Recently, Laura has been more proactive moving from the forum management/marketing side of things to becoming a SEO evangelist of sorts.

She recently organized an Austin SEM meetup, with a presentation on local search (aka geotargeted search engine optimization).

Optimizing your website for local traffic, especially if you’re mainly a geographically-fixed business like a hair salon or ice cream parlor can pay off with big dividends regardless of whether you go down the free search engine optimization route or the paid search route.

A number of factors work in your favor:

• Highly relevant and targeted traffic since the campaigns specially target consumers with specific needs
• Generally lower bids, as the pool of advertisers is smaller (even in a metropolitan area like New York City or Los Angeles – it’s a more viable prospect compared to facing bidders all over the world)
• Higher conversion ratios
• Ease-of-followup and greater opportunities to build a continuing relationship (especially if you employ email marketing and/or direct mail in your customer relationship management efforts)

Obviously SEM/SEO is not going to be your end point, it’s merely going to be your start point to generate leads. Building the relationship and establishing trust, credibility, asking for the sale and asking for the repeat sale are going to be the bedrock of your business building efforts.

For the local SEO side, here’re some slides from Laura’s presentation:

3 formats for localized SERP (search engine results page) display:

10 Pack

Authoritative OneBox

Integrated Map

I remember getting a set of highly relevant local results when looking for a shooting range near the hotel where Affiliate Summit West was held in Las Vegas earlier this year. The localized search result with map and local landmarks give a much better user experience. If I had more time, I probably would’ve headed over to the range.

You can check out Laura’s local search slide presentation and writeup.

If you’re located near Austin TX, you might also like to sign up for Laura’s Austin SEM group.

Here’re some of my favourites:

With the ShareResult affiliate network affiliate manager Julia Steat at the Great Affiliate Road Rally

With Notebook Forums‘ Laura Alter (yes, she is 6’ and wearing heels…)

After talking to him for about a year, I finally got to meet B5 blog network’s training manager Tris Hussey

At the social media session with Justine Ezarik and Tris Hussey

Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta at the Super Affiliate session

At the “Engaging the Media” panel session with Lisa Picarille, Anik Singal, Valerie Stevens and Jim Kukral

I don’t know about you, but I think Jim Kukral deserves some type of award for being the most photographed!

Be sure to check out the other pictures at the ASW photo collection.

Affiliate Summit as always was a blast (I still have about 500 of my own pictures to put up somewhere…).

If you’re keen to bring your affiliate business to the next level, be sure to check out Affiliate Summit East from Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.

With that, here are the women of the Affiliate Summit:

Justine Ezarik is a lifecasting star who vlogs over at iJustine.tv. She spoke at the social marketing session with Sam Harrelson, Stephanie Agresta, Debbie Schultz and Tris Hussey sitting on the panel.

Schaaf Consulting’s Stephanie Harris spoke at the Anik Singal’s AC Certified workshop the day before Affiliate Summit.

Buy.com‘s Melissa Salas chaired the video marketing panel and also received the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year award. She’s done some great work with Buy.tv.

Irene Rojas is an affiliate manager with the OfferHive affiliate network based out of florida. Met her at the Affiliate Bash and she is friendly.

Carolyn Tang: I’ve talked to her on ABW and on Facebook and it was great to meet her at the summit. Carolyn’s probably the second most public face of ShareASale after ski fanatic and founder Brian Littleton. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk a whole lot, it was great to meet Carolyn and a number of the SAS merchants at the Affiliate Meet Market and the trade show.

Laura Alter, Lauren and Andrea Schoemaker

WickedFire regulars Laura Alter of Notebook Forums, Lauren AKA Turbolapp and my homie Andrea from PlanetAndrea…who’s been one of my buddies and supporters since I began.

Samantha Brachat: Sam over at NeverBlueAds has been a great affiliate manager and we did a podcast on seasonality and getting started in affiliate marketing. (Samantha Brachat Friday Podcast)

Heather Paulson:
We’ve exchanged emails and talked on the forums. I caught her presentation at the Affiliate Classroom Live workshop and it was a great opportunity to meet and talk to an experienced OPM and PPC manager like Heather at SAS’ Party Under the Stars. Check out the Paulson Management Group.

Danielle Nagami AKA MsDanielle
It’s always a great opportunity to meet people behind the blogs and meeting MsDanielle was no different. We were talking at the John Chow BBQ pig out the last day of the conference and I even got to carry her box around…

Robyn Jones
The former Ms Robyn Martin and now Mrs Kris Jones, always looking fab. Check out the PepperjamNetwork.

Rachel Honoway: Affiliate marketing veteran Rachel (who’s driving the AC Certified program) and I had some fun with the moving bed in the suite during the ShareASale party…but it’s really not what you think! If you haven’t yet, check out this edition of the Friday Podcast we did earlier. (Rachel Honoway Friday Podcast)

Julia Stead: We’ve talked on Linda Buquet’s 5Star Affiliate Marketing forum and I was surprised at how short she was.

Well, actually she’s like over 6′ and used to play basketball. We actually had got some footage of her and fellow ShareResults affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso dancing on the couches at Tao during the Affiliate Bash, but the footage didn’t come out…

Ah well…ASE Boston I guess.

Debby Banning: Building trust and credibility is important in building your network and I first “met” Debby when she added me as a friend on Facebook. I checked out the link and saw that Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com was a common friend. Debby’s with Market Leverage.

Note: This is a snippet from the 300+ photos I took at the seminar. More to come, including some commentary and analysis of the topics covered during the show.

Check out details on the next Affiliate Summit

I don’t read many magazines, reading most of my content and feature content online.

Besides reading the print edition of Singapore’s major English daily, The Straits Times, which comes with weekly tech, fashion and lifestyle “magazines”, on the rare occasion, I check out:

• Revenue (I read the online digital edition when I can)
• Skymall catalogue found on most domestic flights
• Tabloids like US, People

Tabloids and rag mags are a good opportunity to conduct niche research, especially for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods). You can find out which are the hot jeans, perfumes/fragrances, electronic items and build a niche themed site within a couple of hours.

Depending on how hot the trend is, you could reap affiliate or CPA commissions for a couple of weeks or even more than a year, if you trendspot correctly.

The other thing is magazine preferences reveal a lot of a person’s personality. Kris and Lee Odden have a fairly strategic/macro type approach (having leading their own respective business organizations), but more so from their choices of the Smithsonian, Forbes, Inc., while younger guys like Shoemoney and Joe Whyte go for more topical/news type publications like Playboy, Wired, Maxim, Stuff.

To propagate this meme, I tag:

• Laura Alter
• Michelle MacPhearson (who was a good sport to take part in the Goals meme)
• Sleepyblogger Robyn Tippins
• Social Traffic Queen Alex Mayo
• PlanetAndrea

So the conversation seems to have shifted from whether “onsite blogging” provides value, to how difficult it is to “liveblog a session” because of the multiple tasks involved:

• Pay attention to the speaker
• Live blog the session

Here’s a secret I learned as a former journalist. I together with the reporters from the Reuters, Associated Press and Bloomberg news wires, sat listening to Microsoft, HP or some other company make their announcement, and we used our strategies, following that, we’d file our reports (the newswire guys generally filed their reports within 30 seconds to a minute to someone in the newsroom), the reports would go live.

Due to our ability to effectively process the information successfully, their reports would be circulated all over the world, and my news stories would make it to page one of Singapore’s business daily, or it’d make the front page of the tech session.

Compared to everyone else, we have the same brain, the same abilities, but yet we’re able to achieve different results.

So the question is:

What made the difference?

—

Before we get into that, consider all the tasks you have to get through every day.

You need to:

• Check and respond to email
• Collaborate with joint venture partners
• Develop your own products (or project manage if you’ve outsourced it)
• Update your blog or submit news articles/press releases
• Manage the sales team in following up and marketing your services
• The administrative stuff like filing paper, and probably the least exciting activity (at least for me…) filing your taxes

On top of that, we all only have 24 hours to finish this in.

So again: What makes the difference?

Your time planning and execution strategy you use make all the difference.

I won’t go into time planning, but focus on the execution aspect.

Many business owners and new entrepreneurs fail because:

• They fail to realize what’s important
• They fail to do what’s important
• They fail to follow up on what’s important

The Pareto principle states that 20% of the people in a city in Italy owned 80% of it’s wealth. Since then, the Vilfredo Pareto’s principle has been generalized to:

“20% of what you do will lead to 80% of your results” — So of the 10 things you do, you need to complete 2 of them to become really successful. The problem is that most people choose to do maybe 5 or 6 things.

Unfortunately, those 5 things happen to be part of the trivial 80%.

Fast forward to Internet Marketing, my opinion is that we’re closer to a 95-5 rule (It’s actually closer to a 90-9-1 rule, but I’ll save it for another day).

That 5% effort which gives you your 95% of results could be:

• Brokering a joint venture with the leader in a niche you’re targeting
• Landing media coverage in the most influential media for your specific segment
• Selecting the ONE seminar/convention out of hundreds held every year to be in the right place at the right time to meet the one partner/mentor/client who will help propel you to the next level of success.

Being able to sort out your priorities and more importantly, acting on them, will give you unfair leverage over all your competitors.

If you’re looking for one takeaway form this post, here’s one thing you can start doing now which will bring you phenomenal results. It’s a simple, two-step process.

Are you ready?

• Spend five minutes at the start of each day determining which one thing you must finish today which will bring you a giant step closer to your goals (It’s usually the ‘most difficult’ task, which has been pending for some time)
• Completing it to the best of your ability (Make a personal commitment to finish it before you go to sleep)

Want to see someone who’s put this into action? How about “PC Torque – $25 million in 4 years”
[And if you’re interested in the live blogging strategy. Here’s the answer:

• Spend time listening to the speakers at event. Take down keywords. Occasionally note down a phrase if you plan to quote them on it.
• Before you start writing, take one minute to summarize what you’re going to say. Limit it to 3-5 points. Each point can be 1-2 sentences.
• Just do it.]

For additional ideas, check out:

–> Internet Millionaire Code

Laura attended the inaugural Elite Retreat and has been very successful in her brick-and-mortar computer business and is also owner of the popular NotebookForums site too.

Besides having 3 sweet kids (her 5 year old plays a mean game of warcraft), she’s pretty tech savvy.

Check out her blog:

Laura Alter’s blog

Laura’s got one of the prettiest WordPress templates I’ve seen and Matt Brett (a fellow 9rules member) did a great job on it.

If you need inspiration for your own Internet Marketing efforts, read Laura’s post “PC Torque – $25 million in 4 years“

Like a game of ‘Pass the Message’ which you play in a big group, depending on who you check out, the meme is known as:

• 5 Things You Might Not Know About Jarrod Hunt
• 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me (Cameron Olthuis)
• 5 things You Didn’t Know About Todd Malicoat
• 5 Things You Never Knew About Me (Shoemoney)
• 5 Things You Never Knew About Me (David Naylor AKA DaveN)

At first look, it seems like Shoemoney and DaveN are on to the right thing. Then again, it could mean that DaveN is good at following formats after being tagged by the Shoemeister.

So this freeform means you have the right to rename the meme (Master Rename Rights so to speak).

Instructions: (Especially for those I’m tagging)

From what I gather, you are supposed to:

1. Disclose 5 personal things about yourself
2. Tag another 5 victims friends to pass this labor of love to.

Here’s my 5:

1. I am was quite the game addict. I used to clock up 8 hours a day on mudding (especially DikuMUDs) when I was in school. I clocked up another 12-14 hours per day on weekends. A mud is a multi-user dungeon, the predecessor to text-based MMPOGs (and muds are way cooler IMHO). The longest I’ve spent is 36 hours on a game of Civilization. I only stopped because I was starting to black out (and just as I was about to wipe everyone else out too).
2. I am was also quite the Japanese manga/anime fan. To the extent that I blew a couple of thousands of dollars on graphic novels during my youth, and much more on DVDs when I failed to make it to adulthood. How do I rank on the Otaku scale? Let’s just say I wanted to name my daughters: Nausicaa (after Nausicaa: Princess of the Valley of Wind by Hayao Miyazaki) and Bianca (after the Sol Bianca sci-fi series). My wife didn’t go for Nausicaa, although my daughter’s Bianca (the Italian variant of Blanche, which means fair-skinned and beautiful).
3. Although I’ve been paid quite a bit for writing (as a journalist generating content, and later as a consultant generating strategy plans), I write in spurts and prefably when inspired. In my youth (a long long long long time ago), I used to practise writing love poetry (I write killer haikus and sonnets), and then I handed them out to girls I met. Somehow I tended to always have a lot of company.
4. I had plans to operate an ice cream parlour. I’d always enjoyed eating mud pies, ice cream and generally anything with chocolate in it. I spent about 6 months experimenting with recipes and testing out my creations on friends and family. Then one day I realized the idea of working 7 days a week and 12 hours a day didn’t seem that appealing. My favourite ice-cream flavors would probably be chocolate chip cookie dough, phish food, vanilla bean and basically anything with chocolate in it.
5. I spend a lot of time watching TV (although it’s usually during meal times and just before I sleep). I like all sorts of gangster movies (Scarface being a favorite), sci-fi (Babylon 5, the 4400, X-files) and crime dramas (The Shield, Prison Break. All time Favourite: Oz)

That rounds off my 5 Things.

I’m tagging:

1. Rachit Dayal: (dude, get moving on the Blogging Predictions 2007 meme too!)
2. Ryan Chua: (who seems to blog in a leap year, or every time a space mission is launched, whichever is less frequent)
3. Super Affiliate Guy Jon: (who might have more time to take part in this meme since he’s stepping out from Affiliate Marketing, though I’m not sure if I should use anchor text like “Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Blog, Affiliate Blog” anymore. Some advice, Jon?) Oh and Jon’s promised to smack me at ASW too.
4. Kumiko (The Cash Quest Babe): Ok, I have a thing for attractive young women aiming to make money (…from online ventures). She’s got a ‘bubbly’ writing style too.
5. Chris Hooley: Chris is too &*&(_&^ creating weird junk like HooMoney and going on SEO Pub Crawls to participate in my blogging meme. With friends like Hooley, who needs…

Since I was double-tagged, I’ll do the excessive thing and go tag another 5 bloggers (I’m not sure how Laura’s going to reply from her Notebook forum to being blog tagged by PlanetAndrea (who’s likely from another planet).

Here goes:

1. New mum and social media optimizer Michelle MacPhearson: Badder Adder pawns MySpace. Next stop: MyBlogLog!
2. I scanned and it seems my anime homie (and fellow 9ruler), Michael Ono, amazingly hasn’t been tagged yet.
3. Tag guru and fellow 9ruler, Richard Ball
4. 9ruler Social Media specialist Emergence Media (Daniel Riveong) – he has a really cool ‘slider bar’ navigation tool to move through his blog. And social media being his thang, I figured a meme is just what the doctor ordered.
5. Bluehost CEO Matt Heaton (Because I came across his blog when scouting for web hosting and moved my sites over, impressed by his integrity, candor and honesty)

Ok, all, I’m looking forward to something juicy interesting