First let me say, I don’t have a sob story and I’m not already a baller. I’m a recovering youth pastor turned WordPress website designer helping small businesses and non-profits find their way in the madness online. Three and a half years ago, I didn’t even know what WordPress or mobile marketing or affiliate marketing or (insert-trendy-marketing-term-here) was. Now, we make ends meet making those things work for small businesses – while my little girl fights dragons and spills her water on the couch next to me. Oh, and I’m also the coordinator for WordCamp Columbus.

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I couldn’t tell you exactly how it happened, but about three years ago after we got back from Iraq, I found the Passion Project from Paul Pitrowski which led me to Entreprenuers-Journey and Yaro Starak then to Tyler Cruz (where I first learned about affiliate marketing). Thne, of course, I found Shoemoney. It took me a while to find him, but I got there as quickly as I could! Without further adieu, here are the top four reasons he should invite me to the Affiliate Summit.

Why Shoemoney Should Choose Angie Meeker To Join Him At Affiliate Summit West 2012
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1. The most obvious: He has yet to have a winner of the female persuasion.

I can’t promise I’ll wear a low-cut, ripped up tshirt with booty shorts (trust me, that would be a hot mess!), but it would be great to report back to the vaginally-blessed affiliate marketers the awesomeness that is the Affiliate Summit West and how they, too, can get a piece of that pie.

2. I am actively working on projects for which I NEED to learn something that will be discussed at the Summit.

When we first started designing websites, we did a few Crime Stoppers websites (you know, where you can submit an anonymous tip when you know something about a crime, then get paid for it). Those organizations are just begging for more sites like the ones we make, so we’re setting up a network of websites for the anti-crime community (some free ad-supported sites, some sites with better features that cost some $$). I have GOT to learn how best to make affiliate advertising work for me on YourCrimeSite.com, an anti-crime network we’re building. The average site on that network will get between 300-600K visits a year. That traffic will add up! Not to mention direct advertising, and creating our OWN affiliate program for the network itself. We’re relaunching in late January – perfect timing to implement some of what I’ll learn at the Summit.

The other area I want to learn more about, but find little information about online, is LOCAL affiliate marketing. I want to know how I can get the candle shop down the road to get into affiliate marketing for their own products so they can turn their raving fans into sales. I asked them once and they said, “We thought about it, but we really want to protect our brand.” WTF does that mean? (I KNOW what it means, but I want to hear from some people who have heard those types of objections before and can help me work through them). Somewhere in me there is a desire to create a local affiliate network and to manage that network… but that sort of discussion is hard to find online.

3. I can barely remember how to play blackjack.

Eh. Who wants to see someone who actually knows what they’re doing toss a couple grand on the table? Let’s get some REAL drama going. Blackjack is the game where you try to get to 21 without going over, right? I might have to call my friend, Jerry to help. He knows card games. If I were to play and win more than $15K, I WOULD definitely get the Shoemoney S tattoed somewhere. My daughter would think I was a real superhero – coolest thing ever! (Speaking of her, would you head over to this contest on Facebook and vote for her? If she wins, we get a big ol’ flat panel tv, an XBox+Kinect, and Happy Feet the game). Thanks!

4. Life change? I’ll give you that.

I’m sure Shoemoney gets emails and videos from people all the time telling how they followed your instructions and now live on a posh beach in the south of France sipping Crystal and getting dark-chocolate-sea-salt-pedicures (I don’t even know if those exist, they just sound fancy). We’re not there yet. Most months our business makes the ends meet from my husband’s job at a local non-profit. Cool job, not-so-cool pay. But it’s because of Shoemoney’s generosity and others like him, their willingness to SHARE what they know, that we’ve been able to make it work. I set my own hours, I’m my own boss, I’m here when my daughter gets home from preschool in the middle of the day. Things are tight, but generally speaking, I have a life many moms and dads dream of. But…

I want more. Affiliate Summit West will help me get there.

Having said that, this week I have challenged myself to cook. At home. Every single night. I sat down Saturday night and made a real shopping list, and a meal plan including snacks and everything. I used up some of what we had left from the week before. The cost of our shopping list was almost $60 less than we’d typically spend, not to mention the $60+ we’d spend eating out.

Today for lunch we had baked sweet potatoes, black beans with chopped mango and onion, mixed with the juice of one lime. So simple, yet it really tasty.

It was nothing compared to dinner, though. I got almost every recipe for this week from this month’s Food Network magazine, which I stole from Bob’s mom, Tammy. We had Roasted Butternut Squash Sandwiches. It was DELICIOUS! If we had been on the back porch and had paid $50 for our meal, I might have thought we were at Northstar or Skillet!

The recipe is below if you’d like to try it yourself. We had most everything on hand, except for the squash, the cheese and the bread. We bought the squash for $1.00 at the Grandview Ave Farmer’s Market, a 5 oz. wedge of Danish Herman goat cheese from Osage Creamery at the same Farmer’s Market for $5.60 which we used instead of Manchego, and a loaf of french bread for $2.00. Nila really liked the cheese, which surprised Bob and the vendor from Osage, who said most kids don’t because it’s rather strong. Enjoy!

Roasted Butternut Squash Sandwiches

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for the bread
• 1/2 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 Maui or other sweet onion, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 8 slices country white bread
• 1 pound manchego cheese, thinly sliced
• 1 cup sliced almonds, toasted

Directions

What i am is bored.

What i am is unused.

What i am is yet content.

What i am is hopeful.

What i am is smart.

What i am is faithful.

What are you?

Here at MyNameIsAngie.com, I’ve ALWAYS offered a free video course teaching the basics of WordPress. The opt-in for it has ALWAYS been in the upper right sidebar and has always included basically what it does now. And, I’ve always had very minimal success with gaining subscribers. Go figure. I mean, who needs a free 8-video course to learn how to do what some pay a designer hundreds or even thousands to do for them? Anyway…

You should also know that I don’t get thousands of visitors a month. Mostly because I don’t usually DO the things for myself that I teach OTHER people to do which would drive traffic here! Not enough time in the day to teach, design, mother and wife (read: poor time management)! So when you see the opt-in numbers below, they might not look impressive to you. Look beyond the actual numbers, and simply compare the before and after opt-ins.

I installed PopUp Domination on May 19. In the 53 days PRIOR to installing it, I had 2 subscribers. In the 53 days since installing PopUp Domination, I’ve had 37 optins for my free video course. That’s an increase of 1,750%.

I don’t know what else to say. I changed the design of the site a few times, but the new design has actually worked against the other stats of the site (retention, pageviews, bounce, etc…). There is no other explanation except for the in-your-face popup opt-in! I have about a 5.67% opt-in rate right now, with very little effort to either drive traffic to my site or to get what traffic does come to opt-in. I can’t imagine how this little plugin would help turn my visitors into subscribers if I was actually TRYING. What would YOU do with a 1750% increase in subscribers this month?

Click here to purchase your copy of PopUp Domination.

And here is a quick video showing exactly how to use the Editorial Calendar directly from the EC plugin authors.

The WordPress Editorial Calendar Screen Cast from Zack Grossbart on Vimeo.

I’m about to open up another round of my Easy WordPress Websites Webinar. Here’s a little blooper from a promo video. Like the video set up? I learned how to make it from Gideon Shalwick. You can learn how, too, for free here. Sometime this week I’ll show you our actual setup in the basement. I love it!

Would you do me a quick favor while you’re here? Would you leave a comment below with ONE thing you’d like to learn this June? It can be related to WordPress, email marketing, mobile marketing, video marketing… whatever. Just let me know one specific way I can help!

1. Write a post by examining the pros and cons of an issue.
2. Write a tutorial.
3. Email a person who is well-known in your industry and ask them a few questions.
4. Do a post that answers your readers’ or customer’s common questions.
5. Post about current events in your niche. They don’t even have to be local events. If you’re a golf instructor and the Master’s is happening in Augusta, write up some of your thoughts about the best shots of the weekend. It will show your readers that you’re engaged in your industry and what’s important to them.
6. Invite your readers to submit articles.
7. Review your statistics to see what keywords referred your visitors to your site and write a post about those topics. Even three or four referrals from a particular keyword show that your readers are interested in that topic.
8. Debunk a myth in your post. Every industry has some time-honored traditions or myths that just don’t work or aren’t true anymore. Tell us about them.
9. Compare something. If you’re a gardener, write about using organic vs. non-organic fertilizers.
10. Designate each day of the week as a theme day where you will always post about a particular topic on that day.

Screenshot of widget output on "Open Source" page under top level page "My Portfolio", running Twenty-Ten theme

The title of the widget is the top level page within the current section (but you can change that in the widget’s settings) . It will show all page siblings (except on the top level page), all parents and grandparents (and higher), the siblings of all parents and grandparents (up to top level page), and any immediate children of the current page. If you’re a programmer, you can also use it inside template files using a function.

If you’re just using WordPress for simple blogging, then you might not need this plugin. But, if you develop sites for clients who sometimes have complicated page structures or hundreds of pages with groups of pages, then this is definitely something you can use.

(click to enlarge)

Last year, I designed a site for a tutoring franchise in Canada. They wanted each of their franchises to have several pages dedicated to their location and for one of those pages to be that location’s blog…but to only display those three pages in the sidebar navigation when a visitor was look at that location. Makes sense. Someone looking at Location A doesn’t need to be distracted by all of the pages for Location B, right? So here’s how using the Simple Section Navigation looks on that site:

To install Simple Section Navigation on your site, navigate to the Plugins tab on your dashboard, click Add New, and search for “Simple Section Navigation.” Install it, then remember to activate it, too. Once you’ve done that, go to Appearance>Widgets, and you’ll see a new widget called “Simple Section Navigation.” Drag it over to the sidebar where you’d like it to display.

(click to enlarge)

There are a few settings you can play with once the widget is in place. For example, you can change the title of the widget. If you don’t, it will simple display the top level page’s name (for the Scholars example above, that would have “Our Centres.” You can choose how to sort the pages, to exclude particular pages from that section, whether to show the widget on the home page, whether to make the title of the widget a link to the top level page (in our example above, “Our Centres” could either be a link to the “Our Centres” page, or just be the text “Our Centres,” to show all the pages in a section, to show the widget even if there are no pages in that section to show, and to not show the navigation on pages that are excluded.

1. StudioPress. StudioPress uses a theme called Genesis to power almost all of their other themes. To use most of their themes, you have to install Genesis first (but not activate it), and then install the theme you want to use (called a child theme). The child theme gets its inner workings from Genesis, but gets its unique design from its own theme files. Kind of like how a child gets its DNA from its parents, but that DNA works itself out a little different from child to child in a family. The Genesis theme itself is pretty powerful and I’ve used it on several sites. The best thing about StudioPress themes is their support. It is A++++. I have NEVER seen a product with such great support. In fact, when possible anymore, I start with a StudioPress theme and make modifications to it.

2. ThemeForest. Themeforest is a collection of themes for various platforms, not just WordPress themes… but you can search just for WordPress themes. ThemeForest is a theme marketplace, meaning many different theme authors sell their themes there. This is nice because it offers a great variety of themes. The theme this site currently uses is called Magzimus, and I got it at Themeforest. I suggest reading through a theme’s Comments before you purchase a theme through ThemeForest, and look to see how the theme author responds to questions and requests for assistance. There are some truly creative themes at ThemeForest that make great use of what WordPress is capable of, and you just won’t find those themes anywhere else.

What theme are you using for your site now? What do you like about it? Not like? Can we take a peek? Do you need a recommendation for a theme to use for a particular project – tell us about in the comments.