Self Growth Tutorial

This is our third blog post in our blog and social media tutorial series. Now that we've posted tutorials about the two most popular blogging services out there at the current moment, we are going to move on to social media sites. Let's begin with SelfGrowth.com.

SelfGrowth.com is a great website that aggregates self-improvement experts on the Web. There are numerous categories on their website including personal growth, finance, health and fitness and spirituality. In fact, most of our partners fit into one category or another.

The Self Growth website allows their users to link to their websites, etc. online. This guide outlines how to link to your digital media downloads from your SelfGrowth.com page so that you can increase exposure to yourself and your products.

Getting started

If you have not done so already, you should create a Self Growth account. The steps are easy and their interface walks you through this process. To get started go to http://selfgrowth.com/user/register. You will most likely want to create a Professional account.

Inserting your downloadable products into your SelfGrowth.com page:

Once you have created the account, you will need to submit your website for approval in order to create an ‘Expert Page.’ The approval process takes about 24 hours. Once that is done, you can edit your Expert Page, adding bio information, contact information and product information. Here are the steps for inserting the product links into your page:

1. Login into your SelfGrowth.com account.
2. Click on the ‘Expert Page’ tab from the yellow tabs at the top of the page
3. Click on the ‘Products’ tab from the blue tabs at the top of the page. These will be right below the yellow tabs.
4. Scroll down to the Audio & Video products section
5. Leave this web page open and pull up a new tab or window in your web browser
6. Go to http://affiliates.iamplify.com
7. Login to your iAmplify Affiliate Account
8. Search for the product you would like to feature
9. Click on ‘Get Links’
10. Copy the code for the product Text Link. Here is an example for the text link code for Marianne’s Miracle Matrix.: <a href=http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381><b>Get a FREE 30-Day Subscription to Marianne Williamsons Miracle Matrix </b><br/><img src="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>
11. Go back to the web page for SelfGrowth.com, which should still be in the products section of the ‘Expert Page’ tab.
12. Insert the Product name in the box labeled ‘Title’
13. Insert the text for the Text Link code box labeled URL
14. Edit the Text Link so that only the bolded part remains (note that the numbers for the ‘aid’ and the ‘bid’ will be different when pulled from your affiliate account.)

<ahref=http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381><b>Get a FREE 30-Day Subscription to Marianne Williamsons Miracle Matrix </b><br/><img src="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>

15. Click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of the page.
16. Repeat this process for each of the product you would like to feature on SelfGrowth.com (we would recommend you do this for all of them).

Other Tips

• There are probably many other SelfGrowth.com experts in your industry. Be sure to network with them by becoming connected through the social networking feature in your account. This is a great way to meet others, create collaborations for seminars or downloadable products, etc.

WordPress Tutorial

This is our 2^nd Tutorial in our Blogging and Social Media Tutorial Series. This post, we will be focusing on WordPress.

WordPress is another popular blogging service similar to Blogger. While it is not our recommended blogging service because it does not support our media player widgets, there are other ways to promote your products through this service.

Getting Started

WordPress answers some basic questions about signing up and setting up your blog here:

http://support.wordpress.com/getting-started/

Wordpress.tv is a great resource for WordPress video tutorials. Below is a video tutorial that walks you through the sign up process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/signing-up-with-wordpresscom/

Dashboard

One of the biggest differences between WordPress and Blogger is the WordPress Dashboard. The below tutorial gives you an overview of the WordPress Dashboard

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/the-wordpresscom-dashboard-introduction/

Adding an “About Me” (or any other static) page

One of the first things you’ll want to add to your new blog is an “About Me” page to introduce yourself. This is a great place to add a photo of yourself, biographical information and links to your products for sale at iAmplify. This tutorial will walk you through this process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/adding-an-about-me-or-any-other-static-page/

To add affiliate links to the “About Me” page or any blog post:

1. Write out the Product Title or how you would like the linked text to appear in your post
   
2. Highlight the text you have written with your mouse and choose the link button on the Nav bar of your post (it's the broken chain symbol)
3. A pop up will appear and you will need to paste in your affiliate link URL into the Link URL field.
4. To find your affiliate link for a specific product, just search for the product you would like to link to in the affiliate interface.
5. Once you find the product, click on the “Get Links” link for that product and find the text link. Copy that code and paste into a text document. It will be look something like the below. I’ve highlighted the part that is the actual tracking link in the html code:

<ahref="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092"><b>Click here to buy <i>Heartworm Prevention Naturally!</i></b><br/><imgsrc="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>

6. The final URL you will paste into the Link URL field of your blog post will look like this: http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092
7. You can also choose a target (whether you want the link to open in the same window or in a new window), choose the title of the link (this is the title that will appear if you mouse over the link) and choose a class
   
8. Click on insert link and you are done!

Blog Appearance

Next you’ll probably want to customize the appearance of your blog. You can access themes (blog templates) under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. This tutorial will walk you through the process

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/previewing-and-activating-themes-2/

Displaying a List of Links in your Sidebar

You can customize what people see in your sidebar by adding widgets. You can also access this feature under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. Even though WordPress doesn’t have an html widget option like Blogger does, you can set up permanent links to your products for sale at iAmplify by adding a links widget to your sidebar. You can extract the affiliate link to your product pages as instructed above. This tutorial will walk you through the process of adding links to your sidebar: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/displaying-a-list-of-links-in-your-sidebar/

Arranging your Links into Categories

You can categorize your links as well. So if you have several different products or just want to differentiate your iAmplify links from other links, you can choose a category name for these links. For example, you could choose to name your products for sale through iAmplify as Downloads. This tutorial will walk you through the process:

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/arranging-links-into-categories/

Other tutorials

I’ve detailed the basics of setting up your WordPress blog and featuring your content for sale, but there are many more tutorials you may want to watch. Below are some other tutorials you may want to check out.

Customizing your Writing Settings

Creating your WordPress.com Profile

Changing your Reading Settings

Writing & Publishing a Post

Adding Categories & Tags to Your Posts

WordPress SEO & Optimization Strategies

The Tag Cloud Widget

The Pages Widget

Blogger Tutorial

Over the next several weeks, we are going to post some tutorials surrounding blogging and social media platforms. We know that these platforms can be especially helpful to our expert's marketing efforts, but we also realize there is so much information out there that it's hard to know where to begin. So it is our intention to aggregate some useful information and links to help you navigate and put these platforms to use.

The first platform we are going to talk about is Blogger. Blogger is one of our favorite blogging platforms not only because we use it, but because it supports our media player widgets. It is also one of the most popular blogging platforms out there.

Below are some helpful links to get you started as well as some tips on how to set up your media player widgets. I've also included links to more advanced tips so you can optimize your blog once you are fully set up.

Getting Started

Blogger has quick tutorials that will help you get started creating your blog. The steps are easy and the interface walks you through the process.

1) How do I create a blogger account? Basic Instructions on how to sign up: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41348

2) Getting Started Basics: http://www.blogger.com/features#gettingStarted

3) Getting started video tutorial- this tutorial walks you through the basic steps visually:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnploFsS_tY

I wanted to give special attention to the Layout Guide that Blogger links to in their getting started steps, because this will be one of the places where you can add a permanent widget placement to your blog.

You can do this by adding a Page Element which I will detail below.

How to add a Page Element (how to add a permanent placement for your media player widget):

Go to the Layout/Page Elements tab in your blogger account.

You can add several page elements to your blog page or sidebar by clicking Add a Page Element. This will open a pop-up window. Click Add to Blog in the proper element section to add it:

· Link List: Add a link list to your blog with the ability to add a link list title, select the number of items to display and sort your link list alphabetically.

· Labels: Add a list of all the labels you've used on your posts. Click each link to see a page showing all the posts with that label. You can change the title of the list, and sort it alphabetically or by frequency of use.

· Picture: Add a picture from your computer or the web. You can also add a title and caption to your picture and shrink the picture to fit into your blog perfectly.

· Text: Add text to your blog (such as a welcome message or footnote) with our rich text editor.

· HTML/JavaScript: Add third-party functionality or other HTML/JavaScript code to your blog.

· Feed: Add content from a site feed. Enter the feed URL, then click Continue. You'll then be able to add a title, select the number of items to show (up to five) and display the item dates and/or authors by selecting the appropriate check boxes.

· Logo: Add one of our stylish Blogger logos to your blog.

The HTML/Java Script page element is the page element you want to add to your blog layout to add a permanent placement for your media player widget. For an example of how this looks please view our blog at: http://iamplife.blogspot.com/. You’ll see that I’ve added a permanent placement on the right that is called iAmplify’s Featured Download. This is a permanent element on the blog, but I change out the featured widget and description weekly.

You can also add a media player widget to any blog post. To do this, you just need to switch to the Edit Html tab in your blog post and past the embed code into the Html.

*Please note that you must use the embed code format. Blogger does not allow Javascript.

More Features

Blogger details some additional features like developing your community, getting feedback from your community, new post notifications, open id and converting your blog into different languages.

http://www.blogger.com/features#moreFeatures

Advanced Features

In the Advanced Features sections, Blogger details how to post on the go, group blogging, and adding third party applications.

http://www.blogger.com/features#advancedFeatures

Featured Blogger Tips & Tricks

There are millions of blogs that are dedicated to blogging tips and tricks. I’ve looked through several of these blogs and Bloggerbuster.com is by far the best I’ve found.

Look at these two posts:

200 quick tips for using blogger

The complete list of blogger tutorials

I’ve pulled out some of the tutorials I found useful:

Remove “nofollow” tags from your blogger template to spread some link love

How to use a background image for your blog

Create “wordpress” style pages for your blogger blog

How to hide the blogger nav bar

How to add background music to your blog

Create navigation buttons to enhance your blog

How to add icons beside your navigation links

What makes a great blog header?

How to create a custom header in blogger

How to create post summaries in blogger

How to generate links to related posts

What is a blog feed and why do I need it

Five Ways FeedBurner can improve your readership

New Partners

We continue to add new partnerships and their products to our store. Don't forget to check out the affiliate account center to find new products that you may want to feature on your site. To access the new products feature, login to the affiliate account center and then click on the Text Links, Banners and Widgets text link on the left hand side. Then click on the New tab on the top of the page. This will give you all of the recently launched products. Below are a few exciting new partner stores we've recently launched.

In partnership with Meredith Corporation, we've launched download stores for All People Quilt and Scrapbooks etc., both divisions of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Their products are also available at iAmplify for purchase. So if you have a craft related site or would like to feature how to quilt or scrapbooking products, sign into your affiliate account and search for all people quilt or scrabooks etc in the search box in the upper left hand corner. Then choose the products you would like to feature and grab the appropriate tracking codes for that product. You can choose from text links, product images or media player widgets.

We have also recently launched a partner store for one of America's leading health and nutrition experts, Gary Null. My Generation magazine dubbed him one of the top health gurus in the United States. For over three decades, Gary Null has been one of the foremost advocates of alternative medicine and natural healing. His products are also available at iAmplify and if you want to feature his products on your website, follow the steps above by searching for Gary Null. If your site has any health component, especially alternative health, his products are a perfect complement!

Last but not least, we've recently partnered with Seminars on DVD to launch a partner store called Seminars on Demand. This store features all of the amazing business seminars that you can find on DVD in a convenient downloadable format. Find seminars from business leaders like Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy and Bob Proctor. As with the above stores, these products are also available via iAmplify. We are actively searching for more business related affiliates. If your site features business content, we would love to hear from you!

If you need help navigating your affiliate account or if you are having trouble with any of your links, please contact us at affiliates@iamplify.com. We are always happy to help!