About Joanna Jana Laznicka

Joanna began an online marketing and public relations firm before graduating high school in 1993. Ten years later, Joanna became a WordPress enthusiast and has since mastered the back-end complexities of the content management system. Today, Joanna provides complete website analysis from functionality to marketing while continuing her research and dedication to the wild, wild web. Connect with Joanna Jana Laznicka on LinkedIn or
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How to Use Quipist to Boost Blog Traffic

By Joanna Jana Laznicka

Blogging is a lot of like chess: you must think one move ahead, or risk being outwitted by the competition.

As an established and (I hope) well-respected blogger, I’m constantly forward thinking. I’m experimenting with, and strategizing ways of, increasing my sites’ page views and traffic. In a move to stay ahead of industry trends, I recently started toying with a new social media platform called Quipist. (If you’re unfamiliar with the site, fret not. I’ll fill you in a little later.)

Quipist immediately brought positive results: it led to increased traffic and page views.

And so, being the sharing type, I decided to reveal how others might use the site to their benefit.

Before signing up for Quipist, I did some Google sleuthing to see how it might benefit my blogging strategy.

There wasn’t much information available, given how new the platform was. This was a good thing: It meant most bloggers weren’t taking advantage of the social media platform. It also meant this was an opportunity to get ahead of a new trend.

I wanted to experiment to see if maybe – just maybe – Quipist was worth using on a regular basis.

First, here’s a breakdown of how the site works.

Users can customize profiles in numerous ways. They can use real names or pseudonyms, and personalize accounts with bios and avatars. Privacy settings can be adjusted and friend lists can be hidden.
Users can contribute content in four ways: through text, links, video and images.
Users can interact in five ways: by sharing content, commenting on it, liking it, disliking it or declaring neutrality.
The more interaction a post receives, the higher it climbs Quipist’s feed.
This means that the more interaction a post receives, the more likely it is to lead to increased blog traffic.
Quipist’s social media aggregator saves bloggers time. It allows users to share Quipist posts to other social media sites. This works with all the major players, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumbler. (Quipist says it’s working to add other social media platforms.)
On the flip side, Quipstream feature allows users to read all their social media feeds on one screen. It lets users browse Facebok, LinkedIn, Tumbler, Instagram, Google+ and Reddit feeds on one feed. That saves time, too.
Need more incentive? Its proxy tool makes content go hyper viral. Instead of pulling people in to read content, it pushes content out to those who aren’t following you, but are interested in your topics. This is a gem for bloggers and crucial to luring new followers to blogs. (By the way, Quipist is currently giving proxy accounts for free to anyone who asks. This is a huge perk, since they’ll eventually start charging for such account upgrades.)

Have I piqued your interest yet? Here are my tips for using Quipist as part of a blogging strategy:

Get a proxy account (remember, they’re free) and start a niche in order to connect with fellow users. Meanwhile, follow proxies and accounts related to your blog’s niche.Think of proxies as themed niches. Look for your proxy tribes, and join them. You can have multiple proxies through subaccounts.

Increase your Quipist rank and become more visible. New users are unlimited how much, and how often, they can submit content. Take advantage of this perk while it lasts. It can help improve your Quipist rank, which is a point system that rewards users for submitting interesting content.Every time a user interacts with your post, it gives you points. The more points, the better.

Don’t overdo it with the self-promotions; it might get you banned. Quipist isn’t banning accounts yet, like any good social media platform, they’ll likely clamp down on spammers in time.Quality, diverse content gets you further with Quipist.

Be social and interactive. Reply to comments, react to posts and contribute to the dialogue of other users’ posts.

Lastly, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with Quipist’s terms. Here’s a glossary:

Love The Q / Q-Love: Love Quipist and love the cause

Hug: What you send to someone when you don’t want to necessarily ‘like’ someone’s post, but yet you want to show them support with empathy.

Proxer: A Proxer is someone who is allowing a Proxy to act on their behalf on Quipist.

Proxy: A Proxy is someone with a Proxy account, and who has Proxers (proxy followers). When a Proxy makes certain choices on Quipist (such as making a Qpinion), those choices cascade onto their Proxer’s accounts as well. It is reversible by the Proxer for every single item, and may be revoked entirely by the Proxer at any time.

Proxy account: A proxy account allows someone to act as a proxy.

QPoints/Quift: A gift of points from Quipist; a surprise bonus points for something that you did that delights us

Qool: Cool

Qause: Cause

Queue Up: Sign Up / line up / join / participate

Quill: Once used to write quips

Quip: A witty remark

Quipstream: A Quipist’s timeline and incoming social media feed

Quip It / To quip: Write about it on Quipist

Quip In: When one signs into Quipist

Quip Up: When one signs up for Quipist

Quipist: A member of the Quipist community

Quippie: Groupie/follower

Quippier: Something that is more quip/witty than another quip

Quipping: Present participle of quip and what a Quipist does

Quit: Something a successful Quipist never does

Vet: To give proof/evidence, in the form of links, that something is true or false.

Vex: When something ‘controversial’ has been shared. For example, someone may post a video of an unknown person engaging in animal cruelty and you, of course do not want to like it, yet you want to show support against such cruelty or assist in identifying the perpetrator by spreading the word. This is one of many ways vexed can be used. We welcome feedback on this feature.

What’s your Q? – What are you passionate about?
Then, sit back and enjoy the extra little bit of traffic to your blog from Quipist. And who knows, maybe your content will go viral via Quipist.

Follow me on Quipist: https://www.quipist.com/profile/Joanna

Why Your Organization Needs a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet

By Joanna Jana Laznicka

I have a friend who recently was assigned to manage the social media accounts for an organizations they volunteers for. They are new to such a role and I wanted to give them some pointers on where to start. I believe anyone who takes on the task of social media management needs to make a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet.

In this article I will discuss what a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet is, how to start and use it. The following tips can help any business owner, organization or newbie social media manager to be properly get organized and see success with their social media efforts unfold.

What is a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet?

A Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet is basically an inventory of your organizations social media accounts and passwords, what is the current state of the accounts, where the accounts need improvement and making sure the branding message is consistent across all social media platforms. Also it contains the best keywords, best hashtags to use along with other items like the top influences in the specific niche the organization is targeting.

I completely 100% believe before anyone from an organizations signs up for social media accounts or starts updating old accounts and posting to the accounts this kind of spreadsheet needs to be in place.

To start make a spreadsheet either in Microsoft Excel or Google Spread Sheet. I prefer using Google Spread Sheets. Reason I prefer Google Spread Sheet of Microsoft Excel is because I can easily share it with others using it as a collaboration tool with other staff, consultants or volunteers and also use it to document for upper management real time social media milestones or where we need more attention.

As well Google Spread Sheets can be opened up from anywhere which makes it easy to work from any computer if that is a personal computer or a public computer such as one in a business center, library or office. One of the best feature is it is stored in Google Drive which is cloud it will not get lost if your computer gets corrupted such as getting a virus, a hard drive goes bad or your laptop gets stolen.

To start the Social Media Marketing Spread Sheet you will make seven sheets with specific columns.

1- Social Media Accounts. This is where you will list all the accounts, username, passwords and emails associated to that social media account if you need to retrieve a password and todays date with current amount of followers. I would start by adding the most popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Stumblupon, Google+ and so on.

2- Keywords. On this sheet you will list all the keywords and how often they are search monthly. You will find the keyword search volume by using tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner or Hittail
3- #Hashtags – You will list popular hashtags your competitors and others in the same niche use in the first column and the second column you will list your hashtag analytics. A good tool to determine the popularity of a hashtag is hashtagify.me or hashtags.org
4- Social Media Bios – Here you will cut and paste the current bios published on each of the social media accounts and see if they are uniformed, portray the same message consistently, use keywords or need to be rewritten to serve better results

5- Draft Posts – The title is pretty self-explanatory. It is always nice to have several drafts posts put aside for the days you have writers block.

6- Social Media Influencers – This is where you list people / social media accounts who are influential to your same niche and frequently repost other people’s social media posts. Establishing a relationship with them would be a good thing if you can get them to repost your posts even better.

7- To-do List – a basic list of to-do that you noticed while putting this Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet together. It could be as simple as to updated profile photo, or deleting social media posts that are not consistent to the brand messaging, to contacting to narrowing down who has the password for a specific account

I setup a blank Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet here you can view and download it for your own use.

Note the social media spread sheet will grow by time but for now this is going to help keep everything organized, keep your messaging and branding consistent. I also find that people / organizations think their social media is in order until they get a spreadsheet going like this and start noticing that they might have:

disorganizations of usernames and the passwords
ghost accounts basically social media accounts a past employee started that have gone stagnant and need to hunt down the passwords to take control of it
inconstant branding and messaging
missing exposure by focusing too much on one social media platform versus diversifying – it is truly amazing how much traffic Stumblupon and Pinterest can bring to a site but yet most people overlook using them as a traffic driver

Once the social media spreadsheet is populated you will be on an organized path to social media posting postings success.

Increase Your Traffic Blog and Affiliate Revenue 35 to 50% with These Personal Tips

By Joanna Jana Laznicka

I decided to start being upfront and write about what is working and what is not working in obtaining quality blog traffic and affiliate and or ad revenue from my WordPress websites. It is going to take some time to unwind exactly what I do and the methods I use; for this reason it will be written up over a series of blog posts. For those who enjoy reading my findings please tell me in the comment section some of your own discoveries in increasing traffic and revenue for your own sites. Hopefully these blog posts and articles will become more of a discussion as opposed to a one way discussion of my findings.

For those who do not know me, I own several websites that some would consider blogs, publications, portals, industry niche websites, and industry directories. Whatever name you give to them does not matter to me, but what does is making revenue from them and a nice residual income. My revenue model is ads, mainly Google Adsense, Amazon Associate ads, and a few other affiliate programs.

You might ask why I do not do sponsored posts because it is an excellent revenue source. The simple answer is I am very dyslexic which makes things difficult. For those who can do them there is great revenue that can be made from sponsored posts, so do not ignore doing them if you have great writing and grammatical skills. For those like myself who cannot, we just have to work harder and bring in much more website traffic to produce a living wage.

You may be asking how I produce content for the sites if I am severely dyslexic. I use contributors, but not just any contributors. I make sure they are experts in the niche they write about. I never ever accept articles from SEO companies looking for a link for their clients unless the article is about SEO tactics for a site that focuses on SEO and the writer is a noted author discussing SEO strategies. I never accept articles from professional bloggers hired by companies to pump out articles containing often mundane and formulaic content unless the article is about blogging tips and is an above average article for a site that focuses on blogging advice. I do however seek out top notch experts to write about the niche in which they are experts for my various sites. For instance, VCs write about obtaining venture capital, and medical doctors who focus on specific chronic diseases write articles about that specific medical disease they research or are known for treating. Having experts writing for my sites gives them a lot of credit with Google and other search engines. If you do not use contributors, make sure you coin yourself as an expert in the area you blog about. Go beyond and take it several steps further making sure Google sees you in an expert in that arena. This is not done overnight but over time and with a lot of manual effort such as participating in forums focusing in that niche. Among other various tactics it helps to become friends with other experts in that niche on social media sites.

I have had really good affiliate income and really bad affiliate income from my sites. When things are good I get excited and am happy to share my excitement with those who care to learn. This is especially true for the last thirty days I had a 35 to 50 percent increase in website traffic and doubling my profits from Adsense and Amazon Associates. The following are a few things I did that I feel helped to achieve this:

Apache Error Logs – I cleaned up all the errors in my Apache Error Logs. I run my sites on couple Virtual Private Servers (VPSs). My hosting company has been on my back to deal with all the errors in my log for some time: over two years. I just ignored it thinking it if is an issue it will show up in Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools or show some sort or error in the back end of WordPress or in Cpanel. For some reason my sites were slow, some performing badly in organic search, and my VPS started needing reboots at all hours. My hosting company basically gave me a stern warning fix the errors in the Apache Error Log or they are going to start charging me a hefty amount to reboot the VPS off hours or lose me as a customer. I did not even know where to find these error logs, it was not an obvious list in Cpanel, WordPress, Google, or Bing Webmaster Tools. I had to have the hosting company send them to me via email and guide me exactly where and how to view them. At first these error logs look like a foreign language, but I worked my way through to understand them and fix anything listed. Mostly they were pointing out badly coded plugins or outdated plugins that that were causing the server to perform badly. I deleted any plugin that was listed in the error logs and right away my sites ran faster and traffic increased. If I knew how much of a traffic increase I would have gotten from doing this, I would have done it long ago. I am also in my web hosting company’s good books for being proactive and fixing anything that shows up in the errors logs on a weekly basis.
Mobile Friendly Responsive Design – I made sure my sites are mobile friendly. Time is a limited resource for me so if the WordPress theme was not mobile friendly I would change to a theme that was HTML5 compliant and responsive. It would have taken too much time to re-engineer an older existing theme to be mobile friendly. I tend to stick with StudioPress themes (Learn more – StudioPress Affiliate Link). I love them because they have excellent technical support, a forum, tutorial videos, documentations and email support. I also love how quickly they update their themes to meet industry standards as technology evolves. After trying many other themes from Themforest and Elegant Themes, I discovered that they look great but as technology changes and WordPress gets updated they seem to break, and the owners of the themes do not update them fast enough and become more of a headache than it is worth. Time is money, and choosing a theme that will produce the least amount of headaches as your site grows is well worth it.
Adsense & Amazon Associates – I made sure that all my ads are mobile friendly and showing up when someone using a mobile device browses my sites.
Twitter – I work on increasing my Twitter followers by following people who are influential and retweet in the specific niche my site and Twitter account focuses on. I did this about two years ago and then stopped doing this focusing on other areas because my Twitter accounts were growing on their own organically. However, lately I felt like I wanted to experiment again with this in the hope I gain followers who would have never heard of my sites otherwise. Across the board on all my Twitter accounts I went from 45,323 to 49,438 followers.
Social Signals – I work on giving more proper social signals to Google to give the search engine a better understanding of what my site is about and what kind of followers are ideal for my site. This was done by joining and participating in groups in the specific niches of my sites on LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook via each site’s profile page on that specific social media site. When I have time I take further steps to show that our contributors are experts to Google in the specific niche they are writing about by linking their social media accounts where they are prominent and their business websites. These small things give Google a full understanding of what industry the site is in and who are the ideal people they should show it to.
Removed the Dead Weight – I removed sluggish elements from my sites. Periodically I run my site through a free site called GTMetrix.com to see what is slowing them down. Most often they are applications, plugins and ads that were calling out to a third party site. Social media plugins and ads are a major culprit for this. I kept the ads since they are my revenue and limited the use of social media plugins. Instead of having sharing buttons on the top and bottom of the site I only had them on the top of the site.
Socialoomph Account Groups – I took a good look at Socialoomph (Learn More – Socialoomph Affiliate Link)) that I have a subscription to and have used for several years to see how I can utilize it better. I discovered Account Groups and made a few which I should have done long time ago. It saves me so much time when promoting my posts on FB, LinkedIn and Twitter. I was really was needing to free up my time. This simple step easily freed up one to two hours per day.
Instagram – I worked on being more active and increased my followers in hopes the followers will read my bio where I list a few of my key sites and go to them. I am up to 845 followers. I know this is not much but I was a late adopter of Instagram.
Amazon Associates – I looked at products that were bought via my sites or social media posts in the last year that are focused on the same niche as the site, and promoted the product in Twitter posts to a concentrated audience of the same niche. (Remember to be ethical and always disclose your affiliate links.)

What I did not do to build traffic and revenue this month

Link Building for SEO Purposes – I did not do any link building, in fact I have actually never done active link building. I am lost as to how to do it while still being ethical, so I stay away from it. I may be hurting my sites by not doing so, because some SEOs say that it still is important and it probably is, but I try to keep things as white hat as I can. I always adhere to Google Webmaster Best Practices where they say that forced link building is frowned on.
Pinterest – Due to lack of time working on making my sites mobile friendly I did not do as much with Pinterest as in previous months. I do have it on my todo list in the next three weeks to clean up my Pinterest accounts and make them for efficient. I am a member of BoardBoaster ( Learn More BoardBoaster Affiliate Link) but I am not utilizing it to its full potential and would like too. I would also like to work on being a part of more collaborative boards. Collaborative boards rock and if you are not a part of any, go out your way to get invited to participate in some.
Blog Commenting – I do not comment on other blogs to get links or traffic. There are many Facebook groups set up to do such a thing, “you comment on my site and I will comment on yours.” I just do not see the appeal in doing so and I feel that Google will see this as spam and will in future demote such sites that do if not already.
Giveaways – I have never participated in giveaways for the use of increasing my social media following. It looks like it works well for some and they have a significantly larger social media following. I would be interested in learning from other bloggers during a giveaway; does ad revenue go up?

If you liked what you read and learned some tips on how to increase your blog traffic and ad and or affiliate revenue I would love to hear some of your tips that made a difference in gaining quality traffic and affiliate revenue for your blogging sites.

A Study Into Which Amazon Associates Affiliate Links Bring In The Most Revenue

By Joanna Jana Laznicka

Recently, I have been taking a hard look at which Amazon Associates affiliate links, banners and widgets bring in the most revenue and which ones are just plain deadbeats wasting valuable space. Most of my readers/followers are aware I own several news sites based on a broad range of topics. Some might call them blogs, niche sites, online magazines, educational resources, etc. Amazon links are posted within almost all of them. I became an Amazon Associate back in 2003. It is 11 years later and I am still pleased with using the program. The goal of this post is to help you learn how to increase revenue by showing which Amazon Associates affiliate links, banners and widgets bring in the most revenue. I have learned from experience: Analyze, Analyze, Analyze! It will save you time and increase your cashflow when it comes to monetizing sites.

Research Methodology

[Please note: Due to my sites having several different focused topics, my findings are broad. Others who are Amazon Associates might find different findings depending on their niche, layout and audience of their site.]

I started my research by signing into my Amazon Associates account and looking at the Link-Type Report found under the Reporting section.

(For privacy reasons, I have left out my revenue numbers)

I then chose a big date range, such as one year or many years, to get a large scope versus a day to day analyse. I ran three reports with different date ranges: 2003 – present day, 2011 – present day (In 2011, I changed my site strategy, due to the penguin algorithm) and a 30 day report.

I then assessed Impressions and Click-Through Rate versus the Advertising Fee Column, mostly paying attention to the Click-Through Column to see the correlation between all three reports.

Findings And Conclusions

The following findings are based on all the sites I own. The hands down top performing and revenue making links/banners/widgets from Amazon Associates were the following four units :

Basic Display Product Links: Click-Through Rate 81%
Enhanced Display Product Links: Click-Through Rate 53%
Enhanced Search Box: Click-Through Rate Box 77%
Search Widget: Click-Through Rate 72%

Example of Basic Display and Enhanced Display Ads (Live Affiliate Links)

Text & Image Ad	Text Only	Image Only
	SEO 2016: Learn Search Engine Optimization

Examples of Enhanced Search Box and Search Widget (Live Affiliate Links)

Enhanced Search Box	Search Widget

My truly deadbeat ads, in order of absolutely worst performing to just simply bad performing, are as follows:

Slide Show: The Slide Show widget so under performed, that it was embarrassing. It had the third most impressions out of all the amazon affiliate links, with a horrible click-through rate and minimal sales. It might be a cute widget, but it isn’t bringing me any income. It has to be removed from my sites.
Banner Links – Category: Second most Impressions when it comes to Amazon affiliate links on my sites, with only a 4% click-through rate. It has a decent amount of sales for the 4% click-through rate. However, for the amount of impressions it should bring in more. The Banner Links Category features products chosen automatically based on product categories. The sales are good, but I can definitely swap these out for better performing units.
Product Cloud: The Product Cloud widget shows clusters of product titles that are relevant to your page. The font size of the title in the cloud indicates how relevant the product is to your page. They look much like the old Tag Clouds in WordPress from years ago that were popular but not so common now because Google and other search engines see them as keyword stuffing. They get great impressions, ok click-through rates, but zero sales.
Omakase Links: With tons of impression and a 52% click-through rate, Omakase grossly underperforms and brings me zero revenue. This actually shocked me because Omakase links combine information on each site visitor’s taste, the site’s content, and historical trends to dynamically generate relevant ads that Amazon serves to your site, providing personalized product ads to your site visitors. We have all seen these ads on sites. You go to Amazon two hours prior to research a product and then hours later you are on a random site and there is an ad for that exact product. I presumed the Omakase Links would be better revenue generators, but they are the exact opposite.
Recommended Product Links: With a high impression rate, but only 4% click-through rate and zero in sales, I need to remove these ads immediately. I thought Recommended Product Links were a good thing because they are dynamic links in which Amazon automatically selects and serves the content. You enter the type of products you want displayed, and Amazon updates them with the best selling products based on your criteria. However, based on my site findings, they are not working.
Easy Links: Getting decent impressions. However, with no click-throughs and no sales, this ad is not bringing in revenue and needs to be removed as well.
Carousel Widget: The fancy carousel widget is eye catching, but it gets a low number of impressions, only a 6.3% click-through rate and no sales. It has to be removed.
Deal Widgets: These display the hottest deals from Amazon on your web page. Call me greedy, but this widget isn’t a deal for me if it is not bringing in sales. With a good number of impressions, but no click-through rate, it isn’t working. I would opt for a better performing unit.
My Favorites Widget: The name of the widget is self explanatory. I wish it performed but it doesn’t on my sites. It could be that I like boring things or it is not placed in a good location on my sites. Perhaps, it is just something people just don’t care to click on. Nevertheless, it needs to be swapped out for a better performing unit.

Outside of these finding, the rest was really moot, not enough impressions versus click-throughs versus advertising fees to get any effective data from. I hope my findings will help you increase your revenue if you are an Amazon Associate. Feel free to share any tips you may have in the comments section below.

About Joanna Jana Laznicka

HitTail Long Tail Keyword Tool Review

A Study Into Which Amazon Associates Affiliate Links Bring In The Most Revenue

Research Methodology

Findings And Conclusions

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