No matter who you are there is always somebody out there who is better or who gets information before you. Trying to keep up can sometimes be difficult without the proper tools. The best way to keep up is by tracking what websites they are visiting and interacting on. Let me introduce a service that allows you to do just that, Backtype.com.

What does Backtype do?

Backtype is a comments search engine with a bit more functionality. Basically you can enter any url and it will list all websites where it has commented on, so you can build up a profile of what websites of where they are interacting and commenting on. Not only that but you can follow certain websites and be alerted when they have created a new comment on any site. To give you an example below is a screenshot for Richard Hearnes excellent SEO site RedCardinal.ie:

Along the right hand side you can see all the websites they have commented on. As you’d expect foran seo consultant there are a lot of seo related websites.

What else can you do with Backtype.com?

They have a feature called “Connect” and this feature is great if your a blogger. Have you ever wanted to know what articles or topics get the most reactions? Sure you can use the search function of technorati but what about the reactions on all the new social media sites like twitter etc? To show you an example I’ve put in Shoemoney’s site to see what articles of his have generated the most comments.

As you can see his article about making money from Twitter generate huge reactions which gives me suggestions for my next post.

Popularity: 31% [?]

When your link building for your site it is always better to get relevant links. Now there are many ways of finding relevant links, search engines, direcories, forums but one of the best ways is to see whoose linking to competitor websites or high profile websites in your niche.

There are two ways available to analyse competitors back links, one is the “link:” operator in Google, the other is Yahoo SiteExplorer. Now Google’s link operator will only show a handfull of a sites backlinks but SiteExplorer will show all backlinks but will only let you export 1000 of them.

Another problem we have with backlink analysis is the “no follow” tag. Not all links are valued equal and Google came up with PageRank to aid in solving this problem. PageRank is a value of authority assigned to a single webpage. An outbound link from a page will carry some of that PageRank. To allow webmasters control over their outbound links as webmasters do not always want to dilute their PageRank, Google introduced the “No Follow” tag. The “No Follow” tag informs Google not to pass any PageRank to the link, thus making the link have no benefit towards search engine rankings.

Not all Search Engines adopted the “No Follow” tag and Yahoo is one of them, so the problem with SiteExplorer is that it includes “No Follow” links and “Do Follow” links in its results. Well I’ve found a solution.

I’ve just begun using a firefox plugin called SEO Link Analysis by Yoast de Valk. SEO Link analysis adds to Siteexplorer the PageRank of the page that the links originate from, the Anchor Text used in the link, and offers colourcodes to explain if the link is a DoFollow link or No Follow link.

Below is a screenshot of SiteExplorer, before and after SEO Link Analysis has been installed:

SiteExplorer before SEO Link Analysis

SiteExplorer after SEO Link Analysis has been installed:

SiteExplorer with SEO Link Analysis installed

I hope this helps you with your competitor analysis!

Popularity: 26% [?]

Affiliate Summit have just released the results of it’s AffStat Survey for 2009. This is probably the best affiliate marketing stats your going to get, over 450 affiliate marketers were surveyed for this report.

The report is full of interesting information including breakdown of the income levels of the average affiliate, the number of domains owned, the number of campaigns run concurrently along with affiliates views and gripes with affiliate networks/affiliate managers.

Check it out below:

Popularity: 1% [?]

Jason Moffatt ( Uncle Mofo) recently posted on his blog how a lot of so called successful internet marketers are faking it, just to appear successful. We’ve all seen it in the industry, the photoshoped commission cheques, the inflated blog posts about monthly earnings etc.

It does raise a good question though, what do you do when your starting out and nobody knows you? Most people get involved in affiliate marketing because they think it’s an easy way to make a quick buck. They want overnight success. If it means lying to some people about how successful I am to generate sales, why not?

Well I’m going to tell you, your shooting yourself in the foot!. The key to all the succesful internet marketers out there is longevity and trust. Lets say we did bullshit in the beginning  to make sales. Starting off it goes well, it does work and the sales start coming in. Brilliant, I’ve made 2k in commissions this week, then all of a sudden, the cats out of the bag and its all over the internet, Im a fraud, I bullshitted everybody. Will I make 2k the next week? Hell no, I’ve just pissed off all my existing customers and my potential customers for decieving them. I’ve seen this happen in both the online and offline world.

In the online world a perfect example is Paul Borque from UberAffiliate.com . Paul brags how he makes thousands of dollars online but then exposes himself when he revealed he was almost turned down for credit for a 30 grand car. If he was such a successful marketer why would he need a loan for a 30k car or why would his credit be so bad. There’s a great post on nickycakes.com which exposes Paul Borque for what he is, a snake oil salesman. Do you think anybody buys his products any more? Doesn’t seem so his blog appears to be abandoned.

A great example in the offline world is Anglo Irish Bank. For years they deceived their shareholders with fantastic balance sheets. When it finally emerged that their chairman had been inflating their balance sheets with temporary loans from other banks to boost their deposit ratios and that their chairman had been hiding his own personal loans of 120 million, the public lost all cofidence in the bank and pulled their deposits. It caused the bank to be nationalised to save it from collapsing. Another clear example of what happens when you decieve your customers.

I’ve given you two examples there of why not to lie, so what do you do when your starting out? The answer is simple emulate!

Emulating is the best way to achieve your goals. Look at what other successful marketers are doing and try do it yourself. If they got their blog design from unique blog designs, you get your design from unique blog design. If they are using a lightbox opt in form, you use a lightbox opt in form. By doing this your not lying but your building your credibility as you appear to be like other successful marketers.

This is just my two cents, if you agree or disagree with me leave a comment below!

Popularity: 25% [?]

Competitor Analysis is so important in Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate Marketing is really all about the data and the more data you have, the more informed choices you can make. Analysing your competitors adwords can help you decide if an offer is converting and worth trying. If it’s done right it can also help you build your keyword list. I’m going to show you two tools which will allow you to analyse your competitors:

PPC Web Spy

PPC Web Spy is a firefox plugin that will show you the destination url of any adwords. It will allow you to spot affiliate urls in PPC Advertising. In the below example I’ve highlighted where it’s showing an affiliate url:

Read the full story

Popularity: 10% [?]