Mr Beach Bum.com

Maybe you didn’t even realize this but part of having a successful business includes building a brand. In many ways you are a branding expert without even realizing it. After all, you deal with brands in your everyday life and probably don’t even have to put much thought into it. For example, when you see an ad for McDonald’s, you probably know exactly what they stand for, what products they have, etc. This is branding in a nutshell. But let me tell you, when it comes to branding, it’s a lot easier to be a consumer than it is to be a business owner trying to build a brand. This is why you might need some good solid advice from the experts.

This is where the Brand Identity Guru comes in. The guru himself is Scott White, and he authors the Branding Blog . What I really enjoy about his blog is the fact that he takes a witty approach to a topic that might not be second nature to all of his readers. I have taken a few marketing classes in my time but I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know as much as I could about branding, yet I felt perfectly comfortable reading his posts. One of my absolute favorites is this post called “Brands we love/hate” I can certainly identify with a lot of what he says and I am sure most of you can too.

I often try to remind myself about the differences between perception and reality. And what I mean by that is you may have an idea in your head that you are going down one path, yet others may percieve an entirely different path.  It is all about what you project to others as to how they will perceive you. In many ways this is exactly what branding is all about. The idea is to be mindful enough about what you want to say with your brand image so that others will be able to perceive your reality. Sometimes it can come rather easily if you stay true to yourself, but I would bet that any of the most successful companies with some of the hottest brand names out there today didn’t get their image by accident or without careful planning and well executed strategies.

It is in this same sense that I quote from Scott’s post “How I’m going to beat type 2 diabetes using branding and business skilss” in which he says the following:

“For almost twenty years I’ve been helping clients develop a brand identity. I’ve also fixed some pretty messed up brand identities. You see brand identity is who you want to be, but brand image is how everyone else perceives you. Most of the time we see a gap between the brand identity and brand image. ”

So the question is, how will you handle your brand? Well if that question scares you at all then I highly recommend that you check out Scott’s blog, Branding Blog , and become a regular reader. It is actually quite entertaining but it makes you really think about branding in general and that is exactly what every business owner needs to do. And if you’re really serious about building your brand then you might consider checking out his “Pump up your brand workshop“.

The Branding Blog should definitely be on your RSS feed reader if you plan to start an online business and create an image that will keep people coming back. Do it now as opposed to later and maybe you can avoid the ugliness involved in repairing a damaged image.

This was a sponsored review.

I was asked to do a review on a site that has a concept I’ve not come across before. Qooforum.com is essentially a forum where you can post about the topics you like, and they share a percentage the Google Adsense revenue generated by your posts with you.

This concept intrigued me so I just had to check it out for myself. It’s free to join and I found a wide range of topics available to discuss with other members. For example, they’ve got threads for news/politics, sports, fashion, investing, computers - you name it! Actually, you can name it. You see the idea here is that you will be the one adding to their threads. As stated in their Frequently Asked Questions, the more threads you create, the more you can make. There is, however, one little catch up front. You must earn the right to create new threads and earn revenue by initially making 50 posts. 

So how do you make money once you are able to post threads? 

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Note: This is the first installment in a new series of Affiliate Network reviews that we will feature here from now on. If you have a specific affiliate network that you’d like us to review, please feel free to comment below and we’ll consider adding it to our list of future reviews if it is not already planned. Keep checking back for this series and look for the Affiliate Network Review Series tags to make it easy to find. 

I am a member of quite a few affiliate networks. Since joining up with an affiliate network is typically free, it is in my best interest to diversify. I urge you to do the same. Seriously, why limit your possibilities for income to just one network when you can choose the ads that work best for your website from a plethora of suppliers?

The fact of the matter is, you are not necessarily going to find every advertiser you may want for your website in just one affiliate network. As a matter of fact, the only way you may have access to every advertiser that might work best for you is by joining multiple affiliate networks.

What I’ve found is that each network tends to have a niche market all their own in terms of the programs they offer. For example, I’ve found LinkShare.com to be my go-to for many of the big name brand advertisers such as Dell, Apple, etc. In the same token, I know I can count on Clickbank.com to keep a large pool of “work from home“, “Free iPOD / iPhone /PS3 / Wii / younameit” type of ads as well.

So where does Shareasale fit in?

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