Mashable posted a list of 50 Web design tools yesterday, and we’re thrilled that siteMighty landed near the top (#8). They said:

“[T]here are now scores of tools that turn ordinary folks into designers.”

We couldn’t agree more. Like we always say, we built siteMighty to enable anyone to build an affiliate marketing web site. And not just any site, but one that’s beautiful, powerful and that can be built in about 5 minutes.

I came across an interesting blog today titled, “One Year Goal, Can one man really make $100,000 online in just one year?” This got me thinking, can siteMighty make you $100k in a year?

I get this question every day from our users, how much can I make with siteMighty? My answer is always the same, “it depends.”

I’m not being flip. It really depends on how much experience you have marketing an affiliate site; how much time you’re willing to invest into your site; and how much you’re looking to make with your siteMighty site.

We have users at every level of earnings, some are happy, others want to make more (ok, I’m sure everyone would like to make more). The best thing about siteMighty is that we enable someone who couldn’t market affiliate programs before siteMighty, to build a site and get started. So many people find the affiliate marketing industry prohibitively technical and complex, that’s why we built siteMighty. siteMighty simplifies everything, and gets you started within minutes.

That $100,000 question is still unanswered, I know, but the best answer I can give is still, “it depends.” A better question might be, “Is it possible to make $100k a year with siteMighty?”

Yes. I’m sure of it. There’s nothing stopping you. I mean, we would never say, “Whoops, you reached your earnings limit for the year, now turn it off.” We’re your biggest fans! Go for it. Make tons of money. We’re here to help every step of the way.

It’s really disappointing to see companies taking advantage of people. It’s even more distressing when it’s a competitor of your company making everyone else look bad by association.

Today, I discovered a company that offers a service similar to siteMighty, but the similarities end there. The most glaring difference between this company and our own is that it charges over $5,000 to get started. Immediately, a red flag goes up.

Being the marketing person that I am, the first question I ask myself is “What’s the pitch?” (btw, if you’re an affiliate considering this $5k+ program, your first question should be “What’s the catch?”). The pitch is important to me because it’s the value proposition we extend to our users and potential users. For the $5k+ company to pitch such an exorbitant fee, means that there pitch is either very compelling or untrue.

When we talk to our customers, we are very aware of the language we use and the promises we make. Especially for affiliate marketing, we have to be very careful about telling people “you’ll make X over the next month.” No one can tell you that for certain. People enter this industry (and join siteMighty) at varying stages of experience. Some of our users know how affiliate marketing works and can get started right away. Most of our users, on the other hand, are brand new to affiliate marketing.

These are the people we built siteMighty for. siteMighty is perfect for anyone who wants to start marketing affiliate programs, but has either no way to build a site, or no budget to hire someone to build a site. You can literally come to siteMighty with zero experience in site building and have a site up in less than 5 minutes.

Keep in mind that this is just getting the site up. Step 2 involves marketing your site, and, admittedly, in the beginning we thought all we had to do was get your site built and that was it. But there’s another step which involves setting you on the path to marketing and gaining traction with your siteMighty site. We’re figuring this out and have already implemented a number of features, tools and offerings to help our users market their siteMighty sites (i.e. training guide, 24/7/365 Live support, etc.).

We’re looking for love. We want you to love us at sign up, but also love us 7 months later when you’re rocking with your siteMighty site. We can’t expect someone to to come to us with no experience and start making $10,000 a month right away. Don’t get me wrong, $10k/month is a lofty goal, but it’s attainable.

The point I’m trying to make here is that we love affiliate marketing. We believe in it. But to do it well means that it takes time to get to know it. With siteMighty, you’re given all the tools and expectations you need to succeed. Plus, we’re here to help every step of the way. We’re nothing without our amazing users.

The bottom line is that we want to add value to the industry, overcome the stigma that a few in our industry perpetuate, and see our users succeed.

The marketing department is in full swing here at siteMighty, so I thought I’d take a moment to share our latest strategy leaving the nest. Blog outreach.

We learned a lot from launching Huckabuck (our very cool Google-killer), but the thing I learned the most was how to engage blogs and get their authors to write about us. In my experience, it’s no easy task, but when it happens it’s well worth the wait. The goal here is to get a mention or review in a popular blog.

Here’s how we do it:

1. ID Blogs: I started the discovery phase of the blog outreach by going to Technorati and searching around. In the past, I would have searched for subject specific blogs, but I decided to take a look at the most popular blogs and was amazed at how many entrepreneurial blogs there are. Way more than a year ago when we were launching the Huck.
2. Make a list: You can make a written list on paper, or make a spreadsheet. I’ve even found it works to bookmark blogs and keep them in a folder on my computer. This time around, I’m using netvibes. Now, on a single tab, I have my first round picks and I’m ready to monitor.
3. Monitor the posts: This is you, in a helicopter, monitoring a high-speed chase. Just watch, take notes and report on what you see. You’ll find that if you screened your blogs correctly, they’ll blog on a theme and it’s that theme you’ll want to align your product with.
4. Comment, Post & Link to: By monitoring the blog, you’ll get a feel for the blogger’s voice and the types of people that read the blog. Become one of those people publicly. Start commenting on the blog, and really bring value to the conversation. The whole reason you monitor is so you really get the blog and can actively and legitimately participate. You should also start posting on your own blog and link back to the blogs you’re monitoring as much as you can.
5. Approach: I want to believe that if you do the above things well enough, you’ll never have to ask someone to blog about your company, product or service. But if you do it right, getting something from a blogger when you’re a real member of their community is going to be much easier.

I’ll keep y’all updated on the progress we make with siteMighty.

Whoa. Chris reminded me this morning of how long it’s been since I last posted to the Voodoo blog. It’s been an incredibly busy time for us here at siteMighty, but now, Blake’s back and ready to blog, blog, blog.

From now on, I want to primarily post about siteMighty happenings, specifically regarding marketing/growing siteMighty. We officially launched in March 2007, and as of 7/17 we have over 1700 users. Not bad, but we can do better.

We have an amazing team of interns that are bringing a lot of new energy and fresh ideas to siteMighty. They’ve helped us get siteMighty to a point where we can emerge from our beta phase, and move into hard-core marketing. Coming out of beta means we’re:

• Polishing all the content on siteMighty
• Releasing a comprehensive FAQs and Knowledge Base
• Offering a training guide for help with marketing a siteMighty site
• Integrating tutorial videos through the siteMighty account interface
• Adding 24/7/365 Live Support

More about our amazing Summer Rockstars:

1. Claire (The Artist): Claire’s bringing her talents in graphic design and experience in viral marketing to siteMighty. She is currently working on a viral marketing project involving videos where we will engage our users by connecting them to the siteMighty culture and team. We’re going for a YouTube hit with this one, but our primary goal is to connect with our users and get them excited about not only using siteMighty, but about being a part of our family.
2. Will (The Godfather): I’m calling Will the Godfather because he has tons of experience on the software development side of things. He’s working with us to learn more about how to launch a start-up and how to market a new product. He’s an MBA Fellow at Tulane. Moving forward, Will will take an active role in developing search marketing strategies as well as our blog outreach campaign for siteMighty.
3. Tannia (The Story Teller): Tannia has a very curious mind, and is always interested in how things work. She’s also great at putting things into plain English which is really great since we talk in “geek speak” a lot of the times here. Tannia is currently working on a series of press releases with Jeff as part of an awareness campaign for siteMighty.
4. Jeff (The Great Communicator): Jeff is just wrapping-up his Master’s coursework at SLU, but he’s already added a great deal to siteMighty. He was the lead on an award entry project where siteMighty was ultimately named New Orleans’ CityBusiness Innovator of the Year 2007. This is a big deal for siteMighty. Jeff is going to be working with Tannia on the awareness campaign for siteMighty.

These are all the lead projects that they’re working on, but in addition to these, we’re also starting our blog outreach campaign. Blog outreach takes lots of finessing and time. We’ve not found much success in the past “cold calling” a blogger and asking them to write about us. In those cases, we got dismissed as just another sales pitch.

We’ve developed a more sophisticated approach:

1. Identify Blogs: Use Technorati (or another blog search engine) to define a vertical, or a subject that a group of bloggers consistently write about.
2. Comment and Trackback: This step involves adding value (in the form of content) to the blogs in your vertical. Don’t pitch at this stage, just ease into the conversation/community. Comment on their blogs, and link (trackback) from a related post on your blog to their blog.
3. Request a mention: I’m not calling this a pitch, because if you do #2 well, you won’t have to ask for a mention.

We are very pleased to announce the very first BarCamp to be held in Russia. BarCamp Kazan (Russian here) will be held on August 4th, 2007, in Russia, Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan.

This BarCamp conference will coincide with my trip to Russia to visit my colleagues at Flatsourcing, Inc. we are all very excited to bring the “unconference“-style conference to Russia.

Kazan is a city with multiple excellent technical University programs. There are many highly qualified computer scientists and web programmers, and we look forward to this opportunity to bring them together, and share some of our experiences through our last six years of developing our global partnership.

I’m personally excited to host a conference session with my colleague Oleg Kurnosov in which we will share concepts from Thomas Friedman’s excellent book The World is Flat. This book has had a tremendous impact on us both personally, and provided a blueprint (and name inspiration) for our current joint venture, Flatsourcing Inc.

We want to extend the invitation to anyone and everyone to join us in Kazan August 4 for this BarCamp. The airfare might be a little steep, but we will make sure the conference is free. Thanks to everyone who is helping to put this on. Be sure to read the announcement on the Tatsoft Blog too, (English version here.)