I attended the Save Up ’11 Conference in NYC last week.  It was an amazing learning experience and gave me a chance to meet and learn from fellow Deal Pro’s.  While all that was fantastic, it’s difficult for me to interact with people I don’t know very well.  I’m shy, quiet, an introvert.

Not having an outgoing personality creates some difficulties at a blogging conference or anywhere that puts you in a group of people you don’t know very well.  While I still have a ways to go in overcoming my shy personality, I am working on it.  I wish I was more chatty or could strike up a witty conversation with a complete stranger.  However,  it is not me and I’m okay with that.

I continually strive to break out of my shell.  While I won’t ever be one to stand up in from of the group and sing karaoke, I’d like to speak up more at the lunch table.

Amee wrote previously about Tips for a First Blogging Conference.  But what do you do if your shy and worried you won’t get enough out of the trip?

While I’ve only attended 2 conferences, I have 3 tips that worked well for me (although people that don’t know me may have no idea that I was actually quite talkative):

1.  Room with someone you’re comfortable with.  If you will be sharing a room, make sure you are at least somewhat comfortable with your roommate.  It’s necessary to have a place to relax at night. If you are with a complete stranger or someone with a completely different schedule, I believe it will just add more stress to your trip.   It will also help to have someone you know to occasionally hang-out with throughout the conference.

2.  Sit with new people.  It is easier for us to sit with people we know or already have a relationship with.  If you force yourself to sit with people that you’re not familiar with, you may find that you have something in common with them.  I’m okay just listening to the conversation and taking it all in, but I do enjoy getting to chat with smaller groups of individuals.

3.  Attend a smaller conference.  When determining which conferences to attend, keep in mind the number of people in attendance.  A smaller conference such as Save Up ’11 and Savvy Blogging Summit fit my personality better than a huge conference such a BlogHer.  I am easily overwhelmed with 100 people, much less put me in a place with thousands of people.

I’m still working on overcoming my shyness.  Hopefully as time goes on, I will feel more comfortable and contribute more to the conversation.  Although once you know me, I don’t stop talking which may not be a good thing 🙂

How to you overcome shyness at public events?

You can search all of our articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Thanks to Jenny with Freebie Spot for guest posting for this weeks Ask a Blogger. We’ve talked about writing pitch letters in a past article but this article gives you a new perspective on pitching companies.

I was really nervous about cold pitching. Extremely nervous. Mainly because I did not want to just pitch a random company about a random product. I figured they would just turn me down. Why would they want to promote a product that has been successful for years?

Then I read something somewhere about PRnewswire. I dug around the site (which is extremely confusing) and set myself up with daily emails for new and future products hitting the market. I also composed a standardized “pitch” template in my email client specifically for PRnewswire pitches which I can simply change the company name or product and adjust the email as needed.

I started pitching companies whose products were of interest to me. And the responses poured in. I have actually had to schedule giveaways now so I don’t have too many posted at one time (I am not a giveaway-only blog). I’ve received a lot of great products from cold pitching, especially a lot of food items, video games, and movies. As an example, I had a review and giveaway for a Playstation game which I received 1 copy to review and 5 copies to give away. That’s approximately $360 worth of products! And they pitched me in the same email for another product.

If a press release has a PR company listed at the bottom, send them a pitch. If it has the email of someone from the company at the bottom, use your best judgment (i.e. do you think they’ll respond?). All they can do is ignore your request or say no. But many say yes! PR companies have the highest “yes” rates for me.

So don’t be afraid. Write your pitch email. Include your page rank, page views, monthly uniques, use proper spelling and grammar, be professional, and specifically state that you are wanting to promote their product by hosting a review and giveaway on your blog (I suggest using that wording exactly). You don’t want to beat around the bush; just flat out say what you want in your pitch. Often times, you’ll get it.

I hope this has helped some of you. Maybe if you are nervous about cold pitching like I was, you’ll give it a shot. After all, you’ve got nothing to lose!

Do you have tips for pitching companies?  Let us know.

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Thanks to Amee with Madame Deals for this weeks article.

I have had been blogging since April 2009 at Madame Deals. I decided in December I was going to take my blog from a hobby to a business. I knew I had to make a business plan. I had to set goals. I had to come up with strategies to manage it all. I also know the website would be a part of my life but not my life. It is easy to get caught up in making sure everything you see gets posted and every deal appears on your site. If you a careful you will neglect your “real” life and family. The only way to avoid this to make a schedule. You also have to be selective as to watch you are going to write about and develop a methodology for doing so. I decided I would share some of my tips with you.

Here are five great tips to make you a super star blogger

1) When you receive a pitch and you have decided you are going to do the review
a) Put it on your calendar when it is due
b) Put a reminder in your calendar to actually do it
c) Create a post template by copying and pasting the requirements found in the email in your post
d) Set the template to the date it needs to be posted and then use a year that is one year greater than the year your are in so you can easily find it
e) Place in the email address from which it came so you can send the link to the company easily
f) Create a google doc and place in the contact name and email and payment information and the products they represent in case you need to pitch them in the future. It is great to say I loved working with you on such and such.

2) Use a calendar and create a schedule. On your calendar should be your post schedule and your product review schedule.

3) I believe you need to educate yourself. You need to spend at least 15 minutes a day learning something new to grow your business. I pick a new topic each week to learn.

4) Once you learn your new item. You need to implement your idea. If you just read or see something new you will not remember it unless you actually use it.

5) Tip is do not put all your efforts on one area. You need to grow your business every week. I pick a different place each week to expand my reach and create new readers.

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

I was recently asked how I created my Nav Bar to have Dropdown Menus and how I redirected my menu items to specific Categories and Tags on my website.  I know there are better ways to accomplish a redirect, but with my limited knowledge of coding – I took the simple route.

Watch the video below to learn How to Create a Dropdown Menu and How to Redirect a Page in Thesis.

Having trouble viewing the video?  Click here.

**I timed out on my video, so make sure you hit “Save” after selecting your Pages at the end of the video.

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Please leave a comment on posts you would like to see in this series.

Thanks to Madame Deals for this weeks Ask a Blogger Post.

Are you broke? Are you just starting out? Have you been doing this for awhile and your site is not going anywhere. The resolution to all of those issues is advertising your business to a different audience. I often get asked how did you grow quickly. The answer is marketing and advertising and being creative. I believe it takes money to make money. I say that but I do not actually use my money to advertise.

Here are three simple ideas that you can use right now to improve your reach without spending a dime.

1) Ask everyone you know to talk about you. I would get myself a FREE t-Shirt from Vista Print and where it everywhere. I would “buy” some business cards when they are free on Vista Print. I would hand them out to anyone who moves. You never know.

2) I would sign up for sites like Swag Bucks . They pay you to search on the internet. You can make money and use it to purchase advertising without spending any money out of your pocket. The other option is one I have been very successful with to the tune of $50 a week in superpoints. Here are codes to join.

• http://superpoints.com/wrpgs/j5lrbm
• http://superpoints.com/wrpgs/4djinh
• http://superpoints.com/wrpgs/n2zw1o

What you do here is build a multilevel team and then you all spin to win prizes and money. I use the money/ giftcards I earn as prizes on my site. The prizes increase the fans who come to my site. They increase the page views on my ads which increase my revenue. I didn’t pay a thing and I am making money and my fans are winning things. The fans are also able to earn by spinning so it is a win-win situation.

3) Exchange advertising. I have set up a place on my site MADAME DEALS to place other bloggers buttons on my real deal site. If you are interested in a swap fill out my Button Exchange document here!

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Please leave a comment on posts you would like to see in this series.

SEO is an utterly confusing topic for me.  I understand the basics (mostly) but after that, you may as well be talking Chinese to me.  Luckily, there are a few plug-ins to help the SEO disadvantaged, like myself.

Some of these plug-ins will help with index and crawling while others help with the speed and load time of your site.  All of these plug-ins have come recommended to me and are active on my website.

1. XML-Sitemap
2. PC Robots.txt
3. DB – Optimize
4. All in one SEO
5. W3 Total Cache
6. Smush.it
7. Askimet – for spam

See more of our favorite WordPress Plugins on a past post

*All sites are different, so you may need to speak with your tech guy before installing.

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Please leave a comment on posts you would like to see in this series.

I have been trying to decide what to write about all week.  Then I received an email with new offers from one of my affiliates and it hit me.  I’ll write about one of my favorite affiliates: Escalate Network.

Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of great affiliate networks out there.  Escalate Network is not the only affiliate network I use.  You’ve read from previous posts that Amee and I belong to a lot of affiliate networks and are extremely pleased with most of them.  However, Escalate has proven to be reliable, user-friendly and the affiliate managers are easy to work with.

What is Escalate Network?

It is a performance-based affiliate network that brings together choice affiliates and quality online advertisers as partners according to their website.  They offer programs such as coupons.com, RedPlum, JcPenny and many more.

Why is Escalate Network one of my favorites?

• Pays Net 15
• Exclusive offers and great payouts
• Easy to navigate dashboard
• Fast approval for new affiliates
• Easy to locate links and banners
• Real time reporting
• Responsive & Knowledgeable affiliate managers

The fact that Escalate Network pays Net 15 is one reason why they are at the top of my list.  Why? Most of my affiliates pay Net 30 – Net 60.  I get my money by the 15th of the month with Escalate and usually sooner.  That means any money I earned in August, I will get paid for by September 15th.  That is a HUGE deal!

I have also found their tracking to be accurate and the advertisers provide legitimate offers that can truly benefit my readers.  I will not post something that can’t benefit my readers in some way.  I was also pleasantly surprised that Escalate came to the Savvy Blogging Conference to meet their affiliates and discuss ways to make their network better.  I started using Escalate more often after meeting Chris and David in person.

Overall, I (as well as many of my blogging friends) have been impressed with Escalate Network.  If you are not an affiliate – you should be.

What are you waiting for?  Sign up with Escalate Network today and let me know if you have any questions.

You can search all of our Articles by typing in Ask A Blogger.

Please leave a comment on posts you would like to see in this series.