all the long tail keywords.

Here’s what also cool about this approach : it allows you to test & optimize your campaign on a small scale before you ramp it up with 1000s of keywords. In the next post I’ll show you exactly how to do this.

Now you may be thinking : “Amit, this sounds great, but how do I filter out all the high to med volume keywords from my huge freakin’ keywords list?”

Simple, use Ad Sage, it’s a nifty little toolbar addon to Excel that gives you the search volume of each keyword on your keyword list (on MSN search) in the past 6 month. For your initial campaign launch, bid on only the keywords that have had at least 1 search in the last 6 months.

In the next section we’re going to segment that keyword list…

SEGMENTING YOUR KEYWORDS

In most markets it makes sense to break up your keyword list into seperate categories.

Let me give you an example: let’s say your promoting a site about bedroom accessories, you probably want to break up the keyword list into these categories like these :

lamps

sheets

pillows

furniture

brand name (if you can bid on that)

competitor brands

etc

Once your done breaking up your keyword list into categories, put each category of keywords into a separate Excel worksheet. Make a miscellaneous category for whatever keywords don’t fit into any other category.

Here’s an important key to getting a good conversion rate and high quality score:

Build a separate landing page for EACH and EVERY category that specifically targets that category. Don’t just dynamically insert variables onto the page, make sure each page has unique and highly relevant content. Your landing page about pillows, better be about pillows and nothing else!

If you’re direct linking, see if you can deep link each category to a relevant page about that category. If you’re bidding on specific product names, deep link each product to its sales page.

Next Time I’ll show you how to setup your ads, choose appropriate domain names, setup conversion tracking, and build your campaign using Efficient PPC.

Check out this shot of the MarketLeverage Team wearing SuperAffiliateMindset T-shirts :

WOW! This a great way to generate buzz for your company, especially considering market leverage has send out team shots wearing T-shirts of various blogs.

No, I didn’t write the headline for shock value, Stuff White People Like is actually a hilarious, somewhat edgy, and controversial blog.

Stuff White People Like doesn’t really make fun of white people, so much as it makes fun of urban hipsters & yuppies. The author of the blog is actually a white guy himself!

I love this blog because it describes people in Boston so accurately that it’s almost SCARY!

The reason I’m bring up Stuff White People Like is because it’s an amazing example of how POWERFUL blogging can be.

Here’s some mind blowing stats about Stuff White People Like :

1. Has over 14 MILLION visitors since it’s inception - started Jan 18th, 2008. No joke - check out the date on the first post.
2. Averages over 1000 comments per post - and that’s a conservative estimate.

Now go to Stuff White People Like and check out the cleverly placement of Google adsense ads, sometimes before a post and sometimes after.

Now based on the amount of traffic this guy’s pulling in can you IMAGINE HOW MUCH MONEY HE’S MAKING?

The blog itself ONLY has around a hundred posts.

Stuff White People Like has totally demolished any doubts in my mind about the enormous income potential of blogging.

So what stops most people from starting a money making blog of their own?

Two things :

1. Most people don’t have the technical know how to setup a blog properly
2. Most people don’t know the fastest and most effective ways to start getting a ton of traffic to their blog

Here’s some exciting news…

My good friends Anik Singal and Rosalind Gardner have recently launched a FREE Blog Classroom course on how to setup and start getting an avalanche of traffic to your very own blog.

I’ve been going through free Blog Classroom videos and I’m can’t believe the amount of free content they’re giving away. I wish I had had access to a free course like this when I first started blogging.

As an experienced blogger I can tell you Anik and Ros know what they’re talking about. Just based on the content they’re giving away, I can’t wait to go through the full course that they’re launching on April 29th.

So if you’d like to discover a simple step by step way to launch your own money making blog, sign up for the Free Blogging Course Now!

PS For those of you who decide to take it to the next level and purchase the full course on blogging next Tuesday, I have a very special bonus in store for you (note : must sign up through my link to receive bonus). Stay tuned for the details!

The Travel & Culture Channel is excited to announce the return of the pop culture blog Starked DC, and the debut of our latest destination blog, The Hawaii Traveler, as welcome two new bloggers to our midst.

First up we have Jody Reale at The Hawaii Traveler.  Jody divides her time between the mountains of Colorado and the islands of Hawaii, but it’s the latter expertise that she brings to her blogging.  I think you’ll enjoy discovering the suggestions she makes on how to enjoy island time.

Following a long hiatus, DC’s political news and gossip is back –  with J-Michael Cabosky taking over blogging duties at Starked DC.  J-Michael claims that while he has a political slant, he’ll cry foul on all parties.  Catch his comments on yesterday’s Pennsylvania primary and see what you think.